John Nance - Headwind

“Yes, sir. Will you be coming with us, Mr. Campbell?” the captain asked.

“Let me think about that. Stand by.”

Stuart Campbell mentally reviewed the options. The Italian warrant based on the Interpol warrant would be good anywhere in Italy and could be faxed to the Maltese authorities. But what if EuroAir’s captain decided once again to head somewhere else, such as Morocco or Spain? He’d have to scramble to get to wherever they went, and coordinating the capture would be even more difficult if he was sitting in the cabin of an airplane.

He was having to think three moves ahead, precisely like a game of chess. He smiled to himself and shook his head. So my choices are, move the king’s knight to king three, or leave the knight in place .

And he was the knight to the Peruvian president’s king.

He raised the phone back to his ear. “No, Captain, I’ll stay here. Check in with me when you’re on the ground, wherever that might be.”

President John Harris sat in silence for a second with the phone pressed to his ear as he revisited his decision and concluded he was right. Sighing, he straightened in the seat.

“Jay, I want you to listen to me very closely.”

The disillusionment in the voice from Laramie was painfully obvious.

“Yes, sir. I’m listening.”

“My best strength has always been my judgment of character and capability. I think my presidency was successful, and if so, the reason was that I appointed the best people.”

“Thank God I wasn’t on that list. I would have destroyed your record.”

“No, Jay, you wouldn’t have. Quite the contrary. You would have done a superlative job, and we both know the error in judgment which got you in such trouble was an affair of the heart, not some act of greed or ambition.”

There was a short laugh on the other end. “Definitely not ambition.”

“No, and if Karen’s case hadn’t come before your court before I announced my appointments, you would have been the President’s lawyer, and perhaps later, attorney general.”

“You’re far too gracious, sir.”

“No, as I say, I’m an extraordinary judge of character, and yours hasn’t changed.”

“Mr. President… John… it makes no difference now. I can’t…”

“That’s enough,” Harris interrupted. “Now listen. We both understand that this is a very serious situation both for me personally, and for our country, and for every other ex-president who ever leaves home. Believe me, I do not want to fall into the hands of the Peruvians, or under the control of this warrant. I am not handing you this assignment with the expectation that you’ll fail. But, I also have no illusions about the difficulty ahead of you, or the extreme mismatch between what kind of staff support you don’t have, and what some of the major international firms could provide. So why do I insist you handle it? I have two things going for me on this decision, Jay. First, I will trust my life to the international legal abilities I saw in a young lawyer named Jay Reinhart, whom I hired many years ago; and second, my gut tells me the only way to beat Campbell and Miraflores at their game is to adhere to the doctrines of Sun Tsu.”

“The… Chinese philosopher?”

“I’m not sure how much of a philosopher he was, except on the doctrine of warfare, but the man was millenniums ahead of his time when he asked why anyone would fight an enemy on the enemy’s terms. To hire a major firm would be to do exactly what our friend Campbell expects. We’ll do just the opposite.”

“Sir…”

“You’ve fulfilled your ethical duty to warn me of the potential consequences of hiring you, Jay. For the record, I hereby accept that risk and waive that concern. Now, that’s the last I’m going to hear about it. You get your tail in gear and get me the hell out of this mess. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll call you back in thirty minutes for a progress report.”

John Harris disconnected and smiled to himself, wishing he could see the expression on Stuart Campbell’s face when he found out who the former leader of the free world had hired.

Sherry had slipped into the seat next to him as he finished the conversation. She sat studying her boss for a few seconds before pulling him out of his reverie with a question.

“Could I ask what that was all about?”

John Harris turned to her, still smiling. “I just hired my lawyer.”

“Okay…”

“And he’s sitting in Wyoming, wondering if I’ve lost my mind.”

“I see. Have you?”

Harris laughed and shook his head. “Nope. He comes with baggage, Sherry, but he’s the best, as I said earlier.” He described the handicaps and the challenges Jay Reinhart would face, as well as his background, watching her expression darken.

“Why was he thrown off the bench in Texas?” she asked.

“He was a very good judge for four years. Being a judge was a radical departure from international law practice, but it was something he’d always wanted to do. And he was caring, fair, and tough. The very model of a jurist. But one day he got a murder case. A beautiful young woman, a battered wife who’d had the hell beaten out of her for a decade by a local monster with social standing and a successful business career. One evening she blew him away with a twelve-gauge just before the nightly beating and rape could commence. The district attorney, a wife abuser himself, ignored the realities of the case, charged her with aggravated first-degree murder and went after the death penalty.”

“Good grief!” Sherry exclaimed, looking up as a man in his upper seventies stopped just behind their row of seats. The President followed her gaze, his eyes landing on Matt Ward, who had intercepted the visitor.

“Matt?”

“Mr. President, excuse me,” Matt said, gesturing to the man behind him in the aisle. “This gentleman wanted to say hello.”

Harris turned farther around and smiled at the man, noting how frail and gaunt he looked. He raised an index finger in a “wait” gesture and the man nodded.

John Harris turned back to Sherry. “Anyway, in a nutshell, the woman had no money – the husband had seen to that. She hired an incompetent hack as a defense attorney and Jay could tell on opening arguments she was, without question, headed for death row, and he simply couldn’t stand it.”

“But what can a judge do?”

“Nothing, legally,” he said, aware of more movement behind him. Glancing back, the President saw a second man crowding in beside the first, a small American flag pin on his lapel.

“You want to talk to these fellows now, sir?” Sherry asked under her breath.

“Shortly,” he said, turning around toward the two. “Gentlemen, give me just a minute here, okay?”

“Absolutely!” the first one replied, moving back slightly.

“Yes, sir,” the other echoed, a bit loudly. Harris could see a large hearing aid in his left ear.

Jillian had spotted the small gathering and moved into the first-class cabin from the galley to shoo them away, but Harris waved her back with a smile and a small stop gesture of his hand before turning back toward Sherry. “So, Jay simply couldn’t stand seeing this beautiful, battered young woman railroaded by circumstance. Remember, this is long before the acceptance of the concept that a battered spouse who murders her batterer may be acting in self-defense even if the killing didn’t occur during the beating. Anyway, Jay released this emotionally damaged young woman on an exceptionally low bail, which he paid himself, anonymously. He also tried, anonymously, to hire a better lawyer for her, but that didn’t work. Finally he started meeting with her surreptitiously to advise her and try to save her, and along the way he fell helplessly, hopelessly in love with her.”