Headwind

by John J. Nance

  “Is he reversed very often by your Supreme Court?” Jay asked.

  Garrity and Dunham both shook their heads no. “Seldom.”

  “Which tells me,” John Harris replied, “that tyrant or not, he knows the law.”

  “It’s not interpreting the law I’m worried about,” Michael Garrity said. “It’s exercising the broad discretion he’ll have in this case.”

  “So what do you recommend?” John Harris asked.

  “I recommend,” Michael began, “that we spend the rest of the afternoon trying to build a body of case law to refute the idea that either an unproven videotape or a single allegation can constitute a reasonable basis for this warrant.”

  “And the prospect for success?” the President asked, his eyes firmly tracking both lawyers.

  Seamus Dunham sighed and looked at Michael Garrity before meeting the President’s gaze.

  “Mr. President, I would strongly advise you to be prepared for anything. What we have here is a stacked deck.”

  The Shelbourne Hotel, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, Ireland

  Stuart Campbell excused himself from the beehive of activity in the Presidential Suite and adjourned to his bedroom, taking along the videocassette recorder he needed to make a copy of the tape for Reinhart.

  “No one else is to have access to that taped evidence but me,” Stuart had warned his team. “I have the equipment to make the dub, and I’ll do it myself.”

  It was 4:30 A.M. by his bedroom clock when he opened his briefcase and removed a small item in bubble wrap. He laid it on the bed, pulled a tiny digital video camera free of the wrapping, and removed a tiny tape cassette. He turned on the camera and inserted the tape, settling on the edge of the bed and watching the black screen suddenly come alive with black-and-white images of the back of a man’s suit coat. The man disappeared out of the frame behind a desk. Then the camera-bearing individual apparently sat on a couch and readjusted himself and the focus of the camera to a recognizable image: the familiar interior of the best-known office on earth.

  The sound quality was poor but serviceable, and as Campbell had done with the first copy of the tape in Lima, he watched it from beginning to end, making absolutely certain that the words he had heard spoken were precisely as he recalled.

  At the tape’s end, it appeared that Reynolds had turned off the camera just as he departed the Oval Office, leaving as the last image a bouncing shot of a long hallway outside the eastern entrance with a uniformed officer visible, standing by a mirror to one side.

  Stuart had long since prepared the basic legal brief on the tape. Having met Reynolds and recorded his voice in a sworn, witnessed statement, he had evidence that the voice on the Oval Office tape and Reynolds’s voice were the same.

  Campbell fumbled through his briefcase to verify the presence of the other tape, the one containing numerous network television clips of John Harris and his voice, ample proof for a cursory comparison of Harris’s voice and image on the Reynolds tape. He pulled out the transcript of the conversation, wondering if John Harris really recalled the words that had been spoken, or if he’d heard only what he’d expected to hear that day. In any event, the transcript would be devastating to Harris.

  Stuart carefully put the transcript and supporting tapes away.

  It had been wise, he thought, to insist that Barry Reynolds turn over the original tape. A copy would carry much less weight if examined by experts.

  He thought back to his brief meeting in Baltimore with Reynolds and his surprise at Reynolds’s belief that President Miraflores had ordered him killed in retaliation for the Peruvian raid.

  “Miraflores knew I had been the bag man for the operation,” Reynolds had said. “But he didn’t realize I was acting under presidential orders.”

  “Who told him?” Stuart had asked.

  “I did,” Reynolds had replied quietly as he sat in his living room with the drapes drawn. “Before I left the Company, we confirmed the contract on my head. I knew his death squads would get me sooner or later if he didn’t cancel the contract, but I also knew he’d never attempt to assassinate an ex-President.”

  “And, even though you technically commissioned the raid, you thought he’d forgive you?”

  “I knew Miraflores hated John Harris, because his brother was killed in that raid. I knew he’d trade my scalp for Harris’s.”

  “So you gave him the tape you’d made for insurance.”

  “I sent him a copy of the tape,” Reynolds had confirmed, “and agreed to testify if Harris was brought to trial under international law, and if he’d call off his dogs. So far, so good.”

  That had been two months ago.

  Campbell looked at the video camera again, a late-nineties model. He’d had no idea such technology existed before Harris’s presidency, especially in the form of a tiny camera worn concealed in something as small as a tie clip with the recorder itself in a briefcase. But Reynolds had shown him the camera in Baltimore. It seemed a little crude, but it worked.

  Dublin, Ireland

  John Harris had been standing at the window of Seamus Dunham’s office only half listening to the intense legal analysis being discussed behind him while his mind drifted half a world away.

  He thought of Alice, as he did so many times a day. Her loss three years ago to something as simple and devastating as a medical error would always haunt him, along with the wholly illogical feeling that if he’d been at her side in the operating room, the wrong medication would not have been administered.

  The images of her triggered the usual struggle to stem the tears. Outwardly, he had handled her death with the dignity that defined her life, refusing to sue a devastated medical team, forgiving the surgeon and anesthesiologist and the three nurses both in public and in private, trying to help them through the hell of public outrage and misunderstanding. There had already been a national focus on preventable medical error, but Alice’s death—the death of a former First Lady—provided a catalyst, and she would be proud . . . no, she was proud, he corrected himself, of the progress that had come from her loss, and the lives that had been saved in the years since with so many improvements in healthcare safety.

  And now, he thought, here I am with another challenge of character. And how should I handle this, honey? Run? Stay? Fight? Fold? The options had become so terribly confusing, the black hole of fear in his middle rising up every few hours to engulf him and confuse his decisions. I was the President of the United States of America, he told himself. I have a duty to stand and fight with dignity.

  But did he have a duty to submit to a thinly disguised assassination attempt wrapped disingenuously in the robes of the law?

  He ached with the pain of needing her now, at this moment, to nudge him in the right direction again, as she had so many pivotal times during those incredible four years in the White House. The night he’d reached his wits’ end over the issue of running again, for instance. How, he’d asked her, could he possibly let his party down with reelection virtually guaranteed? Yet, hadn’t he placed the marrow of his credibility behind the concept of a single, six-year term, a change that would require a constitutional amendment, but benefit the nation greatly? That was a major campaign promise to the American people. How could he walk away from that?

  Alice had joined him quietly in the Oval after chasing out the Chief of Staff and shutting the door. Together they had stood at the window overlooking the Rose Garden for the longest time, watching the fountain in the distance and the Washington Monument as she squeezed his arm and said nothing.

  “What do I do?” he asked her at last. “How can I walk away from this responsibility?”

  She had smiled at him and pointed to the lighted spire of the monument.

  “George set the example, didn’t he?” she said. “His greatness was teaching us by example that principles would guide and protect this nation when the politics of the moment had been long forgotten.”

  He remembered the weight that had lifted from
his shoulders then, and the ease of making the announcement that shocked the nation and made him an outcast in his own party.

  The job was still undone, he reminded himself. There was still no single six-year term. Perhaps living to keep fighting that battle justified turning tail and running. Perhaps not.

  But there was one thing that loomed always in his mind, accepted and unquestioned and unquenchable: how empty the world was without her.

  I miss you, honey! he thought, almost losing the battle to fight back the tears.

  FORTY-ONE

  Dublin, Ireland—Wednesday—5:30 P.M.

  The sun was hanging low in the western sky when Jay Reinhart emerged from Seamus Dunham’s building with the others close behind. He forced himself to be aware of the beauty before him: the diffused red hues of the angled sunlight igniting the glow of reddish masonry, firing the reflective street signs, and forcing the hapless westbound drivers to navigate with hands held tenuously before their eyes. The city was shifting from the lethargy of a lazy afternoon to the energy of a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, its people charging about to various purposes with an infectious optimism that seemed wholly undampered by the inherent knowledge that not every human circumstance within Dublin’s fair city was positive. There was to be a grand and lengthy fireworks display after dark at the east end of the city where the River Liffey empties into the bay, and the traffic in the heart of Dublin was already building.

  Jay loved sunsets, but there was a limit to what one could enjoy when the thunderheads of circumstance loomed large on the horizon. Yet the ruddy resonance of a city at sunset somehow demanded appreciation, even if it was an item of faith to be stored and valued later in the hoped-for absence of challenge and peril.

  The President turned down Garrity’s invitation to watch the fireworks, electing to return to the airport hotel to order a sandwich through room service, while a relieved Matt Ward feigned delight in doing the same thing as he continued his vigil over the man.

  Seamus Dunham had a wife and child to attend to, which left Sherry and Jay in the effusively resilient hands of Michael Garrity, for whom the word “no” apparently held little meaning.

  “Nonsense!” he had replied heartily when Jay tried to beg off what was increasingly sounding like an impending pub crawl. “Regardless of what happens tomorrow, there’s a local law requiring me to show you some of Dublin, and I shan’t be cited for contempt of tourism.”

  “Really, Michael, I appreciate it but . . .”

  “I’ll hear no objections,” he roared, “and that goes for you, too, young lady!” he said, nodding to Sherry.

  The protests were obviously in vain, so they had reluctantly agreed to a quick swing around the city, with a quick bite at one of Michael’s favorite watering holes.

  But that was all, Jay had cautioned. Neither of them was in a celebratory mood.

  Michael Garrity’s car proved to be a trial in itself. The car was an expensive model, but too small for Jay to be comfortable in front or back, so he tried to be gallant and take the rear seat. But he ended up sitting sideways, his legs too long to fit in the miniature space behind the front seat, even when Sherry moved the front passenger seat fully forward.

  She insisted on switching at their first stop and he agreed, reluctantly. Michael stopped the car and Sherry relocated, catching Jay’s appreciative eyes before he slid into the front seat. Michael accelerated away again with the verve of a Mario Andretti blowing the pace car off the track.

  “Do you folks always drive like this?” Jay managed after a close encounter with a passing truck had raised his heart rate.

  “Like what, Jay?” Michael asked with complete innocence, prompting Jay to drop the subject.

  The Four Courts was a required stop on any tour, though the front doors were closed. “You’ll be seeing enough of it tomorrow,” Michael intoned, as if the prospect was joyous instead of ominous. He catapulted the car into motion again for a high-speed pass at Trinity College, Dublin Castle, and O’Connell Street, “named for the patriot, not our bloody judge,” he said, negotiating another turn at several times the force of gravity, by Jay’s calculation.

  “Now, see that bronze statue there?” he asked, wagging an index finger a dangerous distance out of the driver’s window as he whizzed past the oversized figure of a comely mermaid sans clothing, lying blissfully in a cascading fountain.

  “Most Dubliners won’t show visitors the touristy sights like this, but I think they’re a part of our culture. That’s supposed to be the goddess of the Liffey, Dublin’s central river, or somesuch nonsense. I can never remember the full story. We just call her the ‘Floozy in the Jacuzzi.’ ”

  He reversed course with the subtlety of a fighter pilot pulling 7 G’s and shot south toward the center of the city again, diverting to the right along the south bank of the river and rocketing past a railway station with his arm and index finger once again waving in the breeze.

  “That would be more or less a Mecca for us Dubliners,” he said, pointing to the Guinness brewery. “They don’t give tours of the main brewery anymore,” he said sadly, “but they’ll still give you a taste for free at their little store. And you know, it really does taste better right near the gates of the place than anywhere else on earth.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Jay managed, holding onto the armrest with a death grip as he looked back to see Sherry doing the same, her eyes one dimension wider than normal.

  “Well, it’s true. I’ve had that elixir just about everywhere, and I swear you could navigate back to Dublin by following the trail of the ever-sweeter pints.”

  Michael turned for a moment to make sure they’d been listening.

  “Is it true, Michael,” Jay asked in response, “that they used to run ads alleging Guinness was as good as a medicine?”

  Michael turned to grin at him. “What do you mean ‘alleging,’ my boy? It is good for you. Doctors here in Ireland even prescribe it for lactating mothers.”

  “What,” Sherry laughed, “feed your newborn a pint a day?”

  “No, no, Sherry. Feed yourself a pint a day and you’ll give better milk.”

  “Only in Ireland,” she laughed.

  They zoomed into a garage west of the Temple Bar district and Jay unfolded himself from the front and helped Sherry from the back before following Michael to a pub called the Brazer Head, across the Liffey from the Four Courts. Smoky, loud, and small inside, the pub was filled with members of the legal profession. Michael turned before pushing open the door and proclaimed it one of the oldest pubs in Dublin and the alternate “library” for Dublin’s barristers. “This old establishment has been plying its trade since the seventeenth century,” he said.

  “Library?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mention the Library before, did I? Our office at the Four Courts is really the main law library. I’ll show you tomorrow. It’s very historic. Only barristers are allowed inside, and you can stand outside and look in, watching us trying to keep our wigs on as the solicitors call for us at the front desk.”

  They found a small table toward the back, and Michael ordered a round of Guinness Stout, proclaiming it the national drink as the three pints arrived bearing perfect heads of tan foam.

  “Now, we’ll have an agreement, we will, if you don’t mind. No talk of tomorrow.”

  “Fine with me,” Jay said, letting himself almost relax. His eyes drank in Sherry’s soft smile across the table as she nodded in mutual assent.

  “You really love this town, don’t you, Michael?” Sherry said, having to repeat herself over the din in the pub.

  “I do indeed, especially since the world has changed so much here. Less than fifteen years ago, we were the same poor little country of fact and fable, stout of heart and empty of pocket until the dot-coms of the world found us. Now . . . well, look around you. These days we call ourselves the Celtic Tiger. Actually, we say the Celtic Tiger has arrived. Prosperity’s flowing in, and we’re all pinching ourselves and getting used t
o the idea of an Ireland that’s economically robust. Imagine that! We’ve actually got people immigrating to Ireland if you can believe it!”

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” she said.

  “Jay, you told me some of your people are Irish,” Michael said. “What do you think of us so far?”

  Jay smiled at their host. “I haven’t had a lot of time to evaluate what I think, Michael, but . . .”

  “But . . . if you weren’t so worried about John Harris, you’d like us a lot, and you’ll like us better if we let your client go, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Fair enough.” He raised his glass of stout. “Slainte!”

  Jay and Sherry both echoed the word and the gesture as Jay watched Michael down half the pint in one easy motion.

  “I was told you didn’t drink, Michael,” Jay said, watching Michael’s eyebrows flutter up in surprise before he could extricate his mouth from the glass.

  “What? Who on earth told you such a scandalous lie?” he asked, smiling skeptically.

  “The solicitor in London who recommended you. Geoffrey Wallace.”

  “Oh, Wallace! That was the meeting in Edinburgh. I don’t drink much, Jay, but that was just a windup.”

  “A joke?”

  “Yes. The bloody Brit was going on about how all Irishmen were drunkards, which is scandalously wrong, and so I thought I’d disappoint him. Apparently it worked.”

  “Michael!” someone called across the pub, and Michael Garrity raised his hand and waved heartily, then motioned whoever it was to come over.