“He stayed with her?”
“He married her,” the President said, snapping his seat belt open, “and then did his best to rehabilitate her. The poor woman was under constant psychiatric care, but I’m sad to hear… he just told me… she killed herself last year.” Harris moved forward in the seat and prepared to stand as Sherry reached out to touch his arm, her face a study in concern.
“Sir, are you sure that Reinhart is…” She stopped as he raised his hand to silence her.
“Am I sure I want Reinhart defending me given what Washington or the media might say? Yes, Sherry, I’m very sure.” He got to his feet and turned to the men in the aisle, who had been joined by two more of roughly the same age. Extending his hand, President Harris smiled broadly at them.
ELEVEN
“So what are we going to tell them?” Alastair Chadwick asked as the 737 climbed through fifteen thousand feet.
“Who?” Craig Dayton asked, his concentration elsewhere.
“The passengers. Our passengers. The ones who paid money of one sort or another to have their carcasses carted to the eternal city of Rome. Sicily is not an acceptable substitute, you know. They shan’t be fooled.”
Craig glanced at the copilot and shook his head. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I realize,” Alastair answered, “that in America the airline industry shrinks from this radical idea, but perhaps we should tell them the truth.”
“That is a novel idea,” Craig agreed.
“I thought so.”
“You do it.”
“Not bloody well likely, Captain,” Chadwick said, grinning.
Craig Dayton took a deep breath and pulled the PA microphone from its holder.
In the first-class cabin President Harris stood in the aisle greeting the four male passengers who had been waiting to meet him. All American veterans of World War II, they told him proudly, and all on a tour of Europe that would end with the dedication of a new D-Day War Memorial. The first one, a retired Army colonel, had just begun a description of the tour when the click of the PA grabbed their attention.
Folks, this is your captain. I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say. Now, first, there is nothing wrong with this aircraft… there is no safety problem. There is, however, a problem with our trying to land in Rome. The problem is… diplomatic and legal. We have aboard our aircraft, as some of you know, a former President of the United States, President John Harris. It is our responsibility as an airline, and mine as captain, to keep all of you safe, and that includes a former head of state. I have received credible information that there is a very serious threat to the personal safety of President Harris if we land at Rome, and therefore – despite the severe inconvenience to some of you who need to be in Rome on schedule – we are flying south to a safe location near Catania, Sicily, an air base called Sigonella. Now, when we get on the ground at Sigonella, we will be making arrangements to get you either back to Rome or to your ultimate destination. I am truly sorry for this necessity, but I have no choice.
The retired colonel had been looking in the direction of the overhead speakers. His eyes now latched on the President. “Sir, what, may I ask, was the threat?”
The others crowded in to hear the answer over the repeat of the announcement in French and German.
In the cockpit, the call chime started ringing as Craig replaced the PA microphone in its holder.
“Captain? This is Ursula in the back. Can you come back here? There is much anger.”
“What do you mean, anger?” he asked.
“Some passengers are very angry with you.”
“Are they in the aisles?”
“No. They are sitting, but they are talking loudly and won’t calm down.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Craig clicked off the interphone and pulled the PA microphone back to his face.
This is the captain again. I know many of you are very angry at me for this decision, but you must stay in your seats and accept my explanation for now. When we get on the ground, I’ll come back there and talk to anyone who’d like to discuss the matter, but not now! Do NOT give my flight attendants a hard time. They didn’t make the decision. I did.
Once again he translated the words as closely as possible before replacing the mike and turning to Alastair. “I may have to go back.”
Alastair nodded, checking the aeronautical map against the flight computer readout.
“We’ve two hundred forty miles to go, Craig. About a half hour. Are we planning to chat up Sigonella in advance, by the way, or just drop in out of the blue and violate some more regulations?”
“Best to say nothing, I think, until we’re almost overhead. I don’t want some military commander having an opportunity to tell us we can’t land.”
“We’ll declare an emergency then?” Alastair asked.
“What’s to declare?” Craig replied, pushing his seat back and grinning. “We are an emergency.”
Jillian opened the cockpit door at the same moment. “Craig, you’d better come on back. Ursula and Elle say it’s getting ugly.”
He swung his legs around the center console and pulled himself up. “How so?”
“Some people in the back are demanding to talk to you and are cursing at us.”
“What nationality?” Craig asked.
“Does it matter?” Jillian replied, looking alarmed.
Craig stopped and cocked his head.
“If I’m going to speak to them, it would help if I knew what language.”
“Oh. Of course. They’re grumbling in two or three languages.”
He shook his head as he followed her out of the cockpit.
Three yellow legal pads were spread across the tile counter, the words and symbols on their pages an impressionist portrait-in-progress of the intense activity in their owner’s mind.
Jay took a quick sip of orange juice and suppressed his desire to make more coffee as he concentrated on the first pad, labeled “logistics.” The now-stale aroma of fried bacon and overheated hollandaise sauce still hung in the air, but he was oblivious to it.
The question “Where do I go?” was written carefully across the top, along with the names of London, Frankfurt, Geneva, and Stockholm. Paris had been written in and crossed out. So had Rome. The names of the airlines flying to the Continent from the Denver airport followed, along with the average flying times and several airline reservation numbers. There would also be the problem of getting to Denver. Driving normally took two hours, but with a late season snowstorm slicking the roads and the pass on U.S. 287 into Colorado, it could take much, much longer.
The second pad contained the evolving roadmap of the legal problem, beginning with an annotated plea to himself for research on the codes of civil procedures that guide Italian, French, Swiss, and Swedish courts. Most of what he needed could be downloaded from one of the legal reporting services, Lexus/Nexus or WestLaw, but time was the problem. A quickly extracted printout of the Treaty Against Torture downloaded from the United Nations web site was strewn across the counter just beyond the legal pads, the black and white pages sporting red ink from his underlining.
He picked up the phone and punched in one of the numbers he’d been given by Sherry Lincoln. The third pad was filled with names and numbers, including that of Rudolph Baker, Assistant Secretary of State, who had just come on the line, his tone conveying approximately the same level of caution normally reserved for communist leaders and Iraqi foreign ministers.
“Mr. Reinhart, I’ve just been briefed by Alex McLaughlin at the Justice Department, and I must say I’m flabbergasted at your attitude. Would you care to explain to me why you’re refusing to tell the U.S. government the destination of President Harris’s aircraft?”