“Oh, Jay, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. A sudden illness?”
He couldn’t hold it back. He could feel the words gather like a shotgun blast at fate. “Actually, John, she killed herself.”
“Oh, no!”
“She was in constant therapy, but in the end…”
“The years of abuse from the first husband,” Harris offered.
“Yeah.”
“Jay, I apologize for reopening the wound.”
“You didn’t know. It’s just kind of a bad morning.” He took a deep breath and forced his eyes to open. “Now, Mr. President, where are you?”
“In a bit of trouble,” John Harris said, explaining the situation in brief and raising the immediate question of what to do about the warrant undoubtedly waiting in Rome. “So, I want to hire you as my lawyer, Jay, if you can take a few days off.”
“You want to hire me?”
“That’s right.”
“The last time we talked, you were in the Oval Office and I’d just been suspended from the Texas bar after they threw me off the bench.”
“Doesn’t matter now, does it? You’re not licensed in Italy anyway. We can hire local talent to follow your orders, but I need your international legal expertise. You are familiar with the Pinochet situation?”
“Of course. I keep very current. I don’t know why, since it’s obvious I’ll never get to…”
“You were going to say, ‘practice again’?”
“Yeah,” Jay replied.
“Well, here’s your chance.”
“This is really curious timing.”
“How so?”
“I just received notice last month that my suspension is over and my law license is current again.”
“Good.”
“And if I never said it… John, I’m so very sorry I let you down when you were just starting your administration.”
“You’re forgiven, provided you help me out now.”
Jay rubbed his forehead, feeling his mind still swimming with a cascade of emotions and thoughts and alarms. He had a class to teach, but he was quitting. He should chase Linda down, but he had to let her go. And the chance to practice again was illusory. No one in the legal profession respected a defrocked judge.
“Okay,” he heard himself saying. “What can I do?”
“No, Jay, the question is, what can I do? This is a dynamic, unfolding situation, and the Justice Department has already informed me they will not provide my lead attorney.”
“All right. Ah, first, I need to sit here and think and then jump on the computer and confirm something I remember about Italian criminal procedure.”
“How long? Should I hold?”
“Yes. Five minutes. Maybe four. Don’t go away!”
“I’m not about to, Jay. Keep in mind, though, we’re less than fifteen minutes from arrival in the Rome area, although the pilot has promised to delay his landing for at least forty-five minutes.”
“Hang on, John. Be right back.”
Jay carefully placed the receiver on the tile counter as if he might break the connection by putting it down too hard. He stepped back, staring at the instrument, letting his mind organize itself around the problem. The essence of it! What was he always trying to teach the dullards in his class who wanted to conquer Wall Street but had no idea how the legal system worked? First, reduce the problem to its bare essence: We have a Pinochet warrant waiting for an ex-President. He quickly ran through the facts Harris had given him, coming to the same conclusion Sherry Lincoln had reached some five thousand miles distant: if the warrant was in Rome, it would be all over Europe. Only real estate under full U.S. control could forestall an arrest and give him time to start defensive maneuvers.
U.S. soil. U.S. control. U.S. bases.
Jay began to lunge for the phone, stopped himself, and raced instead to the bedroom to fire up his laptop. He struggled to plug the cable into the jack connecting him to the University’s computer network and toggle on his Internet connection, loosing a flurry of keystrokes to enter the words “United States Military Bases and Detachments” into a search engine.
A list of possibilities came back and he paged through them, amazed at the fact that American military bases all seemed to have their own web sites. Ramstein Air Base in Germany, two in the U.K., none in France, a Navy base in Spain, and…
“Yes!” he said to himself, clicking the name he’d found.
A screen popped up and he ordered the computer to print the image, then switched to a map of the globe and zoomed in on the location, triggering a printed copy of that as well.
The printer disgorged both pages and he took them and fairly skid-ded back into the kitchen to scoop up the phone.
“John? Are you there?”
The line was dead. He replaced the receiver, realizing his hand was shaking, and yanked it up again the second it rang.
“Mr. Reinhart?”
“Yes?”
“This is Brian with MCI Worldcom, sir. How are you today?”
“Too busy for you!” Jay snarled, slamming the receiver back in its cradle.
He had no phone number for the President. How did one go about calling a foreign airliner in flight halfway around the world, especially one presumed hijacked?
This is intolerable! he muttered to himself. What on earth do I do now?
The phone remained silent. He checked his watch. If John Harris had been right, they were on descent into the Rome area right now. What if the pilot decided not to hold, but to land instead? That would be the wrong thing to do.
Maybe I could call through their air traffic control system, Jay thought. No, I can’t tie up the phone!
He rushed back to the bedroom and leaned over the computer keyboard again to enter a search command for the main airport in Rome.
Information on Rome, Ohio, came back.
He tried again with “Italy” attached as the phone rang again.
He leapt from the chair, turning it over in the process of dashing toward the kitchen, before remembering the bedroom extension. He reversed course and answered the phone by the bed.
“Hello?”
“Jay? John Harris. Sorry. It dropped out on us.”
“Thank heavens! Do not land in Rome!”
“Say again?”
“Do not land in Rome. Instead, I think we’d better get you to an air-base in Sicily called Sigonella. It’s a U.S. Navy contract base not far from the city of Catania. There’s another American base near Milan called Aviano, but it’s too well known. I think Sigonella’s a better choice.”
“American soil, in other words?” John Harris asked.
“Not… entirely. Only embassies truly fit that description, but this will more than likely buy us time. Can the pilot do it?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask him. This is a commercial flight and he’s already gotten himself in trouble for helping me.”
“If I lose you, John, how do I phone you back?” Jay asked.
“I doubt you can. I think I’d better call you, if you can keep that line open. Do you happen to have a second line into your home?”
“No, I don’t.”
Jay scratched his head frantically, trying to think how to make the calls he was going to need and keep the line open at the same time.
“You have a cellular phone?” John Harris asked.
Jay shook his head in disgust. “Of course! We can keep this one open, and I’ll use the cell phone. Have you talked to anyone in Washington I need to talk to? I mean, do you have any telephone numbers into the White House or Justice?”
“Yes. Hold on. I’ll put you on with my assistant, Sherry Lincoln, and she can brief you on the contacts at the State Department and Justice Department, as well as the direct White House numbers you’ll need while I talk to the captain.”
“All right. I’ll need to book the fastest flight available to get over there.”
“Whatever you need to do, Jay. I’m reasonably wealthy. I’ll cover any expense necessary and you can name your fee.”