Extraordinary Rendition

11

TOM NASHATKA AND ANDREW Hurd left the courthouse through the rear entrance reserved for judges and some high-ranking government employees. The area had become, since 9/11, a Baghdad-style green zone. Huge, dirty-white New York City garbage trucks blocked the entrance to the maze of old Manhattan streets that ran among the five nearby courthouses. Iron grates implanted in the roadbeds rose like sharks’ mouths from the streets. And United States Marshals in combat boots patrolled the area.

For Tom Nashatka, Andrew Hurd was an enigma, but a heroic one. He had met Hurd two months earlier on the flight from Guantanamo to Miami as they escorted the blindfolded, smelly Ali Hussein. From the outset Tom knew that Andrew Hurd was the boss, the capo di tutti capi, as one of Tom’s mentors had described him. Tom wasn’t familiar with the name, but when he met Andrew Hurd he felt he was in the presence of someone special. Even on sweltering nights in Cuba and Miami, Hurd dressed in a blue suit and tie. His black shoes were highly polished. He sported a black mustache, black hair streaked with gray, and the look and swagger of an agent in a James Bond movie. He smoked cigars even in the small plane.

It was a ten-minute walk from the courthouse to Juliano’s, an Italian restaurant on Mott Street with tables and chairs from the 1950s and an even older tin ceiling from which empty bottles of wine hung. Kimberly Smith was waiting for them at a table with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She raised her hand to get their attention, as if a beautiful blonde woman in a room crowded with men in suits needed to signal anyone.

For Kimberly, Andrew Hurd was not an enigma but a joke. She had first met him in a conference room at the CIA headquarters in Langley as Hurd was assembling “Team Ali” with Tom, Hamerindapal Rana, and several other agents. She saw him as cultivating the raffish look of crazy, communist-hunting G. Gordon Liddy, the leader of the Watergate break-in who claimed that he could hold the palm of his hand over a candle flame, the ultimate symbol of macho. Even in Hurd’s presence she seemed to mock his eccentricities, his cigar-smoking, his taste for double-malt Scotch.

Kimberly and Tom glanced at each other over the tops of the big plastic menus. She was impatient to finish the lunch with Hurd. He was so erratic-calling meetings at strange times and unexpected places, sometimes gently asking questions and at other times screaming, and often calling Hal Rana that “fucking towelhead”-that she never really wanted to see him and, when she did, wanted to spend as little time with him as possible. Besides, she was anxious to spend the afternoon at Tom’s apartment in Cobble Hill. Tom was a powerful and physically exciting lover.

“The plan,” Tom Nashatka said into the din of voices in the restaurant, “is working well so far, Andy.”

“Is that so? Tell me why.”

“Johnson has already showed the memo to his girlfriend.”

“My, my,” Kimberly said, “he’s a bad boy. That’s a no-no. He promised not to do that.”

Hurd actually had a roguish smile at times. “Love makes men blind, doesn’t it?”

When the Italian-accented, raven-haired waiter stood over their table, Hurd was the first to order. “Diet Coke and a Caesar salad,” he said, handing the oversize plastic menu to the waiter. “Too early for a Chivas.”

Tom and Kimberly ordered a small pizza and iced tea. When the waiter left the table, Hurd picked up his glass of water. “Byron is going to have a visitor at his apartment tonight. Khalid Hussein is driving into the city to meet with him.”

Kimberly said, “They’re going to have a prayer meeting, don’t you think, about the Koran?”

Hurd didn’t respond to her. He asked Tom, “When did brother Khalid last talk to the Imam?”

“He was in the mosque for an hour early this morning.” The mosque was wired with multiple listening and recording devices that Hurd’s agents had implanted and that so far had eluded detection.

“And what about Johnson and Khalid? How are they in touch? Computer, cell phone, smoke signals?”

“Email most of the time. Khalid and Johnson have one thing in common: they don’t sleep. They had an email exchange at two this morning to set up the meeting tonight.”

“Christina must be keeping Byron up at all hours,” Kimberly said.

Although Hurd recognized what she intended to convey by up, he again ignored her. “Anything else?”

“Johnson wrote-and Kimberly and I actually believe he is still this naive-that the case against Ali was complicated and that he thought Khalid might help him understand some new information he had. Mr. Johnson doesn’t get it that everybody’s using him.”

“Did he mention the memo Rana gave him?”

“Not in the email.”

Hurd sipped more water as he watched the waiter approach with a basket of plain bread and garlic rolls. “What else?”

“Johnson’s so smitten that he’s told Khalid that his assistant will be there, too. I guess Byron wants to introduce his amor to the family. Omnia vincit amor.”

“Love conquers all,” Hurd said. Just as the waiter was placing the breadbasket on the checkered tablecloth, Hurd added, “Be careful who you love.”

Kimberly was surprised that Andrew Hurd knew a Michael Jackson lyric, just as she was surprised that he knew a Latin maxim. She often thought of him as a belligerent and stupid action figure. She was bemused by him, not afraid of him.

Tom had never told her that Andrew Hurd had killed twelve men since 9/11.

“Be sure,” Hurd said to Tom, “that we find out exactly what these two guys talk about tonight. Word for word, gesture for gesture.”

“Don’t worry, Andy. Johnson’s apartment is, as they say, transparent.”