Extraordinary Rendition (7 page)

And there were those three squash matches they played soon after the meeting at the diner. She had casually mentioned she played squash, and he suggested they play. Christina was a powerful and experienced player, driving fast rail shots from just above the tin on the front wall of the court that, almost skimming the side walls, raced to the deep corners of the rear wall. The shots forced Byron to sprint backwards to reach the speeding black ball.

Byron was more skillful. He rarely relied on a hard shot. Instead he used the front wall to hit feathery drop shots. Racket drawn back, Christina raced forward, frequently reaching the ball just as it grazed down from the wall, but just as often not reaching it as it fell to the floor without a bounce.

Christina was strong and perfectly built, and it was an exciting pleasure to watch her as she ran, stretched, and hit the ball. But more fascinating and exciting to Byron was the nape of her neck. She wore her black hair in a tight knot. Loose tendrils of hair fell to the sweating skin on the back of her neck. That sight overpowered him. His lust was intense.

Byron Johnson had never felt as uneasy in a courtroom as he did now. It was late on a Friday afternoon in Miami. The hearing had already lasted more than an hour, and the visible impatience of United States District Judge Ursula Betancourt was dripping from every haughty, weary-sounding word she uttered.

“Mr. Johnson, you still haven’t given me a single statute, rule, or precedent for the order you’re now requesting.”

For years, Byron, as a lawyer for clients in big corporate cases had on his side what he knew was the competitive advantage in a legal system weighted heavily in favor of the interests he represented. He had spent a career defending corporations accused of antitrust violations in an era when more and more federal judges rejected antitrust claims more and more often. And he had also spent years defending companies accused of securities fraud when rule after rule steadily undermined the pursuit of those claims. In the fields of Byron Johnson’s expertise, it was simply the case that laws passed over the last three decades and the conservative judges appointed since Reagan became president—even the judges appointed by Clinton and Obama—made it easy for Byron Johnson and other big-firm lawyers to protect the companies and executives they represented. The law, as it had come to exist, simply operated in their favor. The conservatives had gradually occupied the field.

Byron Johnson was standing at the podium. “Judge, there are constitutional issues that make these new laws on detention suspect.”

“Detention, Mr. Johnson? Do you mean the new laws on terrorism?”

“I don’t want to debate semantics, Judge.”

“Semantics? I’m looking at the title of the new law. It says ‘terrorism,’ doesn’t it?”

“That word isn’t used in the Constitution, Judge.”

Judge Betancourt was forty-two years old, appointed to her lifetime position by the second Bush. She had very black hair and that aristocratic Hispanic look that Byron Carlos Johnson’s own mother had. Byron thought that she could easily have been one of the associates or young
partners in his firm; in fact, he knew from what Christina Rosario had reported to him after an Internet search that this young judge had worked as a lawyer in a Republican law firm in Miami, a firm to which SpencerBlake had often referred clients. The anonymous Internet entries by lawyers who knew her said she was smart, autocratic, often courteous to lawyers who practiced the same kind of law she had spent her career in but icily skeptical of lawyers who represented plaintiffs or criminal defendants.

“Mr. Johnson, what is it that makes you think your client is even entitled to constitutional protection?”

He had been waiting for this question since the day he first decided to file a challenge to Ali Hussein’s interminable imprisonment, his solitary confinement, his claims of torture during his years overseas, and the strict time limits imposed on his meetings with Byron. He had asked Christina to research precisely the question Ursula Betancourt was now asking: did the Constitution give Ali Hussein as a foreign national arrested overseas the right to a speedy trial, to effective representation by a lawyer, to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment and to other constitutional guarantees? Christina reported back to him that there were no decisions at any point in the last hundred years that definitively answered that question.

Byron was evasive, hoping to re-frame the conversation. He said, “Mr. Hussein was a legal resident of the United States.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I did read your papers. Now get back to my question.”

“Anyone arrested in the United States has a right to due process.”

“But he was arrested in Germany, wasn’t he?”

“He had a right to return to the United States.”

“But he didn’t, right?”

“He was arrested in Bonn before he could do that.”

“What’s the significance of that? He was carrying a Syrian passport. He could have intended to use it. He could have seamlessly gotten back to Syria.”

Byron had been involved in hundreds of these jousting contests with judges. Many of them enjoyed the back-and-forth and the sophisticated spontaneity of the game. Even Byron often enjoyed it. But this judge, he sensed, had a stinger in her tail.

“There’s absolutely no evidence in the record that he intended to leave the U.S. permanently,” Byron said.

“He wasn’t just arrested out of thin air because the agents enjoyed the sport of seizing people in Bonn, Germany. Perhaps your client had wind of the posse chasing him and left here under the guise of going for a business trip to Europe.”

“Judge, he has a wife and children in this country.”

“He does, Mr. Johnson? And how do I know that? Because you tell me so?”

“He told me that. I see that as a reliable source of information.”

Her expression conveyed her skepticism. “Really?” She changed the subject. “He’s been designated an enemy combatant, hasn’t he?”

“He could have easily been designated Attila the Hun.”

She sharply slapped the wood on her bench. “I would expect more from you, Mr. Johnson, than a facetious comment.”

When was the last time, Byron wondered, that a judge had scolded him? He couldn’t remember. It may never have happened.

“It’s a strange constitutional world, Judge, in which the United States Government has the right to hold a person indefinitely, without charges, in what have been intolerable conditions of confinement, just by giving him a label.”

“But Congress decided to pass a law that gave the government the right to do that, and the president signed that law.”

“Judge, let’s face reality here. This is a regime in which the government has in effect suspended habeas corpus and negated the constitutional rights to trial, due process, and freedom from cruel punishment.”

“There you go again, Mr. Johnson. Those are grand sentiments. I don’t see any decree from the president suspending habeas corpus. And you haven’t shown me why Congress and the president are not entitled to treat this person you say is your client in precisely the way it is treating him.”

“Judge, the chair beside me—the chair in which every federal prisoner has a right to sit during a vital hearing—is empty.”

“It’s empty, Mr. Johnson, because the law says the government doesn’t have to bring him to court if the government decides that it’s a risk to security to have him here.”

“Where does this all end, Judge? We are in entirely new and dangerous territory. What if the government simply issues an order saying that Mr. Hussein is guilty and has been sentenced by the Justice Department to life in prison?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “Keep yourself to why you forced us to be here, Mr. Johnson. You filed a motion that frankly I consider frivolous. Don’t waste my time with what could be or might be in a world that might have been or may never come to be.” She paused. The air conditioning in this windowless, wood-paneled courtroom in Miami was cold. “I have to tell you, Mr. Johnson, that for a lawyer of your long
experience I frankly think that these motions you’ve filed are frivolous.”

Frivolous
. It had become a loaded word over the last twenty years in the world of federal litigation. Calling a lawyer’s motion frivolous often led to imposing big money penalties on the lawyer as well as the professional stigma of having been sanctioned for what was called frivolous conduct. Byron flushed at the use of the word, which he had sometimes in the past invoked against an opposing lawyer but which had never been turned on him. Ursula Betancourt was threatening him, and even in the artificially cold courtroom he experienced a sweaty sense of frustration and now, with the use of the word frivolous, a sharp pang of resentment. For the first time in his career, he was no longer, he realized, a select member of the choir.

Byron Johnson simply stared at her, declining her challenge. When Ursula Betancourt realized that he wasn’t going to rise to what she knew was a taunt, she posed a question that was meant to test him, and it did. “One issue you’ve not addressed at all in your papers, Mr. Johnson, is the impact of the SAMs designation of your client. Do you want to address that now before I rule?”

Byron Johnson was speechless. Even a mind as fast as his failed to frame an answer to a question about which he knew nothing. “I’m not familiar with that term.”

Ursula Betancourt glanced at Hamerindapal Rana, who had not said a word at the conference after announcing at the outset who he was. It was as if they shared a secret, for they both knew the term.

“Special Administrative Measures,” Judge Betancourt said. “SAMs, Mr. Johnson. Are you not familiar with them?”
The tone of her voice bore the mocking disbelief of a seventh-grade teacher asking a student why he was not familiar with the answer to three times eight. After waiting precisely five seconds without an answer from Byron, she became brusque, business-like. “The motion for the release of the defendant, for dismissal, for change of conditions of confinement, for an expansion of the hours of attorney-client meetings, and for permission for family visits to the detainee are all denied. Among other things, Mr. Johnson has failed to note that his client is subject to a SAMs designation and, as a result, his client is committed to the custody of the Justice Department, is expressly not allowed bail, and is explicitly prohibited from contact with all outsiders other than a lawyer.”

She turned off the reading light in front of her face. And finally she said, “I think it’s only fair to Mr. Johnson to give him warning that, if he again asks for relief that new federal law makes clear he can’t get for his client, the court will consider imposing substantial financial sanctions on Mr. Johnson personally. I can’t tolerate a waste of Mr. Rana’s time, not to mention the court’s time.”

Hal Rana remained silent at the prosecution table. He didn’t even glance at Byron Carlos Johnson.

Christina Rosario had waited for Byron on a bench outside the locked courtroom. Only lawyers, the judge, and three armed United States Marshals had been allowed inside. When Byron emerged, she stood up. He saw her expectant, questioning look. He said, “Bad day in Black Rock.”

She frowned.

As they stepped out onto the bleak sun-drenched stone plaza in front of the courthouse, three news cameras focused on them. Reporters pressed forward, vying for his attention. Byron looked stunned. It had never occurred to him that reporters knew about the court appearance or that they had simply followed him to Miami and the courthouse. The motion he had filed had been sealed, hidden from the public computerized court files. No notice had appeared anywhere of the scheduling of the hearing. Plainclothes guards had locked the entrance to the courtroom.

Byron didn’t speak. The taxi he had hired to bring him and Christina to the courthouse was waiting. He let Christina step inside before he did. Voices outside the locked door continued their insistent clamor. Cameras were pointed at the tinted windows. The car moved steadily forward through people who stepped to the side only as the front bumper came within inches of them.

S
ANDY SPENCER—GREGARIOUS, GENTLEMANLY, always at ease—often passed Byron Johnson’s light-filled corner office on the twenty-seventh floor overlooking Park Avenue and the urban landscape of midtown office towers. As the lead partner of the firm, Sandy made it a point to walk at least once each week through the five floors the firm occupied in the Seagram Building to make his presence known. On these tours he spoke with the firm’s other partners, the associates, the secretaries, and the messengers. Byron, who was always respectful and friendly to people on the staff, thought Sandy’s tours through the office were a form of politicking, as if, Byron once told a bitter, now retired partner who had been removed from the firm in a campaign Sandy orchestrated, he were running for Mayor of Park Avenue.

Byron was making notes on a yellow legal pad when Sandy knocked on the edge of his open office door. Sandy, his suit jacket off, wore a regimental striped tie. His initials were woven into the cuffs of his crisp white shirt. “Byron,” he said, “when are we going to get you to stop using those yellow legal pads? I thought Nixon was the last man to use them.”