Extraordinary Rendition

47

HELEN WILSON, STILL AT irregular and unpredictable hours, brought Byron the newspapers each day. Each time she had to make her way through reporters and cameramen waiting in the wet cold on the sidewalks of Laight Street. On her first visit after the CNN show, she passed by the reporters and cameramen without being asked a single question, as though she was another tenant in the iron-façaded building. Then the doorman told the reporters that the comely woman in her early fifties was a frequent visitor to Byron Johnson. She smiled like a gracious and patient school teacher when she moved through the excited gauntlet of reporters, not even answering the question, “Who are you?”

Byron had taped to a wall in the kitchen the front page of the Post that appeared after the CNN interview: Qaeda Lawyer Queers Trial. Next to that headline was a doctored picture of Byron’s face wearing the headgear of Osama bin Laden. Several long articles appeared in the Times. Byron read them carefully, searching for reports on where Ali Hussein was and for anything that would give him a clue as to what steps the government was taking against Byron himself.

There was no hard news about Ali Hussein. One article suggested, based on an anonymous source, that Ali Hussein was in Romania, where there were still “black prisons.” Another anonymous source said that Ali was cooperating with the government in the disclosure of “vast reservoirs of hidden funds” at banks in Spain, Syria, and Singapore. And another source said that he was assisting in an ongoing criminal investigation of his former lawyer, Byron Carlos Johnson.

“Do you think that’s possible?” Helen asked.

“There’s an expression in this business about clients. They’re either at your feet or at your throat.”

She paused, ignoring the hint of false bravado.

“How do you really feel about all this, Byron?”

“What? That Ali is helping them to put together an indictment of me?”

She nodded slightly, a look of concern and sympathy on her face.

“Of course it makes me anxious. For years I had an easy passage in life. I didn’t even have to take the subways. I wanted for nothing.”

“That doesn’t necessarily remove fear and anxiety from anybody’s life.”

“It did for me. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that the only shock I had in years was when Joan said she was leaving me. I loved her, I loved the life we had together.”

“What happened?”

“She fell in love with somebody else.”

“That can’t be the whole answer.”

“Of course not. But I ran out of time trying to figure out all the other reasons. My father taught me to march forward in life, face what’s ahead of you, not what’s behind you. That’s probably why he moved from assignment to assignment: Mexico, Uganda, Paris, even Vietnam in the early sixties. At the time I was a kid, and I didn’t learn he was in Vietnam until he died twenty years ago.”

“I have a confession. I looked up your father on Wikipedia. He had one of those lives I associate with WASP aristocrats in the early twentieth century. Fancy-dancy prep school. Princeton, the Foreign Service, Colonel in the Army during World War Two, Ambassador to Mexico, Ambassador to Egypt, editorial board of Foreign Affairs magazine.”

“Wasn’t the world a better place before Google and the Internet? There was once some privacy and mystery in the world.”

“You’re there, too, on the Internet.”

“I know. I stopped looking at it.”

“You should. I checked just yesterday. There are articles on how courageous you are. Someone compared you to Daniel Ellsberg, and Ellsberg, now ancient, said the video you released was more powerful than all of the Pentagon Papers.”

“And other people are saying that I’m a traitor, that I’m a lawyer for terrorists, that I’m an incompetent fool.”

“What do you think you are?”

“I think I have never been more settled and centered and happier in my life.”

Helen smiled. “I’m glad I answered that ad in the Voice.”

“So am I.”

Three hours later they left the building. It was dark. Byron held Helen Wilson’s hand. On the sidewalk, in the iron-gray cold, a dozen or so people with microphones and cameras suddenly swarmed out of panel trucks and cars in which they had been keeping warm.

“Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson. Byron.” Multiple voices called out. Wearing only a blue blazer, white shirt open at the collar, gray slacks, and a scarf, Byron was relaxed and smiling. He said nothing. He led Helen to the sidewalk and, as if by a miracle, a taxi pulled up, and they climbed into it, Helen first.

They drove to the East Village. Helen had a role in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Byron sat in the small audience, engrossed by her performance.