Extraordinary Rendition

31

HAL RANA WAS ONE of the few Assistant U.S. Attorneys with a window in his office in the drab 1970s-era building at St. Andrew’s Plaza. Most of the other lawyers had interior offices with no windows, no natural light, and no view. He could see the glorious span of the Brooklyn Bridge. In clear sunlight, as on this cold day, the multitude of intricate steel cords that held the bridge in space glinted like millions of bright filaments.

He was surprised when one of the U.S. Marshals at the security barricades in the lobby told him over the house intercom that Byron Carlos Johnson wanted to see him. There was a rule in the office that unscheduled visits weren’t allowed. It was called the Wizard of Oz rule: look what happened to the Wizard when he let Dorothy, Toto, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion enter his domain without an invitation. The curtain was opened by the dog, and the Wizard was revealed as a fraud.

But Hal Rana was senior enough, and given his size and bearing, potent enough, that these house rules didn’t apply to him. When he heard the slow South Carolina drawl of U.S. Marshal Vernon Claridge, a retired Army sergeant, on the security phone saying, “There’s a fella here calling himself Mr. Byron Johnson says he wants to see you, sir.” Hal responded, “Does he look dangerous to you, Sarge?”

He heard Claridge, a deep-voiced and genial man, say, “Mr. Johnson, are you dangerous?” In the muffled pause, Hal heard Claridge and Johnson laugh. Claridge then said, chuckling, “Says he’s Peter Pan.”

“Let him through, Sarge.”

Another rule of the house was that lawyers never met alone with visitors, even the invited ones. And this was known as the Rule of the Two. None of the meetings inside the U.S. Attorney’s Office was ever recorded. Recordings were a mine field. A recording of a conversation could reveal words and intonations of the government lawyers and agents that they didn’t want anybody to hear later. Recordings could also capture a suspect’s confessions, but if the government wanted to use that confession, it would have to produce the full tape or video, including what the agent and government lawyers themselves said. But with two or more lawyers and agents in the room with the visitor and no recording device operating, it was possible later to correct memories or harmonize and coordinate them. The Rule of the Two was that two memories, particularly those of two or more government agents, trumped one.

But the rule didn’t necessarily apply to Hal Rana, any more than the rule against uninvited visitors. He put on his suit jacket, a deep and lustrous blue, as elegant in its own way as his carefully wrapped turban. He took the elevator down the four floors from his office to the lobby, gave a hand signal to indicate that he recognized the visitor (two quick fingers snapped downward, like the signal from a baseball catcher), and said as he shook Byron’s hand, “What can I do for you?”

“Let’s talk, Mr. Rana.”

After silently riding the elevator, he took Byron Johnson through the last security barrier-an ugly steel reinforced door on the fourth floor that led into the warren of offices. The walls were lined with bankers’ boxes containing documents. It was obvious that the file rooms were overloaded, so the hallways had been overtaken with case files.

There was one small visitor’s chair in the office. Byron sat on it. “You wanted to see me,” Byron said. The calm tone of his voice surprised him, for in the two hours since he saw Christina Rosario’s picture, his mouth had become parched. He had a thirst that all the bottled water he drank couldn’t quench.

“We got your attention, I see, Byron.”

“Don’t Byron me, Mr. Rana. You could have picked up the phone and called me. I don’t appreciate having goons walk up to my girlfriend on the Columbia campus and me on a downtown street to pass along messages.”

As always, Hal Rana sounded polite, calm, and deliberate. “You know the problem. Telephone calls can leave an unexpected residue, so to speak, and email and letters can live longer than the half-life of nuclear waste. Face-to-face contact is still the best way to operate.”

Byron paused. He reached back into his experience to rely on the wisdom of creating silence to let the other person speak. You learned more that way, and, as he reminded himself, he was here to learn more.

Rana said, “We-you and I-have the privilege of working on the most important case in the country. Unless O. J. Simpson goes on trial again.”

Even in a folding chair-and even when his feelings were consumed by anxiety, jealousy, fear, and hurt-Byron Johnson looked comfortable. And he continued to wait.

“Let me tell you what’s on our mind. We’re concerned because we don’t know whether you’re in deeply over your head, or profoundly naïve and trusting, or whether you know what you’re doing is criminal. We don’t know whether you recognize that the messages from the Koran you have been carrying from and to Hussein are coded to correlate to account numbers of banks in which he controlled funds for al-Qaeda. The money was collected from mosques all over the United States. The funds-and we think there are many, many millions because he was doing this since the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and until the time he was taken down in Bonn-have been dormant for the years he’s been in detention. Only he knows the secret. He doesn’t want to die with it. He wants to get the word out to the people who need to know. But for years he’s had a problem: there’s no way for him to do that. He’s isolated. He’s frustrated. The Imam isn’t isolated, but he’s frustrated. And then you come into Ali’s world, the first person he’s spoken to in years except for one solo agent, who learned nothing. Your client is a very smart man with an uncanny memory. And dedicated. We think he knows the account numbers. The verses in the Koran hold the key.”

Byron shifted ever so slightly in his chair, but his expression, attentive and serious, didn’t change. Go on, he thought, tell me more.

And Hal Rana did. “We’ve learned from other sources that he is very sincere, almost sweet. An appealing person, obedient, respectful. He may have taken you in, or you may have been so taken by his personality that you willingly turned a blind eye-let’s call it conscious disregard of the truth-to assist him.”

Byron put two fingers to the side of his face, an elegant and thoughtful gesture, a gesture that invited more words from Hal Rana.

“We can’t think of any legitimate purpose for your visits to the mosque in Newark. Or for your face-to-face encounters with Khalid Hussein.”

This was one of those rare times in his life that Hal Rana was becoming uncomfortable. He turned from Byron’s steady gaze. He looked again through the narrow window in his office. The dazzling structure of the Brooklyn Bridge appeared to float above the East River, the river’s surface itself on silver fire in the sunlight.

“The issue, Byron, is whether you want to help us. And help yourself. We won’t ask you to explain the inexplicable passage of $52 million through your account, and for now we won’t ask you where it went. But we will ask you to continue to work with, or on, your client. He trusts you, Byron. The word is that you’re a man who inspires trust.”

“You realize, Mr. Rana, that you’re asking me to violate the element of trust in my relationship with my client.”

Still looking through the window at the brilliant scene outside, Hal Rana said, “That can’t really matter to you, Byron. Hussein has provided the lifeblood of money to men who bomb innocent people, commit spectacular acts of hatred. He now wants to loosen up the flow of more of that life-blood. He knows where the money is, and he’s using you to lead his brothers to it. It won’t be used to fund the producers of Sesame Street.”

Even for Byron Johnson, the urge to ask a question was irresistible: “What do you want me to do?”

“First, give us the correct verses that you’ve been scrambling recently. Why did you put out misinformation? The algorithms our people are developing to locate the banks and accounts from the book, chapter, and verse numbers have fallen apart with the new numbers you’re sending to the Imam. We assume you got some sense of what was happening and you decided not to pass along information your client gave you, just to test the waters, so to speak, and see what happened. And you did a good job at that. We’re out of whack now, and the brothers are suspicious, and the Imam and his friends are growing restive. They’re beginning to get agitated.”

“And?”

“And spend more time with your client. He devotes his days to looking forward to seeing you. He has developed a passion for you. He believes you. Continue to cultivate that. He thinks you are an honorable man, so honorable he would never suspect that you were doing anything for him other than giving him legal advice and religious solace. Tell him the date for his trial is coming up soon. Lie to him: tell him that once the trial starts you’ll be able to see him less often, not more. He’ll accelerate the pace of messages he wants you to carry. The more messages, the clearer the picture we get. We think we’re not far from striking gold.”

“And?”

“And wear a wire. There’s likely to be information other than the Koran verses in what he says that will be meaningful to us.”

Byron couldn’t resist the next question: “Why should I do this?”

Hal Rana looked at him. “Why? To save your life, Byron. Your friends in Newark are planning to kill you when they get all the information they need from you, or if they think you’re giving them garbage. They may even get the notion that you’re trying to use the information for yourself. Think about it: we might not be the only people who know that millions of dollars passed through your account and skipped off somewhere into the world.” Hal Rana paused. “Or they may think you are already working for us, on the dark side. Or Khalid Hussein may believe you set him up to slash that face he loves so much.”

“What else?”

“If you work with us, we’ll protect you.”

“And if I don’t?”

“We won’t protect you. And we’ll let the judge know we have a grand jury that is about to indict you for assisting terrorism.”

Byron rose from the folding chair. “Let me help you, Mr. Rana. I’m an older guy than you and I’ve been around in the world for a long time. You need to know something about yourself. You’re an asshole.”