John Nance - Headwind

“Uh, no, I don’t have the equipment. I could have him call you on that number, though.”

“Good. As fast as possible.”

“But, General, as his lawyer, I have to keep everybody focused on the fact that there’s an international arrest warrant out there and some powerful people who will be trying to serve it. I must stay in the loop and on the line. Can you conference me in at the same time if I break the connection and have him call?”

“Yes, Mr. Reinhart. As soon as he calls, we’ll patch you back in.”

Jay passed his home number, relayed the plan to John Harris on the home phone, and disconnected both calls. He sat staring at his home phone, mentally calculating how long it would take to establish the three-way connection and trying to envision what was happening at that moment in Sigonella. He could imagine the big C-17 barreling toward the Navy base at four hundred fifty knots, and he could imagine that Stuart Campbell would be closing in on Sigonella as well with a certified copy of the warrant, an Italian arrest version, and a carefully planned formation of Italian authorities ready to make the arrest. But if the President could make the transfer to the C-17 before Campbell found an Italian official brave enough to authorize an intrusion onto leased American military real estate, he would be safe. There was no way they would try to stop an Air Force aircraft from departing in such a confused diplomatic situation.

He checked his watch again. Twenty minutes, the general had said, before the Air Force transport arrived, and maybe another five minutes to taxi to the ramp and open a door. He could feel his heart pounding and wished there was some sort of television camera on the ramp broadcasting on the World Wide Web. Waiting was an agony.

This may all be over in forty-five minutes! he told himself.

For the first time in over an hour, he got to his feet and opened the refrigerator for more orange juice, thinking how nice it would be to build up the fire and sit there for hours with a cigar, something he seldom let himself do anymore.

Escapist thinking!

He closed the refrigerator and looked to the left, catching a glimpse of the open bedroom door. Linda’s angry departure flooded back on a tide of guilt. Had it really been necessary to hurt her? It seemed like days ago, but once the President was safely airborne, maybe he should chase her down, go to her house, somehow try to explain what he meant.

Thank God we’re going to get him out of there! I can’t imagine what would have happened otherwise.

Images of a frantic flight to Europe, an endless string of twenty-four-hour days, voluminous research, and high-stakes poker with Harris’s adversaries unreeled like the blueprint of an unfathomable nightmare, now that he didn’t have to pretend to himself that he could handle it. The reality that it wasn’t quite over yet was better suppressed.

He sat on the kitchen stool and stared at the phone, which remained silent.

Interrupting the President when he was immersed in a serious meeting was contrary to White House policy, and Chief of Staff Jack Rollins was the man who’d set the policy in the first place.

Yet, there had to be exceptions.

Rollins hesitated outside the door to the Cabinet Room, aware of the voices filtering through from the intense discussion on the other side. They had one last chance to arm-twist the budget through the House, and the President was the only one with the charisma and political IOU’s to do it. He’d been working his magic on twelve angry swing-vote congressmen for the last thirty minutes, but the Harris situation was becoming critical and it was time to act.

Jack Rollins opened the door and moved quietly to Cavanaugh’s side.

“Excuse me, folks,” the President told the group when he saw Rollins enter and come over to stand by his side. Rollins whispered in his ear, “The situation with Harris is ripening. We’ll be to a major decision point within twenty minutes.”

“Give me a few seconds,” the President said to the group as he stood and moved to the door with a hand on Rollins’s shoulder.

“You need me right this minute?” the President asked.

“I think we do, sir. The Air Force has already set a rescue in motion, but it needs your sign-off.”

“Why don’t I just authorize it from here?” the President asked.

“I wouldn’t do that, Mr. President,” Jack Rollins counseled. “There are some volatile aspects still unfolding.”

Cavanaugh nodded. “Okay. Ten minutes.”

“Should I send someone in to get you?”

“No, Jack. I need to finish this. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

Rollins slipped out as the President turned back to the assembled group.

Once again the Oval Office was filling with worried advisors watching the clock. General Davidsen flanked Jack Rollins beside the President’s desk with a phone to his ear. Press Secretary Diane Beecher and National Security Advisor Roger Villems occupied one of the couches facing the Deputy Attorney General and Assistant Secretary of State on the other, all of them holding coffee cups and balancing notebooks and briefing papers.

At the opposite end of the Oval – as staffers referred to the world’s most photographed office – the newest member of the administration stood in deep thought by the fireplace. Michael Goldboro, the Assistant to the President for National Security affairs, otherwise known as the National Security Advisor, had scanned the briefing papers and reread the Treaty Against Torture before coming over from the Executive Office Building by specific request of the President. A quiet man with darting, suspicious eyes, his years as a tenured professor at Georgetown, plus a long list of honored books and papers on the history and future of statecraft, had made him a favorite of President Cavanaugh’s – though the Ivy Leaguers in the Cavanaugh administration and the Democratic Party considered him a poor successor to an office once held by Henry Kissinger. Goldboro was well aware of his nonacceptance, and as a result, he chose his battles with great care.

General Davidsen pulled the receiver away and motioned to Jack Rollins.

“We’re getting critical on timing here, Jack.”

“Tell me.”

“The C-17 is on the ramp and waiting, but the commander of the base, a Navy captain, tells me he’s got a delegation from Catania at the gate, including a magistrate, a bunch of police officers, and someone from the Carabinieri national police. He also says he was bullied into letting both a private jet and an empty chartered airliner land, both of them from Rome.”

Rollins nodded. “Are they ready to make the transfer?”

“President Harris is ready. I was just talking to him. Our crew is ready to crank and go as soon as he’s aboard. They’ve positioned Navy security police around both airplanes, but no one’s trying to force their way… hold on.”

The general put the phone back to his ear, listening and responding for a minute before turning to Rollins again.

“Now they’re making demands, Jack. There’s a representative of the Italian Foreign Ministry aboard that private jet, and there is a demand being relayed, presumably from him, that the base commander essentially step aside and surrender the 737 and all the passengers, including the President, to Italian authority.”

“Who’s the Navy skipper on that base?”

“Captain Swanson.”

“Is he asking for instructions?”

“Not yet. He’s informed them that the base is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Navy, and any unauthorized attempt to enter will meet with armed resistance.”