“It isn’t Peru, you know. It’s Italy. Peru will have to fight to get him. You heard that. And besides, Sigonella is Sicily, which is also Italian territory.”
“Do I have any legal latitude?” Craig asked, turning to him. “As captain, I mean? Put on your lawyer hat and tell me.”
Alastair Chadwick mulled over the question and turned to meet his friend’s gaze. “Actually, I think you do. I believe I was wrong earlier.”
“You mean, when you said we’d be stealing the aircraft?”
“That’s right, I was wrong,” Alastair said. “The international conventions, as well as German law, all give the captain of a aircraft in international flag service complete authority to do whatever he or she thinks necessary once the flight has begun. That’s the key. We didn’t make the decision until the flight had begun.”
“Great!”
“But, Craig, that merely means they can’t put us in jail. We’ll still be sacked on sight by EuroAir, and I still don’t want to do this. Neither of us is going to find as good an airline job anywhere.”
Craig sighed. “I can’t make you do this.”
“No,” Chadwick laughed ruefully, “you bloody well can’t!”
“Which means,” Craig continued, his words metered, “that this tremendously important and pivotal decision in the evolution of international law – the determination of whether this legal travesty happens or not – turns entirely on what you decide, as historians will undoubtedly note. They’ll probably call it ‘Chadwick’s Decision.’ ”
“Oh, thank you so very much! You spread guilt quite effectively for a non-Catholic, you know.”
“We’ve already started this show, Alastair. If we land in Rome, we pulled our little stunt in Athens for nothing.”
“We? What is this ‘we’ business, Captain, sir? I seem to recall begging you not to take off.”
“You said, and I quote, ‘Don’t leave without a clearance.’ So we got a clearance.”
“I’m beginning to see why King George let the bleeding colonies go.”
“Wasn’t his choice. We whipped Cornwallis.”
“Yanks!”
“Brits!”
They fell silent for nearly a minute as the 737 turned once more on an outbound heading.
“Oh, bloody hell! All right! I’ll plug in Sigonella if you’ll give me some semi-intelligent reason to give Approach Control.”
“Thank you, Alastair. But don’t refile for Sigonella. Tell him we want to divert to Naples. We don’t want them figuring this out just yet.”
“And what’s my reason?” Alastair asked.
“We can’t tell them. And that’s the truth. We can’t.”
NINE
Jay Reinhart squeezed the cell phone between his left ear and shoulder as he waited for Assistant Attorney General Alex McLaughlin to return to the line. He picked up the house phone meanwhile and pressed it to his right ear.
“Still there?”
Sherry Lincoln’s voice was a welcome sound. “Right here, Mr. Reinhart.”
“Still working. Hang on,” he told her, setting the receiver down again by the yellow legal pad, the first two pages of which were already filled with notes.
“Mr. Reinhart?” McLaughlin said from his Washington office.
“Yes. Right here.” He readjusted the phone and almost dropped it, catching it with his left hand in time. “Go ahead.”
“Well, we’re all going to have to move very fast on this. I’m glad President Harris was able to retain you so rapidly.”
“This is rather a shock,” Jay replied, massaging his forehead.
“State assures me the arrest will be respectful, and there will be a first-class hotel waiting, but the problem comes tomorrow morning Rome time. Peru’s counsel already has an extradition hearing scheduled for eight A.M. Now, we have no one in Rome from Justice, and even if we did, our role becomes essentially amicus curiae, friend of the court. All we need is the equivalent of a motion for continuance in civil law terms, but, as I say, Justice can only support your argument, we can’t make the motion. Does your firm have someone in Rome who can enter an appearance and do the initial argument for delay?”
“I… don’t have a firm, Mr. McLaughlin.”
There was stunned silence from the Beltway. “You don’t have a… you’re not part of a firm?”
“No.”
“You’re a sole practitioner?” McLaughlin asked in amazement.
“Actually, right now I’m not even practicing. I teach at the University of Wyoming.”
“I see. The law school?”
“No. The main university.”
More silence, and the sounds of a man completely off balance clearing his throat. “Ah, I hate to ask this, Mr. Reinhart, but you are a lawyer, I hope?”
“Yes. I’m licensed in Texas.”
“May I… may I ask your area of legal expertise?”
“Calm down, Mr. McLaughlin. I’m an international legal scholar, and a former practitioner. I am current, even though I’ve technically been on the sidelines for a while.”
“I see.”
“I do understand this, and I do know as much about what to do as anyone else would at this point.”
“Mr. Reinhart, forgive me, but this isn’t going to work. President Harris needs the immediate services of a substantial firm with offices all over Europe, where someone can get to him within the hour. I doubt very much even the U.S. Air Force could get you personally from Laramie to Rome in time.”
“The motion for continuance is very simple under Italian law, Mr. McLaughlin,” Jay replied evenly. “I can hire local counsel in Rome from here in half an hour.”
“Well… that may be true, but what’s needed is a network of long-time polished legal contacts and the ability to work with us from experience, and clerical, secretarial, and paralegal support.”
“I know all that.”
“Mr. Reinhart, I do not want to demean your expertise, sir, but this is not a job for a sole practitioner.”
“The President hired me, Mr. McLaughlin. You are speaking to his lead counsel. Let’s get to the substance of this matter so I can make the necessary calls.”
“Are you familiar with our embassy staff in Rome?”
“No.”
“You don’t know the American ambassador?”
“No.”
“Do you know our liaison to the World Court at The Hague, or the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and his staff?”
“No.”
“Then how in hell, Mr. Reinhart,” McLaughlin said, his voice hardening and his volume increasing, “can you possibly hope to defend not only President Harris’s right to remain a free man, but also the broader interests of the United States of America in a very critical and immediate matter from the MIDDLE OF FRIGGIN’ WYOMING?”
“By phone, by fax, by logic, by training, and by virtue of the fact that I am his lawyer! How much time are we going to waste on this debate? The man’s hovering over Rome as we speak, he’s at the mercy of two commercial pilots, and I’ll bet you your limousine privileges there’s a Peruvian jet of some sort sitting at the next gate to their’s at Da Vinci Airport as part of a quiet little plot to whisk him away on arrival while the local police look the other way. I seriously doubt that John Harris would ever make it to the hotel in Rome, let alone that hearing tomorrow. He’ll be over the Atlantic on the way to a show trial in Lima.”
“How did you know about that plane? Our intelligence sources just told me.”
“Logic, Mr. Assistant Attorney General. That’s how I’d do it if I were Sir William Stuart Campbell.”
“You know him?”
“Yes. Do you?” Jay asked, permitting a little sarcasm into his tone.
“No. Only by reputation.”
“Well, sir, I know him all too well. I’m handicapped by distance, but not by experience.”