I still had connections into the Senate’s intelligence committee in those days, and I knew that at least three southern hemisphere nations had put out contracts on Sam’s life. To say nothing of the big multinationals. It was my warnings that saved his scrawny little neck.
Sam lost the fortune he made on asteroid mining, of course. He’d made and lost fortunes before that; it was nothing new to him. He just went into other business lines; you couldn’t keep him down for long.
He was funning a space freight operation when he sued the Pope. And the little sonofagun knew that I’d be on the International Court of Justice panel that heard his suit.
“Senator Meyers, may I have a word with you?” My Swedish secretary looked very upset. He was always very formal, always addressed me by my old honorific, the way a governor of a state would be called “Governor” even if he’s long retired or in jail or whatever.
“What’s the matter, Hendrick?” I asked him.
Hendrick was in his office in The Hague, where the World Court is headquartered. I was alone in my house in Nashua, sipping at a cup of hot chocolate and watching the winter s first snow sifting through the big old maples on my front lawn, thinking that we were going to have a white Christmas despite the greenhouse warming. Until Hendricks call came through, that is. Then I had to look at his distressed face on my wall display screen.
“We have a very unusual… situation here,” said Hendrick, struggling to keep himself calm. “The chief magistrate has asked me to call you.”
From the look on Hendricks face, I thought somebody must be threatening to unleash nuclear war, at least.
“A certain … person,” Hendrick said, with conspicuous distaste, “has entered a suit against the Vatican.”
“The Vatican!” I nearly dropped my hot chocolate. “What’s the basis of the suit? Who’s entering it?”
“The basis is apparently over some insurance claims. The litigant is an American citizen acting on behalf of the nation of Ecuador. His name is,” Hendrick looked down to read from a document that I could not see on the screen, “Samuel S. Gunn, Esquire.”
“Sam Gunn?” I did drop the cup; hot chocolate spilled all over my white corduroy slacks and the hooked rug my great grandmother had made with her very own arthritic fingers.
Sam was operating out of Ecuador in those days. Had himself a handsome suite of offices in the presidential palace, no less. I drove through the slippery snow to Boston and took the first Clipper out; had to use my ex-Senatorial and World Court leverage to get a seat amidst all the jovial holiday travelers.
I arrived in Quito half an hour later. Getting through customs with my one hastily packed travel bag took longer than the flight. At least Boston and Quito are in the same time zone; I didn’t have to battle jet lag.
“Jill!” Sam smiled when I swept into his office, but the smile looked artificial to me. “What brings you down here?”
People say Sam and I look enough alike to be siblings. Neither Sam nor I believe it. He’s short, getting pudgy, keeps his rusty-red hair cropped short. Shifty eyes, if you ask me. Mine are a steady brown. I’m just about his height and the shape of my face is sort of round, more or less like his. We both have a sprinkle of freckles across our noses. But there all resemblance—physical and otherwise—definitely ends.
“You know damned well what brings me down here,” I snapped, tossing my travel bag on one chair and plopping myself in the other, right in front of his desk.
Sam had gotten to his feet and started around the desk, but one look at the blood in my eye and he retreated back to his own swivel chair. He had built a kind of platform behind the desk to make himself seem taller than he really was.
He put on his innocent little boy face. “Honest, Jill, I haven’t the foggiest idea of why you’re here. Christmas vacation?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“You didn’t bring a justice of the peace with you, did you?”
I had to laugh. Every time I asked myself why in the ever-loving blue-eyed world I wanted to marry Sam Gunn, the answer always came down to that. Sam made me laugh. After a life of grueling work as an astronaut and then the tensions and power trips of Washington politics, Sam was the one man in the world who could make me see the funny side of everything. Even when he was driving me to distraction, we both had grins on our faces.
“I should have brought a shotgun,” I said, trying to get serious.
“You wouldn’t do that,” he said, with that impish grin of his. Then he added a worried, “Would you?”
“Where did you get the bright idea of suing the Vatican?”
“Oh, that!” Sam visibly relaxed, eased back in his chair and swiveled around from side to side a little.
“Yes, that,” I snapped. “What kind of a brain-dead nincompoop idea is that?”
“Nincompoop?” He looked almost insulted. “Been a long time since I heard that one.”
“What’s going on, Sam? You know a private citizen can’t sue a sovereign state.”
“Sure I know that. I’m not suing the Vatican. The sovereign nation of Ecuador is suing. I’m merely acting as their representative, in my position as CEO of Ecuador National Space Systems.”
I sank back in my chair, thinking fast. “The Vatican isn’t a party to the International Court of Justice’s protocols. Your suit is null and void, no matter who the plaintiff may be.”
“Christ, Jill, you sound like a lawyer.”
“You can’t sue the Vatican.”
Sam sighed and reached out one hand toward the keyboard on his desk. He tapped at it with one finger, then pointed to the display screen on the wall.
The screen filled with print, all legalese of the densest kind. But I recognized it. The Treaty of Katmandu, the one that ended the three-way biowar between India, China and Pakistan. The treaty that established the International Peacekeeping Force and gave it global mandatory powers.
“ ‘All nations are required to submit grievances to the International Court of Justice,’ ” Sam quoted from the treaty, “ ‘whether they are signatories to this instrument or not.’ ”
I knew it as well as he did. “That clause is in there to prevent nations from using military force,” I said.
Sam gave a careless shrug. “Regardless of why it’s in there, it’s there. The World Court has jurisdiction over every nation in, the world. Even the Vatican.”
“The Vatican didn’t sign the treaty.”
“Doesn’t matter. The treaty went into effect when two-thirds of the membership of the UN signed it,” Sam said. “And any nation that doesn’t obey it gets the Peacekeepers in their face.”
“Sam, you can’t sue the Pope!”
He just gave me his salesman’s grin. “The nation of Ecuador has filed suit against the Vatican State. The World Court has to hear the case. It’s not just my idea, Jill—it’s the law.”
The little sonofabitch was right.
I expected sam would invite me to dinner. He did, and then some. Sam wouldn’t hear of my staying at a hotel; he had already arranged for a guest suite for me in the presidential palace. Which gave the lie to his supposed surprise when I had arrived at his office, of course. He knew I was coming. It sort of surprised me, though. I wouldn’t have thought that he’d want me so close to him. He had always managed to slip away when I’d pursued him before. This time he ensconced me in presidential splendor in the same building where he was sleeping.