Extraordinary Rendition

18

KIMBERLY SMITH LOVED THOSE hour-long periods when she sat alone in a small studio with the automated camera in front of her as she listened attentively to Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper at CNN or Bill O’Reilly or Geraldo Rivera at Fox bring her into the live broadcast conversations. Just at the moment when a question was directed at her, or at the moment when she decided to intervene in an exchange, the red light at the top of the camera glowed, as if turned on by the sound of her voice, signaling to her that her face and voice were being broadcast to millions of people. She had been such a regular guest on these shows in the years since 9/11 that she was a celebrity people recognized in airports, on streets, and at conferences. These shows were deeply pleasurable for her, more engaging than teaching or writing or researching (although she enjoyed those parts of her life, too, just as she enjoyed other, far less visible work she did). Elegantly produced, stimulating, these broadcasts engaged her best qualities. She could exercise all the fluency, quick intelligence, and snappy, sardonic humor she had developed during her years in college at Harvard, graduate school at Yale, and teaching and writing at Stanford.

And she took pleasure, too, from the fact that she was beautiful. It was there for all the world to see. Sometimes, after a live show was broadcast at eight or nine in the evening, it would be repeated three or four times in the long interval between midnight and the start of the early morning live news shows at six. In the middle of the night, she would sometimes watch herself, proud of the ease and grace and feistiness she displayed. It pleased her deeply, too, to witness how enthralled the men with whom she was spending the night were when, at three in the morning, they watched a broadcast she had done at nine the night before.

Six months into their relationship, Tom Nashatka still thought of Kimberly Smith as his golden girl, even though he suspected she had many other lovers. He knew that from the first time they made love. It was at the end of a day of secret meetings in a nondescript but highly secure building on L Street. They went to a bar on DuPont Circle, and after two hours she asked, “So, do you want to come up to my room?”

Want was not the right word to describe Tom’s intense desire-this unexpected invitation to her room was like the granting of the wildest wish on his life’s wish list. Everything about her seemed unattainable. She was the daughter of wealthy New Yorkers; his father had spent a lifetime working in a steel foundry in Pittsburgh. She had gone to the best-known college in the world; he’d attended gritty Penn State. She went on fellowships to the most famous graduate schools in the country; he had enlisted in the Navy after college. She looked like one of the golden girls, the blessed girls, of American culture-the circle that included Christie Brinkley, Diane Sawyer, Valerie Plame. Tom, although he was a muscular football player and Navy Seal, could be easily recognized for what he was, the Polish son of a Pittsburgh steel worker. He had that flat accent and, at times, those working-class gestures. He used the words you know and like too often, the dominant idioms of most Americans under the age of forty. Kimberly never said like unless she was drawing an analogy.

After the first night in the room overlooking leafy, elegant DuPont Circle, Tom came to believe something extraordinary-that Kimberly Smith loved him. He certainly loved her. She was not only this extraordinary prize, she also had qualities he admired. She was a patriot. During graduate school at Yale, she was recruited by the CIA and became a deep undercover agent. She loved the intrigue. While she was taking her graduate degree, she did fellowships in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and in those times she learned the exciting art of acting as a covert agent. She wrote a book, published by the University of Chicago Press, on Arabic linguistics and culture. She was invited to attend seminars and give lectures on subjects such as the language and message of the Koran in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. After the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, she had started to give secret seminars to CIA agents about Islam and the beliefs of Islamic men and women.

When Kimberly came to New York to appear on television, she stayed at the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South, and the networks paid for her travel and her room. The hotel was only three blocks from the CNN studio in the new buildings on Columbus Circle at the southwest corner of Central Park. Her room, although small, overlooked the park. On the nights after her shows, when she and Tom Nashatka were together, they would have dinner in her room, make love, wake at around one in the morning, step out onto the quiet of Central Park South, return to the room, and continue working on the emailed notes that Byron Carlos Johnson regularly sent to himself, particularly the passages from the Koran that he copied out on his computer screen and sent to himself.

The white light of early dawn filled the trees of Central Park. Tom Nashatka woke from a short sleep and saw Kimberly at the computer. He had fallen asleep two hours earlier, after watching a rebroadcast of the show she had done the night before on CNN. She had been dazzling then, and she was dazzling now, too, although now she was naked and perched with her legs crossed on the desk chair.

“We underestimated him,” she said.

“Say what?” Tom asked, drowsily.

“We underestimated Byron Carlos Johnson,” Kimberly repeated, the clarity of her voice the same as when she was speaking on one of the television broadcasts. Even in private, she never spoke indistinctly or lazily.

Tom Nashatka sat up in the bed, the sheets wound around his waist. “Professor, you have got to give me more information than that.”

“The financial people are telling me that the new numbers just don’t compute. We’re now getting book, chapter, and verse numbers that don’t fit the paradigm.”

For weeks, Tom Nashatka, Kimberly Smith, and unseen technicians at a Homeland Security office in New Mexico had evaluated the passages from the Koran that Ali Hussein gave to Byron Johnson. The numbers of the books, chapters, and verses had quickly assumed a pattern, one that resembled the pattern of numbers by which wire transfers were made. The identities of originating banks, the numbers of accounts, and sometimes the numbers of what appeared to be destination accounts, all seemed to depend on the book, chapter, and verse numbers of the quotes in the Koran from the old Marmaduke Pichtall translation. 6 8 12 13 48 52. So far the numbers never quite fit the numerical patterns for bank codes, account numbers, and wiring routes for thousands of banks and fund transfer businesses in the United States and around the world. But they were getting closer to recognizable numbers that might lead to the locations somewhere in the world of real money. The virtual to the real.

Naked, Tom Nashatka scrambled out of the bed. He looked at the screen of the computer.

Kimberly said, “The last sets of numbers Byron sent don’t resemble any bank numbers or wire routing codes in the world.”

“Maybe Johnson just got it wrong.”

“I don’t think so. He’s always correctly written down what Ali’s given him in the past. Byron’s one of those careful bigtime lawyers. He doesn’t make little mistakes like that. He’s sent out the wrong passages for a reason.”

Tom struck several other computer keys, searching for something. “I told Hurd and Rana two days ago, after that last time with the judge, that they were misreading Johnson. They think he’ll get scared, fold, and work with them. That’s not my take on Johnson.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Our sweeps of his office and apartment. He reads Dickens and William Burroughs, he has subscriptions to the New York Review of Books and the National Review. He watches Casablanca and Legally Blonde. He writes letters to himself, some that he never sends.”

She gave him one of those dazzling blonde smiles. “That’s it. He’s a Renaissance man.”

Tom was serious. “I don’t think so. Byron is restless, irritable, discontented. He’s rebellious, even though he has that, like, you know, New England aristocrat in him.”

“Why not just walk up to Byron and say, ‘Hey, Byron, we’re with the good guys, we’d like you to help us. Can’t you get Hussein to tell you where all the money is and then let us know?’ And America’s been good to him. He’s a lawyer, he has a license to print money. Why not just ask him to help us all out?”

“Andy told me weeks ago that that was not the way to reach Byron. Remember, Byron wanted to represent one of these guys. He asked for this. Andy and his profilers say that Byron can only be made to cooperate the old-fashioned way-scare the hell out of him. It’s our job to scare the shit out of him. I’m not so sure.”

“Who ever knows what a person will do? Profilers? Relying on a profile? Relying on astrological signs works as well.”

“Hurd, loony as he is, has been in the business of nailing people for years and years. He’s a legend.”

“In his own mind.” She glanced at Tom, waiting for him to join her in mocking Hurd.

The faintest traces of dawn had just spread over Central Park. There were the open spaces where the trees parted for the Sheep Meadow, that undulating and well-tended field of green, and, further north, the Great Lawn. In the far distance, even higher in the park, the dawn light glowed on the acres of water in the reservoir.

“What about Christina?” Tom asked.

“What about her?”

“What does she think? She’s spent lots of time with him.”

Kimberly Smith paused. “What do you want me to say to her?”

“What time are you meeting her?”

“Ten.”

“Where?”

“There’s a French restaurant on Madison Avenue and 83rd Street with long tables and benches where all the East Side ladies gather for breakfast, French-style, after dropping their kids at their forty-thousand-dollar-a-year private schools. Byron, she told me, hates Madison Avenue and would never walk into a French-style place.”

“Just have the usual conversation, Kim. Let her tell you what Byron is saying and doing. But if you have a chance, ask her where Byron is keeping his notes of his meetings with Ali.”

“Why?”

“We’ve done three sweeps of his office in the last week. He isn’t keeping any of his notes there anymore. He must be carrying them with him and bringing them home.”

Kimberly smiled. “The cagey little bastard. Under that Gary Cooper exterior beats the heart of Abbe Hoffman. He wants to throw us off. Something has gotten his attention. It’s clear he’s now sending out random passages from the Koran, not the passages Ali’s giving him.”

“Well, if anyone can find out where his real notes are, it’s the foxy Christina Rosario.”

Kimberly, naked, stood up. She was blonde, slim, shapely and, as she embraced athletic Tom Nashatka, deeply alluring and completely tantalizing. “Hey, Navy Seal, boy agents aren’t supposed to say sexy things about girl agents. It’s taboo.”

Kimberly Smith loved every facet of Tom’s size. He was a massive man, and at first he overpowered her, picking her up from the chair and carrying her around the room as she wrapped her legs around him. But gradually the tide of their love-making turned, and she finally overpowered him.