Extraordinary Rendition (9 page)

Hal Rana dispassionately said, “I’ll contact you tomorrow morning, early, and let you know what courtroom to meet us in. We’re going to allow your client to be in court for the arraignment. Judge Goldberg has already been designated. The indictment was filed under seal today. Only we know about it and now you know about it. Your client hasn’t been told why he’s been brought here. Once the arraignment is over, the indictment will be released to the media and posted on the Internet, probably before you even leave the courthouse.”

“Why are you telling me all this, Mr. Rana?”

“We’re not monsters, Mr. Johnson. We did start a dialogue with you a little while back, when you were down here meeting with us. You didn’t continue the dialogue, but now we’re showing you the courtesy of giving you a heads up.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, I appreciate that.”

“Good. It’s always good to be appreciated, Mr. Johnson. You’re about to appreciate us even more because we’ve decided to give you a copy of the indictment today, rather than wait to hand it to you when you and your client appear in court tomorrow. That way you can spend the night with it. It might help you.”

Byron said, “I appreciate that, too.”

“And we are also going to give you something else, if you can guarantee me that you’ll keep it to yourself and your client only, not share it with anyone else.”

Byron painfully remembered the steps of the courthouse in Miami when he had been taken aback by the reporters and cameras on the scorching plaza. He felt at the time that he had been exposed as an amateur. “Maybe before we go any further,
Mr. Rana, you should tell me what you want me to keep so confidential.”

“Fair enough. It’s a highly classified report we’ve prepared explaining in detail the allegations about money laundering and money transfers that are mentioned in the indictment. It provides details ordinarily not seen in an indictment.”

“Such as?”

“Account numbers your client may have used. Wiring instructions he might be familiar with.”

“Why give me that?”

“We want to make sure that in the long run no one will accuse us of having been unfair to you or your client. We know how very rare this case is, so we’re taking the unusual step of giving you and your client the kind of blueprint of our case you would expect to see at trial, not now, so that we can’t be accused of having held onto the company secrets and taken advantage of you by springing information for the first time at trial.”

“It sounds interesting.”

“And maybe once your client sees what we know—as well as what we believe he knows—he’ll see the wisdom in pleading guilty and cooperating with us.”

Byron paused, uncertain about whether to accept the offer. Rana, a skillful man, waited. And then Byron said, “Sure.”

“No one other than you and your client sees it, at least for now. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“And we’ll make it even fairer for you: if there comes a point in time when you feel you want to share it with other people, like accountants, you can file a motion, under seal, with the
judge for permission to release it to other specific people. But you can’t release it without a court order. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough.”

“We’ll need to have you come downtown to pick up these two envelopes yourself. We don’t want to risk emails, pdfs, or messengers. This is hand-to-hand contact, Mr. Johnson.”

Byron had been waiting for a lighthearted tone from the steady Hamerindapal Rana. Maybe, he thought, that last sentence was it. “Did you say contact or combat, Mr. Rana?”

Rana didn’t respond to that. “There is one last thing, Mr. Johnson, so that you’re not surprised.”

“What?”

“The death penalty, Mr. Johnson. The government is seeking the death penalty.”

Christina was dressed in Byron’s comfortable button-down Brooks Brothers shirt and nothing else. He saw below the tapered edge of the shirt’s hem the alluring curve of her ass and glimpses of the hair surrounding her vagina.

As he slipped the documents out of both envelopes Hal Rana had given him, she said, “Want some coffee, Carlos?”

“What would Gloria Steinem say about a smart modern woman making coffee for a guy?

“Baby, do you know how
over
Gloria Steinem is?”

He smiled at her. “Black, no sugar.”

Throughout his career Byron had had an intense capacity to concentrate, a kind of trance focused entirely on the words in front of him or the face of a witness during one of the thousands of depositions he had taken over the years. That
same trance happened now, that cone of silence, as he turned the pages of the indictment and the report stamped on every page with the words “Confidential—National Security Information.” He never touched the mug of coffee Christina placed in front of him.

When the trance was broken, he slipped the documents back into their envelopes. Christina had turned the lights on in the kitchen while Byron was reading. It was almost entirely dark outside. Only the lights in Riverside Park and on the heights of the Palisades on the New Jersey shoreline were visible. The soft light shed by the lamp over the dining room table made his features, she thought, even more handsome. Christina really hadn’t expected to have such a fast-developing affection for this man. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It was not the plan.

Byron’s face was absolutely calm and his voice resonantly thoughtful: “This is serious.”

She lifted her face, silently conveying the question,
How so?

“They’re looking for the death penalty.”

“That’s a joke, isn’t it?”

“This says he arranged the money for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. The bombings at the U.S. embassies in Africa.”

“Anything else?”

“And that he took part in funding the flight training for Mohammad Atta and the other pilots of the 9/11 jets.”

After a pause, she asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“Mystery. How mysterious people are. I know absolutely nothing about Ali Hussein. He doesn’t have the sulfur of evil about him, but here are all these powerful people insisting that he is a killer. Why would Rana and the others make this
up? Why should I believe Ali Hussein and not the dozens of people in the government who must believe he’s evil? I don’t even know for certain that Ali Hussein is his name. Why in fact should I believe anybody?”

They stared at each other. “Can you handle this, Carlos?”

“I don’t know, but I will. Except for Timothy McVeigh, the last execution by the federal government was the execution of the Rosenbergs. And nothing since McVeigh. States execute, not the U.S. government.”

“You’re going to let me go on working with you on this, Carlos?”

“Every brutal step of the way.”

J
USTIN GOLDBERG WAS A tiny man, a perfect miniature: handsome, suave, and fast-moving. Even though he was in his black robes as he entered the courtroom, it took the beat of a moment before anyone noticed him. When he took his seat at the high bench, he put on his half-frame reading glasses and said, in his mannered voice, “This is the case of the United States against Ali Hussein.” He glanced up. “Is the defendant in the courtroom?”

Hal Rana said, “He is. Standing next to Mr. Johnson.”

Judge Goldberg smiled at Byron Carlos Johnson. “Good morning, Mr. Johnson. Good to see you again.”

“Morning, Judge.”

Even Ali Hussein, dressed in a prison jumpsuit and with his arms bound and immobilized in a bulletproof vest, seemed impressed by the judge’s familiarity with Byron Johnson. It stemmed from a period several years earlier when they had served on the same bar association committee. Byron and Justin Goldberg were co-chairs of the committee, which met only once every six months. Byron was barely able to conceal his lack of interest in the committee’s work—it related in some way to pre-trial discovery issues in federal civil cases—and his impatience with having been persuaded by his firm to co-chair the committee so the firm could burnish its reputation for service to the legal community. At the time, Goldberg was
a junior partner at another big law firm. Two years later, at age forty-two, he was one of the many young, conservative, business-and-government friendly federal judges named over the last two decades. Goldberg had always been unfailingly polite to Byron, but Byron sensed that Goldberg’s WASPish style (which he had developed, despite his origins in Queens, while in college at Amherst and law school at Yale) barely concealed a tightly wound and petulant core.

Goldberg said, “I understand the government has a sealed indictment of the defendant?”

“We do,” Rana answered, holding up a copy of the indictment and waving it like a small flag.

“Have you favored Mr. Johnson with a copy?”

“Yes, Judge,” Byron said, “Mr. Rana let me pick up a copy yesterday.”

“Have you had a chance, Mr. Johnson, to give the indictment to your client?”

Byron hadn’t been certain when he would have his first opportunity to signal to Goldberg that there were problems with the process in this case. He had decided to draw attention to everything that was unusual and unfair about the treatment of Ali Hussein. “Give, Judge?”

Goldberg peered over the upper line of his glasses, as if searching for a reason why Byron Johnson would have trouble understanding the meaning of the word “give.”

Byron said, “No, I wasn’t able to give Mr. Hussein the indictment because Mr. Rana instructed me that I couldn’t do that. In fact, in the weeks that I’ve been able to visit with Mr. Hussein in Miami I haven’t been allowed to hand him a piece of paper, and he hasn’t been allowed to give me one.”

Goldberg paused, and in that pause Byron thought again, as he had several times since learning that this fastidious little man was assigned to the case, that until now he had always been on the same side of the law as Goldberg himself. They both represented corporations, banks, and their executives, and both were far more often than not on the winning side. Goldberg continued to adhere to the same interests Byron had represented as a lawyer, ruling consistently in favor of the corporate clients Byron had represented. But he knew that in this case he and Goldberg were bound to part company and to clash—Goldberg had spent a career currying the favor of big law firms, big corporations, and big people in government. He had done that with a quick intelligence and unfailing loyalty, a modern courtier. He was not about to do anything different in this case, although Goldberg, Byron knew, was smart enough to never describe Ali Hussein as an Arab terrorist and would in fact treat Hussein with maddening decorum.

“Mr. Johnson, knowing how thorough you are, I assume you fully advised Mr. Hussein what the charges are in the indictment?”

“As well as I could in the ten minutes I had with him in the holding cell, Your Honor.”

“Does your client speak English?”

“He does.”

“Fluently?”

“He lived lawfully in the United States for ten years before he was detained, Judge. He was an accountant. He is very articulate.”

“I’ll let you have as much additional time as you want right now to speak with him further about what the indictment contains. You can let him read it. I can call a recess for that.”

“The indictment is more than fifty pages long, Judge.”

“Mr. Johnson, if it were three hundred pages I’d still accommodate you and Mr. Hussein.”

“Frankly, Judge, what I want to do is give it to him. And I’m at a loss to understand why I can’t do that.”

“Let’s not argue that kind of issue right now, Mr. Johnson. We can cross that bridge when we get there.”

“I think we’re there already, Judge.”

Byron Johnson detected that acute, pained expression of annoyance he had often seen on the faces of judges like Goldberg—the suppressed antagonism, the tightening of the mouth and eyes. “I don’t think so, Mr. Johnson. All that Mr. Hussein is entitled to at this moment is an understanding of the crimes with which he has been charged.”

Byron interrupted: “I think Mr. Rana should be required to tell us why it is that we can’t give a copy of the indictment to Mr. Hussein.”

“Mr. Rana can be required to do only what I require him to do.” Judge Goldberg adjusted the reading light in front of him. “And at the moment I’m not requiring that he do that. What I do require, Mr. Johnson, is some indication from you that you have reason to believe your client understands the charges against him so that he can intelligently plead guilty or not guilty.”

“Let me cut this short, Judge, and simplify it. He pleads not guilty.”

“Is that so, Mr. Hussein?”

In his clipped, precise English, Ali Hussein said, “Yes, it is, sir.”

“Very well,” Justin Goldberg said. He was efficient. “The next item is discovery. Mr. Rana, what kind of discovery do
you have for Mr. Johnson? Documents? How many? Tapes? How many hours? Videos? Electronic messages? Surveillance tapes? Statements by Mr. Hussein? Give me a sense of the universe.”

“Judge, all of the above. There are mountains of evidence. As the indictment shows, Mr. Hussein had many co-conspirators, there are many confidential informants.”

“That gives Mr. Johnson much to work with.”