“All right, we’ve lost number two,” Alastair said in a matter-of-fact voice.
“And there goes one,” Craig replied.
“Try a restart?” Alastair asked.
“With what? We’re out of gas.”
“I’ll get the APU… damn, no gas for the aux power unit either.”
“We’ll keep the speed up enough for windmilling hydraulics but…”
The electrical power died at the same moment.
“Damn!” Craig threw the appropriate switches on the overhead panel. “Okay, I’ve got my side powered from the battery.”
“I’ve got emergency lights and my battery GPS over here. No instruments,” Alastair said.
“We’ll have to make a no-flap approach,” Craig added. “Hydraulics should last, and we should have standby rudder. VHF radio number one and VHF navigation radio number one and the transponder should work, but the computer’s gone.”
Alastair was already reaching for the transmit switch. “Galway Approach, EuroAir Ten Twenty has a dual engine flameout. No possibility of restart. We’ll need sharp vectoring right onto the localizer.”
The controller’s voice came back on a wave of audible alarm. “Ah… roger, ah, Ten Twenty… you’re one hundred nautical miles from the end of the runway. Can… you make it?”
Craig was running a high-speed calculation in his head, factoring in the winds as he slowed the jet to its most efficient no-flap airspeed.
Alastair watched his lips move, and his head begin to move side to side.
“No.”
“No?” Alastair asked.
“Ask him if there’s a closer field. We can’t make Galway.”
Mr. Justice O’Connell sat in thought for several minutes before looking up suddenly. “Very well. We’re back on the record, and I am ready to rule on Mr. Garrity’s motion.”
“Justice O’Connell?”
The judge sighed loudly but without sarcasm as he picked up his gavel. “Are you attempting to address this court again, Mr. Reinhart? Are you unaware that I’m provisionally ruling in your client’s favor?”
“Yes, sir, but in one respect your ruling will still deny him justice.”
O’Connell replaced the gavel on the bench and swallowed.
“Explain yourself, sir.”
“There is more evidence on that tape, Judge. Please wait, and let me instruct Mr. Garrity.”
Jay turned to Michael, but O’Connell’s voice cut through the attempt.
“I’ll hear you very briefly, Mr. Reinhart. To save time. Tell me directly.”
Jay got to his feet and looked at Stuart Campbell. “Mr. Campbell, would you please rewind that tape in your camera to the end of the original section, where Reynolds leaves the Oval Office?”
Campbell nodded and moved to the camera, deftly manipulating the controls before turning to Jay.
“What would you like to see?” Campbell asked.
Jay came around the table. “May I?”
“By all means,” Campbell said as he backed away from the screen.
Jay pushed the “play” button and let the picture continue until the last few frames of the alcove and the hallway outside the west door came into view.
He pushed “pause,” then leaned in close to the picture to verify what he thought he’d seen.
“What are we looking at, Mr. Reinhart?” O’Connell asked.
Jay sighed as he turned toward the bench. “Judge O’Connell, it is very important to my client that the world not erroneously believe the implications of this tape. I firmly believed as I came into this court this morning that John Harris was innocent, and that this tape had been tampered with, and that the conversation Mr. Campbell presented was false. I believe we successfully demonstrated how that could be done. But there was something bothering me when I first saw this, and I now know what it is. I wasn’t sure until Mr. Campbell played it a second time. Then I remembered a small, inconsequential item from a recent article in the American press.”
“Mr. Reinhart, get to the point. What do you see on this screen that I do not?”
Jay pointed to the hallway visible through the western wall door of the Oval Office.
“This video clearly shows a long hallway that extends at a ninety-degree angle to the western wall of the office. But in the real White House, there is no such hallway. Merely a small alcove. I can testify to this directly since I’ve been in the office and out that door. Can you see this, Judge?”
O’Connell left the bench and descended the steps to look closely at the screen.
“I do see a hallway, yes. But how am I to know your memory is correct? How long ago were you there, Mr. Reinhart?”
Jay hesitated. “Over ten years ago, I’ll admit. But one does not forget that office.”
The judge walked back around and regained his bench as Jay decided to chance a direct request.
“Your Honor, if I may have a ten-minute recess, the Secretary of State of the United States is on his way here. He is in the Oval Office on a weekly basis and can testify firsthand as to whether this hallway really exists or not.”
The judge sat down, saying nothing. He scratched his face and glanced at Stuart Campbell, who was silent, then leaned forward.
“Ten-minute recess it shall be, Mr. Reinhart.”
Joe Byer took the stand when Mr. Justice O’Connell reconvened the court, making fast work of the confirmation that the hallway shown in the video did not exist in the real White House.
“Thank you Mr. Byer, you may step down,” the judge said, focusing on Jay. “Mr. Reinhart, if not the White House… and I am satisfied about that… then what are we looking at?”
Jay got to his feet. “There are, Judge, a total of five different fully furnished mockups of the Oval Office available for the rental of film makers in the U.S. One of them is a permanent set used in the production of a popular television series about the White House. Others have been used constantly in a long procession of feature films or made-for-TV films. These sets can be shipped by truck anywhere in North America and set up in less than a week, and the interiors are essentially indistinguishable from the real office. What we see on this video are pictures made on an artificial set, a mock-up of the Oval Office.”
The judge looked at Stuart Campbell, who shook his head and raised the palm of one hand to indicate he had nothing to add or object to.
Jay had moved closer to the video screen and toggled the video forward and backward, seemingly absorbed in the picture.
“Mr. Reinhart, if you’re through, sir…”
Jay’s eyes had grown wider as he held an index finger in the air. “Wait… wait just a second, Your Honor…”
“Mr. Reinhart…”
Jay turned to the bench. “Judge O’Connell, would you consider coming down here again? There’s something else I’ve just found that absolutely proves my point.”
Mr. Justice O’Connell shook his head as he got to his feet and moved around to the screen once again.
“Here, sir. On that angled wall, you see that mirror, on the side of the alleged hallway just outside the door?”
“Yes?”
“Look in the mirror.”
“I see some vertical lines, not quite vertical,” he said. “What are they?”
“Those, Judge, are some of the two-by-fours holding up the backside of the set.”
“Ten Twenty, turn right now to a heading of zero nine five degrees. I’m taking you to a closer airport at Connemara. Twenty-one miles closer. There’s one runway, runway two seven, and there’s an ILS for that one. It’s twenty-two hundred meters… ah, over sixty five hundred feet in length.”
“What’s the designator?” Alastair asked quickly, receiving the four-letter code and punching it rapidly into his handheld GPS. “I show sixty-two miles, Galway.”
“Roger. Sixty-one miles now,” the controller said.