The Chameleon Conspiracy (9 page)

Abdullah nodded. “That’s my job.”

Applebee came running toward us. “What happened?”

“I think there was an attempt to kidnap us. How did you know we were returning?”

“There’s a panic button in the car with a direction finder,” said Applebee. “Abdullah must have pressed it. We saw that your
car was actually around the corner.”

We went inside to his office. I gave Applebee a full account of the events. He called someone in the building and sent him
to check the scene.

“What do I do next?”

“Do you want to stay in Islamabad?”

“No. I’m done here, but I need to wait for instructions from Washington.”

“Anyway, you’ll have to stick around for a day or two until we complete the investigation and work with the local police on
that.” I went to the vending machine to get a soda and calm down. I sat on the couch in Applebee’s office, trying to collect
my thoughts.

The phone rang. Applebee listened, said, “OK, thanks,” and hung up.

“Our Diplomatic Security Ser vice agents on the scene reported that the motorcyclist disappeared together with his motorcycle.
They just found pieces from a broken red tail light, and skid marks on the road. Nothing else. Did Abdullah hit him?”

“I’m sure of that,” I said. “I saw him flying up in the air. Maybe he wasn’t hurt badly, or he was picked up by a backup team.”

“We’re in touch with the Reporting Centre of the Pakistan Police Ser vice. They’ll investigate.”

“Who are they?”

“Their criminal and political intelligence service. Who were you in contact with in Islamabad?”

“Just two men: a bank manager, Rashid Khan, and an attorney he recommended, Ahmed Khan.”

“Same last name?”

“Yes. I suspect they’re related, maybe even brothers. The lawyer was recommended by the banker, and he sold me information
that most likely came from the bank.”

“We’ll get you a place to stay here,” said Applebee. “I don’t think it’d be wise for you to return to your hotel.”

“I guess not,” I said. “Could you send someone to my hotel to pick up my stuff and bring it over?”

I regretted it immediately. If anyone came to the hotel to pick up Dan Gordon’s belongings, the hotel would tell him that
I checked out few days ago. I couldn’t tell Applebee that I’d checked in again under a different name. He’d have my neck for
violating his security instructions. But it was too late. I needed to mitigate the potential damage.

“Who are you sending?”

“Probably Abdullah,” he said.

“OK, I’ll give him my room key.” I went outside and approached Abdullah, who was sitting in his car, next to the entrance.

“I’ve been told to move into the compound,” I said, handing him my room key. “Please go directly to my hotel room without
stopping at the desk, and collect my things. I’ll call the hotel to tell them my assistant is coming over with the room key
to remove my belongings, and I’ll settle the hotel bill over the phone.”

Abdullah left, and as I turned to go upstairs, Applebee met me outside. “Let me show you to your new residence. We’ve got
plenty of empty houses here. Since 2001, we’ve been singles only. Our staff goes home for family visits. There’s the American
Club in the compound, where you can meet other staff members, watch American TV, and have a beer.”

“Thanks,” I said, and followed him to a building nearby. He opened the door on the ground floor. “Here, you should find everything
you need. Call me if you have any questions.”

I sat on the sofa bed, glared at the walls and the small wall unit with family photos of smiling children, and thought of
mine. I tried calling them using my mobile phone, and on the third attempt I reached Tom, my son, and Karen, my daughter,
who was just about to go out the door. I didn’t tell them about my narrow escape just an hour earlier, and we focused on family
matters. Tom was just returning to his college, and Karen
was about to graduate, but both of them had that vision of the world being at their feet that only the young can claim. Neither
held back their enthusiasm, telling me of their plans and what was new in their lives. It always made me feel proud to see
that they were growing into strong adults. Of course, we couldn’t speak as freely as we would have liked to. Trained by experience
as they are, they didn’t even ask me where I was or when I would be returning.

“I’m going to be back home soon,” I said. It was more wishful thinking than based on reality.

I decided to go to the club to socialize and get my mind off of things for a minute. There were four other men drinking beer
and watching an American TV network. After an hour I was tired of watching stupid sitcoms with dubbed laughter even when they
weren’t remotely funny. I’ve often thought that when a sitcom producer’s IQ reaches 50, he should sell. There was plenty about
America I didn’t miss. I returned to my new makeshift home.

Leaning my head on the soft, green pillow of the couch, I pondered my next move. Ward had left the United States in 1980 or
1981, gone to Hong Kong and South Africa, and finally left a trace in Pakistan. From Pakistan, he may have continued to Iran.
Was it possible that just about the same time he returned to the U.S. without leaving a record with the Immigration and Naturalization
Ser vice, he’d made himself look years older, perpetrated bank fraud, and vanished again? That simply didn’t make sense. The
hunch that his identity had been stolen needed no further support, but it was still just an assumption, and I needed proof.
Before falling asleep, I decided to discuss this matter with Don Suarez, the legat at the embassy.

The next morning, after recharging myself with fruit juice and a muffin for breakfast at the club, I called him. “Sure, come
over,” he replied.

As I sat down next to his desk, Suarez said, “I heard you had an experience yesterday.”

“Yes,” I said. “Any clues?”

“Not yet. The main direction in that kind of investigation is intelligence, not police work. The police couldn’t find any
witnesses to the attack, although Abdullah said the street was bustling.”

“So are you working on intelligence?”

“Yes, together with the Agency, but that takes time.”

The post–September eleventh era had finally seen a little more cooperation between the FBI and the CIA, with a little less
time dedicated to turf wars.

“What do you think? Was it because I was snooping around Ward? Was I picked at random because they saw the embassy connection
with the car and Abdullah?”

“Anything is possible,” he said, shrugging, just when I needed a more concrete answer.

I told him about my suspicions about Ward, my unanswered questions about how he could be in two places at the same time.

“Maybe he wasn’t,” said Suarez. “In the sixties through the eighties, there were instances where young American men just disappeared.
I guess some of them simply wanted to. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them are monks in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet,
fishermen in New Zealand, or just basking on the beach in Goa.”

“And you leave it at that?”

“Sure, if they’re adults, and if there are no complaints from families about missing persons, and there’s no evidence of foul
play. Hey, there’s a limit to the amount of babysitting the federal government can do with taxpayers’ money.”

“Do you have names of these people?”

“No, because if we had a name, that’d mean somebody was looking for him. We don’t have a world chart with pins indicating
where any American citizen is at any given moment. We aren’t there yet.”

I wouldn’t get any answers from him, I thought. I lost interest in the conversation.

A cable from David Stone came in. “You are authorized a one-week vacation. No work is to be performed in any
country other those included on the authorized list provided before your departure. David.”

That was David’s nice way of saying, “You can go wherever you want, but don’t mess up things or you’re on your own.”

An armored embassy car drove me to the airport. I had changed my mind about Switzerland. I had started to think that the Al
Taqwa link Khan was selling me was dubious. If necessary, I’d pursue it with the bank’s receivers from New York. Instead,
I took a British Airways flight to London. From London, I boarded an El Al flight to Ben Gurion Airport, Israel. When I arrived,
it was already dark. I rented a car, listened to Israeli oldies, and drove to my hotel on the beach in Tel Aviv.

The next morning I called Benny Friedman, my Mossad buddy. Friendship forged in military organizations lasts forever. Although
we served together for only three years, we created a strong bond. Our friendship withstood the cultural gap between us. Benny
came from an Orthodox family and adhered to all the tenets of the Jewish faith, while I considered myself nonreligious, only
keeping the traditional rituals during holidays. Benny also had a wry sense of humor, but only those who knew him well could
really “get it.” I was one of the few who did, and I felt that if anybody could penetrate what was going on in his agile mind,
I could. Well, maybe.

I’d left the Mossad when I was exposed to the enemy during an operation which effectively “burned” me from participating in
any future field operations. But Benny had stayed on. He’d climbed through the ranks and made it to the top of
Tevel, the foreign-relations wing of the Mossad, which is charged with liaisons with foreign intelligence services, including
with countries considered hostile to Israel.

When we’d first learned about this wing’s functions during our training at the Mossad Academy, some eyebrows were raised.
“What? Trade secrets with your rivals?” one asked. Alex, our training instructor, was very calm about it. “We are in the game
of interests, and you don’t let feelings and animosities get in your way,” he had said. “If you need to exchange information
with someone, you just do it. Politics may collide, but we do our work. Same goes for any intelligence service worldwide.
We collect intelligence concerning our enemies’ intentions and capabilities, and we’d get it from Satan if he were offering
it at the right price.”

Benny’s secretary transferred the call.

“Dan, is that you? Where are you?”

“In Tel Aviv for a few days.”

“Business?” Benny knew what I was doing, and in the past we had helped each other in matters of our work. I never felt I was
abusing our friendship, and I don’t think he felt any differently.

“Actually, I’m on a family visit. But you know me, I never stop working. Lunch?”

“Sure.” Benny never said no to a good meal, and neither did I. The only difference was that he ate
only
kosher food, while I ate
also
kosher.

Two hours later we met on the fishermen’s pier in Jaffa’s old port. The city of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, is one of the
oldest port cities of the world, with a history dating back five thousand years. The pier is younger, only about a thousand
years old, and is mainly used by fishing boats that bring their fresh catch to the restaurants lined along its outer walls.
This was a place where restaurant decorators didn’t need to fake authenticity—it was the authentic place. Weatherworn fishermen’s
boats bobbed nearby. Busy people were unloading crates of fish, and there was
a strong mix of smells: sea air, fish, and burning wood coal from the open air grills barbecuing fish.

We sat at the table closest to the water. Benny hadn’t changed much during the past year or so since I’d last seen him. But
his mustache had grayed, he had gained a little weight, and he had lost much of his hair. He was starting to look older than
his years. I knew why. He took his job more seriously than anybody I’d ever known. To him it wasn’t just a job, it was almost
some sort of sacred obligation.

“World travel is treating you well,” I said, looking at his belly.

“Age has its indignities,” he said wryly. “In 1975 I was interested in acid rock, and now I’ve got acid reflux. Besides,”
he added, “look who’s talking. You don’t exactly look like the slim serviceman you once were.”

He had a point, of course, and I was quick to change the subject. After schmoozing for a while and catching up on our respective
families, I moved on to business. I told Benny about my debacle in Sydney, without giving him any telltale details or mentioning
Ward’s name.

Somehow Benny wasn’t surprised to hear my story, although he said nothing. I decided to whet his appetite.

“Ever heard of Nada Management?”

Benny left his fork stuck in the huge red snapper he was dissecting.

“Sure, why? Are you trying to dig dead corpses out of their graves?”

“What do you mean?”

“They went out of business and their principal figure committed suicide.”

“How come I missed that information?”

“I’m surprised. It was all over the place.”

“Do you have anything concrete on them?”

“I’m sure we do. I can send you some reading material later. Where are you staying?”

“The usual.”

“Good.”

At six
P.M.
there was a knock on my hotel-room door and a bellman brought me a yellow envelope. I opened it, and sat at the
desk to read the printed document.

On the top it read “The Central Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations,” the official name of the Mossad, Israel’s
foreign-intelligence service. Below that were today’s date and a handwritten note.

Dan, I’m attaching the documents you have requested. Most of the information has already been made public. Some of it could
be outdated or inaccurate, so treat it wisely and don’t regard it as evidence, but as uncorroborated intelligence to develop
further leads. I’m here for the rest of the week if you need me. Regards, Benny.

To the note was attached a thick, bound, printed document which seemed like a photocopied section of even a bigger document.

Nada Management aka Nada Management Organization SA, Switzerland, fka Al Taqwa Management Organization SA.

A financial institution in Lugano, located at Viale Stefano Franscini 22, Lugano CH-6900 TI, Switzerland, not far from the
Italian border. The company was previously named Al Taqwa Management (fear
of God
in Arabic). Al Taqwa is believed to have played a major part in laundering money for Osama bin Laden. Swiss and Liechtenstein
police raided Al Taqwa’s offices in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, respectively, and Swiss police raided as well the home
of its principal, Huber, in Rossimattstrasse 33, 3074 Muri, Bern (see more below), and the homes of Youssef Nada and Ali Ghaleb
Himmat, two other Al Taqwa directors. Al Taqwa’s accounts in Swiss banks were frozen. Separately, Italian police closed an
Islamic cultural center in Milan used as Al-Qaeda’s European logistical
center. The center was financed by Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a Kuwaiti businessman who was also an Al Taqwa director. Three
months later, Al Taqwa was shut down permanently. The U.S. government’s Office of the Coordinator of Counterterrorism distributed
a list of sixty-two organizations and individuals suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. Nada Management was included
on the list.

Al Taqwa was the financial arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. That organization was founded in Egypt in the late 1920s and has
fought for the formation of a pure pan-Islamic theocratic state.

Obviously the document was sanitized, and anything meaningful had been redacted. What was left was history, not intelligence,
I concluded, and just leafed through the rest of the pages. Since Nada Management and Huber were all dead, it was all very
interesting, but what would I do with it? I pushed the bulky document aside and called Benny.

“Thanks for the stuff, but the organization seems to be as dead as its directors.”

“Frankly, I don’t know where it takes you,” said Benny, reading my mind. “That’s the only unclassified material we’ve got
on these guys. There’s one thing you should know though, unless your friends at CIA have already told you.”

“What?”

“We heard rumors that, immediately after the Islamic Revolution, the Iranians and their subsidiary terrorist organizations
were looking for genuine travel documents issued by the U.S. and other major Western countries.”

“Why? Didn’t they have their own version of Tibor who could manufacture genuine-looking passports?” Benny and I knew well
the Mossad’s Hungarian-born document artist.

“I’m sure they do. But why forge and risk detection, when you can use the real thing? National passports are becoming more
and more difficult to forge, because they don’t know
what hidden markers are included in the passport. Besides, maybe in this case whoever took the passport needed not only the
passport, but the identity.”

Benny had unwittingly just supported my earlier suspicion. And the real Ward—where was he? I had an idea, but wasn’t in the
mood to dwell on it just then. I wondered why he had brought up the passport issue when, on its face, it had no connection
to Ward’s case. Was he subtly trying to send me a message?

“Dan, let’s meet tomorrow. I’ve got some ideas,” said Benny, suddenly breaking my train of thought.

“Sure. Want to come to my hotel at one o’clock?”

The next day, Benny arrived unusually late. “You’ll have to excuse me, I had a small emergency,” he said as we sat at the
restaurant downstairs.

“As always,” I teased him.

Benny glared at me and got to the point. “I have more information on Nada Management. Although they were shut down, the money-laundering
activity continues. Terror organizations need money, and if you dry up one swamp to keep the mosquitoes away, another one
will pop up in no time.

“On April 19, 2002, the U.S. government blocked all assets of Youssef Nada and Bank Al Taqwa, both of which were designated
as terrorist financiers by the Department of Treasury on November 7, 2001.”

Benny pulled out a document from his briefcase and leafed through the pages. “Here it is.”

On the same date, the U.S. Treasury also named four additional individuals as terrorist financiers connected to Al Taqwa:
Zeinab Mansour-Fattouh, Mohamed Mansour, Albert Friedrich Armand Huber, and Ali Ghaleb Himmat. The Al Taqwa group has long
acted as financial advisor to Al-Qaeda, with offices in the Ca rib be an, Italy, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. Ahmed Idris
Nasreddin and
Youssef Nada are both founders and directors of Bank Al Taqwa. Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda organization received financial
assistance from Youssef Nada. Al Taqwa provides investment advice and cash-transfer mechanisms for Al-Qaeda and other radical
Islamic groups.

“Fine,” I said. “So they’re probably having a good time somewhere in the Middle East, or they’ve dug in a hole in Afghanistan
enjoying the company of seventy virgins, without even having to blow themselves up.”

Benny smiled. “Maybe. But they left a job half done.” “Meaning?” I was wondering why Benny, an Israeli Mossad executive, was
reading out U.S. government material to me. “How does it help my case?” I asked pointedly.

“There’s a need for their services. Now, when they go under, who’ll take care of the financially orphaned terrorist organizations?
Where will they go?” he said in a mockingly sorrowful voice. Then his tone changed. “Listen, unless we’re ready for them,
we’ll lose the war on terrorism, and our only option is going to be choosing the magnitude of our humiliation.”

Benny was telling me something, which I read loud and clear. The Mossad seemed to be trying to fill the gap and provide financial
services to the “needy” terrorist organizations. But why was he telling me that? Friendship aside, in these matters you didn’t
share that kind of information with anyone, even with a close friend. Benny had thrown a line with some juicy bait. But was
there also a sharp-edged hook?

Being direct seemed to be the best course. “Benny, why are you telling me this?”

He smiled wryly. “Because I like you.” He was as smooth as they come when it came to playing it close to the vest.

“Right. But you want something. Now tell me what it is.” “I could use help,” he said casually. He had anticipated my reaction.

“What kind of help?”

“Your favorite kind. The exciting kind.”

I sighed impatiently. “OK, I get it. Just tell me.”

His story was intriguing. For the past few years, just after the 9/11 attacks, the four “financiers” had run a small but lucrative
business in Europe, and over the last four years they’d slowly taken control of a family-owned bank. This bank had been in
the business of providing financial services to rich Arabs for a long time. Until the midseventies, their clients had mostly
been oil millionaires from the Persian Gulf States or corrupt politicians with dirty money. Last year, the bank actually made
a profit of more than $70 million.

“I take it the Mossad finally put you on commission?” Benny chuckled. “I wish. You know the drill—when you overspend five
hundred dollars, accounting is all over you, but when you make seventy million a year, they don’t even say thanks.”

“Small business?”

“Well, you know, in proportion to other banks in Europe,” he said with a grin.

“What bank is it?” I asked.

“Tempelhof Bank.”

“Benny, are your guys following me?” Was it just a coincidence? I was annoyed.

“Not at all. You’ll soon see that we have a common interest.”

“OK, what’s my interest?” I was getting tired of his slow game.

“You’re looking for Albert Ward.”

“How do you know that? Benny, let’s cut to the chase. Have you been monitoring me?”

“No. I just know.”

“How?”

“People talk.”

“I didn’t.”

“You aren’t people. Since when do you expect me to divulge my sources?” He smiled, enjoying the cat-and-mouse exchange.

“Benny! What the hell is going on here? You tell me about a serious and confidential operation the Mossad is running, but
you don’t tell me about a potential leak in my operation?”

“Pakistan is a sieve,” he said, shrugging. “Rarely is information sold once. Three or four times is more likely.”

“Well, U.S. government employees in Pakistan definitely told you nothing. That leaves one bank manager and one lawyer.”

“Always knew you were a quick thinker,” said Benny, his grin returning.

“Yeah, but how did that information reach you? Do they work for you too?”

“Dan, come on. Don’t expect me to answer that. You know full well that in intelligence there aren’t any loyalties. Just interests.”
Benny was toying with me again.