Headwind

ELEVEN

“So what are we going to tell them?” Alastair Chadwick asked as the 737 climbed through fifteen thousand feet.

“Who?” Craig Dayton asked, his concentration elsewhere.

“The passengers. Our passengers. The ones who paid money of one sort or another to have their carcasses carted to the eternal city of Rome. Sicily is not an acceptable substitute, you know. They shan’t be fooled.”

Craig glanced at the copilot and shook his head. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I realize,” Alastair answered, “that in America the airline industry shrinks from this radical idea, but perhaps we should tell them the truth.”

“That is a novel idea,” Craig agreed.

“I thought so.”

“You do it.”

“Not bloody well likely, Captain,” Chadwick said, grinning.

Craig Dayton took a deep breath and pulled the PA microphone from its holder.

In the first-class cabin President Harris stood in the aisle greeting the four male passengers who had been waiting to meet him. All American veterans of World War II, they told him proudly, and all on a tour of Europe that would end with the dedication of a new D-Day War Memorial. The first one, a retired Army colonel, had just begun a description of the tour when the click of the PA grabbed their attention.

Folks, this is your captain. I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say. Now, first, there is nothing wrong with this aircraft… there is no safety problem. There is, however, a problem with our trying to land in Rome. The problem is… diplomatic and legal. We have aboard our aircraft, as some of you know, a former President of the United States, President John Harris. It is our responsibility as an airline, and mine as captain, to keep all of you safe, and that includes a former head of state. I have received credible information that there is a very serious threat to the personal safety of President Harris if we land at Rome, and therefore – despite the severe inconvenience to some of you who need to be in Rome on schedule – we are flying south to a safe location near Catania, Sicily, an air base called Sigonella. Now, when we get on the ground at Sigonella, we will be making arrangements to get you either back to Rome or to your ultimate destination. I am truly sorry for this necessity, but I have no choice.

The retired colonel had been looking in the direction of the overhead speakers. His eyes now latched on the President. “Sir, what, may I ask, was the threat?”

The others crowded in to hear the answer over the repeat of the announcement in French and German.

In the cockpit, the call chime started ringing as Craig replaced the PA microphone in its holder.

“Captain? This is Ursula in the back. Can you come back here? There is much anger.”

“What do you mean, anger?” he asked.

“Some passengers are very angry with you.”

“Are they in the aisles?”

“No. They are sitting, but they are talking loudly and won’t calm down.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Craig clicked off the interphone and pulled the PA microphone back to his face.

This is the captain again. I know many of you are very angry at me for this decision, but you must stay in your seats and accept my explanation for now. When we get on the ground, I’ll come back there and talk to anyone who’d like to discuss the matter, but not now! Do NOT give my flight attendants a hard time. They didn’t make the decision. I did.

Once again he translated the words as closely as possible before replacing the mike and turning to Alastair. “I may have to go back.”

Alastair nodded, checking the aeronautical map against the flight computer readout.

“We’ve two hundred forty miles to go, Craig. About a half hour. Are we planning to chat up Sigonella in advance, by the way, or just drop in out of the blue and violate some more regulations?”

“Best to say nothing, I think, until we’re almost overhead. I don’t want some military commander having an opportunity to tell us we can’t land.”

“We’ll declare an emergency then?” Alastair asked.

“What’s to declare?” Craig replied, pushing his seat back and grinning. “We are an emergency.”

Jillian opened the cockpit door at the same moment. “Craig, you’d better come on back. Ursula and Elle say it’s getting ugly.”

He swung his legs around the center console and pulled himself up. “How so?”

“Some people in the back are demanding to talk to you and are cursing at us.”

“What nationality?” Craig asked.

“Does it matter?” Jillian replied, looking alarmed.

Craig stopped and cocked his head.

“If I’m going to speak to them, it would help if I knew what language.”

“Oh. Of course. They’re grumbling in two or three languages.”

He shook his head as he followed her out of the cockpit.

Three yellow legal pads were spread across the tile counter, the words and symbols on their pages an impressionist portrait-in-progress of the intense activity in their owner’s mind.

Jay took a quick sip of orange juice and suppressed his desire to make more coffee as he concentrated on the first pad, labeled “logistics.” The now-stale aroma of fried bacon and overheated hollandaise sauce still hung in the air, but he was oblivious to it.

The question “Where do I go?” was written carefully across the top, along with the names of London, Frankfurt, Geneva, and Stockholm. Paris had been written in and crossed out. So had Rome. The names of the airlines flying to the Continent from the Denver airport followed, along with the average flying times and several airline reservation numbers. There would also be the problem of getting to Denver. Driving normally took two hours, but with a late season snowstorm slicking the roads and the pass on U.S. 287 into Colorado, it could take much, much longer.

The second pad contained the evolving roadmap of the legal problem, beginning with an annotated plea to himself for research on the codes of civil procedures that guide Italian, French, Swiss, and Swedish courts. Most of what he needed could be downloaded from one of the legal reporting services, Lexus/Nexus or WestLaw, but time was the problem. A quickly extracted printout of the Treaty Against Torture downloaded from the United Nations web site was strewn across the counter just beyond the legal pads, the black and white pages sporting red ink from his underlining.

He picked up the phone and punched in one of the numbers he’d been given by Sherry Lincoln. The third pad was filled with names and numbers, including that of Rudolph Baker, Assistant Secretary of State, who had just come on the line, his tone conveying approximately the same level of caution normally reserved for communist leaders and Iraqi foreign ministers.

“Mr. Reinhart, I’ve just been briefed by Alex McLaughlin at the Justice Department, and I must say I’m flabbergasted at your attitude. Would you care to explain to me why you’re refusing to tell the U.S. government the destination of President Harris’s aircraft?”

“You have no need to know, sir,” Jay replied, “until the President’s aircraft has landed. There are no advance preparations necessary, and in fact, advance notice could be detrimental if the destination leaked. Do I need to remind you that people are chasing this man with an international warrant?”

“Hardly, but you’re too late in any event. We already know he’s headed to Malta. We’re contacting Maltese authorities as we speak.”

Jay chuckled out loud. “If you’re convinced it’s Malta, then by all means, go right ahead. Meanwhile, what I need to know is whether the Air Force has any long-range transport aircraft in the mid-Mediterranean area. Something that could drop in, get the President out, and make it nonstop back to the U.S. mainland?”

“What do you mean, ‘If I’m convinced’?” Baker asked suddenly. “Is he going to Malta or not?”

“I’m not playing games, Secretary Baker, but you’re going to have to trust me on this for about an hour, for his good as well as for your own plausible deniability.”

“I see. That response essentially means that you do believe he’s going somewhere else. Let me tell you something, Mr. Reinhart. You’re way out of your league! You’re going to mess around with this like some dilettante and get Harris in real jeopardy.”

“That’s the last thing I’m going to do.”

“Well, if you’ve put him up to going to Morocco, you’re making a huge mistake. Same thing with any attempt to get to Gibraltar, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, or just about anywhere else within range. The legal complications in any of those nations will make Italy seem like Vermont by contrast, and you have no idea what you’re doing diplomatically.”

“Relax, Mr. Baker. He’s not going to any of those countries, and if I weren’t aware that I’m an amateur at international diplomacy, I wouldn’t have called you in the first place. I do need your help, but the immediate question is whether we can get the President evacuated by the Air Force or Navy when he lands.”

“What do you mean, evacuated? How can I answer that if I don’t know what sovereign state he’s to be evacuated from?”

“All right, let’s assume for the sake of argument that we’ve managed to get past whatever diplomatic problems might arise from landing him where he’s going to land…”

A short, derisive laugh on the other end cut him off. “Find me a place on this planet, Mr. Reinhart… other than the U.S., that is… where the diplomatic aspects are not a problem. We’re talking about an international warrant for his arrest and prosecution, for heaven’s sake. Wherever he lands, someone’s going to be waiting with a copy of that warrant and he will be arrested and detained. Give up the idea that you can protect him from being arrested. The real fight will be the extradition attempt, and that will require a galaxy of experienced attorneys and deep research and…”

“Sir, that’s enough!” Jay snapped. “Like it or not, I’m his lawyer. For the record, though, I tried to turn him down and he wouldn’t let me, so kindly drop the lectures. You can snarl at the President himself later for his employment indiscretion, but for now, would you please focus on the most important question we’ve got before us? We are not going to let him get arrested, because at that point we’ve truly lost control. Now. Can the Air Force or Navy pick him up or not?”

At last there was silence on the other end as Baker thought through the question. “I don’t know. That’s a question the Pentagon must answer first, and then we’d have to get to the diplomatic and political complications. It might well be that he’ll end up in a country that won’t permit such a rescue. I mean, we’re talking about sovereign states. It could be considered an act of aggression for the Air Force to pop in and extricate a former president. I will find out about the military availability, however.”

“Good.”

“But what you need to understand, Mr. Reinhart, is that only President Cavanaugh can approve that sort of rescue.”

“I realize that, but given the threat to any ex-president ever traveling abroad again and the clear consequences of not acting, how on earth could he refuse?”

There was no answer.

The summoned members of the government had first been ushered into the Cabinet Room, but at the President’s relayed request, they were escorted to the Oval Office by the Deputy Chief of Staff. Under the watchful eye of the President’s secretary, Alex McLaughlin from Justice, Rudy Baker from State, the Deputy Director of the CIA, the National Security Advisor, and an Air Force lieutenant general had milled about for the previous ten minutes before the President swept into the room and pulled up a chair in front of his desk.

“Sit, everyone. Where are we on President Harris’s dilemma?”

The Deputy Director of the CIA started to respond, but the President stopped him.

“First, I should tell you I know he’s headed to Malta, and that somehow the commercial aircrew he’s flying with has decided to be his protector, which is rather strange for a German airline.”

“Not strange at all, sir,” the general interjected. “We’ve got an Air Force reserve officer in the captain’s seat of that airliner. He’s not under our orders or anything, but he’s definitely one of ours. An expatriate commercial pilot who lives in Frankfurt.”

“Really?” the President responded. “That’s fortunate.”

“Mr. President,” Rudy Baker interjected, “I have reason to believe Malta may not be the destination.” He described his conversation with Jay Reinhart.

“When was that call, Rudy?” the President asked.

“Just before we left the Cabinet Room, sir. About twenty-five minutes ago.”

The President nodded and raised his hand for silence. “Okay, and what the heck is this about some defrocked Texas judge playing attorney for Harris? What’s up with that?”

Alex McLaughlin began relating Reinhart’s history, but the President cut him off. “Okay, okay. I get the picture. For some unknowable reason, Harris has hired a maverick who’s a walking liability, which means we have to pick up the slack. Right?”

“No, sir,” McLaughlin said, detailing the reasons the Justice Department had to remain in the background.

Rudy Baker repeated Reinhart’s request for Air Force or Navy assistance, while the CIA Deputy Director chimed in with an assessment of the places Harris could land, and the National Security Advisor briefed them on the possible consequences for U.S. foreign policy of a long battle to extradite Harris to Peru.

“All right,” President Cavanaugh said at last. “We obviously can’t solidify an option list until he lands somewhere.”

They all nodded.

“Very well. General, you said he couldn’t stay airborne more than two hours, so let’s meet again in two hours.” He looked at the Deputy Chief of Staff. “Can we do that?”

“Yes, sir. We’ll move the schedule.”

“And the press isn’t onto this yet?”

“Not really, sir. The wires are reporting a possible hijacking, but no one’s connected it with Harris as yet.”

“Amazing. Usually we don’t know about it until CNN’s got live pictures and Peter Jennings is doing a special report from New York.”

The group fanned out of the Oval Office, the Air Force general moving rapidly into an adjacent room to use a secure phone. He punched in the appropriate numbers and drummed his fingers on the table waiting for a voice on the other end.

“Joe? I’m going down to the Situation Room in a minute. Get the AMC command post at Scott on a secure line and get the duty controller to identify every available C-17, C-5, or C-141, or even one of the Andrews Gulfstreams, within five hundred miles of Italy that we could use for a mid-Med evacuation nonstop to the CONUS over the next few hours. ID the bird and the crew, in flight if possible, and stand by to order them in. We’ll need inflight refueling, too, so they better scare up a few tankers in the plan.”

He listened to the reply and nodded, his eyes on the door to make sure there were no other ears around.

“I want the jump on this, Joe. The way I see it, the President’s only option is to snatch Harris out of there, but he also heard the word ‘Navy’ on the list of possibilities a few minutes ago and we’ve got to make sure the swabbies don’t steal this one. They’d just love to chopper him out to some carrier and fly in the media to interview him all the way to Norfolk.”

The general listened for a bit, nodding at intervals.

“Just get the plan cocked and ready, okay? The second we find where Harris is, I want an Air Force bird turning on final to the same runway. I want to hand the President an easy solution already in place.”