Headwind Read online

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  Other books by John J. Nance

  Fiction

  Blackout

  The Last Hostage

  Medusa’s Child

  Pandora’s Clock

  Phoenix Rising

  Scorpion Strike

  Final Approach

  Nonfiction

  What Goes Up

  On Shaky Ground

  Blind Trust

  Splash of Colors

  Acknowledgments

  While the world of aviation is my domain, I am also a lawyer, and Headwind gave me an extraordinary opportunity to meld both the aeronautical and legal worlds together in an exciting romp that has many dimensions, all of them needing the research help of numerous people in Europe and the Americas, some of whom I’d like to thank publically and specifically.

  First, as always, the evolution of this story was helped immensely by the constant and patient editorial and developmental assistance of my wife, Bunny Nance.

  I want to express my appreciation to my prime advocate at Putnam, Senior Editor David Highfill, whose top-flight abilities at fine-tuning the manuscript always make a good story even better. And my thanks, as well, to my Publisher, Leslie Gelbman, and to my long-time agent and friend Olga Wieser of the Wieser and Wieser Literary Agency in New York.

  Here in Washington State, the demanding day-to-day task of line-editing, polishing, and helping to shape this work was performed again with indefatigable energy by Patricia Davenport, who is also my business partner, an English Master, and my world-class in-house editor who never seems to run out of red pens.

  I could not have rendered an accurate description of how Irish justice would have handled this international crisis without the learned assistance of a world-class Barrister named Patrick Dillon-Malone of Dublin, Ireland, who spent time instructing me and assisting the editing process, as well as directing my visits to the historic Four Courts building and appropriate pubs. My thanks also to Dubliners Mike Rogan of Parc Aviation at Dublin Airport, Feidhlim O’Seasnain, and Peter Donnelly (a member of the Shelbourne Hotel’s management staff), and to my daughter, Dawn Nance, who lives in Ireland and whose suggestions sparked the idea to bring the “circus” to town.

  In London, I want to acknowledge also the kind assistance of Solicitor Leslie Cuthbert, who helped significantly in understanding the Bow Street Courts, and the assistance of Mr. John Coles of Metro Business Aviation at Heathrow.

  And back home in the States, a hearty “Thank You” to Gary and Elizabeth Rhoades, Jim and Kelly Watt, Kirk T. Mosley, and Msg. Jerry Priest, and fellow attorney Ross Taylor for helping proof the results.

  The year 1999 was marked by many things, but the passing of my longtime friend George Wieser was especially difficult. George was there in the beginning of my authorship with an indomitable optimism, and an infectious pride when we reached the bestseller lists with both nonfiction and fiction. He was a gentleman and a scholar and a fighter and that rarest of commodities: an honest man. I shall miss him in this life.

  Dedicated with love and respect to my Aunt,

  my father’s sister,

  Virginia Nance Maccabe

  A fellow Veteran of U.S. Military Service

  who served her country with honor during World War II

  as a female United States Marine.

  ONE

  Gate 35, Athens International Airport, Greece—Monday—2:00 P.M.

  “Captain, I think you’d better get back here!” the chief flight attendant said as she burst into the cockpit.

  Captain Craig Dayton snapped his head around and began reaching for his seat belt as soon as he saw the worried expression on Jillian Walz’s face.

  “What’s the matter?” Dayton asked, aware that his copilot had shifted around in the right seat to look at her as well.

  Jillian shut the door and stood in the tiny space aft of the center console, breathing hard and signaling him to wait. She watched a police car pull up on the ramp of the newly opened airport and stop in front of their Boeing 737, its blue lights flashing. Dayton followed her gaze and spotted the patrol car.

  “We’re about to get in the middle of a diplomatic crisis,” Jillian said. “The gate agent . . .”

  A voice on the overhead speakers cut her short. “Flight forty-two, operations.”

  The copilot lifted his handheld microphone. “Go ahead, ops.”

  “We will have to hold you at the gate for a while, forty-two.”

  “Why?” the copilot asked sharply, noting the arrival of a second police car on the ramp.

  “Forty-two, there is an official order . . . ah . . . wait, please . . .”

  The microphone in the operations office remained on while urgent voices conferred in the background. “Ah . . . we will have to remove some of your passengers.”

  Jillian nodded rapidly, her words tumbling out. “Craig, they’re here to arrest President Harris!”

  Craig Dayton clasped Jillian’s right elbow as he searched her eyes. “Slow down, Jillian, and tell me precisely what you’re talking about.”

  The day had started in Istanbul with the exciting news that a former President of the United States would be riding with them in first class through Athens to Rome. Fresh from delivering a speech to an international conference on hunger, President John B. Harris had come aboard with an attractive young female aide and an appropriately dour Secret Service agent, greeting the crew warmly at the door and even sticking his head into the cockpit to say hello. Impeccably groomed, and wearing a well-tailored dark business suit that made him seem taller than his five-foot-ten height, Harris had proven to be as friendly and gracious as the Washington press corps had always described him during his almost legendary single term in office.

  “Our agent . . . gate agent . . . I know her,” Jillian was saying. “She came down the jetway all upset and said the Greek government has a warrant for his arrest.”

  “Why? What for?”

  She shook her head, creating a moving blur of chestnut hair. “She didn’t know.”

  First Officer Alastair Chadwick whistled and inclined his head toward the ramp, where a third and fourth police car had parked, all with their top lights flashing frantically. “Something’s definitely up, mate.”

  “This is a foreign-flagged airliner,” Dayton said. “No one’s removing any passenger without my permission.” He motioned to Jillian to reopen the cockpit door as he moved the captain’s seat back on its tracks and prepared to get up, filling the air with the aroma of peanuts as the contents of an opened s
nack pouch scattered on the metal floor.

  “Damn.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Jillian said.

  The copilot caught his arm.

  “Craig, you remember I’m a solicitor in my other life in England, right?”

  “Yes, I know,” Craig said, his eyes on Jillian as she stepped out.

  “A little free legal advice, okay? You’re an American national with a European work visa, you’re the master of a German-flagged airliner, and that airliner is currently sitting on Greek concrete. You’re not the U.S. ambassador. They could arrest you for getting in the way.”

  The captain shook his head impatiently. “This is Greece, Alastair. They’ve been civilized for at least a few years now. About two or three thousand, in fact.”

  “Craig?” Chadwick tightened his grip on the captain’s arm, and Dayton responded with irritation.

  “WHAT?”

  “Be careful, okay? I know he’s your President, but you can’t protect him.”

  “No?” There was a flurry of movement as Craig Dayton resumed the process of hauling himself out of the seat. “Just watch me!”

  TWO

  Rome, Italy—Monday—1:00 P.M.

  The Presidential Suite of the Metropole Hotel in the center of Rome was designed for kings and presidents and captains of industry, but despite the opulence of its decor, the most valuable feature to its occupant was a portable phone and plenty of floor to pace.

  “Dammit, man, where are they? You are still in Athens, are you not?”

  Sir William Stuart Campbell, a Scot by birth and a knight of the British Empire by deft political maneuvering, reversed direction without warning and strode briskly toward the ten-foot-high windows opening onto an ornate balcony overlooking the Via Veneto. The doors to the balcony stood aside as a warm breeze flowed in, redolent with the essence of fresh flowers and the fragrance of a busy nearby bakery, but leavened with a hint of exhaust fumes from the midday traffic—all of it lost to the intensity of Campbell’s concentration.

  “Mister Kostombrodis!” Campbell barked, his polished accent worthy of an Oxford don, which he had been at one time in his endlessly distinguished legal career. “My dear sir, I was under the distinct, but apparently misguided impression that we had retained you to keep track of them moment by moment, and that was to include the moment they left the court and headed for the airport. Is it really so difficult to follow instructions?”

  A conservatively dressed young woman wearing a sexless gray suit and a worried expression entered the room, her eyes tracking the imposing hulk of the six-foot-four international lawyer with the wariness of a jackal. She calculated his next trajectory across the forty-foot expanse of the vaulted room and waited.

  “You are virtually certain, are you not,” Campbell was saying into the phone, “that they have a certified copy of the Interpol warrant in their possession?”

  Campbell turned and caught sight of the secretary, who signaled him with a nod of her head. He nodded in return and raised an index finger in a wait gesture.

  “Yes. Yes. I understand. The second you’re certain they have him physically off that aircraft, ring me back. Is that perfectly clear? Whether he’s arrested in Athens or here in Rome is a small matter, but having up-to-the-second information on what is happening is a very large matter. Yes. See that you do.”

  He punched off the phone and collapsed the small antenna in a controlled gesture of disdain, rolling his eyes as he looked at the woman and smiled. “Yes, Isabel?”

  “The foreign minister has arrived, sir.”

  “Show him in, please,” Campbell said, gesturing toward the door as his distinctive features melted into a broad smile, the effect similar to opening a curtain on a sunny day.

  A short, rotund man in a dark suit scurried through the ten-foot-high double doors at the far end of the room and moved across the eighty-year-old Persian carpet as Campbell came to greet him, clasping his right hand and clapping him on the shoulder in a seamless gesture only a larger man could use with such practiced grace.

  “Giuseppe, how good of you to come. It’s wonderful to see you again.”

  Giuseppe Anselmo, the foreign minister of Italy, managed a thin smile as he returned the greeting and accepted a proffered chair next to an ornate couch. A waiter materialized silently with an elaborate silver service of coffee and tea as Campbell inclined his eyes toward the door.

  “Close the balcony doors and leave us now, would you?” Campbell instructed. “And be good enough to secure the main door.”

  The waiter sealed off the balcony, muting the traffic noise as a previously drowned background track of classical music swelled into prominence.

  Campbell reached for a remote control and lowered the volume.

  When the waiter was gone, Anselmo shook his head and leaned forward, keeping his voice irritatingly low.

  “Giuseppe,” Campbell smiled, wagging a finger at him, then tapping his ear. “Sorry, old boy, but I think I might be growing a bit deaf in my dotage. May I ask you to speak up? There are no other ears around, I assure you.”

  “I was saying,” Anselmo repeated in a louder voice as he scooted forward to the edge of the chair, “that this puts us in a very difficult position. Unofficially, of course.”

  “Of course. Treaty obligations are often inconvenient, but are you aware of what Peru’s complaint against Harris really contains?”

  Campbell poured the steaming coffee into one of the expensive gold leaf cups, making mental note of the rich aroma of the special blend he always specified. British or not, he loved rich coffee.

  “I have read it, Stuart. Yes.”

  “Excellent. Then you realize that the Peruvian government made a substantial case to the Peruvian judge who properly issued the arrest warrant under Interpol procedure. President Harris is directly, criminally, personally responsible.”

  Anselmo was shaking his head. “We do not believe that, and I doubt you do either.”

  “Let’s look at the facts, Giuseppe. We know there was a clandestine intelligence operation eighty miles from Lima during Harris’s presidency. We know the targeted building contained some sixty-three men and women, and that regardless of what they were alleged to be making in there, they were, in fact, tortured and, three days later, burned alive.”

  “Stuart, I . . .”

  “Wait, please. Permit me to finish. We also know the American CIA commissioned the operation with local thugs, and we know that commission was the result of a covert operation that could have only been authorized personally by the President of the United States.”

  “But you have no direct proof of that, Stuart!”

  “Giuseppe, as a lawyer, you know we’ve got a rock-solid prima facie case under the Treaty Against Torture. The warrant is valid. It will be up to a trial court to decide if the proof is sufficient. And by the way, we do have the proof, though I’m not prepared to discuss it at this time.”

  Giuseppe Anselmo reached out and tapped Campbell’s forearm with his index finger. “Why are you representing them, Stuart?” His eyes were riveted on Campbell’s. “You have a thriving practice in Brussels. Your firm represents half of the truly successful companies in Europe. You’re very wealthy now. Why take on the United States in a crusade you can’t win?”

  “Is that what you believe this to be?” he smiled. “A crusade?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Of course not! Giuseppe, the only point is that no one on this planet is above the law when it comes to this treaty and the hideous crimes it seeks to prevent. No person may escape universal jurisdiction. No peasant, no king, no president . . .”

  “Please, Stuart! Save your speeches for television,” Anselmo snapped. “I am quite aware that you wrote the majority of the treaty and were the driving force behind passing it and getting it ratified. I am aware of your role in trying to extradite Pinochet.”

  “I am Peru’s lawyer in this matter,” Campbell interrupted, “because they have a valid cas
e, as horrifying as that may be to our American friends.”

  “But Stuart . . . Peru? No one’s going to take this seriously.”

  “Peru is not the issue, Giuseppe. The United States is the issue. You and I are rather familiar with the American attitude that they’re only subject to international jurisdiction when it’s convenient.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Need I remind you of the U.S. Navy’s flight through the ski lift cable?”

  “No.”

  “Or the arrogant legal response to your requests to try the pilots under Italian law?”

  “Of course I am aware of all that!” Anselmo answered with a scowl. “That’s one of the many reasons my government finally collapsed last year and we had to go through elections. It is rather ungracious of you to remind me.”

  Campbell sipped his coffee and glanced through floor-to-ceiling windows at blue skies beyond the balcony, purposefully letting silence hang between them for a few moments before looking back at him.

  “I would never mean to be ungracious to you, old friend,” he said, shifting to flawless Italian. “But the fact is, if I were representing the United States and asking Rome to enforce a warrant for the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, you would not hesitate.”

  “Now, look here, Stuart . . .” Anselmo continued in English.

  “Giuseppe, the fact is, about thirty minutes ago my associates left a magistrate court right here in Rome with a signed warrant for the police to arrest President Harris when he lands at Da Vinci Airport. The judge is prepared to hold immediate hearings tomorrow on our petition for expedited extradition to Peru.”

  “What?”

  “There will be a plane waiting, you see.”

  “What are you doing, Stuart?”

  “Why, being a good lawyer for my client, of course.”

  “But . . . extradition hearings take months, if not longer! How did you convince . . .”

  “There will be appeals by the U.S., of course, but we’re going to demand immediate extradition to Lima for trial. We would appreciate your government’s assistance in cutting through any official delays. Otherwise, under the treaty, I will be forced to insist that Italy try Harris itself.”