“Have you the word of the Prime Minister of England on that sequence, Mr. Secretary?”
“Now, look, in diplomatic affairs…”
“No, dammit!” Jay cut him off. “As President Harris’s attorney, I’m asking you a direct question with very grave legal import. With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, do you have the direct personal assurance of the Prime Minister of England that the scenario you’ve outlined is lock-down valid?”
Byer sat back and sighed disgustedly. “That’s not the way it’s done, Jay.”
“Then we have a major problem.”
“We have no problem at all, as far as I can see.”
“First of all, Mr. Secretary, you and the rest of the folks in this room are not going to shove me aside here, statecraft or no statecraft. I’ll certainly bow to and utilize your superior office and skills and support on understanding the equation, but I have a major decision to help John Harris make right now, and that’s whether to continue to a landing in the U.K., or go somewhere else.”
“That would be foolish…” Byer began.
“What would be foolish? Going somewhere else, or landing here?”
“Going anywhere else except the U.S., which that aircraft can’t reach. This is the friendliest forum Harris could possibly find, Jay. And for the record, we’re not trying to, as you put it, shove you aside. We simply have a better cross-section of talent to help you, and you should be guided by that. No, as Alex McLaughlin told you, we can’t be Harris’s primary counsel, but we can essentially handle this from the sidelines.”
“I will handle this with your help. You will not handle this for me or for the President.”
“Poor choice of words on my part, Jay,” the Secretary said, trying to soften his stance. “Of course you’re the President’s lawyer. We respect that.”
“Nevertheless you’ve made the decision without consulting me or him that the President should come here?”
“Well, Jay, it appears you already made that decision before we arrived. We’re just advising you to stick with it.”
Jay rose from the table. “Excuse me a minute, gentlemen.” He walked to a far corner of the room and took out the piece of paper with the EuroAir cockpit satellite phone number and punched it into the GSM phone.
It took several minutes to get the President to the cockpit, and Jay could feel the contempt radiating from the conference table behind like a wave of infrared heat, felt but not seen.
Harris came on the line and Jay quickly explained what was happening.
“Very well, Jay,” the President said. “Hand the phone to Joe Byer, will you please? Then come back on the line.”
“Yes, sir.” Jay walked back across the room and explained the President’s request, handing the GSM phone to the Secretary of State, who put it to his ear and tried unsuccessfully to get a complete sentence out.
“Hello, Mr. Pres… yes, I… we’re… President Cavanaugh is very concerned about… yes. I realize that. Yes, sir, I’m fully aware of that.” Byer’s face was turning beet-red as he shifted the phone to his other ear and nodded. “Mr. President, you’re talking to the Secretary of State of… yes, sir. I understand. Yes.”
Byer cast an angry glance at one of his aides before looking back at the table.
“Yes, sir. I will.” He handed the phone back to Jay.
“Jay? You there?” President Harris asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Your ear is the only one near this phone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I just read Byer the riot and sedition act and verbally spanked him. He’s mad and he’s embarrassed, so treat him like overheated nitroglycerine. Don’t provoke. He’s been told that you are lead counsel and that whatever you say is the law regarding my defense. And he’s been told to tell Mr. Sheffield to call you immediately.”
“Very well, Mr. President.”
“We’re forty minutes out, Jay. You’d better head for the airport.”
Jay folded the phone and returned to the table, standing across from Joe Byer.
“Mr. Secretary, I’ve got a difficult task ahead of me, and I’m grateful for the support of everyone here. But I need to head for Heathrow now, and I need…”
“To hear from Sheffield. I know!” Byer interrupted, shifting his expression to one of resigned friendliness as he got to his feet. “Give me five minutes to reach him, Jay, and I’ll join you in the car.”
Jay hesitated, watching his eyes, which remained steady and engaged. The thought of leaving someone as crafty and arrogant as Byer to speak with the Deputy Prime Minister in private rang alarms in his head, but a Secretary of State could only be pushed so far.
And for that matter, the same limits applied to Sheffield.
Whatever else he might know, Jay thought, he’s nuts if he thinks he can dictate anything to the British.
THIRTY-ONE
The call from Anthony Sheffield came as they pulled away from the hotel.
“I apologize for being slow to call you, Mr. Reinhart. I had been given to understand that the delegation from Washington was speaking for you.”
“No, sir. Working with me, most definitely, but I am the President’s counsel.”
“Very well. I spoke with the PM at length, and I can tell you that we feel strongly that our responsibilities under the Treaty Against Torture are clear and inescapable. The PM believes that we acted with reckless disregard in handling our treaty obligations in the Pinochet case when we refrained from taking an affirmative stand on the question of sovereign immunity and extradition.”
Jay felt a small shudder of relief. “You mean that Prime Minister Blair should have been more forceful in opposing the extradition request and should have supported the concept that Pinochet had sovereign immunity from prosecution in England?”
“Heavens, no. Quite the contrary. The Blair government should have worked very hard to convince our courts to immediately extradite Pinochet to Spain. The extradition request and the warrant were valid, and there was obviously no sovereign immunity. To allow a former president to hide behind the concept of sovereign immunity would destroy the treaty, because who else but a head of state would be in a position to order state torture? If we permit such nonsense, we might as well scrap the treaty. After all, criminal scum like Milosevic or Saddam Hussein would claim sovereign immunity as well, and that would be absurd!”
Jay came forward in the seat, his face suddenly flushed.
“Mr. Sheffield, wait a minute. Do you understand that we’re not in any way raising sovereign immunity as a defense?”
“Ah, but you would eventually, would you not, Mr. Reinhart?”
“I don’t know. That’s premature. He’s not even in the country yet! And our main argument is that the warrant alleges crimes wholly unconnected with President Harris.”
“But that’s the essence of what a trial is for, isn’t it? The sufficiency of the evidence is to be determined by a court of competent jurisdiction. I, too, am a lawyer by trade, Mr. Reinhart.”
Jay could see Joe Byer leaning forward in his seat, straining to fill in the blanks and alarmed at Jay’s alarm.
“Mr. Sheffield, I beg you to understand that in Lima there will be no court of competent jurisdiction, just a monkey trial orchestrated by a bloodthirsty dictator named Miraflores who is determined to put John Harris on the gallows.”