Hussein had developed a deferential, intelligent, and even playful demeanor at times with Byron. “I’ve got to rely on you now, Mr. Johnson, even for my understanding of the Koran.” He smiled. “May Allah help me.”
Byron picked at random these words from the paperback edition of Marmaduke Pickthall’s translation of the Koran that he kept on his desk: We sent no messenger save that he should be obeyed by Allah’s leave. And if, when they had wronged themselves, they had but come unto thee and asked forgiveness of Allah, and asked forgiveness of the messenger, they would have found Allah’s forgiving, merciful. But nay, by thy Lord, they will not believe in truth until they make thee judge of what is in dispute between them and find within themselves no dislike of that which thou decides, and submit with full submission.
And then he typed in the numbers of the book, chapter, and lines for that quote. He put the numbers Ali had dictated on a slip of paper in his wallet.
When he finished, Byron glanced up at the glittering play of mid-afternoon sunlight on the surface of the MetLife building. Then he moved the leaning arrow on the computer screen to the yellow, cartoon-style envelope just above the words “Send Now.” Instantly his computer screen displayed “Your mail has been sent.”
He pressed down the lid of his computer and walked to the elevator, smiling and waving at the secretaries and young lawyers he passed in the carpeted, muted hallways.
Byron Johnson never again saw his office.
18
KIMBERLY SMITH LOVED THOSE hour-long periods when she sat alone in a small studio with the automated camera in front of her as she listened attentively to Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper at CNN or Bill O’Reilly or Geraldo Rivera at Fox bring her into the live broadcast conversations. Just at the moment when a question was directed at her, or at the moment when she decided to intervene in an exchange, the red light at the top of the camera glowed, as if turned on by the sound of her voice, signaling to her that her face and voice were being broadcast to millions of people. She had been such a regular guest on these shows in the years since 9/11 that she was a celebrity people recognized in airports, on streets, and at conferences. These shows were deeply pleasurable for her, more engaging than teaching or writing or researching (although she enjoyed those parts of her life, too, just as she enjoyed other, far less visible work she did). Elegantly produced, stimulating, these broadcasts engaged her best qualities. She could exercise all the fluency, quick intelligence, and snappy, sardonic humor she had developed during her years in college at Harvard, graduate school at Yale, and teaching and writing at Stanford.
And she took pleasure, too, from the fact that she was beautiful. It was there for all the world to see. Sometimes, after a live show was broadcast at eight or nine in the evening, it would be repeated three or four times in the long interval between midnight and the start of the early morning live news shows at six. In the middle of the night, she would sometimes watch herself, proud of the ease and grace and feistiness she displayed. It pleased her deeply, too, to witness how enthralled the men with whom she was spending the night were when, at three in the morning, they watched a broadcast she had done at nine the night before.
Six months into their relationship, Tom Nashatka still thought of Kimberly Smith as his golden girl, even though he suspected she had many other lovers. He knew that from the first time they made love. It was at the end of a day of secret meetings in a nondescript but highly secure building on L Street. They went to a bar on DuPont Circle, and after two hours she asked, “So, do you want to come up to my room?”
Want was not the right word to describe Tom’s intense desire-this unexpected invitation to her room was like the granting of the wildest wish on his life’s wish list. Everything about her seemed unattainable. She was the daughter of wealthy New Yorkers; his father had spent a lifetime working in a steel foundry in Pittsburgh. She had gone to the best-known college in the world; he’d attended gritty Penn State. She went on fellowships to the most famous graduate schools in the country; he had enlisted in the Navy after college. She looked like one of the golden girls, the blessed girls, of American culture-the circle that included Christie Brinkley, Diane Sawyer, Valerie Plame. Tom, although he was a muscular football player and Navy Seal, could be easily recognized for what he was, the Polish son of a Pittsburgh steel worker. He had that flat accent and, at times, those working-class gestures. He used the words you know and like too often, the dominant idioms of most Americans under the age of forty. Kimberly never said like unless she was drawing an analogy.
After the first night in the room overlooking leafy, elegant DuPont Circle, Tom came to believe something extraordinary-that Kimberly Smith loved him. He certainly loved her. She was not only this extraordinary prize, she also had qualities he admired. She was a patriot. During graduate school at Yale, she was recruited by the CIA and became a deep undercover agent. She loved the intrigue. While she was taking her graduate degree, she did fellowships in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and in those times she learned the exciting art of acting as a covert agent. She wrote a book, published by the University of Chicago Press, on Arabic linguistics and culture. She was invited to attend seminars and give lectures on subjects such as the language and message of the Koran in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. After the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, she had started to give secret seminars to CIA agents about Islam and the beliefs of Islamic men and women.
When Kimberly came to New York to appear on television, she stayed at the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South, and the networks paid for her travel and her room. The hotel was only three blocks from the CNN studio in the new buildings on Columbus Circle at the southwest corner of Central Park. Her room, although small, overlooked the park. On the nights after her shows, when she and Tom Nashatka were together, they would have dinner in her room, make love, wake at around one in the morning, step out onto the quiet of Central Park South, return to the room, and continue working on the emailed notes that Byron Carlos Johnson regularly sent to himself, particularly the passages from the Koran that he copied out on his computer screen and sent to himself.
The white light of early dawn filled the trees of Central Park. Tom Nashatka woke from a short sleep and saw Kimberly at the computer. He had fallen asleep two hours earlier, after watching a rebroadcast of the show she had done the night before on CNN. She had been dazzling then, and she was dazzling now, too, although now she was naked and perched with her legs crossed on the desk chair.
“We underestimated him,” she said.
“Say what?” Tom asked, drowsily.
“We underestimated Byron Carlos Johnson,” Kimberly repeated, the clarity of her voice the same as when she was speaking on one of the television broadcasts. Even in private, she never spoke indistinctly or lazily.
Tom Nashatka sat up in the bed, the sheets wound around his waist. “Professor, you have got to give me more information than that.”
“The financial people are telling me that the new numbers just don’t compute. We’re now getting book, chapter, and verse numbers that don’t fit the paradigm.”
For weeks, Tom Nashatka, Kimberly Smith, and unseen technicians at a Homeland Security office in New Mexico had evaluated the passages from the Koran that Ali Hussein gave to Byron Johnson. The numbers of the books, chapters, and verses had quickly assumed a pattern, one that resembled the pattern of numbers by which wire transfers were made. The identities of originating banks, the numbers of accounts, and sometimes the numbers of what appeared to be destination accounts, all seemed to depend on the book, chapter, and verse numbers of the quotes in the Koran from the old Marmaduke Pichtall translation. 6 8 12 13 48 52. So far the numbers never quite fit the numerical patterns for bank codes, account numbers, and wiring routes for thousands of banks and fund transfer businesses in the United States and around the world. But they were getting closer to recognizable numbers that might lead to the locations somewhere in the world of real money. The virtual to the real.