John Nance - Headwind

Byer cast an angry glance at one of his aides before looking back at the table.

“Yes, sir. I will.” He handed the phone back to Jay.

“Jay? You there?” President Harris asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Your ear is the only one near this phone?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I just read Byer the riot and sedition act and verbally spanked him. He’s mad and he’s embarrassed, so treat him like overheated nitroglycerine. Don’t provoke. He’s been told that you are lead counsel and that whatever you say is the law regarding my defense. And he’s been told to tell Mr. Sheffield to call you immediately.”

“Very well, Mr. President.”

“We’re forty minutes out, Jay. You’d better head for the airport.”

Jay folded the phone and returned to the table, standing across from Joe Byer.

“Mr. Secretary, I’ve got a difficult task ahead of me, and I’m grateful for the support of everyone here. But I need to head for Heathrow now, and I need…”

“To hear from Sheffield. I know!” Byer interrupted, shifting his expression to one of resigned friendliness as he got to his feet. “Give me five minutes to reach him, Jay, and I’ll join you in the car.”

Jay hesitated, watching his eyes, which remained steady and engaged. The thought of leaving someone as crafty and arrogant as Byer to speak with the Deputy Prime Minister in private rang alarms in his head, but a Secretary of State could only be pushed so far.

And for that matter, the same limits applied to Sheffield.

Whatever else he might know, Jay thought , he’s nuts if he thinks he can dictate anything to the British.

The call from Anthony Sheffield came as they pulled away from the hotel.

“I apologize for being slow to call you, Mr. Reinhart. I had been given to understand that the delegation from Washington was speaking for you.”

“No, sir. Working with me, most definitely, but I am the President’s counsel.”

“Very well. I spoke with the PM at length, and I can tell you that we feel strongly that our responsibilities under the Treaty Against Torture are clear and inescapable. The PM believes that we acted with reckless disregard in handling our treaty obligations in the Pinochet case when we refrained from taking an affirmative stand on the question of sovereign immunity and extradition.”

Jay felt a small shudder of relief. “You mean that Prime Minister Blair should have been more forceful in opposing the extradition request and should have supported the concept that Pinochet had sovereign immunity from prosecution in England?”

“Heavens, no. Quite the contrary. The Blair government should have worked very hard to convince our courts to immediately extradite Pinochet to Spain. The extradition request and the warrant were valid, and there was obviously no sovereign immunity. To allow a former president to hide behind the concept of sovereign immunity would destroy the treaty, because who else but a head of state would be in a position to order state torture? If we permit such nonsense, we might as well scrap the treaty. After all, criminal scum like Milosevic or Saddam Hussein would claim sovereign immunity as well, and that would be absurd!”

Jay came forward in the seat, his face suddenly flushed.

“Mr. Sheffield, wait a minute. Do you understand that we’re not in any way raising sovereign immunity as a defense?”

“Ah, but you would eventually, would you not, Mr. Reinhart?”

“I don’t know. That’s premature. He’s not even in the country yet! And our main argument is that the warrant alleges crimes wholly unconnected with President Harris.”

“But that’s the essence of what a trial is for, isn’t it? The sufficiency of the evidence is to be determined by a court of competent jurisdiction. I, too, am a lawyer by trade, Mr. Reinhart.”

Jay could see Joe Byer leaning forward in his seat, straining to fill in the blanks and alarmed at Jay’s alarm.

“Mr. Sheffield, I beg you to understand that in Lima there will be no court of competent jurisdiction, just a monkey trial orchestrated by a bloodthirsty dictator named Miraflores who is determined to put John Harris on the gallows.”

“Mr. Reinhart,” Sheffield replied with a condescending chuckle. “Please! You’re talking about a sovereign nation who, by the way, ratified the Treaty Against Torture years before the United States did. Peru is not a renegade state, and I should tell you that one of the reasons we find your argument disingenuous is because the PM has just had personal assurances from Mr. Miraflores on behalf of the Peruvian government that Mr. Harris will be handled in strict accordance with established judicial procedures, and that they will open their doors to international monitoring and oversight of the process. Therefore, your concerns are misguided.”

“The PM talked to Miraflores?”

“Yes, of course. That’s what governments do.”

Jay thanked him perfunctorily and ended the call, turning to the Secretary with a quick briefing on Sheffield’s words.

“I’m a little shocked, Jay, but this is what happens when you put someone like Sheffield and his boss in a corner.”

“You don’t truly believe those assurances?” Jay fired back, a bitter edge underlying his words as his mind spun between the reality of the approaching 737 and the diminishing time remaining.

“Of course they don’t mean it,” Byer agreed.

“Why the contact with Peru? Are you going to tell me that’s pro forma to make such a call?”

“It’s… a bit unusual, and we know Miraflores can’t be trusted.”

Jay closed his eyes and pushed everything else away from his thinking but the key question: should they land or not?

“Stop the car, please,” he said suddenly.

The driver turned from the right front seat. “Beg pardon, sir?”

“Stop the car, please. I need to get out for a moment.”

Byer caught the driver’s eye and nodded. “Do it.”

The car glided to the shoulder of the motorway and Jay pulled the handle.

“Please wait for me. I need five minutes.”

The din of traffic along the M-4 motorway to Heathrow was deafening. Jay stood behind the car, punched a number into the phone, and waited.

“EuroAir, ah, Ten-Ten,” a British voice said on the other end.

“This is Jay Reinhart. Where are you guys?”

“Over the English channel, Mr. Reinhart. This is the first officer. We’re on descent.”

“How far out?”

“We just crossed the French shoreline.”

“I need to speak with the President, and then with the captain.”

“President Harris is still up here on the jump seat with us. Hold on.”

“Yes, Jay?” Harris asked.

“I may only have seconds to explain, John, but you can’t land in England.”

“What? I thought…”

“It’s all changed, sir. Trust me on this. It comes straight from the PM’s office. They think they’ve got a Neville Chamberlain-style peace-in-our-time agreement with Miraflores to treat you fairly, and they’re determined to accelerate the extradition process.”

“But Jay, the courts won’t let them.”

“I can’t take that chance, John! I’ve studied the procedure, and there are holes in there the Peruvians could pull you through.”

There was silence from the other end, and Jay had to stick his finger even deeper in his free ear as he jammed the phone against the other.

“Are you still there, John?”

“Yes… I’m trying to make sense of this. Where else can we go?”

“I… I have an idea, but first we’ve got to get you clear of England.”

There was a short laugh from the cockpit of the 737. “Jay, we can’t just hover out here.”