Headwind

FORTY-TWO

Nearly a minute of empty videotape passed before an image flashed on the screen. The picture was black-and-white and grainy, and the tiny portable camera was obviously being worn on Reynolds’s clothing, producing a bouncing, lurching picture. It was mostly a blur as Reynolds walked in, but there were some items and features in the background that looked fleetingly familiar before the picture steadied. Reynolds had seated himself on one of the facing couches, pointing his hidden camera toward the east door, which was being closed by an unseen hand.

Suddenly the picture shifted to take in the figure of a man leaning back against the front of the presidential desk in what was now unmistakably the Oval Office, bright light streaming in the windows behind him.

The only sound so far had been cloth scratching against a microphone, muffled voices, and the noise of footsteps and cushions as Reynolds sat.

A familiar voice rang out as the picture steadied on the President’s legs.

“Okay, Barry, where are we? Are we set?”

Jay glanced at Sherry in mild alarm, and she nodded. The tone, the accent, and the meter were all too familiar. John Harris’s voice was very distinctive, though some of the words were distant and hard to understand.

“Well, sir,” a voice closer to the microphone and correspondingly louder began, “we’re ready to go, but it’s… costly.”

“How much… want?” was the reply, broken by the sound of cloth scraping the microphone again.

“You really want to know, Mr. President?”

“This…” More scraping. “never happened, Barry, so I want to know now, since officially I never will.”

“Very well, sir. They want a million, U.S.”

The first of the reply was lost. “… bargain, if they can do the job.”

“Yes, Mr. President, they can do it. But I have to warn you about something.”

“Now…” The voice faded, then came back clearly. “… different matter. Do I want to know whatever you’re going to warn me about? Even off the record?”

There was a hesitation before Reynolds spoke again.

“Sir, I need to tell you, because I don’t want to trigger this thing unless I know you understand the possibilities and are ready to accept them. I don’t want to decide this myself. And, in fact, I’m strongly recommending against this operation.”

The President sighed and crossed his arms, saying, “Very well. Go ahead.”

“There are likely to be sixty or seventy people in that factory and in the compound, and some of them will be civilian.”

“The workers?” the President asked.

“Yes, sir. If we commission this so-called army we’re ready to hire – these mercenaries who are ex-Shining Path, ex-Peruvian Army, and a real ragtag bunch – if we commission them, they’ll go in with the intention to leave no one alive, regardless of who they find. They won’t do it without that understanding.”

“As far as… concerned, Barry, anyone in that factory is forfeit, regardless. They’re killing Americans with… poison they make…” The voice faded to incoherence again.

“Yes, sir. But it will almost certainly be a bloodbath, and the government is certain to be outraged, especially if they can prove the Company was behind it. That’s why I’d say we shouldn’t do it. Too much risk. I need to make sure you understand.”

“I understand, Barry.”

“These are real cutthroats, sir, as I say, on a level you may not be ready to believe really exists in this world. These vermin would just as soon dismember you alive for the fun of it as to decide to have dinner. They’re the closest thing to pure two-footed animals I think I’ve ever met, and… frankly… we can be certain that they’re going to enjoy this job.”

The President asked something in a muffled voice.

“Meaning torture,” Reynolds replied. “We’re authorizing torture. They’ll have themselves a playground with a license to kill, and they’ll very likely kill slowly and painfully for the fun of it.”

Reynolds hesitated, then got to his feet and walked back toward the fireplace before turning, the camera catching the President in full view at the other end of the office.

“Sir, these guys would frighten the SS in Nazi Germany. And I need you to know that the Peruvian peasants working there may well have family members with them.”

“Family…” The President’s voice was too far away from the microphone to be heard.

“Could be,” Reynolds replied to the unheard question. “I can’t guarantee who’ll be there. But if they’re there, they’ll be eliminated.”

There was more incoherent comment from the President, followed by the word “recommendation.”

“Depends on what you want to accomplish, sir,” Reynolds replied. “If you want to shut down that factory once and for all, devastate the leadership, frighten away anyone else who would set up such a large drug-making facility, and massively impact the heroin flow all at once, then there’s probably no other way to get it done. But there will be a terrible cost in lives.”

The President pushed away from his desk and disappeared out of the frame. Reynolds apparently sat back down on the couch and swiveled toward the desk again, raising the level of the frame and revealing the chief executive with his back to the camera standing at the window overlooking the Rose Garden.

The frame lowered once more as the President turned, his head just out of the shot at the top as he turned toward Reynolds. “… no choice,” he said, the words barely understandable. “You’ve… green light. But you never told me this, and…” The words faded momentarily. “Don’t try to limit or warn them in any way. Don’t tell them ‘no torture,’ or you’ll poison our ability to say we never knew.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Now. Bring… over here and show me the details.”

The rest of the tape was a recitation of the logistics of the plan, a handshake, and Reynolds’s exit through the east door.

The screen had been black for many seconds before Jay reached out and stopped the videocassette player. He sat quietly for nearly a minute before drawing a deep breath and shaking his head.

“Oh my God.”

Sherry Lincoln sat stunned and immobile in her chair, her eyes still on the darkened screen. Jay heard her swallow hard, but she said nothing as he got to his feet and leaned on the television.

“Sherry… I cannot believe what I just heard.”

“Nor can I,” she said quietly.

“That was… to the best of my knowledge… John Harris’s voice,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know Reynolds or his voice, but I spent years around John, and…”

“It’s him, Jay. No one else. I recognize the phraseology, the meter, everything.”

Jay sat again, shaking his head, his hands out in a helpless gesture. “I… have no way to fight this tomorrow, except, maybe, just try to harp on the fact that you can fake tapes.”

“It’s not a fake,” Sherry said.

Jay turned to her. “You saw something or heard something that convinced you?”

She looked up at him, true pain filling her eyes. “I know what the Oval looks like. I never saw his face closely enough, but that was his voice, and everything else is exactly right, and after all, there’s only one damn Oval Office!” A hint of anger was creeping into her voice, but Jay spoke the words.

“Then… he lied to us, Sherry.”

“He did that, all right.”

“I… would never, ever have believed… but there it is. And there was one moment you could see his face when Reynolds was at the other end.”

“I hadn’t noticed that,” she said. “I just know his voice.”

They sat in stunned silence for a few minutes before Sherry got to her feet.

“What are you thinking?” Jay asked as she picked up the phone and punched in a few numbers.

“I’m calling him. I want him up here. I want an explanation, although I can’t see how one could exist.”

Her words to the President were short and to the point, undoubtedly leaving him puzzled. She replaced the receiver and turned to Jay with tears glistening in her eyes.

“He’ll be up in ten minutes, as soon as he gets dressed,” she said, sitting again. “What do we do, Jay? I assume they’ll make mincemeat of him when this is shown tomorrow.”

“Yes. I can’t defend this. It clearly establishes sufficient cause.”

“So what do we do? I think he’s finished in Ireland.”

Jay sighed again and reached for the phone. “There’s only one option left. We’ve got to risk a direct flight to Maine.”

The fact that Craig Dayton and lead flight attendant Jillian Walz had been lovers for the past year was standard knowledge at EuroAir, but their practiced discretion on the road usually obscured the liaison, even when Craig answered the room phone with a husky, distracted voice at what would otherwise be the mid-evening hour.

Jay Reinhart was on the other end, his voice and demeanor very grave, and they kept the conversation brief.

Craig replaced the receiver after an economy of words and snuggled back against Jillian in the spoon position, stroking her silken hair as he related the call.

She turned her head toward him slightly. “You sure this flight is safe, Craig?”

“Not a problem, honey. Alastair and I’ve looked at it very carefully, and what we’ll do, as I just told him, is we’ll go to the halfway point and look at the winds, and if there’s any question that we’re getting too close on projected reserve fuel at Presque Isle, we’ll turn around and come back.”

“I wish I could release my two girls.”

He shook his head slightly. “Can’t do it and be legal unless we removed a lot of seats. If we have that many seats, we have to have three of you.”

“I know, I know.”

“You want to go home?”

“I want you to stay employed, and I’m very afraid. You’re about to go pressing the rules again.”

“I actually think I’ve got them buffaloed in Frankfurt, Jill.”

“There’ll be no fuel slips from Iceland or Canada. They’ll know you went direct.”

“They’ll think the U.S. government told me to do so. Anyway, John Harris is still free because of what we’ve done, and I’m not abandoning him now.”

“Rats,” she said. “So what time?”

“Wheels up at seven A.M., babe. That means we should be out of here no later than four-thirty.”

His hand began running lightly along her thigh and she turned in his arms and held his face. “We have to sleep fast, Craig.”

“Aw…” he whined.

“No more tonight!” she replied.

“What if I beg real nice?”

“No. You already did that,” Jillian said. “Begging only works once… every few hours.”

She kissed him. “Call Alastair. Set the alarm. Sleep. In that order!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Twenty-five minutes after the call to Craig Dayton, Jay Reinhart stood in silence beside a seated John Harris and turned off the videocassette player after showing the same sequence.

“My God in heaven,” the President managed.

“I think those were roughly my words, John. What’s going on here?”

Sherry was sitting in stony silence in the corner, watching John Harris as he slowly shook his head. “Jay…” He turned toward her. “Sherry… I want you to listen to me very closely. I have either suffered a major mental breakdown and lost a substantial portion of my memory and my grip on reality, or… what you’ve just shown me is a flat-out fake.”

“John, that’s your voice!” Jay said more sharply than he’d intended.

“And that’s the Oval, sir,” Sherry added.

John Harris licked his lips, his eyes on the dark screen. “I know what we’ve just seen looks like the real thing, but I… did… NOT… speak those words. I did not hear those words from Reynolds. I’m not even sure I ever saw my face on there.”

“It’s there, John, in one shot,” Jay said quietly.

The President looked up at him, his face betraying pain. “You don’t believe me, do you, Jay?”

“I honestly don’t know what to believe, John. I want to believe you, and I want to believe this is a fake, but… and maybe I do, personally, but I’m dead in the morning in court with this. Campbell will play this and even a U.S. judge would have to find a prima facie case against you.”

“There will be time to fight this, Jay,” Harris said. “We’ll need to get expert analysis and show how it was fabricated. I don’t know precisely where I was in the office… I mean, the visual image is probably real, but somehow they’ve faked the voices. After all, there are people out there who do very good imitations of presidents.”

“We don’t have time to do any sort of research or scientific analysis by tomorrow!” Jay answered. “I mean, we could do a digital voice analysis later and prove it isn’t you, but that takes time, and first I have to convince the judge that he can’t rely on this tape in any way. You can be sure Stuart Campbell’s got a carefully manicured pedigree for this thing: chain of possession, affidavits, everything needed to convince. That means an arrest for certain and the beginning of a long, bloody process, and I can’t be sure – with Garrity’s being spooked over the judge – that we won’t be facing a faster extradition track than normal.”

John Harris exhaled a long and ragged breath, shaking his head. “This is one of those never-ending nightmares, isn’t it, Jay?”

“Apparently.”

They all fell quiet for more than a minute.

“Sir?” Sherry said from the corner, emotion constricting her voice.

“Yes, Sherry?”

“I want you to tell me the absolute truth.”

“I always have, Sherry,” he said with palpable sadness.

“I know… as far as I know… and I’ve always believed that. Tell me the words on that tape were never spoken by you, if that’s the truth.”

The President got to his feet and moved to her, placing a hand on her shoulder and the other under her chin, raising her eyes to him.

“Sherry, I swear to you, what you heard was not my voice, nor my words. The conversation you heard was faked somehow.”

She nodded as she blinked back tears and stood to hug him silently, leaving the President off balance until she sat down and he returned to sit on the end of the bed.

“All right, Jay. What do we do?”

“We fly. You fly. Seven A.M. departure. Captain Dayton has agreed to fly to the halfway point and if the winds and his fuel are okay, take you on to Presque Isle, Maine, and the airfield there. It’s literally the closest suitable U.S. airport.”

“And you?”

“I’ll… stand and fight as best I can. I have to anyway, because you may be back.”

“Understood.” The President got to his feet and patted Jay’s shoulder. “If it helps, try to think how you could fake something like this, Jay.”

“I am, sir. What scares me is that someone may have perfectly matched your voice digitally so that even if you didn’t say the words in that sequence, they could still be your words and your voice rearranged.”

“Don’t lose faith in me, Jay. Things are seldom what they appear.”

Jay looked up at him for several very long moments before replying. “That’s precisely what worries me,” he said.

John Harris returned to his room and Sherry bade Jay good-bye with confirmation that she would leave with the President on the 737. They hesitated at his door, holding hands briefly as she promised to call the second they landed in the United States.

Jay returned to the empty room in turmoil, desperate for sleep, feeling the effect of the two pints of stout, and determined to figure out a way around the inevitable. He turned on the TV and VCR and reran the tape, looking for something that had bothered him earlier, a fleeting glimpse of something he now couldn’t place. Whatever it was now eluded him.

He sat on the edge of the bed in deep thought, regretting the time spent at the pub, though Michael and his friends were delightful company.

His friends.

Jay yanked a sheaf of business cards from his pocket and lunged for the phone to get Michael Garrity on the line.

“What is it, lad?” Michael asked.

Jay related the details of what he’d seen on the tape Stuart Campbell had provided.

“Oh, me. That will make things very difficult indeed.”

“Can we block admission of the tape?”

“Yes and no. Remember, we’re dealing with Justice O’Connell, and he’ll do whatever he’ll do without benefit of counsel. Under our Criminal Procedure Acts, it’s really up to the trial judge. There’s no automatic exclusion just because the evidence – the video – might have been obtained contrary to U.S. law,” Michael said, pausing. “All I can do is fight a good fight to keep it out by persuading him that it’s terribly prejudicial to President Harris.”

“Michael,” Jay said, “I’ve got an idea how we can convince him – if you’re willing to lose a night of sleep, and if you can get one of your friends to help us tonight.”