Headwind

THIRTY

Alastair finished the read-back of the air traffic control clearance and turned to Craig with a smile as he made a zooming gesture with his left hand and punched his transmitter button.

“Sigonella tower, Ten-Ten would like immediate takeoff clearance.”

“Damn right!” Craig echoed. “Let’s get the flock out of here.”

“Roger, Ten-Ten,” the young Navy controller in the tower replied. “You’re cleared immediate takeoff… ah, stand by, sir.”

Alastair turned his eyes toward the tower. “Say again, tower?”

Craig had begun rolling forward, but he braked now, stopping the jet short of the white “hold line,” which stood as a visual barrier to the runway beyond.

“What’s going on?” Craig asked.

“I don’t know…” Alastair began, following Craig’s gaze to the right. There were lights moving over the runway surface at the far end, more than five thousand feet distant.

“Cars?” Alastair asked.

Craig nodded. “I guess.”

The tower operator’s voice boomed in their ears, betraying surprise. “Ten-Ten, we, ah, have unauthorized vehicles entering the runway. Hold your position.”

Craig’s left index finger found the transmit button on his control yoke. “What do you mean, tower? What vehicles?”

“We’re unsure, Ten-Ten. They came through a back gate or something. Stand by.”

Headlights were aligning themselves with the reciprocal runway heading and racing toward their position. Two, three, and four more cars fell into formation behind and both pilots could now see red and blue rotating beacons flashing urgently on the top of each car.

“Craig, in the vernacular, ‘Oh shit!’ ”

“Roger on the ‘Oh shit,’ ” Craig replied, glancing at Alastair. “Get him to give us a blanket takeoff clearance.”

Alastair nodded and punched the transmit button simultaneously. “We’ll take the responsibility, tower, but give us a clearance to take off when we can do so safely.”

There was silence for twenty seconds before the tower operator’s voice returned with a defiant tone. “Roger, Ten-Ten, you’re cleared to takeoff at pilot’s discretion and at your own risk. Caution for men and equipment on the runway, and none of them is under the control of the tower.

“Get Captain Swanson on the phone!” Craig ordered, turning to Alastair. “You have the number?”

“Yes.” Alastair yanked a piece of paper from his pocket with one hand while pulling the satellite phone from its cradle with the other. He punched in the digits and waited as they watched the official cars stop one by one in the middle of the runway at two-thousand-foot intervals, effectively making a takeoff attempt suicidal.

Seconds ticked by like minutes as Alastair waited for the Navy commander to answer his GSM phone.

“Captain Swanson? Alastair Chadwick. We’ve got a problem out here.” He quickly explained the dilemma, then turned to Craig.

“He says he just found out. It’s the Carabinieri. They just came barreling onto the field. He says they smashed through a back gate.”

Alastair turned back to the phone. “Yes, sir?” He listened, nodding at intervals. “I understand. We’ll hold on.”

“What?” Craig asked.

“He’s trying to call Rome and find out what’s happening. He says his orders haven’t changed.”

The car closest to the 737 began moving toward them again, accelerating toward the head of the runway, where it turned off and stopped, the headlights pointed at the cockpit. Craig could see the doors of the police car open and several men get out, each of them carrying what appeared to be automatic weapons.

Deputy Foreign Minister Rufolo Rossini had been on his way home when summoned. He raced to his boss’s office to be confronted by the white-hot anger of a blind-sided bureaucrat.

“He misunderstood, Giuseppe!”

Giuseppe Anselmo’s secretary physically leaned around the corner and flagged his attention.

“Sir, I think you should talk to Captain Swanson at Sigonella.”

Anselmo turned with a finger in the air to rebuke her for the interruption, then thought better of it.

“Why?”

“The Carabinieri are overrunning his base.”

“The… what?”

She motioned to the phone and Anselmo launched himself at the instrument as he pointed Rossini to a chair. “Is this your work, too?”

Rossini had turned chalky-white and was having trouble getting a complete sentence out. “I… ah… don’t know how…”

Anselmo motioned him into a chair disgustedly as he yanked up the receiver and listened to Swanson’s complaint.

“I want you to stand by on this line, Captain. This is not being done on our orders. In fact, I just ordered Air Traffic Control to let them depart.”

He replaced the receiver and bellowed around the corner for his secretary to get a connection with the Carabinieri commander nearest to the leased Navy base, then turned his full fury on Rossini.

“What, exactly, did you say to them?”

“You mean the…”

“You know exactly what I mean! Why are they overrunning an American base?”

“All I said was that we… appreciated their help, and were still trying to find a way to detain Mr. Harris and his plane.”

“Wonderful! You said this to a Sicilian commander?”

“Yes.”

“A Sicilian commander who was left red-faced yesterday when told to leave that base? Are you insane?”

The phone rang and Anselmo scooped up the receiver with his right hand in a rapid, fluid arc which ended at his face.

“Is this the commandant? Good. This is the foreign minister of Italy. Listen very, very closely!”

Four armed men wearing uniforms of some sort had arrayed themselves in front of EuroAir 1010, one of them making a lateral gesture across his throat and pointing to each wing.

“He wants us to shut down,” Alastair translated.

“Like hell I’ll shut down!” Craig replied.

“Right. He’s waving an Uzi.”

“Let him wave it. I’m not shutting down.”

Alastair pressed the satellite phone to his ear, waiting for some sign that Captain Swanson had returned to the line.

“Alastair, check the runway diagram. Taxiway Bravo, the next one down. How much runway available from there?”

“Enough,” Alastair answered.

Craig’s left hand hauled the nosewheel steering tiller to the right immediately as he goosed the throttles and sent the four men ahead scrambling backwards. The 737 turned sharply right and reversed course as he guided the nosewheel back to neutral and then left to head back down the taxiway as if they were returning to the ramp. Craig glanced over his left shoulder, straining to see the reaction.

“No shooting, then?” Alastair asked evenly.

“No… no, they’re standing there looking stunned.”

“Craig, they still have three cars on the runway.”

“You’ve heard of the good old American game of ‘chicken’ haven’t you?”

“Dear me, you’re not serious?”

“Am I serious?”

“Never mind!” Alastair said quickly. “Stupid question.”

Craig let the 737 accelerate to thirty knots before braking and turning sharply left onto the second runway entrance. He barreled to the middle of the runway and turned right, aligning the nose of the jetliner with the runway heading. The roof lights of three police cars flashed defiantly in their faces at intervals down the concrete ribbon.

Craig advanced the throttles while holding the brakes, bringing the engines up to full power, the 737 straining and lurching against the locked friction of the tires barely holding the runway surface.

“Flash the landing lights three times, then tell the tower we’re rolling.”

Alastair complied as Craig released the brakes smoothly, feeling the craft leap forward.

In the landing lights, he could see the first car several thousand feet ahead as it sat in the middle of the tarmac pointing toward the moving jet. There were no doors open.

“They’re still there,” Alastair said. “Thirty knots.”

“They’ll move.”

“Fifty, sixty… a thousand feet away from him.”

“I know it.”

Suddenly the car ahead jumped into motion and careened off to the right side of the runway, safely clearing the concrete before they rolled over the spot he had occupied.

“Eighty knots, Craig. Two cars to go.”

“Roger.”

The jet’s acceleration began to slow slightly as aerodynamic drag began working against the smooth passage of the aircraft, but the lights of the next car were steady in the middle of the runway surface two thousand feet ahead, and the onrushing Boeing was covering the distance at a far greater rate.

“Move, damn you!” Alastair said under his breath, as that squad car lurched into gear and moved sharply off the surface to the left.

“The last one’s going as well!” Alastair said, his voice almost gleeful. “Vee one, and rotate!”

Craig nursed the control yoke back, lifting the angle of attack of the wings until the lift exceeded the weight, and the powerful aircraft lifted clear of the runway surface heading west.

“Positive rate, gear up,” Craig ordered.

“Right you are, positive rate, and the bloody gear is coming up. Well done, mate! But how did you know they’d get out of our way?”

“This is Italy. If one of those guys let’s his car get smashed, he’d have to pay for it out of his own pocket. No way would they have left one on the runway.”

Jay Reinhart left the courtroom dazed and struggling to hide it. A dull ache in his middle was protesting his failure to eat or drink anything for hours. He tuned out the discomfort and turned on the rented GSM phone.

It rang almost immediately, with Sherry Lincoln on the other end.

“We just lifted off from Sigonella,” she told him, relating the ninety-minute takeoff delay and her call to the Italian foreign minister that had apparently shaken the air traffic clearance from Rome Control.

“I thought you might already be on approach to Heathrow,” Jay said, holding a finger in his other ear against the noise around him and mouthing the word “wait” to Nigel White and Geoffrey Wallace, who nodded and moved off to confer while he talked.

“No,” she replied, “it’ll be about an hour and forty-five, I’m told. What’s your situation?”

He relayed the result of the hearing, but omitted any mention of Stuart Campbell’s chilling revelation that a clandestine videotape existed that might implicate the President.

“So they issued the British warrant?” Sherry asked.

“Yes, and we can expect them to be at the plane with it when you get here.”

“And now it begins?”

He sighed. “I still see no reasonable alternative, Sherry, but… I think I should speak with the President.”

“Hold on. He’s sitting next to me.”

John Harris’s voice came on the line quickly, and Jay repeated the basics.

“Sir, there’s something I have to ask you.”

“Go ahead, Jay.”

“Does the name Barry Reynolds ring a bell?”

There was a very brief hesitation, and Jay imagined he heard a snort of disgust. “Of course. Reynolds was the CIA covert-operations man who set up the massacre in Peru that’s at the root of this problem. Why? Did his name come up in that courtroom today?”

This is an open line, Jay reminded himself. It could be monitored.

“Yes, it did, John. Stuart Campbell claims he has a clandestine videotape of Reynolds talking with you for thirty minutes in the Oval Office… I can’t get to my notes right now, but the meeting allegedly took place around two weeks before the attack.”

“A what?”

“A tape. A videotape. Supposedly, he was wearing a small camera.”

“In the Oval Office?” John Harris almost roared the question into the phone.

“Yes.”

“My Lord in heaven, Jay!”

“Look, John…” Jay interjected quickly. “I think we’d better save this until I see you in person. I don’t know how secure these phones are.”

“You’re being bluffed, Jay! I can tell you that.”

“Then no such meeting ever took place?”

“I’m… we’ll talk on the ground. You’re right to be cautious about this line. I heard Sherry say under two hours. Right, Sherry? She says ‘Yes.’ ”

“Okay, Mr. President. I’ll be waiting for you. And so will they.”

“Damn!” Harris snarled on the other end, responding, Jay thought, to the imminent arrest.

But it was the Reynolds allegation that had prompted Harris’s response: “I can’t believe Campbell would stoop so low,” the President said, correcting himself instantly. “Strike that. I guess I can believe it, and I suppose I should tell you the reason why.” John Harris’s voice sounded strained, his breathing heavy and audible over the pocket-sized phone even through the din of the Bow Street Court foyer surrounding Jay. “There wasn’t time before now,” Harris added.

“I beg your pardon?” Jay asked, looking at the floor and concentrating on the phone.

“Stuart and I have a bit of a history, Jay, that not even you know about.”

“A history?”

“Something I interfered with that he was trying to accomplish. It goes way back before you joined the firm.”

“I see.”

“I think he’s trying to even the score.”

Two men in animated conversation brushed past, almost knocking the phone from Jay’s hand. One mumbled a “Terribly sorry!” and rushed on, as Jay forced himself to focus on the conversation. “This would be a pretty excessive counterstrike just to get back at you for beating him in a lawsuit!” Jay said.

“It wasn’t a lawsuit,” the President added.

A commotion had broken out toward the main entryway and Jay glanced up to see several well-dressed men sweep in and fan out, questioning bystanders about something. He turned away, trying to concentrate on Harris’s reaction.

“You have my word, Jay,” John Harris said on his end. “This is not as it may appear. Don’t jump to any conclusions.”

“This man Reynolds. Is he a black hat?” Jay asked.

“You mean a bad guy? No.”

“Campbell said Reynolds had a long and distinguished career at Langley.”

“He did, Jay, which is why I made the mistake of trusting him.”

Jay related the news that the Secretary of State and a delegation sent by President Cavanaugh were on the way.

“Good. I more or less expected that,” the President said.

“But I’m worried, John, that they’re planning on taking over the show, and that would be perfectly all right if I could be sure they’re serving only your interests.”

“But you doubt it, as you should.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry, Jay. You are my lawyer, and their help is entirely subject to your discretion.”

“Yes, but should it be? I mean, one error here and you could be on your way to Lima in handcuffs,” Jay said, letting the enormity of the risk settle over him once more. “I’m still very concerned about the intentions of the British Government. I haven’t heard back from the Prime Minister’s office.”

“Mr. Reinhart?” A male voice broke through his concentration, and he looked up to see one of the newcomers standing in front of him. He covered the mouthpiece of the GSM phone. “Just… just a moment.”

“Okay,” the man replied, his accent clearly American.

“John? I’d better go,” Jay said into the tiny handset. “I’m headed… back to the hotel for now. No, wait… I’m going straight to Heathrow on second thought. Do you know where at Heathrow the aircraft is going to be?”

“The general aviation facility by Terminal 4. Metro Business Aviation, I think,” Harris said, passing the address as relayed by Craig Dayton. Jay scribbled it down before ringing off and turning to the man who’d called his name.

“Sorry about that,” Jay said.

“No problem, Mr. Reinhart. The Secretary of State has arrived and would like to speak with you at his hotel. We have a car waiting.”

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Jay said, motioning Nigel White and Geoffrey Wallace over to thank them and arrange a meeting later in the evening.

“You realize,” Geoffrey said, “that if they arrest him today, Campbell will try, and probably succeed, in setting the committal hearing for sometime tomorrow. That’s assuming the home secretary signs the appropriate instruments and Peru has sent the formal request.”

“That would be back here?”

“Yes. Committal hearings are only handled at Bow Street.”

“But we simply file for habeas corpus with the… ah…”

“Divisional Court. Yes, but they might expedite that, as well.”

“Have you ever heard of a contested extradition happening within, say, a couple of months?”

Geoffrey shook his head no. “But keep this in mind, Jay. It all depends on the government. If they want to grease the skids, so to speak, and if the Divisional Court refuses to assign the matter for review by the House of Lords, it could happen very fast.”

“There’s still a last appeal, though.”

“You don’t want to get into that territory. Look, probably we’ll have a minimum of months, but I’m simply answering the question you asked earlier today. Could it be pushed? Yes, it could.”

“This process is beginning to sound more risky than I envisioned,” Jay said quietly.

“It is,” Nigel White replied, “especially if Her Majesty’s Government makes the decision to get involved forcefully. Now, your man is no bloody Pinochet, so it’s unlikely they would, yet…”

“Yet, you’re not sure?”

“I’ve heard disturbing things about this Prime Minister’s fury over the way Pinochet was afforded such kid glove care in Britain.”

“Do you think I ought to keep him out of the country?”

Wallace shook his head. “I’m not saying that. I just need to warn you that even if the underlying charges are hogwash, getting this warrant off his back is not a… what do you call it in the States? A ‘slam duck’?”

“What?” Jay said, shifting his eyes from Nigel White to Geoffrey Wallace. “Oh. No, that’s ‘slam dunk,’ as in basketball. Not duck.”

“Of course,” Geoffrey replied.

“Well, dead duck would be correct if they hand your client over to Peru,” Nigel joked, chuckling for a second before realizing the humor had fallen very flat. He cleared his throat and continued. “I will keep my calendar clear for you tomorrow.”

Jay looked in the direction of the door, where the men were waiting for him, then back at Nigel and Geoffrey. “Okay. I’ll call you later this evening after I’ve heard from the Prime Minister’s office.”

It took fifteen minutes of silence to reach the Secretary’s hotel. The other men in the car were obviously functionaries, Jay realized, after climbing in the car and trying to squeeze even the most rudimentary information from them.

The driver stopped at a side entrance, where a hotel security officer was waiting to usher Jay up a flight of stairs to a service elevator, and then to the fifteenth-floor suite where the delegation was waiting.

Jay introduced himself to the Secretary of State and the Assistant Attorney General he’d sparred with by phone from Laramie, then joined them at an ornate conference table.

An aide to the Secretary ran through a quick briefing: the British Government would not want to ruffle American feathers; ex parte contact with the Prime Minister’s office by anyone not a professional diplomat was highly inadvisable; and arrangements were already being made to rent a plush private residence for John Harris’s extended stay under house arrest.

“Mr. Secretary,” Jay replied, “I was promised a call from Deputy Prime Minister Sheffield. I still want to take that call.”

Secretary of State Joseph Byer nodded and raised his hand, palm up. “Mr. Reinhart… or may I call you Jay?”

“Certainly,” Jay replied.

“Very well, Jay, we’ve already indicated to Deputy Prime Minister Sheffield that we’re here to serve as the diplomatic conduit now, so I wouldn’t worry about not hearing from him. In fact, that’s why I wanted to meet with you, to put you personally in the hands of Mr. McLaughlin here…”

“I want to receive that promised call, Mr. Secretary.”

Byer smiled. “I know you do, Jay. Any good attorney would want to keep a death grip on this thing, but the current President of the United States did not ask me to come over here to stand on the sidelines. He knows, as does President Harris, how important it is to have direct government-to-government diplomatic understandings about these things, and having you in the loop actually muddies the waters.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, Jay, meaning that Sheffield will tell you one thing in diplomatic doublespeak and will tell me – or more properly the PM himself will tell me – something entirely different. He’ll tell me the truth as Britain’s closest ally. This is statecraft, Jay. I know you’re an experienced international lawyer, but this arena is very, very different from what you’re trained to navigate.”

“What do you propose, Mr. Secretary? President Harris is on his way inbound as we speak and will undoubtedly be met at Heathrow in an hour by police officers with the warrant.”

“We expect that.”

Jay warned himself to cap the rising anger in his gut at the paternalistic treatment. I need their help, even if this guy’s a sanctimonious windbag!

“Okay, but what about tomorrow, when we know Stuart Campbell will try to get what’s known as a committal hearing so he can press for rapid extradition? I’ll be there to fight that request and appeal it immediately if it goes against us, but I need desperately to know the mind of the PM. Have you any confirmed word from them?”

Byer glanced at two of his people as if trying to restrain himself from a sarcastic remark, then looked back at Jay. “We know this government’s mind already, Jay. They’ll give good and proper lip service to the need to follow international law and procedure, they’ll let the courts rule that President Harris should be extradited, and they’ll make it quietly known to the court that they expect Harris to be given leave to appeal, knowing that the appeal hearing will be set for a month of Sundays from now. After that, the British will do what the British did in the Pinochet case: delay, delay, and delay some more while they write careful, learned opinions and massage the diplomatic problems behind the scenes, and release pontificating statements about law and treaty responsibilities. In other words, this is the start of a long, long process, which will eventually end with President Harris being allowed to return to the United States. There’s really no cause for any of us to get too exercised.”

“Have you the word of the Prime Minister of England on that sequence, Mr. Secretary?”

“Now, look, in diplomatic affairs…”

“No, dammit!” Jay cut him off. “As President Harris’s attorney, I’m asking you a direct question with very grave legal import. With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, do you have the direct personal assurance of the Prime Minister of England that the scenario you’ve outlined is lock-down valid?”

Byer sat back and sighed disgustedly. “That’s not the way it’s done, Jay.”

“Then we have a major problem.”

“We have no problem at all, as far as I can see.”

“First of all, Mr. Secretary, you and the rest of the folks in this room are not going to shove me aside here, statecraft or no statecraft. I’ll certainly bow to and utilize your superior office and skills and support on understanding the equation, but I have a major decision to help John Harris make right now, and that’s whether to continue to a landing in the U.K., or go somewhere else.”

“That would be foolish…” Byer began.

“What would be foolish? Going somewhere else, or landing here?”

“Going anywhere else except the U.S., which that aircraft can’t reach. This is the friendliest forum Harris could possibly find, Jay. And for the record, we’re not trying to, as you put it, shove you aside. We simply have a better cross-section of talent to help you, and you should be guided by that. No, as Alex McLaughlin told you, we can’t be Harris’s primary counsel, but we can essentially handle this from the sidelines.”

“I will handle this with your help. You will not handle this for me or for the President.”

“Poor choice of words on my part, Jay,” the Secretary said, trying to soften his stance. “Of course you’re the President’s lawyer. We respect that.”

“Nevertheless you’ve made the decision without consulting me or him that the President should come here?”

“Well, Jay, it appears you already made that decision before we arrived. We’re just advising you to stick with it.”

Jay rose from the table. “Excuse me a minute, gentlemen.” He walked to a far corner of the room and took out the piece of paper with the EuroAir cockpit satellite phone number and punched it into the GSM phone.

It took several minutes to get the President to the cockpit, and Jay could feel the contempt radiating from the conference table behind like a wave of infrared heat, felt but not seen.

Harris came on the line and Jay quickly explained what was happening.

“Very well, Jay,” the President said. “Hand the phone to Joe Byer, will you please? Then come back on the line.”

“Yes, sir.” Jay walked back across the room and explained the President’s request, handing the GSM phone to the Secretary of State, who put it to his ear and tried unsuccessfully to get a complete sentence out.

“Hello, Mr. Pres… yes, I… we’re… President Cavanaugh is very concerned about… yes. I realize that. Yes, sir, I’m fully aware of that.” Byer’s face was turning beet-red as he shifted the phone to his other ear and nodded. “Mr. President, you’re talking to the Secretary of State of… yes, sir. I understand. Yes.”

Byer cast an angry glance at one of his aides before looking back at the table.

“Yes, sir. I will.” He handed the phone back to Jay.

“Jay? You there?” President Harris asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Your ear is the only one near this phone?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I just read Byer the riot and sedition act and verbally spanked him. He’s mad and he’s embarrassed, so treat him like overheated nitroglycerine. Don’t provoke. He’s been told that you are lead counsel and that whatever you say is the law regarding my defense. And he’s been told to tell Mr. Sheffield to call you immediately.”

“Very well, Mr. President.”

“We’re forty minutes out, Jay. You’d better head for the airport.”

Jay folded the phone and returned to the table, standing across from Joe Byer.

“Mr. Secretary, I’ve got a difficult task ahead of me, and I’m grateful for the support of everyone here. But I need to head for Heathrow now, and I need…”

“To hear from Sheffield. I know!” Byer interrupted, shifting his expression to one of resigned friendliness as he got to his feet. “Give me five minutes to reach him, Jay, and I’ll join you in the car.”

Jay hesitated, watching his eyes, which remained steady and engaged. The thought of leaving someone as crafty and arrogant as Byer to speak with the Deputy Prime Minister in private rang alarms in his head, but a Secretary of State could only be pushed so far.

And for that matter, the same limits applied to Sheffield.

Whatever else he might know, Jay thought, he’s nuts if he thinks he can dictate anything to the British.