“No problem, Mr. Reinhart. The Secretary of State has arrived and would like to speak with you at his hotel. We have a car waiting.”
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Jay said, motioning Nigel White and Geoffrey Wallace over to thank them and arrange a meeting later in the evening.
“You realize,” Geoffrey said, “that if they arrest him today, Campbell will try, and probably succeed, in setting the committal hearing for sometime tomorrow. That’s assuming the home secretary signs the appropriate instruments and Peru has sent the formal request.”
“That would be back here?”
“Yes. Committal hearings are only handled at Bow Street.”
“But we simply file for habeas corpus with the… ah…”
“Divisional Court. Yes, but they might expedite that, as well.”
“Have you ever heard of a contested extradition happening within, say, a couple of months?”
Geoffrey shook his head no. “But keep this in mind, Jay. It all depends on the government. If they want to grease the skids, so to speak, and if the Divisional Court refuses to assign the matter for review by the House of Lords, it could happen very fast.”
“There’s still a last appeal, though.”
“You don’t want to get into that territory. Look, probably we’ll have a minimum of months, but I’m simply answering the question you asked earlier today. Could it be pushed? Yes, it could.”
“This process is beginning to sound more risky than I envisioned,” Jay said quietly.
“It is,” Nigel White replied, “especially if Her Majesty’s Government makes the decision to get involved forcefully. Now, your man is no bloody Pinochet, so it’s unlikely they would, yet…”
“Yet, you’re not sure?”
“I’ve heard disturbing things about this Prime Minister’s fury over the way Pinochet was afforded such kid glove care in Britain.”
“Do you think I ought to keep him out of the country?”
Wallace shook his head. “I’m not saying that. I just need to warn you that even if the underlying charges are hogwash, getting this warrant off his back is not a… what do you call it in the States? A ‘slam duck’?”
“What?” Jay said, shifting his eyes from Nigel White to Geoffrey Wallace. “Oh. No, that’s ‘slam dunk,’ as in basketball. Not duck.”
“Of course,” Geoffrey replied.
“Well, dead duck would be correct if they hand your client over to Peru,” Nigel joked, chuckling for a second before realizing the humor had fallen very flat. He cleared his throat and continued. “I will keep my calendar clear for you tomorrow.”
Jay looked in the direction of the door, where the men were waiting for him, then back at Nigel and Geoffrey. “Okay. I’ll call you later this evening after I’ve heard from the Prime Minister’s office.”
It took fifteen minutes of silence to reach the Secretary’s hotel. The other men in the car were obviously functionaries, Jay realized, after climbing in the car and trying to squeeze even the most rudimentary information from them.
The driver stopped at a side entrance, where a hotel security officer was waiting to usher Jay up a flight of stairs to a service elevator, and then to the fifteenth-floor suite where the delegation was waiting.
Jay introduced himself to the Secretary of State and the Assistant Attorney General he’d sparred with by phone from Laramie, then joined them at an ornate conference table.
An aide to the Secretary ran through a quick briefing: the British Government would not want to ruffle American feathers; ex parte contact with the Prime Minister’s office by anyone not a professional diplomat was highly inadvisable; and arrangements were already being made to rent a plush private residence for John Harris’s extended stay under house arrest.
“Mr. Secretary,” Jay replied, “I was promised a call from Deputy Prime Minister Sheffield. I still want to take that call.”
Secretary of State Joseph Byer nodded and raised his hand, palm up. “Mr. Reinhart… or may I call you Jay?”
“Certainly,” Jay replied.
“Very well, Jay, we’ve already indicated to Deputy Prime Minister Sheffield that we’re here to serve as the diplomatic conduit now, so I wouldn’t worry about not hearing from him. In fact, that’s why I wanted to meet with you, to put you personally in the hands of Mr. McLaughlin here…”
“I want to receive that promised call, Mr. Secretary.”
Byer smiled. “I know you do, Jay. Any good attorney would want to keep a death grip on this thing, but the current President of the United States did not ask me to come over here to stand on the sidelines. He knows, as does President Harris, how important it is to have direct government-to-government diplomatic understandings about these things, and having you in the loop actually muddies the waters.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, Jay, meaning that Sheffield will tell you one thing in diplomatic doublespeak and will tell me – or more properly the PM himself will tell me – something entirely different. He’ll tell me the truth as Britain’s closest ally. This is statecraft, Jay. I know you’re an experienced international lawyer, but this arena is very, very different from what you’re trained to navigate.”
“What do you propose, Mr. Secretary? President Harris is on his way inbound as we speak and will undoubtedly be met at Heathrow in an hour by police officers with the warrant.”
“We expect that.”
Jay warned himself to cap the rising anger in his gut at the paternalistic treatment. I need their help, even if this guy’s a sanctimonious windbag!
“Okay, but what about tomorrow, when we know Stuart Campbell will try to get what’s known as a committal hearing so he can press for rapid extradition? I’ll be there to fight that request and appeal it immediately if it goes against us, but I need desperately to know the mind of the PM. Have you any confirmed word from them?”
Byer glanced at two of his people as if trying to restrain himself from a sarcastic remark, then looked back at Jay. “We know this government’s mind already, Jay. They’ll give good and proper lip service to the need to follow international law and procedure, they’ll let the courts rule that President Harris should be extradited, and they’ll make it quietly known to the court that they expect Harris to be given leave to appeal, knowing that the appeal hearing will be set for a month of Sundays from now. After that, the British will do what the British did in the Pinochet case: delay, delay, and delay some more while they write careful, learned opinions and massage the diplomatic problems behind the scenes, and release pontificating statements about law and treaty responsibilities. In other words, this is the start of a long, long process, which will eventually end with President Harris being allowed to return to the United States. There’s really no cause for any of us to get too exercised.”
“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.”