“Did you have any reaction when that happened?”
“I did.”
“What reaction?”
Without hesitating, he leaned toward the microphone, as if bowing slightly. “I soiled myself.” He paused. “I was shaking, Mr. Johnson. I had no control over my body. I thought they were going to shoot me.”
“Had you been sick that morning?”
“No. I was a healthy man.”
“What happened then?”
“They smashed the window next to me. They opened the door.”
“And then?”
“Pulled me out of the car.”
“And next?”
“They put a cloth bag over my head.”
“Let me ask you this: before the bag was put on you, did you see the faces of the men who took you?”
“Yes, I did, Mr. Johnson.”
“Did you ever see any of those men again?”
“One.”
“How often?”
“Many times.”
“What does many mean?”
“I stopped counting. I was an accountant. I love numbers. I counted thirty-three times, and then I stopped. I saw him many times.”
“Do you know his name?”
“His name? He never told me. I gave him a name. Jesse Ventura.”
Justin Goldberg touched the edge of his reading glasses, whose lenses flashed like a blade in the light from his desk lamp. “Mr. Johnson, your next question, please.”
“Jesse Ventura. Why that name?”
“I had just seen Jesse Ventura on television. He was crazy, this man is crazy.”
“When was the last time you saw this man?”
“Last night.”
Last night: the answer surprised and unsettled Byron. He had spent ten minutes with Ali in his holding cell before the hearing started. He had said nothing about this.
“Did he say anything?”
“He did.”
“What?”
“He said I am stupid.”
“Anything else?”
“That you’re a lousy lawyer.”
Byron felt a sudden, uncomfortable flush.
“What else did he say?”
“That my lawyer is so stupid that I’m going to end up dead.”
“Anything else?”
“He said what he always says.”
“And that’s what?”
“The money, Ali. Where is the money?”
“Did he do anything?”
“Not what he usually does.”
“And what does he usually do?”
“Usually he hits me.”
“How often has he hit you?”
“Many times, Mr. Johnson. Many times in many countries.”
“When did he first hit you?”
“In Bonn, just a few hours after I was picked up. I hadn’t yet been moved to another city. It was a hotel room. The shades were drawn. I heard the traffic outside. The European car horns. They took my hood off. There was a painting on the wall. It was an English countryside, horses and dogs and men in eighteenth-century riding clothes. There were dead foxes on the ground. Then this man stepped in front of me. There were a few other men in the room. They wore masks. Zorro masks: over the bridge of the nose, the eyebrows, below the eyes, across the temples. But I could see their eyes.”
“And the man who stepped in front of you?”
“No mask. He was big. He wore a suit. He was smoking a cigar. He had an American flag lapel pin on his suit jacket.”
“What did he say?”
“That I should be sick of myself. That I smelled like shit.”
“What happened?”
“He handed me a towel and told me to clean myself.”
“Did you?”
“No. I would have had to touch my soiled pants and my body and private parts in the presence of these men.”
“Then what happened?”
“He said they wanted to talk to me in private, and that this room was private. He said he knew I was a wizard with numbers-that all I had to do was spend some time writing down the names of banks and account numbers where the money was kept.”
“What else?”
“That as soon as I wrote this down he would give me time to go into the bathroom, shower, and put on fresh clothes.”
“Fresh clothes?”
“My clothes. He said he had picked up the suit I had given to the hotel cleaning service the night before and that it was in the bathroom waiting for me.”
“Did that surprise you?”
“It did. It scared me. How did they get my clothes? What else did they have? Who were these people? What were they going to do to me?”
“And?”
“He said my underwear, also clean, was in the bathroom, too. He and his friends, he said, had arranged to help me by taking some of my clothes from my room.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, Please leave me alone.”
“He asked you to write something down, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Did you write anything down?”
“No, I didn’t know what to write down.”
“What next?”
“The men in masks pulled my pants off. They wore plastic gloves. They took off my underwear, and they rubbed my underwear into my face.”
“And then?”
“I gagged, Mr. Johnson.”
“And then?”
“The man hit the side of my head. Jesse Ventura. Just above my right ear.”
“And?”
“I fell over.”
“And?”
“They dragged me into the bathroom. I was crying. The bathtub was filled with water. Two of the men picked me up. By the wrists and the ankles. The man who had hit me said I was filthy and needed a bath. He pushed my head under the water. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to scream. The water rushed into me. And then he pulled me out of the water. They left me on the floor.”
Byron Johnson took up a picture from the surface of the lectern. “May I approach the witness, Judge? I have a photograph to show him.”
“Show it first to Mr. Rana.”
Byron walked to his left. Rana did not stand. Byron put the picture in front of him. Rana rose to his feet. “This is a national security item, Your Honor. We object to its use as an exhibit.”
Byron said, “This is simply a picture of a man. It may assist Mr. Hussein in identifying the man who hit him.”
Judge Goldberg said, “The man who hit the witness, Mr. Johnson? It is an open question, in my view, that the defendant was hit at all.”
“He just testified to it, under oath.”
“And I’m sure, Mr. Johnson, that you’ve advised the defendant of the adverse consequences of perjury?”
“Judge, let me say this: it’s not the function of a judge to suggest that a witness is lying.”
Justin Goldberg slapped the palm of his hand on the bench. It was the first time that he had fully unleashed his temper, that anger he always concealed under his urbane, skeptical surface. “Mr. Johnson, I won’t tolerate contempt.”
Byron stared at him. After five seconds, Justin Goldberg disengaged from the stare. He impatiently held up his hand, saying, “Bring that photograph up to me.”
One of the marshals took the picture to Goldberg. He glanced at it. Byron, who was certain the judge would never let Ali Hussein look at it, managed to stay impassive when he heard Goldberg brusquely and unexpectedly announce: “I’ll admit this. Mark it as defendant’s Exhibit 1.”
The court reporter-a woman in her forties who had been steadily typing into a computer that instantly created a transcript on the laptop computers in front of the judge and Hal Rana-took the picture and placed an old-fashioned sticker marking it as defendant’s Exhibit 1 on the upper left corner of the picture. The marshal handed the picture to Byron, who carried it to Ali Hussein.
“Take a look at the picture marked as Exhibit 1, Mr. Hussein.”
It was a reproduction of the picture Byron Johnson had taken with his cell phone of the man just outside the western edge of Washington Square Park.
“Is this the man?”
“It is.”
“Is this the man who hit you in Bonn?”
“Yes.”
“Is this the man who came to your cell last night?”