Rules of Deception

The topmost report was from his counterpart in Sweden and stated that Walid Gassan, a suspected extremist (Sweden did not countenance the use of the word “terrorist”) had been spotted in Stockholm. It went on to say that Gassan was deemed a priority suspect in the bombing of the Sheraton Hotel in Amman, Jordan, as well as several failed attacks, and requested that any information regarding Gassan or his accomplices be forwarded to the Swedish intelligence service immediately.

The report was accurate, if incomplete.

Walid Gassan had passed through Switzerland in January. Working off a tip from an informant in Geneva’s “Big Mosque,” von Daniken had sent a team to track him down and arrest him. Though not wanted in Switzerland, the red flag warrant issued by Interpol gave von Daniken the authority to take Gassan into custody. As it turned out, fate had been with Gassan, and the terrorist had slipped across the border before von Daniken could do anything more than issue an alert about his whereabouts. He thought of the fingernail he’d found in the aircraft. Maybe his reports on Gassan’s movements had done some good. He did not know, however, whether the terrorist had been kidnapped off the streets of Stockholm or some other European city. He would leave it to Philip Palumbo, head of the CIA’s Special Removal Unit, to inform the Swedes of Gassan’s current location, if and when he saw fit.

Von Daniken walked downstairs to the second floor, advancing along a cool, gray-carpeted corridor to the last door on the right. “KILA 2.8,” read the room placard.

“KILA” stood for the Coordination Unit for Identity Documents. It was KILA’s job to maintain a collection of identity documents from every country around the world. Somewhere in its compendious cabinets was at least one example of every passport, driver’s license, birth certificate, and any other commonly produced identity document currently in circulation in more than two hundred countries around the world.

Von Daniken stuck his head in the door. “Max, you busy?”

Max Seiler ran KILA. He was a short, barrel-chested man with blue eyes and thi

Von Daniken filled Seiler in on the details. “These turned up in the victim’s house,” he said, tossing the three passports onto the desk.

Seiler examined the documents. “An agent?”

“Agent. Trafficker. Crook. One of the above.”

Seiler focused on a maroon passport with a royal coat of arms and the words “Europese Unie Koninkrijk der Nederlanden” emblazoned on the cover. “This the real one?”

“As far as I can tell, Lammers is his real name. He had a C permit giving his nationality as Dutch. ISIS has him tracked back to a university in the Netherlands. I doubt that he went undercover before he was eighteen. Regardless, I want a thorough check. Run all of them through Identigate, then drill down for the breeder docs.”

Breeder documents included social security cards and birth certificates: the government-issued paperwork that validated one’s identity.

Leaning to his side, Seiler cleared a stack of papers off a nearby chair. A glance revealed Italian driver’s licenses, German medical insurance cards, English birth certificates. All fakes.

“Jules Gaye, born 1962, Brussels,” he read aloud, after opening the Belgian passport. He flipped through the pages, studying the immigration stamps, then returned to the front page and held it under a goosenecked ultraviolet light. A faint image of Belgium’s royal palace came to life.

“Reactive ink looks good,” said von Daniken.

“The new Belgian issues are sharp. This one has five security features to put a crimp in counterfeiting. A laser-cut pinhole of the passport holder, a watermark of Albert II, an optically variable image of Belgium that changes from green to blue depending on the viewing angle, and two microtaggants. Offhand, I’d say it’s genuine.”

“You mean the blank?”

“Not only the blank. I mean ‘genuine’ as in official. Issued by the proper passport authority.”

“You’re sure?” Von Daniken’s skepticism was born of experience. Belgian passports were the VWs of the false documents trade. Cheap, reliable, and easy to come by. Since 1990, over nineteen thousand authentic blanks had been stolen from Belgian consulates, embassies, town halls, and diplomatic pouches the world over. The country lost passports the way some people misplaced their keys.

“We can check.” Logging onto his computer, Seiler fed the passport number into Identigate, the Swiss police’s repository of over two million stolen and fraudulent documents from around the world. “The Belgians are as scrupulous about reporting stolen blanks as they are lax about losing them,” he said. “If it’s stolen, we’ll get a match.” After a moment, his broad features creased in dismay. “Nothing. As far as the Belgians are concerned, it’s legit.”

“You’re sure it hasn’t been tampered with?”

“Positive. The pictures are burned into the fabric of the passport itself. It’s physically impossible for Lammers to have replaced the original holder’s photograph with his own.”

“Mind if I use your phone?”

“All yours.”

Von Daniken placed a call to a contact in the identity documents department of the Belgian Federal Police. “Frank, I have one of your passports on my desk. Belongs to a man who got himself killed last night. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s the real thing.” He read off the number and the corresponding name.

“It’s genuine,” said Frank Vincent after a second or two. “Number’s in the system.”

“Fu

“I’ll need some time. End of the day suit you?”

“Before lunch would be better. And one more thing: tell me where you mailed the passport.”

Von Daniken hung up. Max Seiler was examining the New Zealand passport. Again, it passed muster. The document had not been doctored and its number did not turn up on any of their databases for stolen papers. Von Daniken checked his watch. It was five-thirty p. m. in Auckland. Past closing time. He decided to contact the embassy in Paris, instead. Due to the ten-hour time difference, the Kiwis maintained a beefed-up embassy in France capable of handling most official inquiries.

Von Daniken placed the call and was informed that the passport was authentic. According to the New Zealand authorities, the passport holder, Michael Carrington of 24 Victoria Lane, Christchurch, was a citizen in good standing. Officially, NRA. Nothing recorded against. He requested a review of the issuing documents and was told an inquiry would be made forthwith.

“What do you make of it?” he asked after he’d hung up.

Seiler shrugged. “Two valid passports with your victim’s picture, and differing names. There’s only one answer, isn’t there? Gaye and Carrington are legends. We can rule out a dirty businessman. Looks like you’ve got an illegal on your hands.”

An “illegal” was a trained government agent operating clandestinely on foreign soil without his country’s protection. A deep-cover spy.

Von Daniken nodded. Unsettled, he returned to his office. It had been seven years since anything remotely resembling this case had come across his desk. He had just two questions: Who was Lammers working for? And what had he been doing in Switzerland that had gotten him killed?