Extraordinary Rendition

26

IT WAS WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, almost winter now. Byron walked on the worn cobblestones in the middle of Greene Street in Soho. Double-parked delivery trucks had brought all traffic on the narrow street to a standstill. Sunlight shone on the smooth stones of the street and threw into etched relief the iron facades on the old industrial buildings on both sides. At street level, each building housed expensive stores, all filled with bright light and mostly bare interiors. The international glitter in what had not long ago been a warehouse district: Givenchy, Tse, Polo.

Byron loved these long walks on weekday afternoons through parts of Manhattan in which he had literally never set foot. Several weeks earlier, he had remembered a line from the first chapter of Moby Dick, which he had read as a twelve-year-old during a long summer on the coast of Maine with his aunt and uncle; it was early in the first chapter when Ishmael is speaking to the readers and tells them: Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Over the last six weeks he had walked through the streets of Soho-Greene Street, Broome Street, West Broadway; through the wide areas on West Fourteenth Street where there were still trolley car rails embedded in the pavement, as faint as chalk lines; and through the cozy companionable neighborhoods around Christopher Street, Perry Street, and Bank Street in the West Village.

Byron now thought of the years he had spent in Manhattan, and of his life, as carpet-bombing. The weaponry of the bombing was his work. It dominated virtually everything from the day he arrived in Manhattan. From the outset he was vigorous, engaged and driven. For many years he loved the work, and loved the traveling across the country, as well as to Europe and Asia, for clients. He had far more interest in the issues he dealt with and the people-clients, judges, witnesses-he encountered than in the money.

In fact, the money for him was almost invisible. His large income simply flowed by electronic transfer from the firm’s bank account into his own bank account. Without his even counting it, the money paid for the Fifth Avenue apartment where he lived with his wife and children, the upkeep on the second house in Maine, and his children’s school tuition. For many years he worked six days a week; he relished the quiet Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons in the office. Each week he played squash on Wednesday afternoon, and this was his regular break from work. And for years he had gone each Thursday night to the opera or symphony in Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall. In the long years of his marriage, his wife Joan went with him, often in the company of some of the other faculty members who taught with her at NYU.

And finally, in the last six months the long, all-consuming engagement with work was suspended. There was only so much effort he could devote to Ali Hussein’s ordeal-a finite amount of time to spend meeting with him, reading background materials, preparing briefs and motions, and handling telephone calls from random people, most of them obvious cranks, who wanted him to believe they had information he vitally needed, or to abuse him. He couldn’t spend all of his days with Christina Rosario. She was in class from nine every morning until noon and then, in the afternoon, in the wood-paneled, frayed offices of the law review.

So he took to the streets to fill the extra time he now had. On the three or four days each week when he went on his long walks, he picked the neighborhoods based on the names he had heard for years: Soho, the Meat Packing District, the East Village, and Morningside Heights. He was a prodigious walker. He spent at least three hours crisscrossing each neighborhood, often walking down the same streets several times because Manhattan was, in fact, a small island, and the legendary neighborhoods were even smaller. He stopped at each bookstore, usually the vast, shiny Barnes & Noble stores, where tall posters of famous writers (Twain, Virginia Woolf, Kurt Vonnegut) hung from the ceilings. He drank iced coffee in the Starbucks enclave in each store, surrounded by scruffy kids bent over their laptops. Less often, because there were far fewer of them, he stopped in the small bookstores that had managed to survive. In those stores he made it a point to buy books, which he always arranged to have shipped to either his apartment or Christina’s because he didn’t want anything to encumber his hands as he continued his free-wheeling walking.

At the congested intersection of Greene and Spring, Byron waited for the light to change in his favor. At first he didn’t notice the dark blue Chevy sedan with tinted windows that gradually came to a halt near him. When he focused on it, he guessed, correctly, that the oversize tires without hubcaps meant that it was a government-owned vehicle. As soon as the door opened on the passenger side of the front seat, Byron realized that the man leaving the car was there for him. Another man rose from the back seat. They were both blond. Byron glanced into the car to see if Jesse Ventura was there. He wasn’t. The man closest to him had a gold earring in his left ear lobe, in total contrast to the blue sport jacket, white shirt, blue pants, and penny loafers he wore. His head was completely shaven.

“Mr. Johnson.”

Byron faced him. He forced himself to look composed. And in that moment he realized he had seen this man before, in the courtroom gallery and in Justin Goldberg’s chambers.

“Let me guess,” Byron said. “You are Agent Nashatka.”

“That’s right.”

“And where is Jesse Ventura?”

Tom Nashatka was unfazed. His training for this work had taught him that at times the appearance of politeness, restraint, and deference was appropriate. “Why don’t we walk toward West Broadway?”

“Why don’t we not do that?”

“That’s fine, sir; we can talk here.”

Young men and women passed by them. This area of the city, Byron knew, belonged to the young.

“Your call,” Byron said.

“Fifty-two million dollars came into your bank account yesterday afternoon, by wire. Two hours later, fifty-two million dollars flew away, also by wire.”

“You need to say that again. Slowly.”

“Mr. Johnson, you need to talk to us. You need to tell us what you know.”

“You need to tell me what you know. Don’t talk fantasies with me.”

“Sure, Mr. Johnson. You have a checking account with the Private Wealth Management Division at Chase. A wire transfer from the Royal Bank of Canada arrived at 7:52 last night. It was there until 9:55. Then it was sent, intact and in full, to the Bank of the Caribbean in the Turks and Caicos. And three hours ago it flowed again to Norde Bank in Iceland. And from there it’s vanished.”

“You’re making this up as you go along.”

“You really need to talk to us. Hal Rana wants me to let you know that he’s waiting for you.”

“Why are you here? Rana knows my number.”

“It’s procedure, Mr. Johnson, that agents first approach the target.”

Target. That was a special word, as well defined and dangerous as a stiletto. In the special parlance of federal criminal law, it designated a person who was almost certain to be indicted. There was a simple ranking system, as in the Army, except with fewer levels. Target was the top rank. Below that rank was the subject, a person who had a fifty-fifty chance of indictment. The next rank was person of interest, and below that was the witness. But it was a system that was also like chess-a subject could rise quickly to the rank of target, just as a person of interest could rise to the rank of subject. But the person who was the target rarely fell in rank to a subject. A target was, in essence, a marked person.

Byron had learned from his austere aristocratic father that compose yourself was the central message of manhood, as in the Kipling line about never losing your head while all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. Byron stood almost chest to chest with Tom Nashatka.

“Why don’t you tell me,” Byron asked, “anything else you think I should know.”

“Sure, Mr. Johnson. We think you’ve been carrying messages in aid of terrorism.”

Byron let slip his anger. “You’re a hell of a messenger boy yourself, aren’t you?”

“We’re trying to help you, Mr. Johnson. That’s the basic message Hal Rana wants me to carry to you.”

Compose yourself, Byron thought again, almost uttering the words. Steady. “Thank you,” Byron said, turning to walk west on Spring Street. Cold sunlight fell diagonally through the intricate pattern of iron fire escapes attached to the upper surfaces of the old buildings. The intricate grille-work of shadow and light.

Byron Johnson walked into a Starbucks, entered the bathroom, locked the door, and vomited into the sink.