Byron knew that he would confront this problem: he had explained to Ali, when Ali asked that he visit the Imam, that there was very little he could say to him about what Byron and Ali had discussed. Byron had tried to make Ali understand that there was an attorney-client privilege that made it impossible for Byron to tell anyone the words that he and Ali had exchanged. And Byron had explained that, if Ali gave him permission to tell his brother and the Imam what their conversations were, then the attorney-client privilege would be lost and Byron might be required to tell other people as well. He was certain that Ali, an intelligent man who had worked as an accountant, understood. But Ali simply said, “Please, just speak to my brother and the Imam. I want them to know that I’m here, I want them to tell you about my wife and kids, I want you to let them know that you are a life-giver, and that you were able to bring me the holy Koran.”
Byron spoke slowly: “I can’t tell you everything we’ve talked about.”
Again Khalid translated: “What has our brother said to you?”
“I can tell you this: that he was in prisons in Europe, or so he thinks, for two years, and then for years in a hot place, probably Guantanamo, in Cuba; that he has been very badly treated; that he doesn’t know what he’s accused of. And that he now has a copy of the Koran.”
The Imam spoke. Khalid translated: “What did he tell you about the Koran?”
“He said that it was life-giving water to read it again.”
Khalid said, “My brother was always very devout.”
“And he also wanted me to let the Imam know that he has read and understands at last the words of book nine.”
“What words in book nine?”
Byron removed from his pocket the yellow sheet of paper. He read aloud: “Those who were left behind rejoiced at sitting still behind the messenger of Allah, and were averse to striving with their wealth and their lives in Allah’s way. And they said, Go not forth in the heat! Say: the heat of hell is more intense of heat, if they but understood.”
Suddenly the Imam, his voice sibilant and rapt, began reciting words in Arabic. It took almost a minute for him to finish. At the end, Khalid said, “The Imam asks that you let our brother know that the next lesson he must understand is in book eight, chapter six, the verses 55 through 62. Ali’s strength is in Allah, in the Glorious Koran.”
Byron had read enough about the Koran to know that its title was properly translated as the Glorious Koran, not just the Koran. He wrote down the reference that the Imam had given him. Book, chapter, lines of verse. 8, 6, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62. He knew also that almost every edition of the Koran, no matter who the translator was, had the same chapter, verse and line number so that readers could all find the same text, just as the Bible and Shakespeare’s plays had common chapter, verse, and line numbers.
Then, somewhere outside the room, a bell sounded. Byron had seen a sign indicating that there were classes for children in the building, and the bell, although muffled, sounded like a school bell. There were no children in the building, no sound of children’s voices anywhere.
Khalid stood. Byron did as well. The Imam remained seated. “The Sheik sends his blessings to our brother,” Khalid said.
Three hours later, in his apartment, Byron turned to the passage of the Koran the Imam had mentioned. He had an old translation by a long-dead man who wrote in his preening introduction that he was Marmaduke Pickthall, the first Englishman who had himself become a Muslim to translate the holy text.
Byron read aloud: Lo! The worst of beasts in Allah’s sight are the ungrateful who will not believe. Those of them with whom thou madest a treaty, and then at every opportunity they break their treaty, and they keep not duty to Allah. If thou comest on them in the war, deal with them so as to strike fear in those who are behind them, that haply they may remember. And if thou fearest treachery from any folk, then throw back to them their treaty fairly. Lo! Allah loveth not the treacherous. And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip Allah’s purpose. Lo! They cannot escape. Make ready for them all thou canst of armed force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others beside them whom ye know not. Allah knoweth them. Whatsoever ye spend in the way of Allah it will be repaid to you in full, and ye will not be wronged.
Byron typed these words into his computer. He had developed a habit of typing notes and sending them through the ether by email to himself, so that he had them in both his Sent column and his Old column. He printed out the passage. He planned to take the sheet of paper on his next trip to Miami to read to Ali. He felt it was part of his task to give this man, isolated for so many years from his family, his neighborhood, his surroundings, and his religion, some link to the world he once knew. And Byron believed he could never assess another person’s religion-life had taught him enough about the mysteries of religion that he long ago gave up considering Roman Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, even the Episcopal formalities of his youth, absurd or misguided or useless. They all mattered to billions of people in the world, and sometimes they mattered to him.
From the privacy of his loft apartment on Laight Street in Tribeca, where the sounds of huge garbage trucks and tractor trailers still rumbled at night on the cobblestone pavements of the old warehouse district, he gazed at the top of the Empire State Building. Shimmering red and blue lights were draped over its heights. He then read again: Lo! Allah loveth not the treacherous. And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip Allah’s purpose.
“What the hell,” he said aloud, “can this mean?”
5
TOM NASHATKA WAS WELL over six feet tall and, at thirty-nine, still weighed less than two hundred pounds. He was blond and blue-eyed, the son of a Polish immigrant family that had settled in Pittsburgh two years before he was born. He went through the Pittsburgh public school system and graduated from Penn State, where he played football and was the captain of the Greco-Roman varsity wrestling team. He had even contended in the 1996 Olympic trials. Tom enlisted in the Navy after he graduated and trained as a Navy Seal. He spent six years in the Navy and was then accepted for a rare slot as a special agent of the Secret Service. After September 11, he asked for a transfer to the new Department of Homeland Security and got it.
His head was completely shaven. For years he had worn an earring, a golden circle in his right earlobe. It gave him, he said, deep cover. “I look like Mr. Clean-bald head and earring, ready to take care of the kitchen and bathroom.”
He was friendly and engaging. After his transfer to New York, he developed many friendships in the upscale, gentrified Cobble Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn. He had girlfriends-not one of them knew he was a federal agent-and he enjoyed several nights out each week at the coffee bars and the real bars of his neighborhood. By eleven he was usually in his small, neat apartment on the third floor of a renovated brownstone. His friends thought he worked at a brokerage firm. Although they found it odd for someone in the sales business, Tom let his friends know he didn’t want to take them on as clients because he thought there might be some kind of conflict of interest. There were times, too-and his young friends thought this was strange for a broker-when he was out of town, without explanation, for two or three weeks at a time.