The Chameleon Conspiracy (35 page)

I dove to the floor and yelled at McHanna, “Get down, get down!” He fell on the carpet and crawled under his desk. I edged
to the window to peep outside. I saw a gunman on the roof of the adjacent building aiming at our window with his scope-mounted
gun.

“Don’t get up,” I said. “There’s a sniper on the roof of the next building.”

“Some crazy guy,” said McHanna. “This never happens in South Dakota. But then again, South Dakota is much smaller.”

What was wrong with him? Somebody shoots at him, and his immediate reaction is a statistical comparison?

“Do you know why he’s trying to kill you?” I asked, still lying on the carpet wondering what the sniper would do next.

McHanna didn’t answer. He’d just broken the rule I learned during my military service: don’t draw fire—it irritates the people
around you. I was clearly in the shooter’s range, and could take a bullet if I got up.

“Stay where you are,” I said. “There could be additional snipers.” I crawled toward the entrance door. Another bullet hit
the door just inches above my head.

Son of a bitch. I had no gun, no backup, and no idea how many shooters there were. I saw one, but there could have been more.
I couldn’t risk exiting through the door because it’d put me directly in the line of fire.

I dialed Hodson’s office from my mobile phone. After two rings I heard Hodson’s secretary announce, “Mr. Hodson’s office.”

As I responded, “Julie, this is Dan Gordon,” she said, “Hold on,” and put me on hold. I anxiously looked at the battery bars
on my phone. I was left with only a few more minutes of power. I couldn’t take the risk. I disconnected and dialed 911. The
operator came on.

“What is your emergency?”

“Shots fired at me by a sniper,” I said, but realized I was talking to myself. The phone was dead. Battery empty. I crawled
toward the desk and tried to reach the telephone. Another shot shattered the mirrored display cabinet next to the desk, covering
me and the floor around me with broken glass. I pulled down the telephone cord and grabbed the receiver. There was no dial
tone.

“McHanna,” I said. “Do I need to dial 9 or something to get an outside line?”

“No, just press any button on the right.”

I pulled the phone to the carpet and tried them all, but the phone was dead. I checked the cord. It was still hooked to the
wall, but the phone was still dead.

“We should leave immediately,” I said. “Is there another exit?”

“You mean from my office?”

“Yes.”

“Only the door you came in through.”

“How about your office suite? Does it have a back door?”

“Just the one front door.”

I crawled back toward the windows, groping for the curtain cords. I managed to close the heavy curtains on two of the three
windows. Another bullet went through one of the curtains and into the opposite wall.

Damn. The shooter had time and ammunition, just the things I was hoping he’d be short of. If I identified correctly based
on my military training, the sniper was using a U.S.-made USMC-series gun, which has a magazine capacity
of five rounds and an effective range of one thousand yards. We were only fifty to seventy-five yards away. He had already
used four rounds. I tried to push the heavy desk toward the window to block some of the shooter’s view, but even with McHanna
pushing from underneath, we couldn’t move it. The desk was too heavy.

Rays of sunlight emerged through the one window with open curtains. That gave me an idea. I crawled to the wall on the shattered
glass, cutting my arm and knee, and found a largish piece of a mirror, which had fallen from the wall unit. I pushed a guest
chair around to face the window and quickly mounted the mirror on its cushion, leaning it against the chair’s back. The mirror
captured the sun’s rays and reflected them in the general direction of the shooter. As I heard the next shot breaking the
mirror I jumped to my feet and ran through the door. I tried the phone on the receptionist’s desk. It was dead as well.

I needed something to protect myself if I encountered any opposition face-to-face, but the only thing I could find was a metal
letter opener on her desk. I cautiously checked the outside door. The hallway was empty. I ran to the emergency exit next
to the elevator door and down the stairs to the floor below McHanna’s office.

The first office was a dentist’s clinic, and the receptionist and two waiting patients were startled as I barged in. I was
breathing hard and bleeding from my hand, and my pants had blood stains in the knee area.

“I need to use the phone,” I said, and when I saw their hesitation—a small wonder given my bloody and messed-up appearance—
I added, “I’m a federal agent.”

“Let me take care of that,” said a man in a white doctor’s gown who emerged from an inside room hearing the commotion. “Are
you hurt?”

“I’m OK, thanks, but I really need the phone,” I said. Looking uneasy, the receptionist handed me the receiver. Moments later
I heard sirens and the building was flooded by SWAT, the Special Weapons Assault Team, wearing black protective gear
and carrying high-power guns. A neighbor must have called the police after hearing the shots. One SWAT member entered the
dentist’s office and approached me.

I flashed my DOJ ID. “There’s a shooter on the roof of the next building. There could be more than one.”

“Were you the target?” he asked.

“I may have been, but more likely they wanted to get Timothy McHanna. He’s on the twelfth floor, in McHanna Associates. Don’t
let him out of your sight. He’s the subject of a federal investigation.”

He radioed to his team, and we ran to the twelfth floor. McHanna was still cowering under his desk. But police were already
everywhere, and no one was shooting. The officer answered his radio. “Got you.”

“OK,” he said. “There was just one shooter, and he got away, leaving empty shells behind him.”

“I’m getting the hell out of here,” said McHanna as he emerged from under the desk.

“I think we need to talk first,” I said.

“I have nothing to tell you,” he said dismissively.

“Who wanted to kill you? He may try again.”

“How do you know I was the target? Could have been for you. From what I hear, you’ve got your own enemies.”

He had a point, but I wasn’t about to concede it.

“I’ll look into the list of people who want me dead. But I suggest you do the same. I suspect the bullets were meant for you.”

“Why?” he asked faintly, although I suspected he knew the answer already.

“Because nobody knew I was coming to see you.”

“Not even in your own office?”

“No. I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d pay a visit to an old friend. Just a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“Mr. Gordon, I hardly think this is funny. My life is in danger.”

Now he was admitting it.
That’s some progress,
I thought. “Were any threats made against you?”

“No.”

“Tell me, who wants you dead?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Obviously the shooter knows, but he’s currently unavailable. I don’t have his e-mail or phone number, so I can’t ask him.
That leaves only you to answer my question. Who wants you dead?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“Why are your phones dead?”

“Dead? All of them?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. Maybe a power failure.”

“Where is your staff? I didn’t see anyone when I came in.” “I told them not to come in for now. We can’t operate our business
when all our files and computers are gone.”

“Do you have any new employees?”

“No, they’ve all been with me for quite some time.”

“So nobody came in today?”

“Just the receptionist. She came in this morning as usual, but I sent her home.”

“Did she leave immediately?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Did she say anything about the mess in the office?”

“No. She was here yesterday during the search.”

“What’s her name?”

“Saida Rhaman.”

“What’s her address and phone number?”

“I only have a number. She told me she recently moved to a new apartment, and I don’t have the address.” He removed an address
book from his inside jacket pocket. “Her number is 718-555-9878.”

I told the SWAT agent quietly, “Don’t let him out of your sight.”

I went outside and called Hodson from a pay phone. “I think the attempted hit is directly connected to our search yesterday,”
I told him. “Somebody is trying to silence McHanna. It’s also possible that the sniper was just sending him a warning.
A shooter with a sniper’s rifle with a scope doesn’t miss from such a short distance unless he’s totally clumsy.”

“That means that, whoever they are, they don’t trust McHanna to keep quiet voluntarily,” said Hodson. “Maybe it’s time. I’ll
send agents to pick him up for questioning.”

“I thought you’d do that, so I asked the SWAT team’s commander to keep an eye on McHanna.”

I called the duty FBI agent. “I need to locate Saida Rhaman, telephone 718-555-9878.”

“Hold on.”

“The last known address we have is on Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.” He gave me the house number.

“What’s the cross street?”

“Third Avenue.”

“Did you check the phone listing?”

“Yes, it’s listed under Nikoukar Jafarzadeh.”

“Please run a check on that person,” I requested.

“OK. Call me in an hour.”

“Sure, and once you’re done with him, I need background on Saida Rhaman, a receptionist at McHanna Associates. Her boss gave
me the number listed as Jafarzadeh’s.”

The name Jafarzadeh sounded Iranian, and Saida Rhaman sounded Arabic. But maybe it was a coincidence. Or not. An hour later
I called the agent again.

“Nikoukar Jafarzadeh, a male born in Tehran, Iran, in 1970, applied for a student visa in 1988 sponsored by a language-learning
institute in Virginia. An F-1 student visa was issued on 2/88. The visa expired on 2/90 and there’s no record of his leaving
the country. On 7 November 1992 he was stopped in Arlington, Virginia, on a minor traffic violation. He carried a Virginia
driver’s license, number 099889004334. Virginia’s DMV records show his address as 1528 North 16th Road, Arlington, Virginia
22209. There’s no telephone listing for that address. No connection to Saida Rhaman was found. Additional information is forthcoming.”

“Do I understand from the immigration info you’ve just mentioned that he’s an illegal alien?”

“Probably, since we presume he’s still in the U.S. There’s no Social Security number attached to his name, nor an INS ‘A’
number indicating he received permanent residence, a green card, or that one is pending.”

I called Hodson and reported. “Let our people in Virginia handle this,” said Hodson when he heard my suspicions. I was entering
his turf.

Mel, the analyst, called me. “You’d better come down here,” he said. “We found something interesting.”

As I walked into the analysts’ room, Mel gave me a document and exclaimed, “Look at this!” It was a one-page form. “This is
a money-transfer order of $7,900 to Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou, International Bank of Hellas, Athens, Greece, account
GF 8873554.”

I gave him a wondering look. “And?”

“We also found this,” he said and flashed a red-cover Greek passport. I opened the bio page and saw our dear friend Timothy
McHanna’s picture. The name on the passport was Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou, nationality Hellenic, valid for five years.
I leafed through the pages. There were a few entry and exit stamps, all from European countries.

So multiple identities weren’t the Chameleon’s exclusive domain. I returned to the office and ran a check on Niarchos Alexander
Papadimitriou. Nothing came out. I quickly sent a query to Interpol, U.S. National Central Bureau to seek Greek police assistance
in identifying Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou, and to ask whether the passport was genuine. I attached a copy. I didn’t
have much hope from that end. I suspected that the genuine-looking passport was homemade.

Although the passport appeared to have been used for travel
outside the U.S., I assumed McHanna used it for additional purposes. The money-transfer order, though in the modest amount
of $7,900, could indicate that McHanna didn’t trust the pension plan the true owners of his company had prepared for him and
was building his own nest, padded with somebody else’s money. If there was one transfer, there could be more.

“I suggest you ask your team to keep looking. I think the strategy should be to look for all money transfers to individuals.”

“That’s easy,” said Mel. “We have their computers up and running.”

Within moments the printer spewed out a report of all outgoing money transfers during the preceding seven years, sorted and
grouped by recipient.

“That’s fantastic,” I said. “Can we sort the data by date? That way we can see when money went out and to whom. Next we should
do the same with incoming transfers, and finally do the same when the sending or receiving party was a corporation or a trust.”
I had just brought upon myself weeks of tedious paperwork. Next, we’d compare the accounting with the records I’d brought
from Switzerland.

Within an hour we started to see a clear pattern. McHanna was moving small amounts, usually $2,000 or $3,000 at a time, to
his Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou bank account in Greece. In just one year the transfers totaled $215,080. I searched the
files for the name Nikoukar Jafarzadeh—just a wild guess—but there was nothing for that name.

The FBI duty agent called. He’d contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and learned that Nikoukar
Jafarzadeh’s name had come up following a query on his name at the National Tracing Center, Crime Gun Analysis Branch. It
brought up his gun purchases: two sniper rifles and a handgun from one dealer at a gun show in Virginia. The dealer had filled
out a form for ATF. That information, combined with the other evidence we already had, was too strong to ignore. First McHanna
said that he’d told the receptionist not to come
to work on the day following the FBI search, but she had. Next, the phones weren’t working and the receptionist had disappeared.
Then came the discovery that her home phone was actually listed under Nikoukar Jafarzadeh, a man with a fondness for sniper
guns.

I called Hodson. “I may have a direction for you,” I said. “The shooter may have had inside help.” I gave him the details.
“I’ll be back in the office tomorrow,” I said. “Is McHanna there already?”

“Yes, we are working on him now.”

When I returned to the federal building on the next day, I saw Hodson with his aides. “Made progress with McHanna?”

“No. He isn’t talking,” said Hodson. “A dead fish is more talkative.”

“First-degree interrogation?” I asked, thinking how aggressive FBI interrogators can be.

“Second, as well,” he said. “He’s been under interrogation for the past twenty hours, but he isn’t saying anything meaningful.”

I entered the interrogation room. McHanna was rattled when he saw me. He looked bad, really bad, with black circles under
his eyes, which were shifting from one side to the other.

“Can I be alone with him?” I asked.

The FBI agent left the room.

“McHanna, look at me. I’m your chance to live through this.”

He raised his head with a contemptuous look that said it all.

“I know what you did during the past two decades, or for an even longer period. No question you’re looking at a prison term.
But we can pretend there’s nothing against you and let you walk right now.”

“You mean I can go?”

“There’s some paperwork to complete, but yes, I’ll recommend letting you go.”

“What’s the catch?” he asked suspiciously.

“No trick. You refuse to cooperate. It will be a while until all the documents seized in your office will be analyzed. We
may not have a probable cause to hold you any longer, so I think you’re about to leave this place soon. We have patience,
though, and I’m sure you’ll be back.”

He gave me a doubtful look.

“Of course, your employers will not be so patient. Do you know why?”

He looked at me, waiting for me to continue.

“Because they’ll understand you talked. Of course, an inadvertent leak from a ‘knowledgeable government source that spoke
on condition of anonymity’ could appear in the media saying that you’re cooperating, and therefore were released on your own
recognizance.”

That got to him. “Are you crazy?” he yelled. “They’ll kill me.”

“Why? You have been serving them loyally for such a long time, they’ll probably try to smuggle you out of the country.”

It didn’t seem to be an option that McHanna had even considered viable. And we had not yet said who “they” were.

“It’s a good thing that you understand reality,” I said, and sat on a chair opposite him. “They’ll have no such plans. They
don’t believe in protracted justice.”

He didn’t react.

“Of course, the fact that you were stealing them blind isn’t going to help, if they find out.”

He was too shaken to say anything. “Mr. Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou,” I said in a theatrical solemnity. “Do you have
additional names and passports leading to bank accounts with money you skimmed?”

“What do you want to know?” he asked faintly.

“Where is Kourosh Alireza Farhadi?”

“Who?”

“Kourosh Alireza Farhadi.”

“Never heard that name.”

“Kourosh Alireza Farhadi, aka Albert Ward III.”

“Really? Is that Albert’s name? I didn’t know that. I told you, Albert’s in Australia. He’s retired.”

Aha,
I said to myself,
McHanna forgot when he lied, when he told the truth, or when he’d said anything.

He supposedly knew him only as Whitney-Davis. He had just confirmed knowledge of Albert Ward, although he’d previously denied
it.

“And where is Harrington T. Whitney-Davis?”

“They’re all the same person. Retired in Australia.”

Bingo! But I didn’t want to show him my joy, and moved on.

“Retired? What do you mean?”

“He told me that he decided to retire in Australia.” “When was that?”

“I think a few months ago.”

“While he was in the U.S.?”

“He called me from Australia. I last saw him a few years ago.”

“Who owns McHanna Associates?”

“I do.”

“Formally?”

“Yes.”

“And informally?”

He hesitated. “I have silent investors.”

“Who are they?”

“Foreign institutions.”

“I need names.”

“I can’t give you any.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer.

“Mr. McHanna, I know who your investors are.”

“You do?”

“Yes. You’re the paymaster of an Iranian covert operation in the U.S., which moved millions of dollars to and from the U.S.
to finance secret operations of Iranian intelligence services, and to support terrorist organizations.”

He became so pale that I though he’d faint immediately. I leaned toward him. “Mr. McHanna, I hope you realize that
under the Patriot Act, what you did could get you the death penalty by lethal injection in a federal prison.”

Before I could move, McHanna vomited on me and on his own clothes. It smelled terrible—he must have eaten the carcass of
a skunk after he was brought in. Was that the kind of food they served there? I calmly took a tissue from my pocket and wiped
the slime off my face and clothes, remaining in my seat.

“Look at me,” I said. “I’m the only one who can help you out of this mess. Tell me where our guy is.”

“I want a lawyer,” he suddenly said. “I’ve got rights.” “Do you know what is going to happen if your Iranian bosses discover
you were skimming off the top? I hardly think they’ll like it.”

“I didn’t steal anything.”

“Right,” I said. “It was actually Papadimitriou who transferred money to his personal bank account in Greece, and it so happens
that Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou looks exactly like you.”

“This was money I was entitled to.”

“Don’t expect me to believe that,” I said. “Your Iranian friends will like even less the fact that you killed their agent
who suspected you. U.S. prisons are safe places, but you know, anyone really determined could get to you even there. Shit
happens.

“Look, I know you killed Christopher Gonda—that is, Reza Nazeri,” I suddenly said.

McHanna didn’t answer. He was as pale as a sheet of paper. I took a step back. I wasn’t going to let him vomit on me again.

“The man you are looking for is in Sydney, Australia,” said McHanna faintly. “During recent years he used the name Herbert
Goldman.”

“Where can I find him?”

McHanna hesitated.

“If you don’t tell me, then I’ll assume it’s just another lie. Or maybe you had him killed?”

“No, no,” he protested. “Look in my personal address book. Your men seized it when I was brought here.”

I remembered looking through it and not seeing any reference to Goldman. “Under what name did you list his number?”

“Norman McAllister.”

“And the number is in the address book? Is there an address as well?”

“No, just the phone number. It’s in code. You have to add numbers to get the correct telephone number.”

“What’s the code?”

“Add one to the first number, two to the second number, three to the third, and so on.”

“Tell me when you spoke with him last.”

“A week ago.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He wanted me to send him money and a passport.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, I wired him $3,000 through Western Union. I had no way of getting him a passport.” McHanna buried his head between his
soiled hands. “I want a lawyer,” he repeated faintly.

“Do you want to make a deal? Is that it?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll get you a lawyer.” I left the room, and asked the agent to assume control. I went to the men’s room to wash up. There
wasn’t much I could do. I used the industrial-strength soap and water to wash my hands and my face and the stains off my clothes,
but the soap smell just got mixed with the sour smell of McHanna’s vomit.

I returned to Hodson’s office. They were still sitting there when I entered, together with the jet stream of smell, courtesy
of McHanna.

“What happened? You smell like shit,” said Holliday, stepping a safe distance away from me.

“McHanna doesn’t seem to like the menu here,” I said wryly. “And I took his complaint.” I went on, “He wants a lawyer, probably
to make a deal.”

“What does he have to offer?”

“You’d better watch the video. For one thing, he didn’t flatout deny my theory that he was heading the financial arm of an
Iranian clandestine operation here, moving millions to finance terror. Next, he conceded that Ward, Farhadi, Whitney-Davis
and Goldman—our Chameleon—were the same person. Look in his address book under Norman McAllister for the Chameleon’s number.”
I gave them the code.

“I’m sure more details will come in McHanna’s full account,” I continued. “It’s looking like he wants a plea bargain. Between
all this and Reza’s statements, he’ll be locked up forever.”

“What statements?” Hodson sounded surprised.

“Reza sent his mother three letters and asked her to keep them in a safe place. She kept the letters in an envelope together
with other personal stuff he had left behind. She showed me the envelope, and there I found the first lead to Reza’s connection
to Al Taqwa. I borrowed the letters and had them translated.”

“Borrowed?” asked Holliday, catching the word immediately. “You said they were personal. Did his mother let you take them?”

He knew me well. “Well, she showed them to me, and I borrowed them.”

“Without letting her know?” asked Bob.

“I’ll return them,” I promised. “But anyway, Reza wrote to his mother that McHanna, the head of a financial institution in
New York where Reza had been working, was stealing from the company, and when Reza confronted him, McHanna threatened his
life. Apparently McHanna kept his promise, although he didn’t confess doing it yet.”

Holliday told me what they’d learned after sending “Dan Gordon’s law partner” to look for additional documents in the Swiss
bank archives. “We found documents establishing that Nazeri was a member of Atashbon. He’d first used Christopher Gonda’s
name, and as of 1988 used the name Philip Manteau. He was actually functioning as McHanna’s boss, but disguised as an employee.”

“Were all three letters saying the same thing?” asked Hodson. “Only two. The third one hinted about the possible fate of the
Chameleon. It only said that McHanna was nervous about recent developments, and that he even told his employees that if they
ever reported on him, he would get them. I think Reza sent these letters to his mother as an insurance policy. Maybe he didn’t
trust Atashbon command’s protection that much.”

I got up. “I’m going home to wash up. Even I can’t stand myself any longer.”