Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thriller) (31 page)

“
W
ait,” he cried, “I’ll tell you.”

“I’m listening,” I said.

“When you first came to
‘We Forward Unlimited’ company in Dubai to rent their services, you gave them your passport which they copied and scanned. As routine, they sent your image to VEVAK in Tehran.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked, although I knew the answer.

“Because VEVAK owns them.”

“Why did the request come?”

“It’s a routine procedure applied whenever a new client hires the company’s services. That helps VEVAK to identify foreign agents snooping around the Gulf States, since they are more likely to use services such as ‘We Forward Unlimited’ to mask their identity. They are particularly interested in American agents collecting proof of embargo violations.”

Smart idea! I thought. That service gave VEVAK information about potential foreign intelligence agents, but also an open door to read all their mail. Obviously, intelligence agents don’t discuss their subterfuge matters on third party vendors’ service platforms. But sometimes, some of their counterparts’ names and addresses are revealed, and at times secret information falls between the cracks without being cyphered. Ali Akbar paused.

“Go on!” I urged him.

“VEVAK used sophisticated facial recognition software to match your photo with all photos they have on file.”

“How did they have my photo to compare to?”

“You gave the Iranian consulate in Vienna your passport photo when you applied for a visa a few years back.”

Ha! I remembered that. It was during my preparation to infiltrate Iran chasing the Chameleon.

“When VEVAK had a positive ID on you, they told ‘We Forward Unlimited’ to send them your mail box services application and saw your listed Paris address.”

“And then?”

“They told Shestakov that you were likely to expose his secret dealings. So he sent Monica, the German woman, to befriend
your son
and move in with him to get access to you.”

“Does she work for VEVAK?”

“I don’t know. I know she works for Shestakov.”

I was amazed. That means that I was under the prying eyes of VEVAK as soon as I set foot in Dubai. I also didn’t have an answer yet as to how VEVAK identified me as an American agent. Just by comparing photos? Well, they were right to suspect, because they saw the same person using two completely different names, and even with different nationalities.

I also delved into my memory to ascertain what had happened to André’s rent payments. I knew they ended up in at the Agency’s coffers, but could André know about it and tell Monica that the CIA cashed his rent checks? I made a mental note to ask Eric about it.

“You still didn’t answer my question. How did you know to approach me?”

“After VEVAK identified you as a suspected foreign operative, their agent instructed me. He showed me your photo, told me where you were staying, and directed me to talk to you about my letters. When the letters were sent to the U.S. Consulate in Dubai, saying that my scientist brother wanted to defect, VEVAK didn’t know who the CIA would send.  When you came, they had no proof that you were the one the CIA sent for that mission. There are so many foreign agents here. But for them it was enough if you exposed yourself as an American agent so that they could kidnap you.”

My stomach lurched, but I kept on going.

“Was Firouz really your brother?”

“No. We just happen to have the same last name. It is very common in Iran.”

“But the brother story came up first through your letters to the Consulate!”

“That’s true. It was the beginning of the VEVAK operation to apprehend an American agent in Dubai.”

“Were you the one to post a warning on my account with ‘We Forward Unlimited’ to make me leave Dubai?”

“No. VEVAK did that independently to make you panic, do unexpected things, then try to kidnap you, but if you managed to leave, follow you to your next destination.”

“Did they follow me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I need the address of the place where Madani
is
held.”

Ali Akbar didn’t answer. Without a warning, I hit his face with the gun. His nose started bleeding. “Answer me!”

“Shestakov has him.”

Although he’d told me that earlier, still, this was breaking news. But I didn’t blink, as if I’d expected Ali Akbar to tell me that.

“Where?”

“In a villa right here in Dubai.”

So, there’s a new Madani revealed every way I turn. Who’s the right Madani and who’s
fake
? I was getting confused.

“Why would Shestakov hold him?”

“Shestakov orchestrated, along with Madani, Madani’s escape from Iran. Madani in return was expected to advise Shestakov about the Iranian government's military and nuclear purchasing plans to enable Shestakov to continue sales of the parts for the reactor and initiate additional sales of military goods.”

“Madani wanted to leave Iran?” I asked a dumb question. Ali Akbar didn’t need to know what I already knew know about Madani.

“Yes, and it was impossible for Madani to leave.” If what Ali Akbar was telling me was accurate, it seems that Madani’s contact with the Mossad agents who attempted to recruit him earlier in Italy was loaded. Madani knew that the price of betrayal could be very heavy and that he could face summary justice Iranian style – at the end of a rope.
 
And he had already been in contact with Shestakov, who wanted his services. So great discretion was needed. Madani must then have played off Shestakov and the Mossad. Perhaps the textile business that Madani thereafter started was only a cover? If Shestakov was indeed holding Madani, then it seemed that he’d got tired of the games Madani was playing and had had his men abduct Madani.

“Did Shestakov abduct Madani?”

“You can say that,” answered Ali Akbar candidly. ”Shestakov smuggled Madani here through the Iranian port of Kharg Island,
across the bay from Dubai. They hid Madani in an empty container that had earlier brought Iranian reactor equipment shipped by Shestakov, and therefore anchored in a separate place for security reasons. Shestakov's men had free access to the ship, and it sailed the 430 mile distance to Dubai.”

“Why is Shestakov holding Madani? For ransom?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that Madani cannot leave the villa and that there were some angry exchanges of words between him and Shestakov. I was there just once.”

It was clear to me that Shestakov knew he was holding a treasure, and if he was holding him in a secluded villa, it could mean that Shestakov was negotiating to sell Madani to the highest bidder.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Shestakov had given SVR a right of first refusal. After all, Shestakov was Russian, and he brokered between Russia and Iran re the reactor in Bushehr. Therefore offering Madani to the SVR would make a lot of sense. From the SVR’s perspective, “buying” Madani had its advantages.
First, to prevent a knowledgeable Iranian general from defecting to the West.
Second, to strike a blow at the CIA,
which had failed in the race to get Madani, when he was discovered to be in the SVR’s hands.
Third, Madani could give first-hand information
that he possessed regarding the Iranian government’s nuclear bomb plans though obviously, by now, Shestakov must have sucked
 
from Madani everything he wanted to know.

“Does Madani understand what will happen?

“I don’t know. Shestakov’s men bring him food and entertainment.

“Women?”

“Yes.”

             
“Are you married? I asked all of a sudden?”

             
“No.”

“Any children?”

“No.”

“Do you live alone?

“Yes.”

“Get up!” I snapped, “
we’re
going.”

“Where?” he was frightened. “I already told you everything.”

“Home, to your home.”

If Ali Akbar thought I was done with him and was about to give him a free ride home, he would soon find out he was wrong.

He directed me to his home.
An apartment in a high-rise.
When he exited the car I followed him.

“Where are you going?” he asked when he saw me next to him.

“To your place,” I just accepted your kind offer to serve me with tea.”

He had no words. We entered the elevator and went to the 9
th
floor. He opened his apartment door. I grabbed his keys from him and locked the door from the inside.
So much for any attempt to escape and call the police to arrest an intruder.

“I need documents,” I said. “Show me your files, and I promise I’ll be out of here in no time.”

He pointed at a two drawer grey metal file cabinet. It was not locked. I flipped through the files. Most of them were personal. “Show me your bank account records in BVI.”

He was dumbfounded. “I don’t have any,” he finally managed to say.

“But you own that account in Traders and Merchants Bank!”

“No, I only have an account with Sepah Bank here.”

“Who’s your insider officer?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Insider officer, your VEVAK case officer who handles you.”

“Mustafa Hadid,”

“Do you have a file on him here?”

He shook his head. I quickly ran through the files, but there was nothing of interest, except, except…a fat file with the initials “LSIT.” Ha! These were the initials of Shestakov’s company. I pulled it out and flipped it open. The first thing I saw was a lease agreement for a single family house in Arabian Ranches for AED 275,000 per year (approximately $58,000.) The renter: Ali Akbar Kamrani.

             
“Shestakov.”

I looked at the date of rental. September 1, 2006. That means that an
operation to kidnap Madani had been contemplated before Madani was about to defect.
Unless, of course, the house had other uses.
I continued sifting through the file. In fact I didn’t exactly know what I was looking for. I knew that Ali Akbar was a self-confessed VEVAK agent, a clandestine recipient of money from Shestakov (and maybe also from SVR - the Russian
intelligence foreign service) for “fixing” things. Did he have a third loyalty? Where were the documents regarding the BVI account? There was nothing in the file cabinet. It was only my speculation that he was the owner of that BVI account, just a hunch with nothing to back it up with. I turned around suddenly. Ali Akbar would be my compass. His face would tell me if I was approaching the hot stuff. When I closed and shut the file cabinet I saw an expression of relief on his face. I looked behind the cabinet, nothing other than spider webs.

I opened it again. There must be something here. I pulled the upper drawer out completely and ran my hand under the top. Bingo. Taped to the flat metal was a file, half an inch thick. I looked at Ali Akbar. He was shaking. I pulled out the file. It was full of documents, most of them in Arabic or Persian, but the few that were in English looked promising. Wire transfers between Sepah Rome and Tehran of significant amounts, and I mean millions. There were also official looking letters with the Revolutionary Guards emblem, but although I could read them, I understood little.

“Mr. Van der Hoff, please, I ask you to leave. You are going through my personal records, these files have nothing to do with the materials that you are interested in.”

“Really?” I asked and continued with my search. A white office envelope felt as if it contained more than just paper. I looked inside. It contained a green American Express credit card that looked as if it had never been used.

There was a tense look on the face of Ali Akbar. Although he tried hard to keep me from noticing, my Mossad body language course told me that I was holding something that caused him great concern. The card looked just like all American Express cards. The little devil inside me was also curious. Why would he keep the card secreted?

Before I could answer, and while I was looking in the file cabinet for more stuff, I felt a blow to my head that shook me. I fell to the floor. Before losing consciousness briefly, I saw Ali Akbar holding a table lamp with a heavy base. I opened my eyes and closed them again, the headache was splitting. The apartment was quiet. I opened my eyes again. Ali Akbar was crouching very close to me, searching my pockets. The keys to the apartment! I’d locked it when we’d entered. I half closed my eyes so as not to alert him. But Ali Akbar was too busy looking for the keys. Luckily I’d put them in my pants’ back pocket and was lying on my back. Therefore he couldn’t get at them.

I thought of Amos, my martial arts instructor
during Special Forces training at the Mossad. Amos was a short guy with red hair, cross-eyed, so you never knew where he was looking. That helped him to kick us hard when we least expected it
.
“When your enemy is very close to your body, that limits your options. Look for the available vital points or vulnerable points. They can kill, or cripple your enemy. Therefore use them only when it’s either your or his life, and you cannot escape. Don’t be a hero. You have an assignment to carry out. If you deliver your enemy a crippling blow you will be the survivor, not the winner. Choose the target carefully.” I did.

As Ali Akbar leaned toward me closer, until I could smell his body odor, I hit his ears suddenly with both my slightly-cupped palms. That created a painful and serious vacuum effect that could burst both his eardrums. Injury to the inner ear and the
 
cochlea
 
also means loss of balance. He gasped in pain and fell backwards. I turned on him and pushed upwards with my fingertips into the hollow areas just under his ears, and finished him with an elbow strike to his nose. He was out instantly.

I got up, breathing heavily. Ali Akbar
was showing signs of returning to reality from the temporary serenity I had imposed on him.
I looked for the file I’d retrieved earlier, and, most
importantly, the envelope with the credit card that seemed to be the immediate trigger for his attack. The contents were scattered on the floor. I picked them up and left the apartment, locking it from the outside. I didn’t know if Ali Akbar had called for help while I was knocked out. I left the apartment building, entered my car, and waited. My camera was ready. If Ali Akbar had summoned help, it would not be the police. They could ask too many questions.  I wanted to take a good look at any people he’d called, for future reference. After ten minutes of sitting in my car, lights off, I saw a black Buick stopping next to Ali Akbar’s apartment building. The man who exited the car looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him immediately or get a good shot of him. He rushed into the building. I started my car and returned to my hotel, headache and all, but with significant prizes. I sent a short encrypted message to Eric, reporting where I was and that I’d made serious progress, and went to bed. I had to think how to break the news to Eric that if Kamrani was right, Madani was in Dubai, and, therefore, the person Eric had in the U.S
.
– Madani Number 3 – as well as his wife and son still waiting in Europe – are also fakes.

I woke up a few hours later. It was still dark outside. My head was hurting but my mind was clear. I sat at the small desk, turned on the bankers’ lamp, and looked at the scanned photo
Pierre had given me in Paris of Christian Chennault. Gotcha! I said to myself, that’s the man I saw a few hours ago rushing into Ali Akbar’s apartment building, Christian Chennault, Leonid Shestakov’s henchman. If I needed further proof of the Shestakov-Ali Akbar connection, I didn’t have to look any further. I’d just seen it.

Then I looked at the credit card I took from Ali Akbar. I was troubled, but didn’t know why. Let’s play a game, I said to myself, let’s look at the account number. I turned on my laptop, keyed in the 12 digit password and logged in through a secure server to the office. I ran the account number on the database. The response came in immediately. “No data is available. Check the account number as it appears to be invalid.”

I compared the numbers on the card with the numbers I keyed in. They matched. I’d made no mistake. I tried again. The same auto response came. The only conclusion I could make with my head hurting was, that there must be a mistake. Either American Express issued a card with an erroneous account number, or the Agency’s database was screwed up, or the card was forged. I went back to bed. I was still bewildered and uncomfortable about how to break the news to Eric. But, what the hell, I thought and fell asleep.

When I woke up, I sat on my bed trying to collect my thoughts. What if Kamrani was lying about Madani’s being held in Dubai? What if the credit card was a simple armature forgery? Anyway, nobody can use it because every card
-
reading machine would reject it immediately. Then, what’s the use? And what is the real reason for printing this card and then secreting it
so carefully
?
 

A blow to my head again, this time metaphorically.
“You’re an idiot,”
my little inner devil told me.
“After all those years with cypher training you couldn’t see it? The credit card is a code card, a key, not a credit card!”

I looked at the card again. This time I counted the card number’s digits. 16! American Express cards have 15. This one was
never meant to be used for charging champagne. To make sure, I followed the routine of manually checking the validity of the card. I wrote down the 16 digit number and doubled every other digit from right to left. I added the new numbers to the undoubled digits. Now all double digit results should be added as a sum of their component digits; 16 is actually 1+6.  The result I had was 72. Since the final sum on a valid card must be divisible by 10, and the result was 72, then the only conclusion was that card was a fake. The Agency’s database was correct: that’s a bad card.

Ali Akbar had made no hostile moves when I interrogated him over very important matters. But when I found the credit card
,
that
blew his top, and he’d hit my head. I copied the numbers to an encrypted message and sent it to Eric and Paul, suggesting that they also copy NSA – the National Security Agency, the U.S. agency that encrypts and deciphers all communications that further the national interests of the United States.

XXI

July 2007 – Washington, D.C.

It was time to leave and go home. I decided to break the news to Eric, Benny, and Paul personally about Madani’s allegedly being held by Shestakov in Dubai.

I flew to London and I called Eric, asking to have a meeting as soon as I arrived, then caught a connecting flight to Washington, D.C. An Agency car met me and took me to Langley. In Eric’s office, I put an envelope on the coffee table between us. “It’s all in there,” I said, “all my findings.”

“Tell us now,” asked Benny, “we’ll read it later.”

“OK, Benny, do you remember telling us that your men approached Tango while he was in Italy on a business trip?”

Benny nodded
.
“
Y
es, he was identified by our talent spotter. We did a target study that marked as a suitable and worthy target for recruitment.”

“Well, it was business, all right. There were some requests for bidding made by Tango, or maybe a better term would be double dipping. During the same time he talked with your men, Tango was already working for Shestakov. The immediate reason for his visit to Italy was to set up a bank account to receive Shestakov’s payments. Obviously he couldn’t open an account at Sepah Bank, knowing that the payments he’d receive would be reported to VEVAK. Therefore he opened an account at Banco di Luigi, a small and discreet bank in Rome.”

“Do you have these statements?”

“No. But I have intelligence telling me the account has several million Euros. The U.S. can ask the Italian government for authenticated copies of these statements if we establish that the request falls under the U.S.-Italian Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty.”

“Where did you get the intel?” asked Eric.

I wasn’t about to tell him that Aldo had told me. Eric would crucify me for cutting corners. “Ali Akbar Kamrani told me.”

“Voluntarily?” asked Benny with a surprised smile.

“Yep. Another squeeze of Kamrani’s balls can get you surprising results. I went to Dubai for that. Tango received a
one-time amount of $1 million, and additional frequent payments.
Ali Akbar hinted that Madani had partners.”

“But Kamrani is an Iranian agent. Didn’t he report this to VEVAK?”

“Apparently not. He was more afraid of Shestakov’s thugs, who are next door to him, than of VEVAK, which are across the bay.
Anyway, I suspect that Ali Akbar Kamrani himself was double dipping; working for VEVAK and getting “bonuses” from Shestakov.”

“Meaning?”

“A few days after Shestakov made payments from his account at Sepah Bank in Rome to Tango’s bank account in Luigi Bank, there was another transfer, of exactly 15% of each transfer, to a bank account in the British Virgin Islands.”

“Got details?” asked Benny, with increased interest.

“No, just the name of the account and an account number. I know that the bank account is held by a trust, and British Virgin Islands law is very strict in defending the anonymity of the ultimate beneficiary of the trust, unless…”
I paused.

“Unless what?” asked Benny.

“Unless you
can show that you have been wronged by ways and means which you can only partially understand or by persons unknown. If so, you can apply to the
 
BVI
 
High Court for a document disclosure order against any third party in the
 
BVI
 
who is not a mere witness but who has got caught up in, facilitated, or become involved in a wrong. In the
 
BVI
, there are more than 470,000 active offshore companies. Such a third party is almost inevitably a locally licensed and regulated trust company, or a company formation and administration agent.
 
BVI
 
trust companies are expected to hold ultimate beneficial ownership and 'Know Your Customer' documentation. Such documentation should reveal who actually stands behind any
 
BVI
 
company that is administered by a regulated
 
BVI
 
trust company. Such a court order should lead us to the disclosure of this type of documentation.”

“How do you know all that?” asked Benny, with a tad of suspicion.

“Well,” I said with a smile, “don’t forget that I’m a lawyer” and when Benny’s facial expression signaled ‘Oh, come on
!
..
.
’ I continued: “I consulted Martin Kenney, a leading fraud attorney in BVI and the local member of FRAUDNET, a worldwide network of attorneys created by the International Chamber of
Commerce. I told him that I’m a Tel Aviv lawyer acting as an Estate’s Executor trying to invade a BVI Trust that the Estate was suing. Kenney told me that if my client was the apparent victim of a breach of a fiduciary duty or an apparent victim of a fraud, we can seek disclosure orders against any third party in the
 
BVI
 
who has apparently got mixed up in or become involved in the handling, transfer, or concealment of the fruits of the fraud or iniquity complained of. He warned me, though, that sometimes hard core fraudsters will anticipate the possibility of the use of such orders, and may therefore interpose a further layer of fraudulent data by the use of a nominee ultimate beneficiary owner - a totally illegal method of concealment. Kenny said that he is able to get around this problem and place us on a path of inquiry to show who stands behind a nominee ultimate beneficiary owner.”