John Nance - Headwind

Jay Reinhart turned off his computer and ended the modem connection with the seat phone.

Thank God for modern communications and computers and databases, he thought. A little more than two hours of paging through the Pinochet decisions in Britain and studying British civil procedure, and the Treaty on Torture itself had led to a quick and dirty conclusion: Britain was the right venue.

Jay took a deep breath and leaned back in his seat, feeling relaxed at having made that decision. He glanced out the window to his right and suddenly the fact they were in flight and he wasn’t afraid in the least became a jolting realization.

The departure from Denver had triggered a beginning of the usual gut-wrenching fears as they taxied to the end of the runway, but amazingly enough, his apprehension had evaporated on the takeoff roll. The contrasts between the gentle motions of the flying living room he was occupying and what had occurred a short while before in David Carmichael’s tiny Cessna had tamed the terror, reducing it to a numbed acceptance, a psychological acquiescence and knowledge that nothing about being airborne could ever scare him quite as profoundly again, especially in the benign environment of a luxury jetliner.

Amazing! he thought. All these years all I needed to cure my fear of flying was a near-death experience in a single-engine kite.

He looked around the plush first-class cabin of the Boeing 777, taking in the alluring feminine form of a young flight attendant handing a drink to an aging British rock star he’d recognized two rows ahead.

But he had work to do and calls to make. He tore his concentration away from an instantaneous daydream involving the raven-haired flight attendant and focused instead on the first call he was about to make.

I say it here and it happens there! he thought to himself, any feeling of power overwhelmed by the sense of urgency and responsibility and risk of getting it wrong. He was, after all, up against perhaps the smartest international lawyer on the planet, a man who’d lived and breathed little else besides international law and treaty law for the past thirty years.

Stuart Campbell’s confident, smiling face swam into his mind’s eye, sending a jolt of adrenaline through his bloodstream. The close encounter with the fog-shrouded surface of northeastern Colorado had numbed his fears somewhat, but the thought of Campbell honed the sharp edge of his apprehension once again. Was London a naive choice? Worse, was it a stupid choice, playing right into Campbell’s plans?

Jay closed his eyes and shook the thought from his mind as best he could. He couldn’t be making decisions based on fear instead of logic. Campbell was, after all, just a lawyer, as was he. It was a matter of reading the law and the procedures of each country and deciding where John Harris would be most protected while he built his case against the warrant.

Jay picked up the phone and ran his credit card again before dialing Sherry Lincoln’s GSM phone. She answered on the second ring.

“Go to London, Sherry. Please tell the President. On second thought, let me brief him directly, okay?”

There was a brief delay as she passed the word to John Harris and handed him the phone. His warm and friendly voice betrayed none of the tension or the peril he was in.

“John, I have to warn you of something,” Jay said.

“Go ahead.”

“It’s not likely, but… the current government and the current prime minister have not been tested on this issue, and they seem to think quite differently from their predecessors.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, it’s not impossible that their stance toward rapid compliance with the warrant could dramatically change from that of the Pinochet situation.”

“You mean, uphold sovereign immunity as a bar to the warrant?”

“No, John. I mean they could decide that they have a duty to hear the extradition case immediately with no interference from the Law Lords.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“Highly unlikely, but that’s why I need to get there first.”

“And if not Britain, Jay?”

“I don’t know,” Jay said at the very moment a new possibility flashed across his mind. “I don’t know, but I’m working on alternatives. Don’t leave until I call you from London in about nine hours.”

“I heard you hesitate,” Harris said. “What are you thinking?”

Jay snorted on the other end. “Something… an idea… completely off the wall and not worthy of discussion right now.”

“In my experience, Jay, those usually turn out to be the best of all.”

Jay Reinhart awoke with a start in his first-class seat, instantly upset at himself for having slept for the last three hours when he needed to be working. The flight attendants were already moving about the cabin with a fragrant breakfast, their efforts spotlighted occasionally by bright sunlight streaming in the windows and the welcoming smell of rich coffee.

He glanced at the small color TV screen at his seat displaying a map of their progress over the Atlantic and read the time remaining: one hour, ten minutes.

Jay sat up and rubbed his eyes, feeling exceedingly grubby. He got to his feet and headed for the lavatory, surprised at how wobbly his legs felt but determined to at least sponge his way back to social acceptability – an imperfect process which took less than ten minutes as he leaned heavily on a selection of colognes and amenities the airline provided in a small survival kit. He returned to the seat and gratefully accepted a cup of coffee and a sweet roll before pulling out his legal pads and trying to focus on planning the high-speed sequence of events he needed to orchestrate in London. It was a task he kicked himself for not completing hours ago, before the effect of time zones, loss of sleep, and dry cabin air began to muddle his thinking.

The first order of business would be to hire the right solicitor – the right British lawyer – to represent John Harris under Jay’s control.

But which one? He needed a lawyer who could quickly help him determine which magistrate court Campbell’s people had taken the warrant to, what rulings might have already been issued, and specifically what the extradition procedures were in Britain. He also needed to know whether or not Campbell was already in town. And he needed a best guess from an up-to-speed local practitioner on even the most far-out stunt Campbell might try to short-circuit the process and convince the appropriate branches of the British Government to turn Harris over to Peru when the courts had finished with the matter. So he would probably need an international firm.

No, wait. The first order of priority is to call them in Sigonella, he reminded himself, checking his watch. It was 8 A.M. in Italy, 7 A.M. in the U.K. He needed to call before heading for central London, just to make sure nothing had changed.

Next, I need to talk to the government. I’ve got to know how they’re going to react to a request to seize and extradite a former U.S. President.

Another flash of apprehension and doubt rang a warning buzzer in his head, much as the stall warning in the little Cessna had cut through the heart of his confidence on that incredible flight.

Was it only a few hours ago?

Jay forced his mind away from that scene and back to the issue. The fact that Campbell was a highly placed Brit – a Knight of the British Empire and a senior barrister known as a QC, or Queen’s Counsel – meant Jay was at a tremendous disadvantage. Campbell knew everyone. He knew no one. How could he possibly equalize such odds in time to discover what he had to know?