The Chameleon Conspiracy (33 page)

“So management doesn’t know who they really work for?”

“You got it,” said Benny. “They believe oil billionaires from the Gulf States own the bank.”

“How did you manage to do that and survive the Swiss regulators’ scrutiny?” I asked curiously.

“Don’t ask,” said Benny. “But it works fine. Now you can understand my difficulty, not to say inability, to let you have access
to the bank’s records.”

“I don’t need current records,” I said. “I need to go back to 1980 or 1981 through, say, 1995.”

“It’s possible that the records for the earlier years are archived or even shredded. But that I can find out.”

Later on in the afternoon Benny called. “These guys are so meticulous, they never destroy anything. The documents are stored
in”—he paused, and I heard pages turning—“Manheim Document Storage, in Bern. Does that help you?”

“In a way. I’d either need to break in or get a court order.” “Get a court order under some pretext,” suggested Benny. “We
don’t need the media attention if a break-in is discovered.”

I returned to my office and found in the day’s mail Mrs. Nazeri’s power of attorney that I had had sent to her earlier, marked
The Law Offices of Dan Gordon, Esq.
She had executed it before the Swiss consul in Tehran and faxed me an advance copy. This was the original. As I instructed
my assistant to messenger it to the surrogate’s court downtown, I reflected that at last, I was practicing law again. Well,
not exactly. I wasn’t expecting to be paid, and my motive went beyond the need to serve a client. Also, the pleadings had
been drafted and filed by a discreet Agency lawyer, not by me.

No matter. I was the one who’d signed the petition seeking my appointment as the administrator of the estate of the
late Philip Montreau, aka Christopher Gonda. Wasn’t that enough?

A week later the surrogate’s clerk called me. “You have indicated in the petition a Swiss address of the decedent.”

“Yes.”

“Did the decedent have any assets in Switzerland?”

“I think he just had bank accounts.”

“You will most probably need ancillary letters of administration for a Swiss court. The Swiss banks will not honor a New York
court’s order. You’ll have to convert it to become a Swiss court order as well.”

Nonetheless, he said, my appointment had been confirmed, and he faxed me a copy. In short order, I dispatched a locksmith
to meet me at Nazeri’s apartment. The locksmith opened the door, replaced the lock, gave me a key, and left.

I entered the spacious three bedroom apartment. Nazeri had spent a lot of money on decor. Not to my taste, all these pink
figurines and lace, but still expensive. I searched the apartment. It was clean. Too clean. I put on plastic gloves and looked
around. I opened drawers and closets. Nothing. It was like a model apartment in a development for people of middling taste.
There was nothing personal in the apartment, and there were no documents whatsoever, not even an old phone bill. The apartment
was neat and tidy, as if the maid had just left, removing everything personal or made of pulp. I sighed. I’d have to send
lab people to search for fingerprints.

I returned to my office and wrote a report to the file. Two days later the surrogate’s court issued the additional documents
to be sent to Switzerland. After we had them approved with an apostille, that antiquated but still-necessary method of authenticating
documents for transmission to foreign authorities, I sent them to Switzerland by registered mail. Boring, formal, but necessary.

A week later Dr. Liechtenstein, our Swiss attorney, faxed me the court’s decision. It took me some time to decipher the archaic
German they used. I read it again and again until I understood that in fact the Swiss court had authorized the request of
the New York City Surrogate’s Court to

order Tempelhof Bank to open their archives and provide the New York Surrogate Court’s appointed Administrator Herr Dan Gordon
with copies of records of deposits and other transactions of the late Philip Montreau, also known as Christopher Gonda, who
resided in Wehntalerstr. 215, CH-8057 Zürich, made or occurring between January 1, 1980, and December 31, 2005, at Tempelhof
Bank, or for which Tempelhof Bank acted as a banking correspondent.

The order contained additional conditions and details, but I was already celebrating in my heart. I had managed to make another
small step forward.

I called Dr. Liechtenstein in Zürich and asked to arrange my visit to inspect the documents.

“I’ve already talked to them. It will have to be at their storage facility,” he said. “I’m sorry—they tell me that the physical
conditions there aren’t so good.”

Five days later I was in Zürich, my court-authorized appointments and travel documents having been fully vetted. “You never
know with the Swiss authorities,” Bob Holliday had said. “They’re extremely fussy when U.S. government agents
visit their country, even when the visit complies with a Swiss court’s order.”

I met Dr. Liechtenstein with the bank’s lawyer, and we traveled to Bern’s Manheim Document Storage company. There were an
hour and a half of formalities, which included my execution of a confidentiality agreement, in case during the course of my
search I was exposed to documents unrelated to Mr. Montreau, and therefore not included in the court’s order. I signed. Why
should I care if I stumbled on secret deposits of this dictator or that thug? I raced through the formalities. I had one agenda:
Chameleon and his Atashbon cohorts. I wouldn’t be distracted, not even by the bureaucratic hurdles put up by the young blond
man who was assigned by the bank to help me. I knew he was in there to make sure I wasn’t sidestepping my court-approved gangway,
which was like the one used to herd cattle to the slaughter. My gangway here was fitted with virtual sides, railings, and
other means of protection, to prevent me from looking at any other documents. Here, I thought, I was the cattle.

I’d come prepared. Before leaving New York I had met with Special Agent Matt Kilburn of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Unit, whom
I’d first met at the conference in Giverny, France. Matt had been working on the investigation of Nada Management, previously
known as Al Taqwa, and provided me with excellent written and oral reports on the methods of its operation.

Heinrich Andrist, my chaperone, appointed by Tempelhof Bank, was a gentle person with a very polite demeanor.

“OK,” I said as all the lawyers left. “Let’s start with 1981. Can you tell me how these cartons are cata loged?”

“By account number and by our client number index.”

“Can I see the index?”

“I’m sorry, you can’t. It contains names and details of the bank’s customers, and that is protected by Swiss law.”

“Of course. Let’s look up by name. The decedent’s name was Christopher Gonda, and then Philip Montreau. He may have also used
Reza Nazeri.”

“Of course, Herr Gordon,” he said patiently. He went to the third row of the eight-foot-tall heavy metal shelves, climbed
a small stepladder, and pulled out a carton case.

“That’s Mr. Gonda’s file for 1981.”

I chose that year to begin my search, although I was almost certain I’d find nothing. But just in case, I wanted to make sure
I wouldn’t miss anything.

I quickly ran my eyes over the yellowing documents. There were bank statements and deposit slips, telegraphic transfers and
other documents. But there was nothing to quench my thirst or satisfy my hunger for pertinent facts. They were just old papers,
seemingly irrelevant to my subject of interest. I need to see the buzzword
Al Taqwa
, or other similarly exciting leads telling me where the money went. An hour later I closed the box and shook my head.

“Nothing here,” I said. “Please bring the next box.”

Heinrich brought me 1982, then every year through 1987. Nothing. The documents represented typical bank accounts of a businessman
who liked to travel and buy expensive gifts for himself. There were many transfers or withdrawals, but with all deposits made
in cash, it was impossible to trace their origin or the source of his income. I made a record of significant outgoing transfers,
all of them to other banks in Europe and the U.S. Hours went by. Heinrich looked at his watch; it was four thirty p.m. But
he still said nothing.

“Please get me the 1988 box, and we’ll call it a day,” I said. He seemed relieved.

That box was bigger than the rest. As the flying dust reached my nose, I sneezed, and then, getting a better look, restrained
myself from crying aloud. Lying atop the pile was a printed envelope of Al Taqwa. Inside were copies of seven wire transfers
made from an Al Taqwa account in Lugano, Switzerland, through Tempelhof Bank to a McHanna Associates account at Manufacturers
Hanover bank in New York. I quickly added up the amounts. They totaled approximately $7 million. The transfer orders were
signed by Gonda. That was a
strong indication that he had signature rights at Al Taqwa to move funds around.

I frantically leafed though the other documents in the box and felt like Ali Baba in the children’s story, breaking into the
cave of the forty thieves and finding heaps of silver and gold, bales of silk and fine carpets. An inch deeper into the box,
I found additional documents showing wire transfers from Gonda to Al Taqwa and from them to McHanna Associates, using Tempelhof
Bank as a correspondent bank. Heinrich made me copies of the documents I selected. I signed a receipt and left.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven
A.M.
,” he said.

I returned to my hotel, ordered room service, and concentrated on reading the documents.

An alarm bell sounded. “
Feuer, evakuieren Sie bitte alle Räume.
…

Fire, please evacuate all rooms.” I opened my room door. People were running in the hallway. I didn’t see or smell fire or
smoke. I looked out the window: there was no fire engine or any special activity in the street.

“Another fire drill,” I muttered. I’d already been through one in Islamabad—I should have been considered exempt. I was in
shorts and a T-shirt and didn’t feel like leaving my room again. I had no intention of playing. I closed the door. Seconds
later came a series of strong bangs on my door. I opened it.

A man with a flashlight and fireman’s hat said in a thick German accent, “You must to leave now.”

“What?” I asked, pretending not to understand.

“You must to leave,” he repeated.

Reluctantly I stepped into my pants, took my laptop and my personal documents, and went to the door. I stopped, turned around,
and took the copies of the bank documents I’d had made at the storage facility. Maybe I could find a corner to go over them
while this stupid, untimely drill was going on. The elevator door was blocked, and I had to use the stairs.

About a hundred people were in the lobby, some in night clothing and some wrapped in blankets. Twenty minutes later I heard,
“Falsche Warnung”
—false alarm, said the guy who had ousted me earlier from my room, as he entered the lobby. “Somebody pressed the alarm button.
We shall report this to the police. It’s illegal to do that,” he announced in German, then repeated it in English. I had no
patience or interest to hear the rest of the things he had to say and ran first to the elevator.

I opened my door and took a step back. My room had been ransacked—every drawer thrown open, the suitcase shaken out. I opened
the door wide, placed a shoe to stop it from shutting, and gingerly walked inside. If the intruder was still inside my room,
I didn’t want to be locked in with him. He could be armed, and there could be more than one intruder. I checked the bathroom
and the closet. They were empty. I looked around. The bed linens were thrown on the floor, and my clothes in the closet were
piled up in the corner. Somebody had pressed the fire-alarm button to get me out of my room.

I called security. The same “fireman” came over. He must have been their jack-of-all-trades.
“Mein Gott,”
he exclaimed when he saw the mess. “Is anything missing?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I was still holding my laptop computer and the stack of documents. “Please check to see if other guests
were victimized as well,” I said. If I was the only one, then the conclusion would be clear: I’d been singled out. Someone
wanted something I had. And the only things I had were the papers and my laptop. It wasn’t my fashionable attire.

“I need another room,” I told him. “I can’t stay here.”

He went to the night table and used the phone. A few minutes later a chambermaid came and gave me a room key for a room on
a different floor. I quickly packed and moved there. I left my luggage in my new room and went to the twenty-four-hour business
center, still carrying my laptop computer and the documents. I faxed the documents to my New York
office and shredded the copies I had, taking the confetti-like pieces with me.

Whoever had broken into my room was either interested in the documents because he didn’t have the information they contained,
or he wanted to see how much I’d found. I could have been wrong, of course, but so far there was nothing to contradict me.
The alarming conclusion was that someone knew to expect me in Switzerland, knew where I had gone that day, knew where I was
staying, and had used the alarm-bell button to get me out of my room. Had my talents for identifying followers rusted? I hadn’t
noticed anything unusual. Frankly, though, I hadn’t been paying much attention. For once I’d arrived in Switzerland for something
that was so aboveboard that I was relieved to not have to constantly look behind me. And of all my cases, this visit—the
perfectly clean one—had to be marred by a hostile entry? I threw the confetti into the fireplace in the lobby and waited
to see it blaze.

I called Casey Bauer to report. He was more alarmed than I had been. “Dan, leave the hotel immediately. Cancel tomorrow’s
meeting at the ware house. You may have to return to the U.S., but not just yet. We need to arrange security before you can
return to the ware house.”

I called Lufthansa Airlines using my room telephone, asking the switchboard operator to connect me. I spoke with the airline
representative and bought a one-way ticket to Frankfurt. I asked the desk to prepare my bill and send up a bellman, although
all I had was one small suitcase. I told the bellman I was going to Frankfurt and asked him to get me a taxi. I paid the hotel
bill and mentioned I needed to fly urgently to Frankfurt.

At the airport, when I’d made sure I wasn’t observed, I took the elevator down to the arrival hall, pressing all the buttons
to make the elevator stop on every floor. I was alone in the elevator, but anyone looking at the lit numbers above the elevator
door wouldn’t see on which floor I’d exited. I went to the
taxi line and took a taxi to Zürich, where I checked into the Hilton hotel using my Anthony P. Blackthorn documents.

I called Casey Bauer, reported my new location, and fell asleep in front of the television. I was angry and surprised that
I’d been spotted. Field security was lax somewhere. Next time the consequences could be more serious.

Two hours before my scheduled meeting with Heinrich Andrist, my chaperon at Tempelhof Bank’s ware house, I called with my
cell phone to apologize. “I had to fly unexpectedly to Frankfurt to meet another client. I’m sorry for any inconvenience I
may have caused you.”

“Will you be back?”

Now he misses me? “In a few days. I’ll call ahead.”

Casey Bauer called my cell phone. “There’s no question there was a security leak,” he said. “Did you tell anyone where you
were going?”

Sometimes I feel like kicking the bureaucrats who ask stupid questions. But Casey didn’t qualify—he was a trained CIA officer
covering all bases. “Nobody in New York but my office administrator.”

“Weren’t you involved with the courts in New York and in Switzerland?”

“Yes, but they didn’t know if and when I was coming to Switzerland. My contacts at the bank didn’t know where I was staying.
That leaves only Dr. Liechtenstein, the Swiss attorney I hired to help me get the Swiss court order. He knew when I was arriving,
and knew where I was staying.”

Casey sighed. “Let me check on him,” he said grimly. “But it seems whoever it was wanted something from your room, and not
you personally. Otherwise they’d have been waiting for you inside your room.”

Once stretched on the sofa in my spacious room I was finally able to analyze the documents I had retrieved from the bank’s
ware house. I turned on my laptop and logged into my New York office. In less than one minute I was connected, passing through
four sets of different username and password
screens. I opened the data files and read the documents I had faxed my office computer earlier.

The conclusion was unavoidable. In 1988 Reza Nazeri, aka Christopher Gonda, aka Philip Montreau, had moved millions of dollars
between Switzerland and the U.S., and back. During that time money-laundering laws had been reserved for drug lords and corporate
frauds, and the phrase
terror financing
hadn’t been coined yet or thought of. Most of the transfers had gone through Al Taqwa in Lugano and Tempelhof Bank in Zürich,
and in all of them the name used was Gonda, not the two other names, Nazeri and Montreau. But although I found 1988 records,
he’d had an account with Tempelhof Bank at least as early as 1981. Was there an explanation?

Perhaps the answer was simple. Since he’d used the stolen identity of Christopher Gonda to open the account, and Gonda disappeared
at about the same time, I assumed that 1981 was in fact the year the account was opened. Why had Nazeri/Gonda needed the account
before the banking scams had begun? Since my first quick review of the earlier files at the ware house didn’t reveal anything
suspicious, I went on to the next year. I was locked into an assumption connecting Nazeri/Gonda to McHanna. Therefore, I may
have overlooked Gonda’s activities before his account was used to launder money transferred between McHanna and Al Taqwa.
I’d have to go back to the ware house to look again in the files, including those I’d already reviewed, but definitely those
of the years subsequent to 1988.