Triple Identity (10 page)

“And what would be your role?” he asked.

I had a sense of cat and mouse here. But which one of us was the cat and which one was the mouse?

“Liaison,” I said curtly.

My earlier fears that Guttmacher would grill me or throw me out suspecting I was there to trap him were exaggerated. He was still guarded but visibly eager to move ahead. Finally, he managed to say, “I'll be happy to assist your clients. Our bank has a long tradition of strict confidentiality, rivaling that of Switzerland.”

He'd definitely gotten the message.

“How do you rival the Swiss banks, which are known to be the most discreet in the industry?” I asked, pushing him a bit more.

“It's not just the banks,” he explained, “it's also the governments. You see, the U.S. has a treaty with the Swiss government that forces them to disclose certain things to the U.S. government agencies. Details about financial activities of suspected criminals, such as money launderers and drug lords. So the Swiss government is actually acting as an arm of the
FBI whenever there is such suspicion. The U.S. government forces the banks, through the Swiss officials and the Swiss court system, to disclose information, which the banks then give the Americans.” He smiled genially. “In Germany, the situation is different. Our courts are much more protective of the privacy rights of our clients and the stability of our business relationship. Therefore, such things don't happen here.”

I listened attentively to his speech. Of course I knew what he was saying; I had been involved in numerous cases in which the Swiss government was helpful. I also noticed that Guttmacher had conveniently forgotten to mention that, under the centuries-old international custom called letters rogatory, as well as through MLAT, a bilateral treaty between governments for mutual legal assistance, the United States and Germany could request and obtain much the same sort of banking information from one another for use in criminal investigations and prosecutions. But the subtext of the conversation showed me that Guttmacher fully understood that the money involved was the fruit of criminal activity. This was a good sign for my evaluation of his corruptibility. If DeLouise had used Guttmacher, he had probably conducted a similar assessment.

“While communicating with a potential source, and during the development process of your relationship,” Alex had told us, “you may wish to make your party feel that he's being let in on a secret. That attitude bolsters the trust between the two of you and gives your party a sense of pride. Obviously, you never disclose a real secret.” We all nodded. “Simply invent something that may sound plausible to your party, act as if you're confiding in him. Ask him to keep it a secret. Here, we build a good cover story or a plausible excuse in six months of training and endless exercises. Just keep in mind — if your cover is blown, you're next.”

“You see,” Guttmacher continued in his flowing lecture, “Germany does not have a law against money laundering and, therefore, what is not illegal here cannot become illegal just because the Americans want us to think it is. The war is over, you know,” he ended with a grin, again exposing his gold tooth. Guttmacher struck me as a person who lays his cards on the table but has at least another full deck up his sleeve.

“No money-laundering law?” I repeated.

“No,” he said with satisfaction.

There was truth to what he said, and that was promising because he showed me his dishonesty: a required trait if you want to be considered as a banker for stolen money. I knew that Germany was dragging its feet in passing a law intended to fight multinational crime. A draft of the law was being discussed in the German Bundestag but hadn't yet passed. I remembered having read the draft proposal before leaving the States.

The guy knew what he was talking about, I thought, giving Guttmacher an appreciative look. He must have been deeply involved in shady transactions if he knew the ropes so well. I didn't mention that I knew that Switzerland had just passed money-laundering laws, albeit limited in scope, thus both bowing to and resisting pressure from the United States.

“How do you want to proceed?” I asked Guttmacher, showing him I was satisfied with his answers.

“Where is the money now?” he asked directly. The man had all the sweetness of a funeral director.

“It's available immediately, if I see the right investment,” I answered, avoiding his unexpectedly direct question.

He smiled. “Fine. I'll prepare a plan for you. Where would you like it delivered?”

“To my New York office,” I answered. “You have my card.”

We shook hands, and he escorted me to the door.

I decided to walk back to my hotel. I had to see if there was an indication on my guest registration that I was with the U.S. government and either remove it or check out. I strolled a few blocks in the chilly air and found myself in Marienplatz, the center of life in Munich. I looked in my guidebook. I could do this. I could be a tourist for a moment, at least until I could fully absorb the meaning of my meeting with Guttmacher.

Marienplatz, the guidebook said, was named after the three-hundred-foot gilt statue of the Virgin Mary that stands in the middle of the square. At the north side of the square is the Neues Rathaus. Built at the end of the nineteenth century, it is best known for its glockenspiel. Once
a day, its army of enameled copper figures performs the Scheffeltanz, followed by a reenactment of an event that celebrated royal weddings in the fifteenth century. At the end of each session, a mechanical rooster crows.

Legend has it that, after World War II, an American GI concerned by the deteriorating condition of the figures “borrowed” some paint from his unit's storage area and gave it to the building's caretakers. As a show of their appreciation, the caretakers allowed him to ride one of the horses in the jousting scene, earning cheers from the people gathered in the square.

After taking in the sights for a bit, I stopped into a café for a cup of tea. I sat looking through the window at the buildings and at the people going by, but not really taking anything in. I decided to walk back to my hotel, preoccupied with Herr Hans Guttmacher. He'd obviously snapped at my bait. He'd proven easy to draw in to corrupt dealings, and that could have been a good reason for DeLouise to hire him. I was anxious to learn, though, whether DeLouise had used Guttmacher. If he had, would he have been Peled or DeLouise?

At the hotel I found a message from Lan waiting for me at the front desk. “I have the numbers you requested. How do you want them forwarded?” it read.

I stuffed the note in my shirt pocket and headed up to my room. Lan was always prompt, discreet, and intelligent. She could sense what I meant even if I gave her a seemingly indecipherable hint. I knew very little about her personal life. She was half-Chinese and half-Vietnamese. She'd worked at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon until the last days in 1975 but had stayed behind when the embassy's diplomatic staff left. After things calmed down, however, she was granted a U.S. visa as a token of appreciation. She came to the States and married a Vietnamese journalist in D.C. Her husband died several years later, when she was in her midforties. She'd never remarried.

I called Lan and asked her to forward the data through the secure connection to the legat at the American Consulate General in Munich. I was always amused at the double-talk in the U.S. Foreign Service: legat, short for legal attaché, isn't always a lawyer but is always an FBI special agent. In the intelligence community, use of these titles is termed light cover;
deep cover is reserved for positions outside the embassy or consulate, such as in trade companies or in other businesses in which international travel and contacts would seem normal. CIA jargon for the position is NOC, nonofficial cover. The Soviets used to call their deep cover agents illegal, because they didn't work out of the embassy or in a company connected with their country.

As usual, I had planted a decoy magazine and a telltale hair when I'd left my room and, when I walked into the room, I went directly to the safe to check on them. The hair was still in place. I took a bottle of good German beer from the minibar and watched TV until I fell asleep out of sheer boredom.

The following morning I drove to the consulate's compound at Königinstrasse and went to see Helga, the legat's secretary. She looked particularly lovely. “This came for you this morning with the diplomatic pouch,” she said with a smile, handing me an envelope.

She led me to a small conference room, where I read the memo from Lan.

I looked at the list. There were calls to three Japanese restaurants, two jewelry stores, several calls to what appeared to be private residences in Munich, and six calls to Bankhaus Bäcker & Haas, the bank of my new pal Guttmacher. I compared the numbers on the log with the number on the business card Guttmacher had given me. Different. I picked up the telephone and called the number on the log.

“Guttmacher,” replied a voice at the other end. I hung up. So he'd given DeLouise his direct line. But he hadn't given it to me. I guessed DeLouise was a bigger fish for him. With six calls to Guttmacher identified, the likelihood that DeLouise had more than one contact with the banker had been upgraded from a suspicion to an assumption, but not a fact.

A separate page showed fifteen international calls made from DeLouise's hotel room: three calls to Switzerland; two to Luxembourg; seven to the United States, all to California; one to Italy; and two to Israel.

Israel again! The lines next to the two numbers in Israel were empty. “Unknown subscriber” was written in the comments box.

I looked at the numbers. There were two calls to the same number. I didn't need to look twice to realize it was a very familiar number: the Mossad's clandestine headquarters on King Shaul Boulevard in northern Tel Aviv, across from Israel's Pentagon.

“What the hell!” I thought excitedly, but then I slowed down. Why would DeLouise call the Mossad thirty-three years after he had left it? For that matter, had he really left it? Had he forgotten the elementary rules of security, which forbid making a traceable phone call from a hotel room?

I grabbed my notes and put the list back into the envelope. I stuffed it all into the inner pocket of my blazer and went back to Helga's workstation. She was out, but Ron Lovejoy was sitting at his desk with his office door open.

“Good afternoon, Ron,” I said, from the doorway, “Can you spare me a minute?”

“Sure,” he said, “come right in.”

I sat in a chair across the desk from him. Lovejoy was a well-built, clean-shaven man in his late forties with gray hair and rimless reading glasses. He must have been a jogger or maybe spent a lot of time at a health club. The thought made me feel rather guilty When I'd joined the Israeli army, I had barely 175 pounds on my 6′4″ frame. And now? Well, never mind. I knew I had to do something about it and kept promising myself to change things. But somehow, between cases and trips, I never really got around to it. If I were three inches taller, my weight would be OK. I'm not overweight, I told my friends who'd criticized my few extra pounds, I'm just short.

“Well, the clues I dug up in Israel led me here, and I'm hoping I'll find an ex-wife and the daughter, Mina Bernstein and Ariel Peled.”

“So you haven't found DeLouise yet.”

“Yes, I did. He's dead.” I realized I had not yet shared this information with Lovejoy He'd left his office before I'd called David Stone in Washington with the news.

He didn't react when I told him about my visit to the morgue. Sitting behind that consulate desk didn't expose him to those kinds of stories; it was probably his field service in the FBI that made morgue visits sound routine.

“How long would it take to get a copy of the German police report?” I asked.

“Well, it depends. Usually they don't share their investigations with us unless they need our help. When that happens, we insist on getting all the details before we send Washington a request for FBI assistance.”

“Is there a better way?” I asked.

“Frankly, though it sounds convoluted, the easiest and fastest way to get that report is for an FBI agent working the bank investigation in the States to send a message through
INTERPOL
mentioning the U.S. criminal investigation of DeLouise and asking urgently for a copy. Make sure he asks for a faxed copy of the complete report in German — ask
INTERPOL
specifically not to translate it. If the Germans and
INTERPOL
are willing, that will speed things up. The Bureau can get it translated once it arrives.”

“I think my retirement could come up before we see this report travel through channels. Have they asked for your assistance?”

“No,” he said, “at least not yet. I didn't even know he'd died until you told me. But give them time; they work slowly but meticulously. But at least, if they send a request to the U.S. through
INTERPOL
, they usually come and ask me to have the Bureau get them the same thing. I'm sure they'd like to have his criminal record, if there is one. Plus a background check to discover potential enemies. All that takes time.”

“That's exactly why I'm trying to work concurrent to the criminal investigation,” I said. “If the German police insist upon completing their criminal probe before telling you anything, my own chances of making
progress here are slim. His assets won't wait for the Germans to finish what they're doing. Assets of the dead have a tendency to dissipate and disappear quickly. And the assets of someone who might have been killed because of them vanish even faster.”

Lovejoy looked at me. “Homicide investigations take precedence over civil matters. You know that.”

I knew that, but the criminal investigation was German while the civil asset chase was American. However, I wasn't about to argue with him or wait for things to run their course. Under the rules, the legat is the representative of the U.S. Department of Justice in the country, and even if not an attorney, he or she outranks DOJ lawyers temporarily in country. So, in fact, Lovejoy was my superior in Munich. I had a feeling that unless I moved fast, the assets would. But give a little to get more. I had to share more information on DeLouise with Lovejoy.