“No shooting, then?” Alastair asked evenly.
“No… no, they’re standing there looking stunned.”
“Craig, they still have three cars on the runway.”
“You’ve heard of the good old American game of ‘chicken’ haven’t you?”
“Dear me, you’re not serious?”
“Am I serious?”
“Never mind!” Alastair said quickly. “Stupid question.”
Craig let the 737 accelerate to thirty knots before braking and turning sharply left onto the second runway entrance. He barreled to the middle of the runway and turned right, aligning the nose of the jetliner with the runway heading. The roof lights of three police cars flashed defiantly in their faces at intervals down the concrete ribbon.
Craig advanced the throttles while holding the brakes, bringing the engines up to full power, the 737 straining and lurching against the locked friction of the tires barely holding the runway surface.
“Flash the landing lights three times, then tell the tower we’re rolling.”
Alastair complied as Craig released the brakes smoothly, feeling the craft leap forward.
In the landing lights, he could see the first car several thousand feet ahead as it sat in the middle of the tarmac pointing toward the moving jet. There were no doors open.
“They’re still there,” Alastair said. “Thirty knots.”
“They’ll move.”
“Fifty, sixty… a thousand feet away from him.”
“I know it.”
Suddenly the car ahead jumped into motion and careened off to the right side of the runway, safely clearing the concrete before they rolled over the spot he had occupied.
“Eighty knots, Craig. Two cars to go.”
“Roger.”
The jet’s acceleration began to slow slightly as aerodynamic drag began working against the smooth passage of the aircraft, but the lights of the next car were steady in the middle of the runway surface two thousand feet ahead, and the onrushing Boeing was covering the distance at a far greater rate.
“Move, damn you!” Alastair said under his breath, as that squad car lurched into gear and moved sharply off the surface to the left.
“The last one’s going as well!” Alastair said, his voice almost gleeful. “Vee one, and rotate!”
Craig nursed the control yoke back, lifting the angle of attack of the wings until the lift exceeded the weight, and the powerful aircraft lifted clear of the runway surface heading west.
“Positive rate, gear up,” Craig ordered.
“Right you are, positive rate, and the bloody gear is coming up. Well done, mate! But how did you know they’d get out of our way?”
“This is Italy. If one of those guys let’s his car get smashed, he’d have to pay for it out of his own pocket. No way would they have left one on the runway.”
Jay Reinhart left the courtroom dazed and struggling to hide it. A dull ache in his middle was protesting his failure to eat or drink anything for hours. He tuned out the discomfort and turned on the rented GSM phone.
It rang almost immediately, with Sherry Lincoln on the other end.
“We just lifted off from Sigonella,” she told him, relating the ninety-minute takeoff delay and her call to the Italian foreign minister that had apparently shaken the air traffic clearance from Rome Control.
“I thought you might already be on approach to Heathrow,” Jay said, holding a finger in his other ear against the noise around him and mouthing the word “wait” to Nigel White and Geoffrey Wallace, who nodded and moved off to confer while he talked.
“No,” she replied, “it’ll be about an hour and forty-five, I’m told. What’s your situation?”
He relayed the result of the hearing, but omitted any mention of Stuart Campbell’s chilling revelation that a clandestine videotape existed that might implicate the President.
“So they issued the British warrant?” Sherry asked.
“Yes, and we can expect them to be at the plane with it when you get here.”
“And now it begins?”
He sighed. “I still see no reasonable alternative, Sherry, but… I think I should speak with the President.”
“Hold on. He’s sitting next to me.”
John Harris’s voice came on the line quickly, and Jay repeated the basics.
“Sir, there’s something I have to ask you.”
“Go ahead, Jay.”
“Does the name Barry Reynolds ring a bell?”
There was a very brief hesitation, and Jay imagined he heard a snort of disgust. “Of course. Reynolds was the CIA covert-operations man who set up the massacre in Peru that’s at the root of this problem. Why? Did his name come up in that courtroom today?”
This is an open line, Jay reminded himself. It could be monitored.
“Yes, it did, John. Stuart Campbell claims he has a clandestine videotape of Reynolds talking with you for thirty minutes in the Oval Office… I can’t get to my notes right now, but the meeting allegedly took place around two weeks before the attack.”
“A what?”
“A tape. A videotape. Supposedly, he was wearing a small camera.”
“In the Oval Office?” John Harris almost roared the question into the phone.
“Yes.”
“My Lord in heaven, Jay!”
“Look, John…” Jay interjected quickly. “I think we’d better save this until I see you in person. I don’t know how secure these phones are.”
“You’re being bluffed, Jay! I can tell you that.”
“Then no such meeting ever took place?”
“I’m… we’ll talk on the ground. You’re right to be cautious about this line. I heard Sherry say under two hours. Right, Sherry? She says ‘Yes.’ ”
“Okay, Mr. President. I’ll be waiting for you. And so will they.”
“Damn!” Harris snarled on the other end, responding, Jay thought, to the imminent arrest.
But it was the Reynolds allegation that had prompted Harris’s response: “I can’t believe Campbell would stoop so low,” the President said, correcting himself instantly. “Strike that. I guess I can believe it, and I suppose I should tell you the reason why.” John Harris’s voice sounded strained, his breathing heavy and audible over the pocket-sized phone even through the din of the Bow Street Court foyer surrounding Jay. “There wasn’t time before now,” Harris added.
“I beg your pardon?” Jay asked, looking at the floor and concentrating on the phone.
“Stuart and I have a bit of a history, Jay, that not even you know about.”
“A history?”
“Something I interfered with that he was trying to accomplish. It goes way back before you joined the firm.”
“I see.”
“I think he’s trying to even the score.”
Two men in animated conversation brushed past, almost knocking the phone from Jay’s hand. One mumbled a “Terribly sorry!” and rushed on, as Jay forced himself to focus on the conversation. “This would be a pretty excessive counterstrike just to get back at you for beating him in a lawsuit!” Jay said.
“It wasn’t a lawsuit,” the President added.
A commotion had broken out toward the main entryway and Jay glanced up to see several well-dressed men sweep in and fan out, questioning bystanders about something. He turned away, trying to concentrate on Harris’s reaction.
“You have my word, Jay,” John Harris said on his end. “This is not as it may appear. Don’t jump to any conclusions.”
“This man Reynolds. Is he a black hat?” Jay asked.
“You mean a bad guy? No.”
“Campbell said Reynolds had a long and distinguished career at Langley.”
“He did, Jay, which is why I made the mistake of trusting him.”
Jay related the news that the Secretary of State and a delegation sent by President Cavanaugh were on the way.