It was only after seven meetings that Byron mentioned the Koran.
21
“AND EXPLAIN THAT TO the Grand Jury, Agent Hurd, what these numbers mean?”
Andrew Hurd used the small silver wand to project a narrow, precise beam of light at the rows of numbers displayed on the big white chart. “These are numbers that our experts have told us are, and in some cases were, actual bank account numbers at banks in the US, Iceland, Ireland, London, Yemen, and Venezuela.”
“How did you and your agents develop these numbers?” Hamerindapal Rana asked.
“Over time, a pattern emerged that correlated to the book, chapter, and verse numbers of the passages from the Koran that the prisoner was giving to Byron Johnson for transmittal to people outside the prison.”
It had been years since Rana had presented a witness to a grand jury. That work was almost invariably done by younger and less experienced lawyers because it was easy to question witnesses who were in front of a grand jury. No judge was present to supervise what was happening; there were no defense lawyers and no spectators in the courtroom. For centuries, the process of presenting witnesses and evidence to the grand jury was secret, and the secrecy and the absence of any critical eyes made the job a vehicle for the training of young lawyers. The twenty-four people who now sat in the sealed courtroom had been gathering once a week for many months, and Rana and the other government lawyers who were managing the grand jury had come to know the members by name, to joke and banter with them, and even to ask some of them how their children were. Something verging on workplace camaraderie had developed over time. There were coffee cups everywhere after just a few minutes together.
Even though this was easy work, and despite the relaxed relationship he had developed with almost all the people in the courtroom, it still irked Hal Rana that Hurd had insisted that he and not some junior lawyer in the prosecutor’s office ask the prepared questions and listen to the scripted answers. But in all his fifteen years in the Justice Department, he had never had to deal with an agent with as much authority, influence, and power as Andrew Hurd. Every other investigating agent in the FBI, the Secret Service, and the NSC and those elite officers in the criminal enforcement division of the Postal Service were subservient to attorneys at Hal Rana’s level. Not so Hurd. Hurd spoke, you jumped.
“What can you tell the grand jurors about these numbers?”
“Our experts call them ideograms. They’re drawn from innocuous, sometimes mundane and unpredictable sources. They could be the sequence of numbers you see etched in black on cereal containers. Or barcodes on a magazine cover. We have seen those numbers used to provide guides to counterfeit hundred dollar bills, for example. It’s a matter of detecting a pattern.”
“What was the pattern here?”
“During our monitoring of the detainee Hussein we noticed that he had developed a special attachment to the Koran, which is organized with a fairly elaborate set of numbers-both Arabic and Roman numeral-for its books, chapters, and verses. We had some information on the detainee that in the late 1990s and early 2000s he’d become a wizard at collecting cash, money orders, and cashier checks from various sources-such as cash collections at mosques, check-cashing stores, independent benefactors, and others-and then channeling enormous quantities of cash through domestic and foreign banks and money transfer companies. He was not at that time particularly devoted to the Koran, in the religious sense, although our informants told us he was skilled at quoting certain passages. And he has a prodigious memory for numbers and an uncanny aptitude for mathematics. He’s also, we believe, a zealot, a jihadist in a suit.”
Hal Rana asked, because Hurd gave him a cue to do so, “What was it about those passages?”
“The Koran has coherent, cohesive messages that to the initiated and to the students of the text form patterns of meaning and storytelling. They appear in scattered sections of the text. This is because the Koran was written by many people and minds over a period of years, much as the New Testament was.”
“And?”
“And Ali Hussein’s study of the Koran could never lead to an integrated understanding of these themes. He was a dabbler, not a scholar. It takes years of study to draw the religious themes together. But he does know numbers.”
“How do you know that?”
“Through an informant.”
One of the grand jurors, a thin, sarcastic, spunky woman with orange hair, raised her hand to get attention and asked, “And who was that informant?”
Hurd, through a glance from his blue eyes, conveyed the message no to Rana, who said: “That’s not information you need to know.”
Rana was hard-working, devoted to his cases and the Justice Department, intelligent, and experienced, but he was not the kind of lawyer who could make people on juries like him. It may have been his height, his turban, or the overly formal manner he had developed at the English language schools he attended in Sri Lanka. That was a problem when he was involved in an actual jury trial, and he knew that he’d never succeeded in developing the appealing style of the best trial lawyers. But there was a difference between an actual jury trial and a grand jury. In a grand jury room, it didn’t matter whether there were people who were put off, offended, or antagonized by his style, words, glances, or gestures, or people who were instinctively biased against his race and origin. In his years as a prosecutor, he had never known a grand jury not to indict someone when he asked for an indictment. Unhappy with the rebuff of Rana’s refusal to answer her question, the sardonic woman who had raised her hand gave him a look as if to say, Come off it, Hal.
“What else,” Hal Rana asked, “has this informant told you?”
“That the detainee Hussein is communicating with outside people to alert them as to what accounts and in what countries money is located.”
“Isn’t it true, Agent Hurd, that Hussein is held in solitary confinement?”
“He is.”
“For how long?”
“Years. He’s a dangerous, very high-value prisoner.”
“Why is he dangerous? Is he violent?”
“Not personally. He is a small man. He’s had no training with weapons or martial arts. He’s dangerous, and important, because of what he knows.”
“What does it mean to be in solitary confinement?”
“In Hussein’s case, he is never allowed among other prisoners. Food is brought to him. He has a cot, a wash basin, a toilet. He has one book, the Koran. Three times a week he is allowed to walk fifteen feet to a shower room. He’s accompanied by three guards when he does that. He’s observed while showering.”
“Is he allowed to exercise?”
“Not in the prison gym. He can exercise if he wishes in his cell. There is room for sit-ups, push-ups, isometric exercises, things like that. He is not a very athletic man.”
“Can he have conversations?”
“He can speak to the guards. He doesn’t avail himself of that privilege.”
“Does he have visitors?”
“Only his lawyer.”
“Does he have more than one lawyer?”
“Only one.”
“And is that Byron Carlos Johnson?”
“It is.”
“Do they meet in his cell?”