Extraordinary Rendition (36 page)

“I have a confession. I looked up your father on Wikipedia. He had one of those lives I associate with WASP aristocrats in the early twentieth century. Fancy-dancy prep school. Princeton, the Foreign Service, Colonel in the Army during World War Two, Ambassador to Mexico, Ambassador to Egypt, editorial board of
Foreign Affairs
magazine.”

“Wasn’t the world a better place before Google and the Internet? There was once some privacy and mystery in the world.”

“You’re there, too, on the Internet.”

“I know. I stopped looking at it.”

“You should. I checked just yesterday. There are articles on how courageous you are. Someone compared you to Daniel Ellsberg, and Ellsberg, now ancient, said the video you released was more powerful than all of the Pentagon Papers.”

“And other people are saying that I’m a traitor, that I’m a lawyer for terrorists, that I’m an incompetent fool.”

“What do you think you are?”

“I think I have never been more settled and centered and happier in my life.”

Helen smiled. “I’m glad I answered that ad in the
Voice
.”

“So am I.”

Three hours later they left the building. It was dark. Byron held Helen Wilson’s hand. On the sidewalk, in the iron-gray cold, a dozen or so people with microphones and cameras suddenly swarmed out of panel trucks and cars in which they had been keeping warm.

“Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson. Byron.” Multiple voices called out. Wearing only a blue blazer, white shirt open at the collar,
gray slacks, and a scarf, Byron was relaxed and smiling. He said nothing. He led Helen to the sidewalk and, as if by a miracle, a taxi pulled up, and they climbed into it, Helen first.

They drove to the East Village. Helen had a role in
The Merry Wives of Windsor
. Byron sat in the small audience, engrossed by her performance.

T
HE SUN IS DAZZLING. The Atlantic is exquisitely blue. In the distance, the small outer islands covered with pine trees seem to be on fire without ever being consumed by the afternoon light. My two grown sons, both in their thirties, in the strength and wonderful vitality of their lives, are tossing a fleet Frisbee across the verdant lawn that leads to rugged shrubbery on the edge of the small cliff and Maine boulders overlooking the ocean
.

The air is hot and dry. It’s filled with the summer fragrance of pine, the sea, and the moss and seaweed on the boulders. My three grandchildren—Hector, Tomas’s son, dark like my mother, and Hunter’s twins, Foster and Tom, with my father’s slim, blond litheness and elegance even though they are only seven—run, screaming happily, back and forth between their fathers, trying to intercept the Frisbee. Here they are, my sons and my grandsons, together for the first time with me
.

Their wives are in the kitchen behind me. They like each other. I can hear that in their voices. They’re at ease in their lives. If divorce and disruption are in their future, I can’t detect that. One is a doctor, the other is a lawyer. I don’t know them well, but they are without pretense
.

I’ve just finished a six-mile run on the winding, traffic-less roads of this island to which I’ve been coming in the summers all of my life. Helen, who rode on a bicycle beside me while I ran, is in the shower. I’m still sweating, drinking lemonade, and standing
on the flagstones of the old patio where my mother and father entertained famous people when I was a kid. Their ghosts are here. They seemed to my eyes to be happy, successful people. But who can ever know these things? My parents are dead, and not one of their famous friends is still alive
.

Those of us here now—my sons, my grandchildren, their vibrant mothers, Helen, and me—are vital, as were those guests in that long-ago time, in this moment in the high Maine summer. The sun and the clean, bracing air gave them, and now us, that vitality, the joy that can sometimes come in the simple act of living
.

My sons are intelligent men, and they have overcome the hurt feelings I know they bore toward me in the years when they were at school in Manhattan as boys, then in Massachusetts at boarding school, and then in college. I had become the father for them that my father was for me. Remote, cool, often inaccessible, more of a message-giver than a mentor. Now they have allowed me to become their friend. I ask them for advice. I tell them my truths, I’ve asked for their forgiveness. I feel they are giving it to me, and I want to be worthy of it and of them
.

For the last several days I’ve honored my sons’ need to know what I’ve done, where I stand now, and what the future will likely be for me. Just before I left New York, I hired Vito Calabrese, a criminal defense lawyer whose name I’d heard for years. As I explained to my sons, he had represented Mafia dons, indicted Congressmen, investment bankers, and even Elaine, the woman who owned Elaine’s, the celebrity restaurant on Second Avenue. She’d scratched the face of a customer early on a Sunday morning. Vito, a friend of the police commissioner and Rudy Giuliani, got the charges dismissed. When I left New York two months ago, I left with the settled sense I was in the right hands. Vito may be
flamboyant—he could get rid of the colorful matching ties and pocket squares—but he is steady, intelligent, and realistic
.

Hal Rana has moved to Washington to become an Assistant Attorney General, a significant promotion. Justin Goldberg has issued a one-sentence order dismissing all charges against Ali Hussein. The Imam and Khalid Hussein were released from custody without being indicted. The government has refused to apologize to the Muslim community in Newark for the seizure of the mosque
.

And Ali Hussein is somewhere in the world
.

“And what about you, Dad?” Tomas asked
.

“Vito says the grand jury has been disbanded. Since Jesse Ventura disappeared—since, as the government says, he never existed—Vito says that any evidence that Jesse gave the grand jury would be zeroed out. Vito has a way with words. But he also said that they can put together another grand jury. Something can happen, or nothing.”

“How do you feel, Dad?”

“Completely at peace. Blessed to be here with you, your wives, and your kids.”

I haven’t told them about the one-page note Eben Cain, the man who watched over this house in the lonely winters, handed me yesterday. Slow-speaking and deliberate, Eben said it had been months since he looked into the old mail slot in the waiting room at the island’s dock, where for years his family’s mail was left. In his one concession to the modern world, Eben had a shiny new mailbox in the post office in Boothbay Harbor. He went there once every two weeks
.

“Sometimes,” Eben told me, “I take a gander in the old slot. This was in it.”

Eben handed me an envelope on which Christina’s writing appeared. “For Eben Cain, To Be Given to Mr. Johnson.” I opened the envelope. In it was a single sheet of paper. “Carlos, if you wish to follow the money, there’s an account in Banco Popular de Venezuela in Bogota. Anyone who has the numbers I’ve written here can get full access to the money in that account.” At the bottom of the page was a line of fourteen numbers and below that were the words: “All my love, Brighteyes.”

Tonight we’ll have a bonfire on the beach. We’ve already assembled the stones and the wood and the seaweed for the fire. I’ll show my grandchildren how to bake lobster in the seaweed and stones as my own grandfather taught me
.

And I’ll let Christina’s note float momentarily over the fire and then dissolve as the ashes disperse into the night air
.

Now I hear the screen door open. At different times in my life, I’ve seen my grandfather, my mother, my father, my wife, my boys when they were children, and Christina Rosario walk through that door. And now, in this place and time, I see Helen
.

“Helen,” I say. “Come here. Let me hold you.”

E
DUCATED AT BOWDOIN AND Cornell, Paul Batista is one of the leading criminal defense trial lawyers in America. He is also one of the country’s most familiar and widely known television personalities, with hundreds of appearances on Court TV, MSNBC, and CNN over the last fifteen years. His articles have appeared in
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal
, and elsewhere. He is the author of several legal textbooks, including
Civil RICO
, the leading treatise on the federal racketeering law, now in its third edition. His poetry has appeared in such leading literary magazines as
Poetry International, Pegasus, Press
, and
Parnassus
. He served in the United States Army in the early 1970s. An avid marathon runner, he lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, New York.
Death’s Witness
was his first novel.

Other Books by Paul Batista

Death’s Witness

Ebook also available from Astor + Blue Editions