He passed the number and Jay quickly wrote it down.
“In your opinion, Mr. Ambass… Richard, what can we expect the British to do about this?” Jay asked.
“Frankly, I don’t know, Jay. I can tell you this government has been critical of the way the Pinochet case was handled by the Home Office.”
“In other words, they think the Blair government should have supported Pinochet’s assertion that he couldn’t be arrested or extradited because of sovereign immunity?”
“No. The opposite. Some members of this PM’s administration seem to think Pinochet should have been shipped to Spain within twenty-four hours of his arrest, though that’s not really legally possible.”
Jay felt momentarily disoriented. “They… support rapid extradition?”
“I wouldn’t say they support it as a matter of general policy, or that they’re prepared to bypass normal legal process, Jay. But I would warn you that there are voices in this PM’s ear telling him that Britain doesn’t have the right to delay extradition as a matter of political decision. In other words, one of the reasons President Cavanaugh scrambled our Secretary of State over here is to try to convince the PM that Britain must not interfere with their courts in any direction.”
“I’m slightly stunned,” Jay said. “Surely they can’t feel the Pinochet case is directly similar to President Harris’s? I mean, with Pinochet the whole world knew very clearly the charges of official torture were valid. These nonsense charges against John Harris are anything but. They’re absolutely groundless.”
“Well, that’s a good distinction, counselor, but you have another problem. With Pinochet, it was Spain, a third-party country, trying to get their hands on him. Even the Blair government would have supported shipping the general back home to Chile if anyone had thought Chile would really put him on trial. But there was a bad taste in everyone’s mouth about Spain making the complaint. Here was Spain demanding that England ship a Chilean to Spain to be tried in Spain for killing mostly Chileans in Chile. It was a real stretch.”
The ambassador continued. “Now, with John Harris, the problem is that the nation that considers its citizens to have been victims of official torture is the very same nation signing this warrant and demanding Harris’s extradition. In other words, Peru wants him in Peru to answer to charges of ordering the torture and killing of Peruvians. That’s a different ball game.”
“My problem is, sir, that I need time to show in court that the charges are bogus. Obviously the Peruvians want to try him in Peru, where the charges will automatically be considered valid whether they are or not.”
“It’s a real dilemma, I’ll grant you, and I can’t guess whether or not the British PM is going to think it’s sufficiently different from the Pinochet case to justify helping us. I just don’t know, which is why I’ll be waiting with bated breath to hear what they tell you.”
The ambassador ended the call and Jay toggled the phone to try Geoffrey Wallace’s office again. Wallace was still out, he was told, and Jay left a terse message before replacing the receiver and jumping to his feet to pace and think.
An entire delegation of heavyweights was inbound from Washington. Why had no one bothered to tell the President’s lawyer? A small administrative oversight, or a pointed one? He couldn’t decide, and the positive prospect of acquiring bigger guns for the fight ahead was being diminished by the prospect of losing control to the servants of a sitting President who had already made the decision to distance himself from John Harris’s dilemma.
Jay checked his watch, envisioning the EuroAir 737 already in the air and headed toward London. Should he phone them? Should he even consider turning them around or sending them to some other capital?
Jay moved to the largest room of the suite, where he’d spread out his three legal pads on an elegant mahogany dining table. The track of his thinking so many hours ago in Laramie and over the Atlantic was clearly visible on one of the pads, the various candidate capitals crossed out one by one until only London remained.
Am I wrong about this? Good Lord, the stakes are too high to be wrong!
Jay moved into the kitchenette and loaded the coffee maker with his mind a half continent away. If the Prime Minister decided to throw the weight of government in the direction of rapid extradition, could he essentially override the legal process? And if so, to what degree?
I’ve got to know the status of the warrant, Jay thought.
There was nothing he could do to stop that process, of course, but once the President had been arrested, Geoffrey Wallace could move instantly to challenge the legality of the arrest, the legality of the warrant, and the legality of any decisions made.
Calm down! There is no way the British PM would send John Harris off in chains to Peru without months of hearings and appeals.
He was sure of that. He was almost sure of that.
The phone rang and Jay moved to sweep up the receiver, relieved to hear the prodigal solicitor on the other end.
“Terribly sorry, Mr. Reinhart. But it’s been a bit of a cock-up getting this figured out, and now that I have, you’d better get yourself down here.”
“Where is ‘here,’ and what are you talking about? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”
“Indeed. I’m at the Bow Street Magistrate Court near Covent Garden. I’ll give you the address. Campbell has already arrived, but the matter isn’t slated for a half hour. You have time to get here.”
“This hearing is to perfect the Interpol warrant?”
“Righto. I’m ashamed to say that it took me a while to discover that only the Bow Street Magistrate Court handles extraditions. Then, when I checked the Bow Street docket, I was wrongly informed the matter wasn’t set yet. But it was, you see. In fact, it was set this morning for a hearing at three-thirty this afternoon, which is thirty minutes from now. Could have been an administrative error, I suppose, but the earlier misinformation smells like a favor to a crony.” Wallace passed the address quickly, adding, “You realize there may be little we can do to oppose this first step?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I rang up someone who knows this magistrate, and I’m told he’s unlikely to do anything but quickly issue the arrest warrant. The extradition warrant will take a later hearing.”
“May I speak at all in court?”
“It’s rather informal, so I doubt if the magistrate would toss you in the Tower of London for interjecting a few words. Whatever you might be able to say, however, will most likely have no legal significance at this stage. This is merely a formality to translate the Peruvian Interpol warrant into a provisional British arrest warrant. You can oppose it if the judge allows, but on a very narrow basis. You know, did Peru really send it? That sort of thing.”
Jay rang off and raced to the elevator with his briefcase. He punched the button repeatedly, then gave up and ran to the stairway, descending the six flights to the lobby, where the doorman whistled up a taxi. The ride to the court took less than fifteen minutes, and Geoffrey Wallace was waiting for him at the curb as he climbed out of the cab.
“Mr. Reinhart?”
“Yes. How’d you know?” Jay asked.
“You look appropriately stressed,” Wallace said, introducing himself and ushering Jay through security into the small and somewhat scruffy lobby and off to one side. The solicitor was probably sixty and just under six feet tall. Jay memorized his cheerful features, round face and a full head of sandy hair that almost looked like a rug.