Permanent Record(92)
Laura informed me of Sarah’s presence in Hong Kong only a day or so before she communicated with me on an encrypted channel, which itself was only a day or two before I actually met her in person—and if I’m somewhat loose on my dates here, you’ll have to forgive me: one frenetic day bled into the next. Sarah had been a whirlwind, apparently, since the moment of her landing in Hong Kong. Though she wasn’t a lawyer, she had deep expertise when it came to what I’ll call the interpersonal or subofficial nuances of avoiding extradition. She met with local Hong Kong human rights attorneys to seek independent opinions, and I was deeply impressed by both her pace and her circumspection. Her connections through WikiLeaks and the extraordinary courage of the Ecuadorean consul in London, Fidel Narváez, together produced a laissez-passer in my name. This laissez-passer, which was meant to get me to Ecuador, had been issued by the consul on an emergency basis, since we didn’t have time for his home government to formally approve it. The moment it was in hand, Sarah hired a van to take us to the airport.
That’s how I met her—in motion. I’d like to say that I started off our acquaintance by offering my thanks, but instead the first thing I said was: “When was the last time you slept?” Sarah looked just as ragged and disheveled as I did. She stared out the window, as if trying to recall the answer, but then just shook her head: “I don’t know.”
We were both developing colds and our careful conversation was punctuated by sneezes and coughs. By her own account, she was motivated to support me out of loyalty to her conscience more than to the ideological demands of her employer. Certainly her politics seemed shaped less by Assange’s feral opposition to central power than by her own conviction that too much of what passed for contemporary journalism served government interests rather than challenged them. As we hurtled to the airport, as we checked in, as we cleared passport control for the first of what should have been three flights, I kept waiting for her to ask me for something—anything, even just for me to make a statement on Assange’s, or the organization’s, behalf. But she never did, although she did cheerfully share her opinion that I was a fool for trusting media conglomerates to fairly guard the gate between the public and the truth. For that instance of straight talk, and for many others, I’ll always admire Sarah’s honesty.
We were traveling to Quito, Ecuador, via Moscow via Havana via Caracas for a simple reason: it was the only safe route available. There were no direct flights to Quito from Hong Kong, and all of the other connecting flights traveled through US airspace. While I was concerned about the massive layover in Russia—we’d have almost twenty hours before the Havana flight departed—my primary fear was actually the next leg of the journey, because traveling from Russia to Cuba meant passing through NATO airspace. I didn’t particularly relish flying over a country like Poland, which during my lifetime has done everything to please the US government, including hosting CIA black sites where my former IC colleagues subjected prisoners to “enhanced interrogations,” another Bush-era euphemism for “torture.”
I wore my hat down over my eyes to avoid being recognized, and Sarah did the seeing for me. She took my arm and led me to the gate, where we waited until boarding. This was the last moment for her to back out, and I told her so. “You don’t have to do this,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Protect me like this.”
Sarah stiffened. “Let’s get one thing clear,” she said as we boarded, “I’m not protecting you. No one can protect you. What I’m here for is to make it harder for anyone to interfere. To make sure everyone’s on their best behavior.”
“So you’re my witness,” I said.
She gave a slight wry smile. “Someone has to be the last person to ever see you alive. It might as well be me.”
Though the three points where I’d thought we were most likely to get stopped were now behind us (check-in, passport control, and the gate), I didn’t feel safe on the plane. I didn’t want to get complacent. I took the window seat and Sarah sat next to me, to screen me from the other passengers across the row. After what felt like an eternity, the cabin doors were shut, the skybridge pulled away, and finally, we were moving. But just before the plane rolled from the tarmac onto the runway, it halted sharply. I was nervous. Pressing the brim of my hat up against the glass, I strained to catch the sound of sirens or the flashing of blue lights. It felt like I was playing the waiting game all over again—it was a wait that wouldn’t end. Until, suddenly, the plane rolled into motion again and took a turn, and I realized that we were just far back in the line for takeoff.
My spirits rose with the wheels, but it was hard to believe I was out of the fire. Once we were airborne, I loosened my grip from my thighs and felt an urge to take my lucky Rubik’s Cube out of my bag. But I knew I couldn’t, because nothing would make me more conspicuous. Instead, I sat back, pulled my hat down again, and kept my half-open eyes on the map on the seatback screen just in front of me, tracking the pixelated route across China, Mongolia, and Russia—none of which would be especially amenable to doing any favors for the US State Department. However, there was no predicting what the Russian government would do once we landed, beyond hauling us into an inspection so they could search through my blank laptops and empty bag. What I hoped might spare us any more invasive treatment was that the world was watching and my lawyers and WikiLeaks’ lawyers were aware of our itinerary.