Extraordinary Rendition

24

“STATE YOUR NAME FOR the record.”

He leaned forward slightly, toward a slender, snake-shaped microphone. “Ali Hussein.”

“How old are you?” Byron Johnson asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Why aren’t you sure?”

“I’ve been in prison for a very long time.”

“How long have you been in prison?”

“I don’t know.”

“More than five years?”

“For sure.”

“Do you know what today’s date is?”

“No, not really.” Ali sat back slightly from the microphone, waiting for the next question.

To his left, Byron heard but did not see Hal Rana stand. “Judge?”

“What’s the objection, Mr. Rana?” On the wall behind Justin Goldberg was an immense seal of the United Sates in bronze, the fierce eagle at the center, its talons gripping symbols of power and peace. Goldberg looked annoyed.

“The United Sates will stipulate that Mr. Hussein is forty-three years old.”

“Does that work for you, Mr. Johnson?”

“It does, Judge.”

As Hal Rana sat down, Byron looked steadily at Ali Hussein, in prison clothes, an enigmatic expression on his face (fear, contempt, indifference?), and had one of those moments when he was uncertain whether his client was focused, or even aware of the place and time, or cared about the outcome, or simply so nervous that he was losing all sense of direction. “Mr. Hussein,” Byron said, “how old were you when you were taken into custody?”

“I was thirty-five.”

“Where were you when you were arrested?”

“Bonn, Germany.”

“Why were you in Bonn?”

“To work.”

“What work did you do?”

“I was an accountant.”

“How long had you been in Bonn when you were arrested?”

“Three days.”

“How long were you planning to stay?”

“Two more weeks.”

Byron adjusted his own slender microphone at the podium where he stood. A loud acoustic noise briefly filled the courtroom. Ali Hussein sat at least thirty feet from him, in the witness box well below and to the right of Judge Goldberg. Ali Hussein was now focused. Byron liked the crisp back-and-forth rhythm of the questions and answers he and Ali had now established.

“When were you arrested in Bonn?”

“July 14, 2003.”

“Before you went to Bonn, where were you living?”

“Fort Lee, New Jersey.”

“Are you a United States citizen?”

“No.”

“What is your immigration status?”

Byron had learned that Ali Hussein sometimes said unexpected things. He leaned forward crisply to the microphone.

“Prisoner, Mr. Johnson, prisoner.”

Justin Goldberg glanced at Byron over his half-frame reading glasses. His glance was meant to convey that he expected Byron to control his witness.

“What was your immigration status?”

“Green card.”

“How long had you held it?”

“Five years.”

“Who was your sponsor?”

“Khalid Hussein.”

“Who is he?”

“My brother.”

Byron, uneasy with the thought that his client might be lying, asked, “What does your brother do?”

“He owns a warehouse business in New Jersey.”

“Where were you born?”

“Syria. I was Syrian.”

Byron knew that it would not take long for Justin Goldberg to intervene. And now he did. “Mr. Johnson, it’s not my intention to cut you off, but the purpose of this hearing is to give you the opportunity to show, as you’ve put it in asking for this proceeding, that the government is guilty of gross misconduct-I think you called it criminal abuse-that, you believe, has deprived your client of due process of law justifying dismissal of the indictment. I think I have that right, Mr. Johnson, do I?”

Justin Goldberg-acerbic even though soft-spoken-looked at Byron Johnson, expecting an answer.

Not answering, Byron simply stared at Justin Goldberg.

“Given all that, Mr. Johnson, the defendant’s pedigree doesn’t matter. So let’s cut to the chase, sir.”

Byron’s gaze shifted from the judge to slender Ali Hussein. “Mr. Hussein, how were you arrested?”

“I was driving in a rental car, a Toyota at nine in the morning. I stopped for a light at an intersection. Four men jumped out of a Mercedes SUV stopped next to me. Two of them held up what looked like badges. They pressed them against the side window. Two held guns.”

“Did they say anything?”

“Get out of the car. Show me your hands. Get out of the car.”

“Did you get out of the car?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Terrified, Mr. Johnson. I didn’t know who they were. They were angry. They were fierce.”

“Did you have any reaction when that happened?”

“I did.”

“What reaction?”

Without hesitating, he leaned toward the microphone, as if bowing slightly. “I soiled myself.” He paused. “I was shaking, Mr. Johnson. I had no control over my body. I thought they were going to shoot me.”

“Had you been sick that morning?”

“No. I was a healthy man.”

“What happened then?”

“They smashed the window next to me. They opened the door.”

“And then?”

“Pulled me out of the car.”

“And next?”

“They put a cloth bag over my head.”

“Let me ask you this: before the bag was put on you, did you see the faces of the men who took you?”

“Yes, I did, Mr. Johnson.”

“Did you ever see any of those men again?”

“One.”

“How often?”

“Many times.”

“What does many mean?”

“I stopped counting. I was an accountant. I love numbers. I counted thirty-three times, and then I stopped. I saw him many times.”

“Do you know his name?”

“His name? He never told me. I gave him a name. Jesse Ventura.”

Justin Goldberg touched the edge of his reading glasses, whose lenses flashed like a blade in the light from his desk lamp. “Mr. Johnson, your next question, please.”

“Jesse Ventura. Why that name?”

“I had just seen Jesse Ventura on television. He was crazy, this man is crazy.”

“When was the last time you saw this man?”

“Last night.”

Last night: the answer surprised and unsettled Byron. He had spent ten minutes with Ali in his holding cell before the hearing started. He had said nothing about this.

“Did he say anything?”

“He did.”

“What?”

“He said I am stupid.”

“Anything else?”

“That you’re a lousy lawyer.”

Byron felt a sudden, uncomfortable flush.

“What else did he say?”

“That my lawyer is so stupid that I’m going to end up dead.”

“Anything else?”

“He said what he always says.”

“And that’s what?”

“The money, Ali. Where is the money?”

“Did he do anything?”

“Not what he usually does.”

“And what does he usually do?”

“Usually he hits me.”

“How often has he hit you?”

“Many times, Mr. Johnson. Many times in many countries.”

“When did he first hit you?”

“In Bonn, just a few hours after I was picked up. I hadn’t yet been moved to another city. It was a hotel room. The shades were drawn. I heard the traffic outside. The European car horns. They took my hood off. There was a painting on the wall. It was an English countryside, horses and dogs and men in eighteenth-century riding clothes. There were dead foxes on the ground. Then this man stepped in front of me. There were a few other men in the room. They wore masks. Zorro masks: over the bridge of the nose, the eyebrows, below the eyes, across the temples. But I could see their eyes.”

“And the man who stepped in front of you?”

“No mask. He was big. He wore a suit. He was smoking a cigar. He had an American flag lapel pin on his suit jacket.”

“What did he say?”

“That I should be sick of myself. That I smelled like shit.”

“What happened?”

“He handed me a towel and told me to clean myself.”

“Did you?”

“No. I would have had to touch my soiled pants and my body and private parts in the presence of these men.”

“Then what happened?”

“He said they wanted to talk to me in private, and that this room was private. He said he knew I was a wizard with numbers-that all I had to do was spend some time writing down the names of banks and account numbers where the money was kept.”

“What else?”

“That as soon as I wrote this down he would give me time to go into the bathroom, shower, and put on fresh clothes.”

“Fresh clothes?”

“My clothes. He said he had picked up the suit I had given to the hotel cleaning service the night before and that it was in the bathroom waiting for me.”

“Did that surprise you?”

“It did. It scared me. How did they get my clothes? What else did they have? Who were these people? What were they going to do to me?”

“And?”

“He said my underwear, also clean, was in the bathroom, too. He and his friends, he said, had arranged to help me by taking some of my clothes from my room.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, Please leave me alone.”

“He asked you to write something down, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Did you write anything down?”

“No, I didn’t know what to write down.”

“What next?”

“The men in masks pulled my pants off. They wore plastic gloves. They took off my underwear, and they rubbed my underwear into my face.”

“And then?”

“I gagged, Mr. Johnson.”

“And then?”

“The man hit the side of my head. Jesse Ventura. Just above my right ear.”

“And?”

“I fell over.”

“And?”

“They dragged me into the bathroom. I was crying. The bathtub was filled with water. Two of the men picked me up. By the wrists and the ankles. The man who had hit me said I was filthy and needed a bath. He pushed my head under the water. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to scream. The water rushed into me. And then he pulled me out of the water. They left me on the floor.”

Byron Johnson took up a picture from the surface of the lectern. “May I approach the witness, Judge? I have a photograph to show him.”

“Show it first to Mr. Rana.”

Byron walked to his left. Rana did not stand. Byron put the picture in front of him. Rana rose to his feet. “This is a national security item, Your Honor. We object to its use as an exhibit.”

Byron said, “This is simply a picture of a man. It may assist Mr. Hussein in identifying the man who hit him.”

Judge Goldberg said, “The man who hit the witness, Mr. Johnson? It is an open question, in my view, that the defendant was hit at all.”

“He just testified to it, under oath.”

“And I’m sure, Mr. Johnson, that you’ve advised the defendant of the adverse consequences of perjury?”

“Judge, let me say this: it’s not the function of a judge to suggest that a witness is lying.”

Justin Goldberg slapped the palm of his hand on the bench. It was the first time that he had fully unleashed his temper, that anger he always concealed under his urbane, skeptical surface. “Mr. Johnson, I won’t tolerate contempt.”

Byron stared at him. After five seconds, Justin Goldberg disengaged from the stare. He impatiently held up his hand, saying, “Bring that photograph up to me.”

One of the marshals took the picture to Goldberg. He glanced at it. Byron, who was certain the judge would never let Ali Hussein look at it, managed to stay impassive when he heard Goldberg brusquely and unexpectedly announce: “I’ll admit this. Mark it as defendant’s Exhibit 1.”

The court reporter-a woman in her forties who had been steadily typing into a computer that instantly created a transcript on the laptop computers in front of the judge and Hal Rana-took the picture and placed an old-fashioned sticker marking it as defendant’s Exhibit 1 on the upper left corner of the picture. The marshal handed the picture to Byron, who carried it to Ali Hussein.

“Take a look at the picture marked as Exhibit 1, Mr. Hussein.”

It was a reproduction of the picture Byron Johnson had taken with his cell phone of the man just outside the western edge of Washington Square Park.

“Is this the man?”

“It is.”

“Is this the man who hit you in Bonn?”

“Yes.”

“Is this the man who came to your cell last night?”

“It is.”

“Is this the man you know as Jesse Ventura?”

“Yes.”

In that pulse of an interval before Byron could ask another question, Justin Goldberg said: “We will go into recess.”

Two days later, Byron Johnson stepped out of the number 6 train at the City Hall station. Rainwater dripped from the street-level grating to the concrete subway platform. Above the station, as in all Manhattan, wind-driven, cold gusts of rain had been falling steadily since the night before. Most of the leaves had finally been stripped from the trees. They lay sodden on the pavement.

Byron fastened his raincoat up to his neck and put on his wide-brimmed Barsolino hat. He had carried the Humphrey Bogart-style hat since looking out at the street that morning from his tall bedroom windows. He knew a hat would be more useful because destroyed umbrellas were strewn across the plaza’s gray pavement and piled against the ornate railings around the Federalist-era City Hall.

Holding down the soaked brim of his hat, Byron trotted through the noisy congestion of cars, yellow taxis, and trucks that had crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and come to a halt in the narrow maze of streets around Foley Square. Alert, agile and quick, Byron went through the colonnades of the Municipal Building. The passageways were wet, but he was briefly sheltered from the downpour. Even in heavy, windswept rain, people still walked while gazing down at the lit screens of their cell phones.

As soon as he emerged from the colonnades under the Municipal Building, Byron almost sprinted to the nearby entrance of One St. Andrew’s Plaza, that Soviet-style building that housed the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He made his way through the two security checkpoints that led to the lobby. Several well-dressed men were waiting near the security machines. He sat on a plastic chair in the waiting room. Now dominated by big photographs of Barack Obama and Eric Holder-both with that look of eager, youthful aptitude-the waiting room was a place through which John Gotti, Bernie Madoff, Ivan Boesky, and other legendary criminals had passed, together with their lawyers. There were also forlorn Puerto Rican and black women in the rows of chairs that resembled the sitting areas in bus stations. As he waited, he spent fifteen minutes reading the soaked paperback edition of Emma he had carried in the roomy pocket of his raincoat. It took Byron a second before he recognized the man walking into the waiting room.

It was Jesse Ventura.

Byron stood up.

“Good morning, Mr. Ventura.”

“You came for this, Mr. Johnson.”

He handed Byron a computer disk that Byron knew contained the video of Ali Hussein’s day-long hearing. The man also gave him a handwritten receipt describing the disk Byron had just been given. Byron signed it.

Without speaking, the man gave a hard, deliberately insincere smile as Byron turned away and left the brown lobby.

Waverly Place-tree-lined, orderly, and quietly beautiful-was empty. Rain still fell. Water ran along the old gutters and pooled at each sewer, congested with fallen leaves. The Three Lives Bookstore had just opened for the day. In its warm interior, a young woman with purple hair sat near the cash register, head bowed, reading. There were no customers in the store.

Just inside the front door of the townhouse in which Simeon Black lived, Byron pressed the intercom button. The peremptory buzzer sounded at the door, and Byron quickly pulled it open. Shaking the water off his felt hat, Byron walked up the creaking stairs. The carpeting was worn. The hallway was d & it smelled of wet wool and soaked newspapers.

The door was unlocked. At the end of the bookshelf-lined hallway, Simeon, at his desk, lifted his right hand and waved Byron in. He was smiling. Byron had grown to feel comfortable in the shabby, scholarly aura of Simeon Black’s apartment-it reminded him of the cozy, book-filled, and cluttered apartments of some of his bachelor professors at Princeton. Even though it was the 1960s, those genteel men actually still wore tweedy blazers with elbow patches. They were literate and kind, and they seemed completely at ease in a style of life that would soon end, in fact had already ended without their knowing it.

And now, in Simeon’s old-world, immensely attractive apartment, Byron, taking off his raincoat and draping it on a standing hat rack, felt a sudden uneasiness. Those professors at Princeton-all certainly dead by now-had only wished Byron and the other students well. They were intelligent, privileged, and kind. They had no agenda other than to live out their lives in the austere luxury of Princeton, and to accomplish that, all they had to do was teach and, if they could, write books of literary criticism, history, or, in one case, a wildly successful novel about a year at a New England prep school.

But, as Byron knew, Simeon was not a kindly professor, and his mission was not to move Byron safely forward in life. Simeon was a reporter. He had written about Army generals and politicians who had waged a secret war. Simeon had named the killers in his books and articles. He had once uncovered the secret financial life of a House of Representatives Democrat who, not long after Simeon’s articles appeared, shot himself in the head in his office. Byron had recently read, because he was now skilled at finding information in the deep recesses of Google, Yahoo, and Bing, that the man’s seventeen-year-old daughter had naively begged Simeon not to publish the articles about her father. Byron also knew the old adage about dealing with reporters: Those who ride the tiger’s back might end up in the tiger’s stomach.

Simeon reached over the clutter on his desk and shook Byron’s hand. He assumed Byron had come to describe what had happened two days earlier, when Ali Hussein testified at the secret hearings in a sealed courtroom about years of physical and emotional torture, the mind-numbing pain of total isolation, and the persistent demon who had followed him for years. Jesse Ventura.

Byron held the gleaming disk. “I want you to make a copy of this, Sy. What’s that called? Burn the CD.”

“What is it?

“It’s the transcript of the hearings, word for word. And the video.”

Simeon knew that, as Ali Hussein’s lawyer, Byron had a legitimate right to have the disk, but he had no right to give it away.

Byron handed the disk to Simeon. He inserted it into the slot at the side of his computer. They could both hear the whirring hum as it was replicated.

“Is the hearing over?”

“It is.”

“When will the judge make his decision?”

“Don’t know.” Byron smiled. “He may never make it. It’s an old trick some judges use. Never ruling. Remember, these federal judges are our modern royalty. They have lifetime appointments. That literally means they stay until they die. And the truth is they can do, or not do, whatever they want. One of those stupid lawyers’ jokes is this: ‘What’s the difference between God and a federal judge? God wants to be a federal judge.’ If Goldberg never rules, then I can never appeal.”

Simeon smiled. “So, Dr. Johnson, what’s your next step?”

“Will you be my Boswell?”

“Of course, I’m already writing Life of Johnson.”

Rain flowed down the windows just beyond Simeon’s desk. All the leaves had been stripped from the London plane trees.

“My next step? I’m going to start insisting that the government turn over to me every videotape, report, note, plane ticket, picture, blood sample, bank record, and DNA sheet that relates in any way to Ali.”

“Talk to me about the videotapes of the torture.”

“Ali testified that cameras were often running, especially in the times when Jesse Ventura was with him.” Byron paused. “Including when he was pushed under water.”

“Waterboarded?”

“That’s what it’s called, although Ali never heard the word, since it started to be used after he was picked up. Waterboarding, it turns out, is being pushed under water. Just like fourteen-year-old boys do in school pools to twelve-year-old boys. But in this case, it’s men doing it. And it lasts longer, long after it stops feeling like a prank. A whole different order of magnitude.”

The gentle whirring inside the computer had stopped. Simeon stood up, sat on the edge of his desk, and turned the computer screen so that he and Byron could both view it. He deftly hit two keys.

And there on the screen was a scene from the hearing.

An image of Ali Hussein, in mid-sentence, emerged. Simeon Black, his voice with that edge of awe of a man winning a lottery, said, “Lordy, lordy, is that him? Your client?” There were no known pictures of Ali before or after he was taken down.

Arms folded, Byron stood behind Simeon as they both gazed at the screen. “The one and only.”

“You know, sightings of these men are rare.”

“He’s a man, Sy, not an egret.”

Simeon grunted. He was excited. He pressed a practiced finger on the volume key, and as if out of nowhere, Ali Hussein’s soft and precise voice rose to high volume.

Byron’s voice, well-modulated and intelligent, spoke in the background: “And you have no idea where the room was, is that right, Mr. Hussein?”

“It was in a hot place. Far from Germany. The flight from Bonn took two hours.”

“Can you describe the room, sir?”

“A hotel room. More like a motel room. The window had a steel plate that covered all of it. There was a double bed. No door between the bedroom and the bathroom. A painting of an oasis nailed to the wall over the bed. No television. No phone. A motel-style desk.”

“How do you know it was a hot country?”

“The air conditioning unit blew out warm air. Along the edges of the steel plate on the window there was always a glare from the outside. It must have been very bright outside, always. As if there was a desert out there.”

“Did anyone visit you?”

“Visit? Visit means a pleasant thing, Mr. Johnson. I expect visits from friends.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“There were always two men in the room with me. Day and night.”

“Did they speak to you?”

“Never. And I never said a word to them.”

“They were in the room when you slept?”

“Not the same two men. There were six or eight men. They were there in shifts.”

“What else happened?”

“I was naked all the time. No sheets on the bed. I couldn’t cover myself, or hide any part of my body. I couldn’t take the towels out of the bathroom. I didn’t have pillows or a sheet, so I could never cover any part of my body. Exposed. In the middle of the night I shivered, even though the air conditioning was weak. And the men watched me all the time.”

“How long were you in that room?

“I don’t know. Weeks, I think. I never heard a sound from outside the room. I don’t think there was anyone else in the motel.”

“Did anyone hit you when you were there?”

“No.”

“Did anyone push you under water while you were there?”

“No.”

“Did anyone keep you awake all day?”

Simeon pressed a key on the computer, and the image paused. On the frozen screen Ali Hussein appeared calmly attentive. In that image he was gazing directly into the camera.

Simeon said, “Byron, are you sure you want to leave this with me?”

“Why, don’t you want it? It’s what you’ve been asking me for.”

“I do.” Simeon lit a cigarette and inhaled. The smoke almost immediately flowed from his nostrils. “But you have to be worried about what might happen to you.”

“I can’t make any prediction about that. In the last couple of months I’ve learned that every day is a new adventure.”

“My editors will want to use these pictures of him. It’s proof that he exists.”

“Let me also tell you this, Sy. You may want to use this information, or not. Ali is a sweet man. At first he was nervous and suspicious and guarded. When he first met me in Miami, I was the only non-hostile face he had encountered in years, but he didn’t trust me. Over time I’ve learned that he is thoughtful. I look forward to meeting with him.”

Simeon took a fresh unfiltered Gauloise from the cellophane-covered package. He pressed the tip of his cigarette he was finishing against the tip of the new one. The handing of the torch, Byron thought.

“Let me ask you this,” Simeon said. “What did he do?”

“Do you mean is he guilty? Did he launder money? Move millions and millions of dollars around the world so that the bad guys could buy AK47s, M-16s?”

Simeon smiled. “Something like that.”

Byron smiled in return. “I don’t have a fucking idea.”