Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thriller) (14 page)

“No. My wife’s sister’s fiancé works there; he’s the one who told me that the company is secretly controlled by VEVAK. He didn’t know anything about my brother’s plan to come to America. He told me about VEVAK over dinner, just making conversation, without realizing that the information was very relevant and important for my brother.

“How do I know you’re not trying to trick me into doing something I’m not supposed to do? I’m just a merchant here trying to do business. I’m not here with any government.”

“I don’t know what else to tell you, I —“

He stopped here as a family paused next to us: a well-dressed man in a suit — was that Brooks Brothers? —
and
his wife, veiled from head to toe. From what I could tell, she alone was pulling the bulk of the family luggage, all of it stacked on one suitcase roller. They had two young children, one of whom was
crying. The mother knelt down right next to us, soothing the young girl, gently wiping her tears with the edge of her robe. Once the child was calmed, they moved on.

“— I already gave you details,” the man continued,
“
that only the sender of the letter would know.”

“How about giving me the name of your brother?” I took a huge leap forward, by revealing my interest.
             

He said without hesitation, “Professor Firouz Kamrani.”

“Why does he want to leave Iran?” I asked.

“He has stopped working on the nuclear program originally intended to produce electricity. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in August 2005, he pushed for nuclear armament instead. The level of activities was substantially increased, abandoning necessary precautions for the sake of expediency. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to have a bomb before the world would realize what was happening and try to stop him. My brother was sending to his superiors warnings about the dangers of accidents at the nuclear reactor as a result of the rushed manner of work. He was ignored. He also didn't like the fact that under the guise of nuclear research for peaceful purposes, Iran was planning to build a bomb. He was brushed off and warned to shut up. He is a scientist, not a soldier, and felt intimidated and afraid for his
family. He told me that he was being followed, and that his mail was opened."

I had a problem with parts of his story. I knew of Kamrani. He had received military awards — and that definitely did
not
jibe
with his portrayal as a peace-loving scientist. On second thought, maybe Kamrani was telling the truth, that his brother’s troubles
had
started in 2005, when Ahmadinejad started pushing the nuclear program for military use.

I got up. “Well, I have a friend who works in the U.S
.
Consulate here, I can give him that information. But I’m doing it only because I have compassion for your brother. Once I relay the information, I can no longer be involved in this.”

“Sure,” he said immediately, feeling he’d got me trapped.

“How can I contact you?” I asked, “Do you have a card? I may call you for business purposes.”
             

He gave me his card, Ali Akbar Kamrani.

“I’ll meet you here tomorrow evening at 6:00,” he said and walked away. I continued sitting there, watching the exit doors, waiting to see if anyone was joining or following him — a partner or an FOE. I couldn’t identify anyone fitting either category.

I returned to the Trade Center, and, after employing detection avoidance tactics, entered the Consulate and wrote a detailed memo to Eric, describing my meeting and asking for a current check on Professor Firouz Kamrani and Ali Akbar Kamrani. It concluded, “I can’t estimate whether Ali Akbar Kamrani, the person I met, is
bona fide
or if he’s even really a brother.”

In the morning, I had a call from the Consulate to come over. "Your request for information
on
customs regulations in the U.S
.
is incomplete," said the woman on the other end, in case we had a third person listening in. “Why don’t you come over and speak with the Commercial Attaché?”

At the Consulate, I was handed an incoming message from Eric.

“Dr. Firouz Kamrani 49, an Iranian scientist, is a professor and an authority on electromagnetism, and deeply involved in the Iranian nuclear program in Isfahan. He is a tenured professor at the University of Shiraz, holding a degree in Electronic Engineering, and a PhD in Physics. He has published articles in reputable peer reviewed scientific journals and is considered to be one of Iran's top scientists. Kamrani was also a co-founder of the Iranian Centre for Atomic Research in Tehran. We need to be sure that Ali Akbar Kamrani didn’t use Firouz Kamrani’s name as
bait without his knowledge. We need proof that Prof. Kamrani is in the loop and is in accord with the person purporting to be his brother. We are still checking on Ali Akbar, but couldn’t identify him yet. Therefore, continue contacts with him but make no promises that could expose you any further. Eric."

On the following day, I bought a D80 Nikon camera with a telephoto lens and waited on my balcony. At 5:45 pm I saw Ali Akbar Kamrani walking from the parking lot toward the hotel’s entrance. I shot 24 pictures in sequence and returned to my room. I removed the memory card and put it in my pocket, and locked the camera in my room safe. I went downstairs to meet Ali Akbar Kamrani, who was patiently waiting.
             

I sat opposite him. He nodded hello.

“As I promised, I forwarded your request to a friend who works in the U.S. Consulate. He told me to stay away. However, after I told him I was touched by your sincerity, he asked me to obtain proof that your brother agrees to what you are doing.”

“How could he tell you that? I mean my brother, he’s in Iran under a constant watch of VEVAK.”

“OK. My friend thought of that, and suggested that you ask your brother next time you talk to him, to suggest to his students during class to read the article of Prof. Krishna Patel
published in Electromagnetic Radiation Magazine, Volume VII, dated November 5, 2004.”

My guest had a puzzled expression on his face, but he wrote down the information. That would tell us whether there's a connection between my guest and the scientist, but obviously would not serve as exact proof that the scientist was in the loop. But, as a first step, that was enough.             

He then gave me a long look, “and the Americans will know that he did that?”

“I have no idea,” I said, “I’m relaying to you what my friend said. By the way, I’m Jaap van der Hoff
.
”

“I already know that,” he smiled.

“You never told me how you know.”

He hesitated. I waited patiently. “You came to We Forward Unlimited to rent a postal box.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question.”

“Mr. Van der Hoff, please forgive me, but I will tell you only when we move forward with getting my brother out of Iran.”

I decided not to pressure him, but rather to ease his tension and talk about things he’d feel more comfortable with.

“Do you live in Dubai?” I asked in a friendly tone. The business card he gave me earlier listed only his name and a telephone number.

“Yes, for a few years now.”

“What do you do?”

“I work in a local representative office of a bank.”

“Oh, which one?” I asked, thinking maybe there’s an opportunity here.

“Sepah Bank.”

“Is it a Dubai bank?” I asked, playing dumb again.

“No, Iranian.”

“Are you happy there?”

“The wages are very good,” he said.

“And what is your position?”

“Assistant
M
anager in charge of export document financing.”

“Interesting,” I said, “I may need your services. How big is the bank?”

“It employs 18,000 people, mostly in its 1,700 branches in Iran. The rest are in branches in Frankfurt, London, Paris, and Rome.”

I continued chatting with him for another ten minutes.

There was no question he knew who I was. He called me by name; he knew I was working for the U.S. government; he knew I came to Dubai in connection with the letters sent to the U.S
.
Consulate; and I gave him answers to his questions and requested a verification to be performed by his brother in Iran. A reasonable assumption would be that the Agency would know if his brother got the message and told his students to read the particular article. Most probably the Agency had an insider at the university, perhaps even in Kamrani’s class. I couldn’t have been more stripped of any defenses if it turned out that the contact he made with me was a charade, a ploy by some intelligence service, most likely Iranian. And yet, I walked into it knowingly with open eyes.

Why?

Because I’m a risk-taker.
Not a paper pusher. Not a bean

counter
. Decisions had to be made; and if things turned ugly, I’d do my best to get the hell out; I’ve done it before, I can do it again. There’s also another reason: From underneath my jacket I had a gun pointed at Ali Akbar Kamrani. If he made any threatening moves, he’d be gone so fast he wouldn’t even know what hit him. I didn’t think it’d happen in a hotel lobby full of
people, but I was ready. I wasn’t concerned with the Dubai police: I was sure that the Dutch consul could get me out of the local jail before I got used to the bad food and company.

I returned to my room and ordered room service. I decided to limit my movements until the dust settled.  Before the food arrived, I went downstairs and called the U.S. Consulate from the lobby's payphone, asking that I be met at the hotel. I couldn’t risk traveling to the Consulate too often and I didn’t want to use the mobile phone, even though assured that it was unregistered, because a location could still be traced. An hour later, just as I finished my meal, a man from the Consulate came over to the hotel. We met at the bar. After I identified him through an exchange of code words, we did not talk further, but sat apart and kept to our drinks. Half an hour later, I left the bar while surreptitiously giving him my camera's memory card with an encrypted report to Eric. Several hours later, he returned and, as agreed earlier during the exchange of code words, met me in the lobby's men's room.

He handed me my camera’s SD card. “Eric’s response is on the card. Read it on only on your computer, it’s encrypted.”

I returned to my room, inserted the card into my laptop, and waited for the decryption. After 14 seconds, Eric’s message appeared on the screen.

“Ali Akbar Kamrani works in an office known to be used as a front for VEVAK. That office does regular banking activities as well. Therefore, it is possible that Ali Akbar is a VEVAK agent. Regarding the withdrawal slip from Sepah Bank in Italy you found in André’s apartment, we’re trying to establish a connection to the bank’s activities, which were a subject of the Treasury Department’s attention. The bank was financing projects to develop missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The bank was established with money from Iran’s military pension fund,
Sepah
is ‘military’ in Farsi. The Italian branch was used for suspect transactions. It’s likely that Gerda Ehlen, a/k/a “Monica,” although technically employed by Shestakov, is working in cooperation with or even for VEVAK to defeat efforts to expose illegal Iranian transactions, including taking aggressive measures against those perceived as key opposition players. Wait for further instructions. Eric.” I deleted his message.

That wasn’t breaking or heartbreaking news. The possibility that Ali Akbar was a VEVAK agent was real, and I took it seriously. I was still wondering about the meaning of the enigmatic note attached to the Euros I’d found. “What’s Pension
1?” I had no clue. Only later did I realize that the answer was right in front of me. I spent the whole day between the pool and my room, waiting for instructions. In the evening, I ordered room service and watched old Western movies. That’s one of the many things you never see in Bond movies, or any “spy” movie or thriller for that matter — the waiting that we, the employees of a huge bureaucratic machine, have to do, the reports we have to write, the rules we must obey, and the frustration we endure when we hit a brick wall when we’d thought there was a breakthrough.

The following morning, the phone rang early. The caller spoke French, quickly using a pre-determined code word to identify himself and giving me a nonsense message about a pending electronic parts delivery to Italy. He then asked about the view from my room. That was enough. I packed my bags and asked for another room. “I want a room with a better view,” I said.  Although I must have been known to the hotel’s staff as ‘the room switcher,’ without a word, they gave me another room. Obviously, under the new circumstances, staying in the same room for too long was dangerous, not knowing who had visited it while I was away, or what devices might have been installed.

I left the hotel and went out for lunch at a restaurant praised by a popular website. The meal was mediocre. I hailed a cab to return to my hotel.

A few minutes later, I looked out the window and saw a sign for Mamzer Park. “Sir,” I said to the cabby, “I need to go to the Hyatt Regency Hotel. I think you just passed it.”