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  “Your old senior partner and employer, Jay. John Harris.”

  A shuddering cascade of memories flooded Jay’s mind. “Mister President? What . . . ? I mean . . .”

  “I’ve been out of office a long time, Jay. Please call me John.”

  “Yes, sir . . . John. How are you?”

  “That was going to be my question to you, Jay. Is Karen okay?”

  Adrenaline squirted into Jay’s bloodstream at the mention of his dead wife’s name.

  “Ah, no, John . . . she’s not.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He swallowed hard before answering. He should spare John Harris the shock of the answer, but there was a perverse satisfaction in telling the truth, like some form of miniature retaliation against the injustice of her loss, knowing the embarrassment it always caused on the other end of a phone.

  “Karen’s dead. She died last year.”

  “Oh, Jay, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. A sudden illness?”

  He couldn’t hold it back. He could feel the words gather like a shotgun blast at fate. “Actually, John, she killed herself.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “She was in constant therapy, but in the end . . .”

  “The years of abuse from the first husband,” Harris offered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Jay, I apologize for reopening the wound.”

  “You didn’t know. It’s just kind of a bad morning.” He took a deep breath and forced his eyes to open. “Now, Mr. President, where are you?”

  “In a bit of trouble,” John Harris said, explaining the situation in brief and raising the immediate question of what to do about the warrant undoubtedly waiting in Rome. “So, I want to hire you as my lawyer, Jay, if you can take a few days off.”

  “You want to hire me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The last time we talked, you were in the Oval Office and I’d just been suspended from the Texas bar after they threw me off the bench.”

  “Doesn’t matter now, does it? You’re not licensed in Italy anyway. We can hire local talent to follow your orders, but I need your international legal expertise. You are familiar with the Pinochet situation?”

  “Of course. I keep very current. I don’t know why, since it’s obvious I’ll never get to . . .”

  “You were going to say, ‘practice again’?”

  “Yeah,” Jay replied.

  “Well, here’s your chance.”

  “This is really curious timing.”

  “How so?”

  “I just received notice last month that my suspension is over and my law license is current again.”

  “Good.”

  “And if I never said it . . . John, I’m so very sorry I let you down when you were just starting your administration.”

  “You’re forgiven, provided you help me out now.”

  Jay rubbed his forehead, feeling his mind still swimming with a cascade of emotions and thoughts and alarms. He had a class to teach, but he was quitting. He should chase Linda down, but he had to let her go. And the chance to practice again was illusory. No one in the legal profession respected a defrocked judge.

  “Okay,” he heard himself saying. “What can I do?”

  “No, Jay, the question is, what can I do? This is a dynamic, unfolding situation, and the Justice Department has already informed me they will not provide my lead attorney.”

  “All right. Ah, first, I need to sit here and think and then jump on the computer and confirm something I remember about Italian criminal procedure.”

  “How long? Should I hold?”

  “Yes. Five minutes. Maybe four. Don’t go away!”

  “I’m not about to, Jay. Keep in mind, though, we’re less than fifteen minutes from arrival in the Rome area, although the pilot has promised to delay his landing for at least forty-five minutes.”

  “Hang on, John. Be right back.”

  Jay carefully placed the receiver on the tile counter as if he might break the connection by putting it down too hard. He stepped back, staring at the instrument, letting his mind organize itself around the problem. The essence of it! What was he always trying to teach the dullards in his class who wanted to conquer Wall Street but had no idea how the legal system worked? First, reduce the problem to its bare essence: We have a Pinochet warrant waiting for an ex-President. He quickly ran through the facts Harris had given him, coming to the same conclusion Sherry Lincoln had reached some five thousand miles distant: if the warrant was in Rome, it would be all over Europe. Only real estate under full U.S. control could forestall an arrest and give him time to start defensive maneuvers.

  U.S. soil. U.S. control. U.S. bases.

  Jay began to lunge for the phone, stopped himself, and raced instead to the bedroom to fire up his laptop. He struggled to plug the cable into the jack connecting him to the University’s computer network and toggle on his Internet connection, loosing a flurry of keystrokes to enter the words “United States Military Bases and Detachments” into a search engine.

  A list of possibilities came back and he paged through them, amazed at the fact that American military bases all seemed to have their own web sites. Ramstein Air Base in Germany, two in the U.K., none in France, a Navy base in Spain, and . . .

  “Yes!” he said to himself, clicking the name he’d found.

  A screen popped up and he ordered the computer to print the image, then switched to a map of the globe and zoomed in on the location, triggering a printed copy of that as well.

  The printer disgorged both pages and he took them and fairly skid-ded back into the kitchen to scoop up the phone.

  “John? Are you there?”

  The line was dead. He replaced the receiver, realizing his hand was shaking, and yanked it up again the second it rang.

  “Mr. Reinhart?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Brian with MCI Worldcom, sir. How are you today?”

  “Too busy for you!” Jay snarled, slamming the receiver back in its cradle.

  He had no phone number for the President. How did one go about calling a foreign airliner in flight halfway around the world, especially one presumed hijacked?

  This is intolerable! he muttered to himself. What on earth do I do now?

  The phone remained silent. He checked his watch. If John Harris had been right, they were on descent into the Rome area right now. What if the pilot decided not to hold, but to land instead? That would be the wrong thing to do.

  Maybe I could call through their air traffic control system, Jay thought. No, I can’t tie up the phone!

  He rushed back to the bedroom and leaned over the computer keyboard again to enter a search command for the main airport in Rome.

  Information on Rome, Ohio, came back.

  He tried again with “Italy” attached as the phone rang again.

  He leapt from the chair, turning it over in the process of dashing toward the kitchen, before remembering the bedroom extension. He reversed course and answered the phone by the bed.

  “Hello?”

  “Jay? John Harris. Sorry. It dropped out on us.”

  “Thank heavens! Do not land in Rome!”

  “Say again?”

  “Do not land in Rome. Instead, I think we’d better get you to an air-base in Sicily called Sigonella. It’s a U.S. Navy contract base not far from the city of Catania. There’s another American base near Milan called Aviano, but it’s too well known. I think Sigonella’s a better choice.”

  “American soil, in other words?” John Harris asked.

  “Not . . . entirely. Only embassies truly fit that description, but this will more than likely buy us time. Can the pilot do it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask him. This is a commercial flight and he’s already gotten himself in trouble for helping me.”

  “If I lose you, John, how do I phone you back?” Jay asked.

  “I doubt you can. I think I’d better call you, if you can keep that line open. D
o you happen to have a second line into your home?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Jay scratched his head frantically, trying to think how to make the calls he was going to need and keep the line open at the same time.

  “You have a cellular phone?” John Harris asked.

  Jay shook his head in disgust. “Of course! We can keep this one open, and I’ll use the cell phone. Have you talked to anyone in Washington I need to talk to? I mean, do you have any telephone numbers into the White House or Justice?”

  “Yes. Hold on. I’ll put you on with my assistant, Sherry Lincoln, and she can brief you on the contacts at the State Department and Justice Department, as well as the direct White House numbers you’ll need while I talk to the captain.”

  “All right. I’ll need to book the fastest flight available to get over there.”

  “Whatever you need to do, Jay. I’m reasonably wealthy. I’ll cover any expense necessary and you can name your fee.”

  Jay started to protest, but Sherry Lincoln was already saying hello. He took down the names and numbers she gave him and asked her to monitor the line while he pulled out the cellular phone, hoping the battery was fully charged. There would be at least a day of work to do in the next fifteen minutes.

  EIGHT

  EuroAir Flight 42, Airborne, 25 Miles Southeast of Rome—

  Monday—2:40 P.M.

  “What do you want to do, Craig? It’s decision time,” Alastair asked, his finger poised over the transmit button.

  “Hold. We hold. Tell them we need some time to sort out a problem. Don’t tell them what.”

  Alastair punched the button and made the requisite call as Craig lifted the PA microphone and blamed the arrival delay on Italian air traffic control.

  The mixed nationalities of the 118 passengers aboard Flight 42 were typical of the melting pot that Europe was becoming in the first years of the twenty-first century. Scattered through the cabin were Turks, Italians, Greeks, British, Germans, Swiss, Dutch, Spaniards, French, and a single Dane, all in the company of forty-four Americans on a guided tour.

  With the exception of two British passengers, only the Americans were aware that a former U.S. President was on board, a fact that had spread excitement through the group on the ground in Istanbul when John Harris was ushered into the otherwise empty first-class cabin by the EuroAir station manager.

  Several members of the tour had come forward in flight to invade the first-class section and say hello, each of them graciously received by the President, who each time had waved down Jillian’s attempts to chase them back to coach.

  As the President finished talking to Jay Reinhart and handed the phone to Sherry Lincoln, the tour director herself came forward and knelt by his seat.

  “Mr. President?”

  “Yes?” he replied, forcing a warm smile to his face and offering his hand to the well-dressed woman, who appeared to be in her sixties.

  “It’s an honor to be aboard your plane, sir!” she gushed. “It feels like Air Force One.”

  He laughed easily. “Well, hardly that. Air Force One has a lot more room. I didn’t get your name?”

  “Annie Jane Ford, sir, from Denver. I’m the tour director for the group back there. All Americans.”

  He held her hand and squeezed slightly. “Annie, please don’t tell anyone, but I’m working on a bit of a scheduling problem at the moment, and I need you to excuse me so I can go talk to the captain.”

  “Oh! Sure! I’m sorry!” She got to her feet and stood aside as he thanked her and moved forward. Jillian had seen him coming and opened the cockpit door.

  John Harris moved inside the small alcove and put his left hand on the captain’s shoulder as he nodded to Alastair Chadwick.

  “Captain?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Where are we?”

  “Descending through twelve thousand, Mr. President, and approaching a holding fix south of Rome. You can see the city up there about thirty miles.” Craig Dayton pointed in the right direction and Harris followed his finger as Craig let a few seconds of silence elapse. “Do you have any word from Washington?”

  “Captain, I have a very large favor to ask you,” Harris began. “I know you already raised the issue, but I didn’t know I was going to get the advice I just received.” He explained his counsel’s recommendation of Sigonella. “Are you familiar with the base?” Harris asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Craig replied.

  “And . . . you have enough fuel?”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Craig answered, aware that Alastair had tensed in the right seat.

  The President turned to the copilot. “Alastair Chadwick, isn’t it?”

  Alastair turned, surprised his name had been remembered. “Yes, it is.”

  “You’re from the U.K., correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And while Captain Dayton here, as a U.S. Air Force officer, feels an obligation to help an ex-president, you obviously have no such allegiance, and your job is very much at stake. Is that a correct analysis?”

  “I’m very much afraid that it is, Mr. President,” Alastair replied cautiously. “I’m sorry to be thinking of myself.”

  “Nonsense. That’s responsible. However, I am in a jam here, and I would very much appreciate any help you could provide in getting me to Sigonella instead of Rome. I can tell you that the legal process waiting ahead is being misused, and while I’m rather prejudiced on the subject, I think you’d be doing international justice a substantial service by preventing what Peru is attempting. Other than that, I have no right to pressure you.”

  “I. . . understand,” Alastair replied, turning back to the forward panel.

  “Regardless of what you decide you can do, I want you to know I deeply appreciate the help you’ve already given me so selflessly. Thank you!” Harris patted Alastair’s shoulder, saluted Craig, and left the cockpit, securing the door behind him.

  “Entering holding,” Craig announced, triggering a radio call from Alastair to Rome Approach Control.

  They made the first outbound turn in silence, the racetrack-shaped pathway showing on the horizontal situation indicator screen in front of them as generated by the flight management computers. They were cleared to fly south on a heading of 170 degrees for a minute and a half before reversing course and flying a heading of 350 degrees back to an artificial point in space ten thousand feet above the Italian countryside, then were to repeat the outbound and inbound legs until cleared to leave and make their approach.

  A call chime rang softly through the cockpit and Craig toggled the interphone to answer.

  “Captain? This is Ursula in the back. We have two men back here who will miss their connections to New York if we hold very long. They insisted I call the cockpit.”

  “Tell them we’re doing the best we can.”

  “What does that mean, exactly? Jillian has briefed us why you’re holding, but these men are quite upset.”

  “It means we’ll know in a few minutes when we’re going to land, Ursula. Don’t tell them anything more.”

  “They’re not the only ones grumbling, but I’ll tell them. Elle is also being questioned.”

  He disconnected and studied the forward panel as they flew in silence for several minutes. Alastair’s fingers were drumming an insistent, nervous tattoo on the control yoke, the muscles along the side of his jaw working overtime, his mind in furious thought.

  “It’s bloody professional suicide,” Alastair said suddenly. “For both of us.”

  “I know it.”

  “We’re as good as sacked right now!”

  “I am, at least. I still say I can get them to believe I made you go along with it.”

  “Look,” Alastair continued, “I know I wouldn’t be doing anything but practicing law if you hadn’t sat in that bar in Abu Dhabi and bullied me an entire night about flying commercially someday. Of course, come to think of it, I would never have had to listen to you in the firs
t place if you and your juvenile delinquent wingman hadn’t blown down my bleeding tent the week before with your F-15’s.”

  “Yeah. That was fun. You RAF types were being too standoffish.”

  “It was funny, I’ll grant you that. But, dammit Craig, now that I’ve got this job, I rather like it! I love flying more than the law. I’ve told you that ad nauseam. That’s why I took so long leaving the RAF, despite your harassing E-mails.”

  “Alastair, seriously, what if I ordered you to get out of the cockpit and go sit down in the back?”

  “Herr Wurtschmidt, our esteemed chief pilot, would still cashier me for not breaking down the cockpit door and clubbing you into compliance.”

  “You’re probably right,” Craig said.

  “But you are going to bloody well do this thing regardless, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know how I can do it without you, Alastair, and yet I don’t know how I could possibly land and turn him over to Peru, for God’s sake.”

  “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!”