He hung up the phone. Two weeks later he parked behind the retail space he had rented, picked up the boxes of money, and drove away. He used some of the cash to live for the next few months while he worked on the first fake identities he built. It was easy for him to earn a license to work as a truck driver under the name Daniel Chase, because he had learned to drive a semi in the army, while he was training in false identities. The work kept him moving, mostly at night, and gave him plenty of time to think.
Each step led to the next steps, and each deception was easier because he had performed the last one and had begun to understand how various bureaucracies worked. Birth certificates led to Social Security numbers and then to driver’s licenses, and then to bank accounts and credit cards. Eventually even passports became possible because he could submit the supporting documents by mail.
He stayed angry, but it was about a year before he gave up trying to devise schemes for returning the money that would restore his reputation. He knew he could simply mail the boxes of money to Fort Meade, but that wasn’t going to exonerate him. He had hauled the money to Libya and done his best to complete a dangerous mission, and when he had finished, his own superiors had abandoned him and then decided to treat him like a criminal.
He began to invest the money. He would deposit small sums in cash in his bank accounts in various names, then write checks to financial services companies—brokers, mutual funds, and later hedge funds. Once he got started, the whole process became almost automatic. Money deposited or invested became more money, and produced the impression of solidity. Time made new money into old money, and old money into wealth.
It took him seven years to get all of the money out of boxes and invested with financial institutions under various false names. At the end of each year he would have his four accountants prepare tax returns for Dixon and Chase and Caldwell and Spencer, then mail them to a fictitious lawyer who was just a mailing address. He took advantage of legitimate deductions, but always paid the taxes without making questionable claims or forgetting to report income. For over thirty years, he had managed to elude the people who were looking for him. But over the years, one after another of the methods he had used became obsolete. If he’d had to start again now, he had no idea whether he could do it or not.
Caldwell needed to go under the surface as soon as possible. The least troublesome way would be to reach Chicago and stop. It was only about a day away. The Peter Caldwell identity included an Illinois driver’s license and a few other bits of identification that he had acquired to pad his wallet—a Chicago library card, a gym membership. On paper he looked like a longtime Chicago resident.
When he reached the city he checked in to a hotel, bought a laptop computer, and began to look for the right apartment. He decided the place should be at least modestly upscale, because police spent less time in affluent places and were less aggressive and suspicious when they were there.
He knew what he was looking for, but he would have to search in the right places in the right way. He started in the northern suburbs—Lake Forest, Kenilworth, Barrington Hills, Winnetka, Glencoe, Wilmette. Houses in the northern suburbs were too expensive to buy invisibly, and there were too few apartments. The southern suburbs were closer to the thing he was looking for, and he looked on Craigslist and found a promising place in Geneva.
It had been many years since he had been in the Chicago area for more than a day or so on the way to somewhere else. He had to do some exploring. He liked the look of Geneva, and the apartment seemed promising. It was 1,800 square feet, with three bedrooms and two baths. When he drove by the building, he was pleased with it. The place was made of gray limestone like a dormitory in an eastern college, with a rounded lintel over a thick wooden front door that looked as though it would be hard to open with a battering ram. There was a back staircase that led to what looked like a kitchen door on the second floor.
He stopped the car and called the number in the ad. He described himself to the woman who answered the phone as a sixty-year-old retiree who wanted the benefits of Chicago but didn’t want to live in the center of it. She asked him how soon he could come and see the apartment. The way she said it intrigued him. He said he could be there in a half hour, and went to get a cup of coffee.
When he knocked on the door, the woman materialized in the doorway. She was slim and appeared to be about forty years old, wearing tight jeans and a short black jacket that might have been designed for a male Spanish dancer. She said her name was Zoe McDonald, and she had blue eyes and chestnut hair. He studied her as they talked in the foyer. She had a pleasant, soft voice, no strange mannerisms, and there was nothing about her to make him feel worried.