Headwind

SIX

A constellation of serious faces were orbiting around a small conference room in the offices of Rome’s airport authority, each man picking at a basket of fruit and plucking bottles of water from the conference table.

A half dozen police officers were in conversation with two plain-clothes officers of the Carabinieri, while three uniformed pilots stood by themselves in a far corner, watching the others. A few feet away, the manager of the airport stood with a mid-level representative of the Italian Foreign Ministry as Sir William Stuart Campbell gestured toward the airport ramp, where a passing rain shower had left a glistening film of water. A haze of cigarette smoke filled the room, and several ash trays were threatening to overflow. The hint of background music leaked in from the passenger areas, the songs too distant to be identifiable.

“Is there any further news from air traffic control?” Campbell asked the ranking police commander in Italian.

The commander shook his head. “Nothing, signore. The aircraft has refused to confirm a hijacking and they are not sending the right signal for a hijacking on their transponder, but… we are treating it as a hijacking.”

“I can assure you,” Campbell said, “that there is no hijacking. The pilots concocted this fiction in order to leave Athens unopposed.”

“Perhaps,” the commander replied. “But we are ready.” He stubbed out his cigarette as he pulled out a fresh pack and hesitated before offering one to Campbell, who politely refused.

“Thank you, no. I gave up those years ago. Cigars only now, I fear.”

The commander smiled and lit up another for himself.

Campbell continued. “And what are your plans if the aircraft lands and taxis up to the gate?”

“Then my men will meet them at the door,” the commander said.

“Gentlemen,” Campbell added, turning to the airport manager and the Foreign Ministry’s representative, “if the press and television reporters appear, you are prepared to control them?”

The airport manager’s head bobbed up and down energetically. He wore a scowl and a rumpled gray suit that hung loosely on his razor thin, almost emaciated frame. He pulled his cigarette out of his angular face and blew a small plume of smoke to one side before answering.

“Yes,” the manager confirmed. “We are ready for them, and they are coming.”

“They are?” Campbell replied, strategically raising an eyebrow, thoroughly aware that the entire national and international press corps had been anonymously notified by his staff.

“Yes, sir. We do not know how, but four different television crews are en route to the airport at this moment.”

“Pity,” Campbell added, rapidly tiring of the smoke. “And the officers here know that they are to treat President Harris with dignity? No handcuffs or searches?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

The official from the Foreign Ministry inclined his head toward the office window, beyond which the dome of St. Peter’s could be seen.

“Mr. Campbell, Minister Anselmo has already specified these things. Provided there is no piracy going on and we get him off safely, President Harris will be housed at a very good hotel until tomorrow’s hearing.”

“What about the chartered aircrew over there?” Campbell asked.

“We have rooms for them near the airport,” the Foreign Ministry official said. “They are fueled and ready to go, in case they are needed immediately.”

Campbell nodded gravely. “Well, I think it is quite appropriate that we provide Mr. Harris with the option to waive extradition, and to minimize media exposure, I would suggest the pilots over there get back aboard their craft and be ready in case he elects that option. I will discuss it with him alone on arrival.”

A burst of two-way radio noise filled the background, the voices exchanging routine information in Italian.

“In any event,” the manager continued, “I am told they have enough fuel to make Lisbon, Portugal, where they’ll transfer Mr. Harris to a transcontinental jet.”

He stubbed out his cigarette at the two-thirds point and promptly pulled out a silver case to retrieve another one, the act quite unconscious.

“Very well, gentlemen,” Campbell said. “I thank you. We have a little time, so I believe I’ll step out for some air and meet you at the arrival gate.”

Stuart Campbell left the office and descended the stairway at an unhurried pace, feeling thankful for the relatively fresh air of the terminal. He pushed through a door into the main terminal and pulled out his GSM cell phone, punching in an overseas number as he sidestepped a river of passengers streaming by from customs.

“Hello. Stuart Campbell here in Rome. Yes. We’re on track. I wanted to let you know that Mr. Harris is due to arrive in a half hour, and I will call you back when we have served the warrant and the police have taken him into custody.”

He listened closely, nodding occasionally.

“Well, I warned you to brace yourselves for an international firestorm of publicity and pressure. I trust you’re ready?”

He stepped sideways to let a woman and three children race by.

“Excellent. I assume the President is monitoring this closely. Please give him my regards.”

He finished the call and folded the cell phone before replacing it in his coat pocket and looking around for the nearest coffee bar. Moments like this, he thought, begged for an espresso. Caffeine on top of adrenaline. He would probably need it.

Captain Craig Dayton rolled his seat back on the floor tracks, trying to sit as close to sideways as the diminutive 737 cockpit would allow.

Alastair’s seat, by contrast, was in the proper position for flight, his seat belt securely fastened as he monitored the autoflight system and the instruments while listening to the urgent discussion among Craig and the two women standing in the cramped, narrow alcove just inside the cockpit door.

Jillian Walz had brought Sherry Lincoln forward with an urgent request: Could they slow or somehow delay the impending landing in Rome?

“We can go into what’s called a holding pattern once we get there, but slowing out here won’t buy us much time,” Craig told her, speaking a bit louder than normal to overcome the background hiss of the stratosphere passing at seventy-four percent of the speed of sound. “We’re over Italy and only thirty minutes out of Rome right now.”

“But you could go into some sort of hold, you say?” Sherry asked.

Craig nodded, straining to see her eyes. “I can, and will.”

“We do have fuel limitations,” Alastair interjected from the right seat.

Craig looked forward at the fuel tank gauges and ran a quick mental calculation on the fuel remaining. “About two hours of cruise flight, which means we could hold no more than forty-five minutes if there’s any chance we’ll need to fly somewhere else.”

“Excuse me,” Alastair interjected. “Somewhere else? Where, perchance, did you fancy? Honolulu? Seattle, perhaps?”

“Cut the sarcasm, Alastair,” Craig snapped.

“We don’t know,” Sherry replied, ignoring the sharp exchange. “There probably isn’t anywhere else to go, but… there are people in Washington, D.C., frantically checking right now.”

“Excuse me,” Alastair added, ignoring the captain’s hand raised in a stop gesture. “Everyone does realize, I hope, that if we fly anywhere else, we will be basically stealing this aircraft?”

“I realize that,” Craig replied.

“Captain, we just need to buy some time,” Sherry continued. “For all I know, they may just need time to get American Embassy people to the airport.”

“If we’re only going to Rome,” Craig continued, “I can hold for over an hour, but they’re going to be screaming at me to tell them why.”

“Don’t forget,” Jillian added, “we’ve got one hundred some-odd paying passengers aboard who would like to land somewhere close to Rome sometime today.”

“I know that,” Craig said.

“That raises something else,” Jillian said. “We have the snack service on board for the leg to Paris, and this wasn’t a snack segment. Should we serve them now, if you’re going to hold?”

Craig laughed and shook his head before nodding. “This is bizarre,” he said under his breath.

“At long last, a rational statement!” Alastair snapped, anger barely disguised in his tone.

“Go ahead and do the snack service, Jillian,” Craig told her over his shoulder. “I’ll do a PA in a minute. Tell them about holding. I’ll blame it on traffic. We’ll also need to find out who may have tight connections.”

“Okay.”

“And, Ms. Lincoln… Sherry?”

“Yes?”

“As soon as you or the President or your Secret Service guy know anything that will help me plan what to do, please get up here immediately.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

“My first officer is being rude, but he’s also quite right: I’ve put both of us in terrible jeopardy with respect to our airline. I think all we can do is delay the landing.”

“I understand, Captain. So does President Harris, who is eternally grateful for what you’ve already done.”

The two women started to leave and Craig Dayton reached out to stop Sherry.

“Wait… look…” He took a deep breath and exchanged glances with Alastair before looking back up at her. “Just tell me what you need, okay? I’ll deal with any job consequences later. As far as Alastair, here, I may have to say I clubbed him and tied him up.”

She smiled thinly. “Looks like he’s bound and gagged to me.”

“You may jolly well have to do just that!” Alastair said without humor. Sherry and Jillian left the cockpit as Alastair’s eyes shifted to the window beside his captain, his face registering surprise. “Craig, you might want to have a look at this,” he said, pointing.

Craig Dayton looked toward the left wing, startled by the presence of two jet fighters with Italian Air Force markings descending from above and ahead of them, a position only the occupants of the cockpit could see.

“Jeez!”

“Toronados,” Alastair said. “Probably scrambled from Naples because we’re supposed to be hijacked.”

Craig was shaking his head. “And if I had some hysterical trigger-happy commando in the cockpit here with a gun to my head, that sight would really calm him down!”

A new voice came over their headsets speaking English, the accent clearly Italian. “EuroAir Forty-Two, please come up frequency one twenty-five point three.”

“Guess who?” Alastair muttered, dialing the frequency into the number two VHF radio.

“I’ll get it,” Craig said, punching the appropriate transmit selector. “This is Forty-Two. Is this the lead Toronado?”

“Affirmative, sir. Do you need assistance?”

“Negative.”

“Are you squawking seventy-five hundred?” the fighter pilot asked, referring to the international hijack code.

“No, but I can’t discuss it. Please back off, and stay out of sight of the cabin.”

“Roger.”

The two fighters rose in their windscreens and disappeared, but there was no doubt in either pilot’s mind that they would be trailing the 737 the rest of the way.

John Harris was sitting in deep thought when Sherry slipped back into the seat beside him. He looked up suddenly as if she had materialized without warning.

“Oh!”

“Are you okay, sir?”

“Yes, of course.”

She relayed the conversation in the cockpit.

“It will be time to phone Washington back in just a few minutes,” Sherry told him.

Harris nodded absently, tapping his finger on the seat’s armrest. “I’ve been thinking, Sherry, of all the good lawyers I know. Those who were in my administration. Those we considered for judgeships at all levels, those I looked at for Justice. And those whom I ran into from time to time in the Oval and elsewhere. The good, the bad, and the unspeakable.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But while you were up there I had to come to a rather frightening conclusion. The only lawyer I’m absolutely sure I can trust to help me with this is the last one I should be hiring.”

“I don’t understand, Mr. President,” she said, surprised by the sudden smile that crossed his face. He looked at her and slapped his hand gently on the armrest, as if bringing a gavel to rest on a decision.

“Sherry? How do I get hold of an information operator Stateside?”

“They used to call them directory assistance operators, sir, but I think they’re extinct now. Ma Bell shot them all. You can only talk with computers. What do you need?”

“The main number of the University of Wyoming in Laramie.”

“And for… who…?”

“Don’t ask, Sherry. Not yet.”