Extraordinary Rendition

36

FOR MONTHS, BYRON CARLOS Johnson had kept on night and day the flat-screen television in the high-ceilinged main room of his apartment. He had rarely watched television over the years. The first television set he ever saw was in the master’s room in his dorm at Groton, when he was thirteen; it was a circular Zenith with an unmanageable rabbit-ear antenna. By eight each night, the master was so obliterated by whiskey that Byron and the other boys could watch the set for hours while the lost forty-year-old man slept in the next room. Byron could still recall and hum the theme songs of the television Westerns that so engrossed him-Johnny Yuma the Rebel (“He searched this land, this restless land, he was panther quick and leather tough and he figured that he’d been pushed enough, the rebel, Johnny Yuma”), Have Gun Will Travel (“Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam?”), Texas John Slaughter (“Texas John Slaughter made ’em do what they oughta and if they didn’t they died”). Byron now realized that the shows he remembered were the ones in which a brave and lonely man confronted a hostile world.

In the three weeks since Simeon Black’s killing, Byron had left his apartment only rarely, for groceries, newspapers, and the unfiltered cigarettes he had resumed smoking because they calmed him and because Simeon had smoked them. He also went out for three visits to the Metropolitan Detention Center to visit Ali Hussein. He had even spent two nights in Christina Rosario’s apartment, where she was wakeful and restless and nervous, limiting Byron’s ability to search for more information-computer files, written notes, her law school papers-that might help him. “Carlos,” she said on one of the visits, “why the one-night stands? Did you forget who I am?”

“I’m working,” he said, “on a major brief for Ali. I think the expression is that I’m about to throw a Hail Mary pass.”

“Let me help you with it.”

“Later,” he answered. “Later. Concentrate on your school-work. That article for the law review must be due, and exams are coming.”

Years of practicing law had made Byron Johnson a dedicated writer. Very few lawyers were Perry Mason, who appeared to live in court and never spent time in his office or even at home. The fact was that even for a lawyer like Byron Johnson, long a big firm litigator with many cases going at all times, the real work consisted of meetings, writing letters and legal briefs, and research. It was almost monastic work.

Byron wrote in longhand. At the end of each day-or in the morning when, as often happened, he spent the night writing-he made two copies of each page on the copier in his apartment. He put the copies in separate envelopes. He addressed one of the envelopes to his post office box on Monhegan Island. He took the other to the bank on West Broadway where he had safe deposit boxes. Each day he shredded the original papers. To prevent people from finding anything in his garbage, he dropped the shredded papers like confetti in three or four garbage cans along the way.

Byron thought of his writing as a testament. It was a testament for Simeon Black. It was a testament for himself. It was also a quarry out of which he intended to send information to people at newspapers, magazines, Internet news services, and television networks whose names Simeon had mentioned to him as reporters he admired.

This was Byron’s Hail Mary pass. His mother was Catholic; he often heard her say when they were together, Hail Mary, full of grace…

Byron paused at eight, after three hours of concentrated writing. He had started just as the winter night was falling, darkening the tall windows of his apartment. When his concentration lifted, he walked around the apartment, stretching.

The television in the living room was on. Displayed on the screen was a vivid scene of a building he knew well: the mosque at Raymond Boulevard and Broad Street in Newark. The zipper message on the screen read: Mosque Raided, Floor Dug Up, Thousands of Documents Seized.

Byron noticed at the bottom of the screen the name of the woman speaking before he focused on her. Kimberly Smith, Stanford University, Terrorism Expert. And instantly, Byron recognized the woman. She was the striking blonde whose pictures Simeon Black had displayed on his computer screen. In one of the pictures, Kimberly Smith was with Christina Rosario. In several of the pictures Kimberly Smith was with Jesse Ventura and with Tom Nashatka in others.

In a strong, articulate voice, Kimberly Smith said: “There is nothing wrong, Bill, with the government investigating terrorists to protect this country. It could have been a church, synagogue, cathedral.”

Bill O’Reilly said, “And what about drilling holes in the floor?”

“Look, Bill, nobody drilled holes in anyone’s head, although law enforcement could have found more information in minds than in floors.”

“What about the ACLU screaming foul?” O’Reilly asked.

“They scream over taking off shoes at security gates. We have dedicated law enforcement men and women. Those are the people who need our protection.”

And you are people, Byron thought, who live on fear and hate.