“And?”
“I never said anything.”
Byron stared at him. “That doesn’t mean he won’t swear that you told him things. You understand that, don’t you?”
“He was the one who beat me.”
“I know, you said that.”
“He is a very strong man, Mr. Johnson.”
“When was the last time he hit you?”
“Just before I was taken to Miami.”
“Did he use his hands or a weapon, a stick, a baton?”
“His hands. And he used water.”
Water? It was only after the invasion of Iraq that Byron had first read in the New York Times about waterboarding. He understood that it involved forcing a man’s head under water so that he feared he was being drowned. There was no way, Byron thought, that this sweating, frightened man could ever have heard the word waterboarding. He had spent years in total isolation. “Tell me more.”
“I was tied up and lowered into water. I started suffocating. Water filled my nose and my mouth and then my lungs. I couldn’t even scream.”
“Did that man do it?”
“No. He had other people do it.”
“Where was he?”
“Always there. He decided when they could pull my face up out of the water.”
Byron imagined that anyone near him in this fetid room could smell his own fear. The ten minutes were rapidly coming to a close. “Is any of this happening now?”
Again Hussein ignored that question, too. “There were times, Mr. Johnson, when there was a video camera in the room when this man was with me.”
“What was happening?”
“He was talking, I was sitting. But the video camera was also there when I was pushed down into the water.”
Abruptly the lead guard said, “That’s it, fellas. The show’s over for today.”
The plaza at the front of the impressive new federal courthouse-a congested area of old Manhattan where the other courthouses were all constructed almost a century ago-was teeming with news vans with tall antennas, reporters, onlookers, and dozens of men and women in uniform. On the fringes of the plaza were the ancient Chinese men and women who always seemed to be there, exercising, stretching and gyrating. The warren of streets and alleys that was Chinatown was so close that it almost extended to the steps of the courthouses. The old men and women were, as ever, mute and oblivious to anything happening near them.
Given the size and closeness of all the buildings, the plaza was steeped in shadow even on a bright day. Byron had hoped to find a rear door from which he could leave the highly secure courthouse, but there wasn’t one that he was authorized to use. He had to leave through the revolving doors at the main entrance, stepping out onto a slightly elevated set of steps. Every eye and camera seemed to turn instantly in his direction. He was ready for this. He had decided, remembering Sandy Spencer’s harsh and critical words, that this time he wasn’t going to act like a deer caught in the headlights.
As several people surged forward in his direction, he paused at the top of the stairs. Microphones were thrust up toward him, and reporters, some of whom he recognized from the television broadcasts he sometimes flipped through at night, raised their voices, asking questions. He found himself unexpectedly calm, with no tremor of the stage fright that had seized him on the steps of the courthouse in Miami.
He heard a strong voice ask: “Who are you?”
“My name is Byron Johnson,” he said. “I represent Ali Hussein. Mr. Hussein has just been indicted, after years in total isolation during which he was brutalized by government agents. He is accused of serious offenses, and I’m here to do all I can to see to it that, even though all the scales of government power are weighed against him, there will be some element of fairness in his trial.”
A sleek black woman extended a microphone toward him. “How long have you represented Mr. Hussein?”
“Several weeks.”
A man’s voice, more strident, interrupted the black woman before she could ask another question. “Does your client know he faces the death penalty?”
“He does.”
“How did he find out?”
“He learned that precisely fifteen minutes ago in Judge Goldberg’s courtroom.”
Another voice overrode the others: “What was his reaction?”
Byron knew he had to stay composed, deliberate, and focused, despite the turmoil and noise surrounding him. “Mr. Hussein is a human being. He lived peacefully and productively for many years in this country before he was snatched up into years of confinement at various places in the world. How did he react? Quietly. But it’s reasonable to assume that Mr. Hussein, as would anyone else, is very disturbed to learn that someone wants to put him to death. Particularly if that someone is a government that has held him totally incommunicado, isolated from friends, relatives, human contact.”
“Is it true that your client met Osama bin Laden?”
“He’s not accused of that. That claim isn’t in the indictment.”
There was a tumult of questions. But one rang out so decisively that Byron had to pay attention: “Why are you representing him?”
It was a question Byron had known he’d be asked at some point. He wasn’t famous in the way that some lawyers were in an age of televised obsession with trials and crime, but who he was and what he did were not secrets. Google, Bing, and other search engines made it a simple exercise to pull his name and details about him from the vast storehouse of information in the ether. Anyone in his profession who looked at the twenty or so entries for him would have been impressed by his credentials and his experience, but to journalists dealing with the huge story of a terrorist accused of a crime in a United States court, Byron’s credentials and experience would have mystified them. There were criminal lawyers in America who were almost household names. Byron had labored for years in a rarefied field, dealing in cases remote from the trials broadcast on Court TV or discussed at night on CNN and Fox. Until now, Byron had never once appeared on television. It had never crossed his mind to seek out an interview on television, even though the public relations firm that SpencerBlake had hired urged him to do it.
Byron answered, “I was asked to do this by civil liberties organizations, by Mr. Hussein’s family, and of course by Mr. Hussein himself.”
The question came back, the tenacious voice, “But why are you doing it? Why you?”
Byron decided to be playful. He smiled. “Because I’m a lawyer. This is what I do.”
Then another question: “Who have your other famous clients been?”
Byron and his law firm had a client roster that was the envy of other lawyers in big law firms like SpencerBlake. But none of the names of those clients would resonate at all with the people now asking him questions. There were no names like Angelina Jolie, Lady Gaga, or Casey Anthony on the list.
“It’s Mr. Hussein who is my only concern.”
11
TOM NASHATKA AND ANDREW Hurd left the courthouse through the rear entrance reserved for judges and some high-ranking government employees. The area had become, since 9/11, a Baghdad-style green zone. Huge, dirty-white New York City garbage trucks blocked the entrance to the maze of old Manhattan streets that ran among the five nearby courthouses. Iron grates implanted in the roadbeds rose like sharks’ mouths from the streets. And United States Marshals in combat boots patrolled the area.
For Tom Nashatka, Andrew Hurd was an enigma, but a heroic one. He had met Hurd two months earlier on the flight from Guantanamo to Miami as they escorted the blindfolded, smelly Ali Hussein. From the outset Tom knew that Andrew Hurd was the boss, the capo di tutti capi, as one of Tom’s mentors had described him. Tom wasn’t familiar with the name, but when he met Andrew Hurd he felt he was in the presence of someone special. Even on sweltering nights in Cuba and Miami, Hurd dressed in a blue suit and tie. His black shoes were highly polished. He sported a black mustache, black hair streaked with gray, and the look and swagger of an agent in a James Bond movie. He smoked cigars even in the small plane.