Headwind (2001)

by John J. Nance

  “Look, John . . .” Jay interjected quickly. “I think we’d better save this until I see you in person. I don’t know how secure these phones are.”

  “You’re being bluffed, Jay! I can tell you that.”

  “Then no such meeting ever took place?”

  “I’m . . . we’ll talk on the ground. You’re right to be cautious about this line. I heard Sherry say under two hours. Right, Sherry? She says ‘Yes.’ ”

  “Okay, Mr. President. I’ll be waiting for you. And so will they.”

  “Damn!” Harris snarled on the other end, responding, Jay thought, to the imminent arrest.

  But it was the Reynolds allegation that had prompted Harris’s response: “I can’t believe Campbell would stoop so low,” the President said, correcting himself instantly. “Strike that. I guess I can believe it, and I suppose I should tell you the reason why.” John Harris’s voice sounded strained, his breathing heavy and audible over the pocket-sized phone even through the din of the Bow Street Court foyer surrounding Jay. “There wasn’t time before now,” Harris added.

  “I beg your pardon?” Jay asked, looking at the floor and concentrating on the phone.

  “Stuart and I have a bit of a history, Jay, that not even you know about.”

  “A history?”

  “Something I interfered with that he was trying to accomplish. It goes way back before you joined the firm.”

  “I see.”

  “I think he’s trying to even the score.”

  Two men in animated conversation brushed past, almost knocking the phone from Jay’s hand. One mumbled a “Terribly sorry!” and rushed on, as Jay forced himself to focus on the conversation. “This would be a pretty excessive counterstrike just to get back at you for beating him in a lawsuit!” Jay said.

  “It wasn’t a lawsuit,” the President added.

  A commotion had broken out toward the main entryway and Jay glanced up to see several well-dressed men sweep in and fan out, questioning bystanders about something. He turned away, trying to concentrate on Harris’s reaction.

  “You have my word, Jay,” John Harris said on his end. “This is not as it may appear. Don’t jump to any conclusions.”

  “This man Reynolds. Is he a black hat?” Jay asked.

  “You mean a bad guy? No.”

  “Campbell said Reynolds had a long and distinguished career at Langley.”

  “He did, Jay, which is why I made the mistake of trusting him.”

  Jay related the news that the Secretary of State and a delegation sent by President Cavanaugh were on the way.

  “Good. I more or less expected that,” the President said.

  “But I’m worried, John, that they’re planning on taking over the show, and that would be perfectly all right if I could be sure they’re serving only your interests.”

  “But you doubt it, as you should.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry, Jay. You are my lawyer, and their help is entirely subject to your discretion.”

  “Yes, but should it be? I mean, one error here and you could be on your way to Lima in handcuffs,” Jay said, letting the enormity of the risk settle over him once more. “I’m still very concerned about the intentions of the British Government. I haven’t heard back from the Prime Minister’s office.”

  “Mr. Reinhart?” A male voice broke through his concentration, and he looked up to see one of the newcomers standing in front of him. He covered the mouthpiece of the GSM phone. “Just . . . just a moment.”

  “Okay,” the man replied, his accent clearly American.

  “John? I’d better go,” Jay said into the tiny handset. “I’m headed . . . back to the hotel for now. No, wait . . . I’m going straight to Heathrow on second thought. Do you know where at Heathrow the aircraft is going to be?”

  “The general aviation facility by Terminal 4. Metro Business Aviation, I think,” Harris said, passing the address as relayed by Craig Dayton. Jay scribbled it down before ringing off and turning to the man who’d called his name.

  “Sorry about that,” Jay said.

  “No problem, Mr. Reinhart. The Secretary of State has arrived and would like to speak with you at his hotel. We have a car waiting.”

  “I’ll be with you in a moment,” Jay said, motioning Nigel White and Geoffrey Wallace over to thank them and arrange a meeting later in the evening.

  “You realize,” Geoffrey said, “that if they arrest him today, Campbell will try, and probably succeed, in setting the committal hearing for sometime tomorrow. That’s assuming the home secretary signs the appropriate instruments and Peru has sent the formal request.”

  “That would be back here?”

  “Yes. Committal hearings are only handled at Bow Street

  .”

  “But we simply file for habeas corpus with the . . . ah . . .”

  “Divisional Court. Yes, but they might expedite that, as well.”

  “Have you ever heard of a contested extradition happening within, say, a couple of months?”

  Geoffrey shook his head no. “But keep this in mind, Jay. It all depends on the government. If they want to grease the skids, so to speak, and if the Divisional Court

  refuses to assign the matter for review by the House of Lords, it could happen very fast.”

  “There’s still a last appeal, though.”

  “You don’t want to get into that territory. Look, probably we’ll have a minimum of months, but I’m simply answering the question you asked earlier today. Could it be pushed? Yes, it could.”

  “This process is beginning to sound more risky than I envisioned,” Jay said quietly.

  “It is,” Nigel White replied, “especially if Her Majesty’s Government makes the decision to get involved forcefully. Now, your man is no bloody Pinochet, so it’s unlikely they would, yet . . .”

  “Yet, you’re not sure?”

  “I’ve heard disturbing things about this Prime Minister’s fury over the way Pinochet was afforded such kid glove care in Britain.”

  “Do you think I ought to keep him out of the country?”

  Wallace shook his head. “I’m not saying that. I just need to warn you that even if the underlying charges are hogwash, getting this warrant off his back is not a . . . what do you call it in the States? A ‘slam duck’?”

  “What?” Jay said, shifting his eyes from Nigel White to Geoffrey Wallace. “Oh. No, that’s ‘slam dunk,’ as in basketball. Not duck.”

  “Of course,” Geoffrey replied.

  “Well, dead duck would be correct if they hand your client over to Peru,” Nigel joked, chuckling for a second before realizing the humor had fallen very flat. He cleared his throat and continued. “I will keep my calendar clear for you tomorrow.”

  Jay looked in the direction of the door, where the men were waiting for him, then back at Nigel and Geoffrey. “Okay. I’ll call you later this evening after I’ve heard from the Prime Minister’s office.”

  It took fifteen minutes of silence to reach the Secretary’s hotel. The other men in the car were obviously functionaries, Jay realized, after climbing in the car and trying to squeeze even the most rudimentary information from them.

  The driver stopped at a side entrance, where a hotel security officer was waiting to usher Jay up a flight of stairs to a service elevator, and then to the fifteenth-floor suite where the delegation was waiting.

  Jay introduced himself to the Secretary of State and the Assistant Attorney General he’d sparred with by phone from Laramie, then joined them at an ornate conference table.

  An aide to the Secretary ran through a quick briefing: the British Government would not want to ruffle American feathers; ex parte contact with the Prime Minister’s office by anyone not a professional diplomat was highly inadvisable; and arrangements were already being made to rent a plush private residence for John Harris’s extended stay under house arrest.

  “Mr. Secretary,” Jay replied, “I was promised a call from Deputy Prime Minis
ter Sheffield. I still want to take that call.”

  Secretary of State Joseph Byer nodded and raised his hand, palm up. “Mr. Reinhart . . . or may I call you Jay?”

  “Certainly,” Jay replied.

  “Very well, Jay, we’ve already indicated to Deputy Prime Minister Sheffield that we’re here to serve as the diplomatic conduit now, so I wouldn’t worry about not hearing from him. In fact, that’s why I wanted to meet with you, to put you personally in the hands of Mr. McLaughlin here . . .”

  “I want to receive that promised call, Mr. Secretary.”

  Byer smiled. “I know you do, Jay. Any good attorney would want to keep a death grip on this thing, but the current President of the United States did not ask me to come over here to stand on the sidelines. He knows, as does President Harris, how important it is to have direct government-to-government diplomatic understandings about these things, and having you in the loop actually muddies the waters.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, Jay, meaning that Sheffield will tell you one thing in diplomatic doublespeak and will tell me—or more properly the PM himself will tell me—something entirely different. He’ll tell me the truth as Britain’s closest ally. This is statecraft, Jay. I know you’re an experienced international lawyer, but this arena is very, very different from what you’re trained to navigate.”

  “What do you propose, Mr. Secretary? President Harris is on his way inbound as we speak and will undoubtedly be met at Heathrow in an hour by police officers with the warrant.”

  “We expect that.”

  Jay warned himself to cap the rising anger in his gut at the paternalistic treatment. I need their help, even if this guy’s a sanctimonious windbag!

  “Okay, but what about tomorrow, when we know Stuart Campbell will try to get what’s known as a committal hearing so he can press for rapid extradition? I’ll be there to fight that request and appeal it immediately if it goes against us, but I need desperately to know the mind of the PM. Have you any confirmed word from them?”

  Byer glanced at two of his people as if trying to restrain himself from a sarcastic remark, then looked back at Jay. “We know this government’s mind already, Jay. They’ll give good and proper lip service to the need to follow international law and procedure, they’ll let the courts rule that President Harris should be extradited, and they’ll make it quietly known to the court that they expect Harris to be given leave to appeal, knowing that the appeal hearing will be set for a month of Sundays from now. After that, the British will do what the British did in the Pinochet case: delay, delay, and delay some more while they write careful, learned opinions and massage the diplomatic problems behind the scenes, and release pontificating statements about law and treaty responsibilities. In other words, this is the start of a long, long process, which will eventually end with President Harris being allowed to return to the United States. There’s really no cause for any of us to get too exercised.”

  “Have you the word of the Prime Minister of England on that sequence, Mr. Secretary?”

  “Now, look, in diplomatic affairs . . .”

  “No, dammit!” Jay cut him off. “As President Harris’s attorney, I’m asking you a direct question with very grave legal import. With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, do you have the direct personal assurance of the Prime Minister of England that the scenario you’ve outlined is lock-down valid?”

  Byer sat back and sighed disgustedly. “That’s not the way it’s done, Jay.”

  “Then we have a major problem.”

  “We have no problem at all, as far as I can see.”

  “First of all, Mr. Secretary, you and the rest of the folks in this room are not going to shove me aside here, statecraft or no statecraft. I’ll certainly bow to and utilize your superior office and skills and support on understanding the equation, but I have a major decision to help John Harris make right now, and that’s whether to continue to a landing in the U.K., or go somewhere else.”

  “That would be foolish . . .” Byer began.

  “What would be foolish? Going somewhere else, or landing here?”

  “Going anywhere else except the U.S., which that aircraft can’t reach. This is the friendliest forum Harris could possibly find, Jay. And for the record, we’re not trying to, as you put it, shove you aside. We simply have a better cross-section of talent to help you, and you should be guided by that. No, as Alex McLaughlin told you, we can’t be Harris’s primary counsel, but we can essentially handle this from the sidelines.”

  “I will handle this with your help. You will not handle this for me or for the President.”

  “Poor choice of words on my part, Jay,” the Secretary said, trying to soften his stance. “Of course you’re the President’s lawyer. We respect that.”

  “Nevertheless you’ve made the decision without consulting me or him that the President should come here?”

  “Well, Jay, it appears you already made that decision before we arrived. We’re just advising you to stick with it.”

  Jay rose from the table. “Excuse me a minute, gentlemen.” He walked to a far corner of the room and took out the piece of paper with the EuroAir cockpit satellite phone number and punched it into the GSM phone.

  It took several minutes to get the President to the cockpit, and Jay could feel the contempt radiating from the conference table behind like a wave of infrared heat, felt but not seen.

  Harris came on the line and Jay quickly explained what was happening.

  “Very well, Jay,” the President said. “Hand the phone to Joe Byer, will you please? Then come back on the line.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jay walked back across the room and explained the President’s request, handing the GSM phone to the Secretary of State, who put it to his ear and tried unsuccessfully to get a complete sentence out.

  “Hello, Mr. Pres . . . yes, I . . . we’re . . . President Cavanaugh is very concerned about . . . yes. I realize that. Yes, sir, I’m fully aware of that.” Byer’s face was turning beet-red as he shifted the phone to his other ear and nodded. “Mr. President, you’re talking to the Secretary of State of . . . yes, sir. I understand. Yes.”

  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.

  THIRTY-ONE

  London, England—Tuesday—5:35 P.M.

  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.”