Byron shifted ever so slightly in his chair, but his expression, attentive and serious, didn’t change. Go on, he thought, tell me more.
And Hal Rana did. “We’ve learned from other sources that he is very sincere, almost sweet. An appealing person, obedient, respectful. He may have taken you in, or you may have been so taken by his personality that you willingly turned a blind eye-let’s call it conscious disregard of the truth-to assist him.”
Byron put two fingers to the side of his face, an elegant and thoughtful gesture, a gesture that invited more words from Hal Rana.
“We can’t think of any legitimate purpose for your visits to the mosque in Newark. Or for your face-to-face encounters with Khalid Hussein.”
This was one of those rare times in his life that Hal Rana was becoming uncomfortable. He turned from Byron’s steady gaze. He looked again through the narrow window in his office. The dazzling structure of the Brooklyn Bridge appeared to float above the East River, the river’s surface itself on silver fire in the sunlight.
“The issue, Byron, is whether you want to help us. And help yourself. We won’t ask you to explain the inexplicable passage of $52 million through your account, and for now we won’t ask you where it went. But we will ask you to continue to work with, or on, your client. He trusts you, Byron. The word is that you’re a man who inspires trust.”
“You realize, Mr. Rana, that you’re asking me to violate the element of trust in my relationship with my client.”
Still looking through the window at the brilliant scene outside, Hal Rana said, “That can’t really matter to you, Byron. Hussein has provided the lifeblood of money to men who bomb innocent people, commit spectacular acts of hatred. He now wants to loosen up the flow of more of that life-blood. He knows where the money is, and he’s using you to lead his brothers to it. It won’t be used to fund the producers of Sesame Street.”
Even for Byron Johnson, the urge to ask a question was irresistible: “What do you want me to do?”
“First, give us the correct verses that you’ve been scrambling recently. Why did you put out misinformation? The algorithms our people are developing to locate the banks and accounts from the book, chapter, and verse numbers have fallen apart with the new numbers you’re sending to the Imam. We assume you got some sense of what was happening and you decided not to pass along information your client gave you, just to test the waters, so to speak, and see what happened. And you did a good job at that. We’re out of whack now, and the brothers are suspicious, and the Imam and his friends are growing restive. They’re beginning to get agitated.”
“And?”
“And spend more time with your client. He devotes his days to looking forward to seeing you. He has developed a passion for you. He believes you. Continue to cultivate that. He thinks you are an honorable man, so honorable he would never suspect that you were doing anything for him other than giving him legal advice and religious solace. Tell him the date for his trial is coming up soon. Lie to him: tell him that once the trial starts you’ll be able to see him less often, not more. He’ll accelerate the pace of messages he wants you to carry. The more messages, the clearer the picture we get. We think we’re not far from striking gold.”
“And?”
“And wear a wire. There’s likely to be information other than the Koran verses in what he says that will be meaningful to us.”
Byron couldn’t resist the next question: “Why should I do this?”
Hal Rana looked at him. “Why? To save your life, Byron. Your friends in Newark are planning to kill you when they get all the information they need from you, or if they think you’re giving them garbage. They may even get the notion that you’re trying to use the information for yourself. Think about it: we might not be the only people who know that millions of dollars passed through your account and skipped off somewhere into the world.” Hal Rana paused. “Or they may think you are already working for us, on the dark side. Or Khalid Hussein may believe you set him up to slash that face he loves so much.”
“What else?”
“If you work with us, we’ll protect you.”
“And if I don’t?”
“We won’t protect you. And we’ll let the judge know we have a grand jury that is about to indict you for assisting terrorism.”
Byron rose from the folding chair. “Let me help you, Mr. Rana. I’m an older guy than you and I’ve been around in the world for a long time. You need to know something about yourself. You’re an asshole.”
32
WHEN THEY LEFT THE Thalia, the first snow of the season was descending in shimmering curtains through the street lamps at the corner of 95th Street and Broadway. It was crystalline and gorgeous, just enough to barely cover the parked cars and the sidewalks. The snow had brought the children of the neighborhood to the streets. The shriek of young voices. In the adults, the wonder at the renewal of the snow, the coming of winter.
Byron took Christina Rosario’s hand, as if to steady her on the glistening sidewalk. They had just finished watching The Third Man, the Orson Welles movie Byron had first seen when he was a teenager, in Paris on one of his brief visits to his parents, probably in 1965. Christina had never seen the movie. The opening scenes of cold and steel-gray Vienna, just after the Second World War, and the unforgettable zither music, had brought Byron to watch the movie at least ten times over the years. At the outset of the film, Orson Welles as Harry Lime had staged his own death, assisted by a team of effeminate and evasive Romanians and Hungarians, so that they could continue trafficking in adulterated and deadly vaccines. Joseph Cotton, mourning the lost Harry Lime, continued to believe in him until he saw children in the hospital crippled by the adulterated vaccine Harry distributed. He then discovered that Harry was alive and helped to hunt him down in the Vienna sewer system. In the last scene, the fingers of the shot and dying Harry Lime gripped the rails of a manhole cover on a Viennese strasse as he futilely attempted to lift the cover off.
“What a great movie,” Christina said. “Thanks for bringing me, Carlos.”
“And next week I’ll take you to The Maltese Falcon downtown.”
They walked three blocks west to Riverside Drive and then uptown to Christina’s apartment at the familiar corner of Riverside Drive and 116th Street. To their left, the park shone in the darkness as snow fell through the bare branches. Ghostly, seductive. She let go of his hand and held onto his arm, walking as if in an embrace. As the snow created an evanescent veil on her hair, he felt the overwhelming pang of his love for her. He found himself wanting these times he had spent with her to last forever.