Extraordinary Rendition

22

MID-AUTUMN SUNSHINE GLITTERED all over Washington Square Park. Byron walked toward the beautiful northern border of the park, where the landmark nineteenth-century arch stood. To his left were the gated small homes, so rare in New York, that looked like Victorian homes in London. Byron had always wondered, ever since his parents first took him to this cozy part of the city for an afternoon party in the early 1960s, who lived in the Mews, as the small, elegantly crafted houses were called. Professors at NYU? Writers? The city version of the landed gentry? So many years later, on this brilliant, chilly afternoon, Byron wondered the same thing: he had never seen anyone inside the gates, except once, in 1975, a beautiful woman in a mini-skirt and high, supple boots.

Byron was early for his meeting with Khalid Hussein. During their quick telephone call to arrange this meeting, Khalid sounded surprised when Byron abruptly said, “We’ll meet at one tomorrow afternoon in Washington Square Park, in the Village.”

Byron envisioned the expression that must have settled quickly on Khalid’s heavy, belligerent face, the expression that conveyed, Nobody tells me where to go and when. But by this time Byron knew that Khalid needed him.

The park echoed sharply with the sounds of children and playful screams. NYU was in session, and in the sunlight hundreds young men and women sat on the benches or the patches of lawn in the recently renovated park. Frisbees-which Byron had first seen spinning through the fall air in Harvard Yard in 1967-flashed nearby. The smell of marijuana, faint but unmistakable, mixed with the stronger odors of roasting meat and chestnuts from the food carts in the park. The colorful umbrellas above the carts glinted in the clean light. Byron noticed, as he often had, that the men who worked at the food carts were all from places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. They never looked happy, and they never released anything from their hands-hot dogs, salted pretzels, or bottled water-without first taking cash from their customers. That instinctive distrust.

Byron scanned the park. For ten minutes there was no sign of Khalid, who would have stood out in the crowds of young mothers and students. Byron walked south, toward the attractive collegiate buildings of NYU at the southern end of the park. He did something he had only recently started to do, almost as obsessively as everyone else in the world did-he glanced at his BlackBerry. On the colorful screen he saw the red star over his message icon that signaled an unread email. He pressed the track ball, and the email opened.

It was from Christina Rosario. He still felt the thrill that, even after months, her presence in whatever form brought him. The message, in graphically clear script, read: “Hey, Carlos. I’m at your apartment, cooking and reading. Come home as soon as you can. I have something special for you.”

What she had for him-just her presence-was always special. He often felt foolish about how attached to her he had become, in fact, how attached to her he had been since that first dusky night at the Central Park Zoo, at the firm party, when she simply started the conversation with the word “Hi.” She had sought him out, and his heart, his body, and his instincts had immediately been attracted to her. In the past, when he had known or heard about men his age who were involved with women as young as or younger than Christina, he’d thought they were foolish or cynical men-foolish if they believed the young women loved them, cynical if they simply sought the buzz of being seen with women so young. Byron came to believe that his relationship with Christina was different. He also developed more sympathy for older men who had become involved with much younger women-it was possible, he thought, that they loved them as much as he loved Christina Rosario.

Something special for you. What had been special for Byron was the easy grace of Christina Rosario, and the fact that for months his only real desire-despite all that he now did and all the radical, frightening changes that had happened in his life-was to be with her, whether at one of their apartments, a movie, or even the desks at Columbia Law School where she told him the results of her legal research on genuinely complicated subjects and he told her almost everything that Ali Hussein said.

And another something special that Christina Rosario had blessed him with was sex. Byron, although confident about his ability to make love, had slept with relatively few women in his life. Despite periodic temptations during his marriage-even once with a female judge in California who later married one of the wealthiest men in America-he had been faithful. Before his marriage he had had affairs with five or six women; and after his divorce, in the six or so years in which he had wandered through his new life with little direction other than the direction his work provided him, there had been three women, all divorced from other lawyers and all very attractive, who had invited him into their homes and their worlds. None of those affairs had lasted longer than six weeks; the women were needy, they were conventional although bright, and they each made it clear that to them, Byron-handsome, courteous, well-spoken Byron with his great job and fascinating pedigree as the son of a famous ambassador-was their chance to have a second life very similar to their lives with their first husbands. But Byron had no desire to renew his old life.

Khalid Hussein suddenly materialized. He stood near a green park bench. He saw Byron before Byron saw him. He was dressed in a blue track suit. For a moment Byron saw in his face the sinister weight of the face of Saddam Hussein: the heavy eyebrows, the alert black eyes that looked as though they were scanning the crowds for signals of danger, and the thick mustache. As always happened, Byron explored the face and the contour of the body for any resemblance between Khalid and his brother, the slender Ali, whose face had the sincere and shy expression of a foreign graduate student.

If Khalid was curious or irritated at Byron’s summoning him to a meeting, he didn’t display it. Byron had long since abandoned any effort to shake Khalid’s hand. Instead he walked by him, and Khalid followed. Nearby a derelict black man with a saxophone played a loud semblance of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s Daydream, Why Do You Haunt Me So? Further away, someone played on a snare drum the theme song of The Sting.

“Who are you?” Byron asked.

Khalid’s expression didn’t change, and he said nothing.

“Let me ask you this: when was the last time you saw Ali?”

“You know that, Mr. Johnson. Before he went to Germany.”

“Let me tell you what I think. You never saw Ali in your life, isn’t that right?”

Khalid calmly looked at Byron. “Why do you say that, Mr. Johnson?”

Byron had spent many years learning not to let people answer his questions with questions of their own. “He doesn’t have children, does he?”

“He does.”

“What are their names?”

“Are you joking, Mr. Johnson?”

“How much does your brother weigh?”

“He’s been in prison for years. He’s probably lost weight.”

Although Khalid’s expression hadn’t changed, Byron knew he was swiftly becoming furious. Byron said, “Let the Imam know that I’ve lost interest in the Koran.”

“He knows that. What you’re giving him, he says, doesn’t make any sense anymore. It’s garbage.”

“What sense were they making before?”

“All the sense in the world, Mr. Johnson.”

“Tell me, what messages were the holy man and Ali sending back and forth?”

“Messages of honor, love, and devotion, Mr. Johnson.”

“The Imam doesn’t strike me as a man of honor, love, and devotion.” Byron paused. “And you certainly don’t.”

“You know, Mr. Johnson, you’re our brother now. You have a new family with us.”

“No, that’s wrong.”

“We’re brethren, Mr. Johnson.”

Even in the afternoon on a work day, Washington Square Park was alive with activity: shrieking kids, street music, dogs barking, and Frisbees floating and flashing. Because of all that activity, sound, and color, Byron didn’t notice until the last second the man in a tight-fitting sheath of clothing streak between them on a sleek Italian bicycle.

He slashed Khalid Hussein’s face and sped on.

Stunned, Khalid raised his right hand to his face, as if trying to deflect a hand that had already done its damage.

Some of his blood, at high velocity, splattered on Byron. He was terrified. Holding his hands in front of his own face, an instinctive protective gesture, Byron saw the bicyclist disappear through the crowds, a slipstream. Byron then pivoted to glance all around to look for other bicyclists, other men, other sources and signs of damage. He heard himself saying, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

And then he realized Khalid Hussein might himself be a source of danger. Byron faced him, prepared to act if he had to. Blood still flowed from a sabre-like cut on Khalid’s cheek.

There was absolute fury in his eyes as he looked at Byron Johnson. He spoke in Arabic before he turned and walked away.

Byron was now completely isolated. Several men and women were watching from a semi-circle that had formed around them as soon as Khalid Hussein was cut. These people had no intention of helping. They were spectators waiting for a spectacle. One of them was even recording the scene on a tiny digital camera, hoping for a scene of mayhem for YouTube.

And Byron ran toward an exit in the iron fence on the western border of the park. For the first time in his life he felt like a fugitive.