Extraordinary Rendition (34 page)

A measured voice asked: “How do you know the agent’s name?”

“Simeon Black was working on a very detailed, deeply researched article on the arrests, detention, extraordinary rendition, and treatment of men arrested overseas in the war on terror. He learned that ‘Jesse Ventura’ was an agent named Andrew Hurd. And I’ve had encounters with Andrew Hurd.”

Another voice, this one a woman’s: “How did you get the video?”

“An agent who once worked with Hurd gave it to me.”

“What agent?”

“I knew her as Christina Rosario. That was not her name. I don’t know her name.”

“Where is she?”

“She is dead.”

“How did she die?”

“She drowned.”

“Where?”

“Off the coast of Maine.”

“Why did she give you the videotape?”

“She was assigned under cover to shadow me. She left the video in plain view, I believe, for me to take. I took it.”

The same woman’s persistent voice: “Why did she do it?”

He was surprised to hear himself say, “Conscience.”

“How is that?”

“She was disturbed at what the government had done. And disturbed as well that it had lied.”

“Who else has the video?”

“The people who filmed it, the United States Attorney’s Office, the judge. And Simeon Black had it.”

“Where did he get it?”

“From me. I gave it to him. When he was killed the day after I gave it to him, it was missing, stolen.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

“The people who wanted to gather up all copies of the video and all of the work and research he was producing.”

“Who are those people?”

“Ask Andrew Hurd. Ask Mr. Rana, the prosecutor.”

“Where do you stand in all of this?”

“I am only a lawyer advocating for his client. He cannot receive a fair trial. He is a victim, not a terrorist. He should be freed, and the people who did this to him should be prosecuted.”

With the camera still trained on him, Byron Johnson stood and handed out the fifteen copies of his report and the disk, as carefully as a priest bestowing a communion wafer.

“The only person likely to be indicted is, in fact, Byron Carlos Johnson.” Hamerindapal Rana glanced around the crowd of reporters in the press room at One St. Andrew’s Plaza.

“He has been the target of a federal grand jury investigation for two months. He has consistently violated rules that prohibited him from disclosing confidential information. He
was ordered by a federal judge to hold in confidence and not disclose that information. He signed confidentiality agreements. He made promises. He has completely violated his promises. He has fabricated information. He has violated the confidential privileges that apply to his relationship with his client. And he may have put the lives of patriotic Americans in danger.”

“Who are the people in the video?”

“We are trying to establish that. It may be that the people in the video are actors. The video may have been an exercise in disinformation. We haven’t ruled out the possibility that Byron Johnson himself had the video produced.”

“What does Ali Hussein look like?”

“The man in the video may not be the defendant we have in custody.”

“Why not give us a picture of him?”

“That, too, is classified material.”

“Mr. Johnson has publicized a picture of his client which he says was given to him by Hussein’s brother. The man in the picture appears to be the same man in the video.”

“Ali Hussein doesn’t have a brother. And our analysts have determined the picture is at least twelve years old.”

“Who is Andrew Hurd?”

“We have never had an agent known as Andrew Hurd.”

“Isn’t he the man in charge in the video?”

“As far as we know, no one in the video is named Andrew Hurd.”

“Johnson’s report says that Kimberly Smith, the Stanford professor and television expert on terrorism, has ties to Andrew Hurd.”

“All Mr. Johnson has is a picture of the person he calls Andrew Hurd with Kimberly Smith. I’m sure Ms. Smith knows many people, and she has been photographed thousands of times with thousands of people. That is the business she is in. She’s surrounded by people.”

“Is she a government agent?”

“Absolutely not.”

“And who is Christina Rosario?”

“We have no record of anyone named Christina Rosario in any relevant agency. Our investigation so far has shown that the person Byron Johnson calls Christina Rosario had a long-term sexual relationship with Mr. Johnson and was with him in a vacation home owned by Mr. Johnson in the three days before she drowned. Local police are evaluating whether her death was a suicide, an accident, or a deliberate killing.”

T
HE METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER was attached by sealed walkways, floor-by-floor, like conjoined twins, to the United States Attorney’s Office at One St. Andrew’s Plaza. Both buildings were surrounded by the narrow streets that bristled with concrete barricades, walls, and the steel mechanisms like shark jaws that would shred tires to pieces when they were open.

The entrance to the MDC was grim. Visitors had to pass through four separate stations, each of them with increasing severity. At the first, Byron Johnson had to display two forms of picture identification and surrender them in exchange for a brass chit. Like all other visitors, he had to turn in his cell phone, his watch, and his belt. At the next station, he had to put his briefcase, shoes, keys, coins, and wallet in plastic trays before they moved on a belt through a scanner. Barefoot, he had to walk through an electronic arch. At the last station, a guard passed a wand around his body, including the space under his testicles.

After months of regularly visiting Ali Hussein, Byron was patient through the whole process. The guards knew him. They were courteous. They knew his name. He knew some of their names. For some reason, Byron had always carried a card identifying him as a former captain in the US Army, and word
of that had spread to some of the guards. That eased, to some extent, the way they treated him.

Before he could enter the hallways and elevators of the prison, he had to write in an old-fashioned log his own name and the purpose of the visit.
Byron Johnson. Attorney-client visit
. In theory, a lawyer could gain entry to the prison and visit a client any time of the day or night on any day of the year. In practice, if a lawyer made a visit after ordinary daytime hours, he or she could wait in this sign-in area for an hour before a guard appeared to escort him.

After Byron wrote his name and the purpose of his visit, a guard whom Byron had never seen said, “Mr. Johnson, could you step over here with me?”

Byron followed him to a group of unoccupied plastic chairs. In his mid-fifties, well-dressed and overly polite, the man, whose name tag was etched with the name “Medina,” said, “Mr. Johnson, I’m afraid you won’t be able to see your client.”

“What’s wrong?” Byron tried to control his voice, but fear had reduced it, like a dried reed, to a rasping sound. For a terrifying moment, Byron was convinced that he was being arrested and that the time had come when he, too, would be taken out of the world and consigned to the fear, isolation, and stress of long-term imprisonment.

“He’s no longer in the facility.”

“Say that again?”

“He’s been removed.

“Who did that?”

“Assigned personnel.”

“When?”

“Not long ago, Mr. Johnson.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have that information, sir.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t have that information either, Mr. Johnson.”

“Who do you report to?”

“I can’t tell you that, Mr. Johnson. My job was to tell you that this guy is no longer here.”

As soon as he reached his apartment, Byron Johnson called Rodney Smith at CNN. Smith was a handsome, hard-working man who, three months earlier, had become the anchor of the CNN news show that ran from three to five in the afternoon. Over the last few weeks, Smith personally—and not one his assistants—had contacted Byron several times. Many of Rod’s questions were about Simeon Black. Byron sometimes felt that Rod, who had started his career as a serious print journalist at the
Boston Globe
and the
Washington Post
, was interested in learning details about a journalist he admired and with whom Byron was connected, like a young baseball player asking questions of older managers about Johnny Bench to learn more about the master. Simeon had spent little time with other journalists and writers. He was a worker in the vineyards of information for his articles and never believed he was going to get the facts he needed from other writers. He got facts from people who were witnesses. Byron Johnson was a witness.

But Rodney Smith was also interested in what Byron knew, saw, and heard. He was one of the journalists at Byron’s press
conference at the Harvard Club. He had CNN run excerpts of the video of Ali Hussein being forced under water in a bathroom in some country somewhere in the world. Other networks, less willing to display brutal conduct by people who were obviously American, broadcast tamer portions of the video.

The full video, which clearly showed Andrew Hurd and Tom Nashatka in the room and managing the men who held and pushed Ali Hussein, had quickly made its way onto YouTube. It had achieved viral status. So had Byron Johnson. He appeared on the most of the Internet postings with his image and words as filmed when he introduced the video.

Rod had several times invited Byron to appear on his show for an interview. He was impressed by Byron’s steadiness, his handsome presence, that attractive combination of a classic WASP face and the black eyes of his Mexican mother. Byron had declined to do the on-camera interviews, but he had given Rod details about Simeon Black’s work and his own dealings with Ali Hussein, the man invisible to the outside world, and the hidden process of the criminal case.

Rod Smith, who had given his private cell phone number to Byron, immediately took the call. “Byron, how are you?”

“I have some news for you.”

“Yes?”

“Ali Hussein is gone.”

“As in?”

“The government has removed him from the country. It’s called extraordinary rendition.”

“How do you know that?”

“I went to see him. I was told he was no longer there. I called the prosecutor. In fact, I bypassed the people I’ve been dealing
with and contacted the U.S. Attorney himself. And he told me that Ali had been returned to administrative detention.”

Rod Smith was an experienced journalist—there was a restrained edge of excitement in his tone. “Does anyone else know this?”

“No.”

“Can I get you to come up here?”

“This time, for sure. I am the lawyer for a man who has been made to disappear.”

“We can send a car down for you.”

“No, I’ll take that great limousine in the ground. I need to concentrate my thinking.”

“Get here, if you can, Byron, in an hour. You know where we are?”

“I know—Columbus Circle.”

“Check in with security. We’ll let them know.”

“Fair enough.”

“Byron, thanks for this.”

W
IND-DRIVEN SNOW BLEW and wrapped itself in shawls around the slender, tall statute of Christopher Columbus. Mid-afternoon traffic, mainly yellow taxis, swirled continuously around the circle at the base of the statue. Byron, standing at the floor-to-ceiling window in the green room in the Time-Warner Building, waited calmly for the young intern to take him to the set. A television monitor was attached to the wall. Rod Smith was speaking. There were routine reports about explosions in Iraq, a stolen child in Florida. And a commercial for a credit card in which a strong young woman stood on the top of a very high rock pinnacle in a wasted landscape in the West.

Sipping lukewarm coffee as he waited, Byron recognized that he had traveled a long way since that desperate day, on the steps of the courthouse in Miami, when he had reacted to the live camera and the anxious, unfriendly reporters like the proverbial deer in the headlights, his awkward performance that Sandy Spencer once used to insult him. This morning, as the beautiful snow made New York a gracious postcard, he was assured and focused and at ease.