A fleeting memory of something he’d dreamed crossed his mind. Was it a question, or a fantasy? Whatever it was hovered just out of reach until he closed his eyes and concentrated.

Jay left the shower, dried himself, and moved quickly to the phone as he retrieved a slip of paper from his shirt pocket in search of a London phone number. With any luck, the Secretary of State would still be there.

Alastair punched the transmit switch on his control yoke. “Roger, Shanwick, EuroAir Ten Twenty level at flight level three seven zero.” He glanced at the altimeter, confirming that Craig had leveled the 400 model Boeing 737 at its maximum operational altitude.

Alastair punched some numbers in the small handheld GPS unit in his lap and stuck a suction-cup-mounted antenna on the side window.

“What?” Craig asked. “You don’t trust the flight computer or the onboard navigation system?”

“I like plenty of backups, Captain, sir,” Alastair said. “And I like playing with my new toy.”

There was a click behind them as Jillian Walz opened the cockpit door to hand Alastair the Coke he’d ordered, then disappeared for a moment and returned with coffee for Craig. She hesitated with the cup in hand and turned to Alastair. “Since… this is a charter and… you know about us, Ali, do you mind very much if I kiss your captain?”

Alastair raised his eyebrows and tried to look shocked.

“And where, exactly, were you planning to kiss him, young lady?” he asked in as stilted a voice as he could manage.

“On the flight deck.”

“The flight deck? Only a shameless hussy would do such a thing.”

“Okay. I’m a shameless hussy. Now may I kiss him?”

Alastair held his right hand up, fanning his fingers as if tapping a cigar while he cycled his eyebrows and tried a strange, British-accented impression of Groucho Marx. “As long as that’s all you do in the presence of a lonely copilot!”

Jillian kissed Craig’s cheek and handed him the coffee before patting Alastair’s shoulder.

“Poor, poor Ali! No love, no companionship, no women.”

“How’re our passengers doing?” Craig asked.

“Sherry Lincoln and Matt Ward are both snoozing, but the President is awake and pacing around like a caged tiger.”

“How about Elle and Ursula?”

“Doing what we flight attendants do best in flight.”

“Talking?”

“Talking. See you boys later. Ring if you need anything… within reason, of course.”

When Jillian had left, Alastair took a long drink of the Coke as he pulled a notebook from his flight kit.

“Okay. Here’s the situation. I compute our decision point as being right at three hours, twenty-four minutes into the flight. We go westbound beyond that time, we’d best keep on going. Right now we’re right on predicted maximum endurance fuel burn, on speed, and the winds have been cooperating bang on to prediction so far.”

Craig nodded. “What do you estimate we’ll have on arrival at Presque Isle?”

“Let’s see… ah, three thousand pounds of jet fuel. Not a lot, but not an emergency, either.”

“But almost no margin for higher winds.”

“That’s the bad news,” Alastair said.

“And how long have we been motoring in this general direction?”

Alastair checked one of the displays. “We’ve been airborne two hours and forty-eight minutes. In other words, I need to wring the latest winds and weather from the radio so my courageous captain can conclude whether it’ll be a gallon of Guinness in Galway, or a bucket of Bud near Bangor.”

Craig looked at him wide-eyed for several seconds before speaking. “Promise me, Alastair, please, for the good of mankind… that you’ll never, ever try writing poetry!”

Jay’s taxi braked to a halt in front of the Four Courts just as Michael Garrity was climbing the steps.

Jay paid the driver and hurried to catch up with him as he pushed through the large doors.

“Michael!”

“Ah. There you are. All rested and ready?” Michael asked with a wink.

“Yeah, sure.”

They entered the Round Hall and Michael stopped to point out the entrances to the four courtrooms that radiated from the rotunda.

“Come on. We’ve got a few minutes. Let me show you the library, then we’ll find out which courtroom we’re in.”

John Harris paced to the front of the first-class cabin and turned again, as he’d done a dozen times in the past half hour. He glanced at his watch, which was still on Dublin time.

9:48 A.M.

He could imagine the lawyers beginning to assemble for the 10 A.M. hearing, and the thought of their battling it out while he essentially sneaked out of town under the cover of darkness was eating at him.

You panicked, John, he told himself. When faced with that tape, you panicked. You should never have run like this!

He glanced over at Sherry, her head gently lolled on a pillow wedged against the window. Her help over the last four years had been of incalculable value, he thought, and he felt guilty for not giving her more time to live her life. She rarely dated. He’d kept her too busy with work, and the paternalistic feeling that had grown on his part had led him to worry lately that he eventually should urge her to look for a better job, and one that made a social life possible.

But it was hard to envision facing the task of being an ex-President without her.

One thing’s for certain, he told himself. Life is going to change now. No matter what happens back there in Dublin.

In the cockpit of EuroAir 1020, Alastair suddenly yelped and looked up from his notebook.

“What?” Craig asked.

“We’re at the decision point. Turn it around, Craig.”

“What?”

“Turn this bloody craft around. We can’t make it.”

“Wait a minute. What do you mean, we can’t make it?”

Alastair was shaking his head. “The jet stream has moved south! Look at our ground speed. It’s down another forty knots, and the wind direction is coming around on our nose.”

“The wind speed’s increased?”

“Yes! Suddenly, on this forecast, the damn figures are all different and… and much worse. Also, Gander’s suddenly below minimums with fog! At this rate, we not only can’t make Presque Isle with running engines, we’re in potential trouble this far south getting to Gander with sufficient reserves. If we could have flown a true great circle instead of the North Atlantic Track System…”

“How about the winds behind us?”

Alastair shook his head. “They’re calling them the same, and what we’ve experienced is on prediction, but that low over Iceland is in motion southbound, so we’d better move now.”

“Call them,” Craig said.

“Shanwick, EuroAir Ten-Twenty. We need immediate clearance to reverse course and return to Dublin due to deteriorating winds and fuel.”

“Stand by, Ten-Twenty.”

“Negative, Shanwick. We’ve no time to stand by. We’re going to need to descend to a safe altitude and turn immediately while you’re coordinating.”

“Are you declaring an emergency, Ten-Twenty?”

“Not unless you force us to, sir.”

“If you reverse course without clearance and without an emergency declaration, that will be a violation, sir.”

Craig nodded. “Declare it! I’m turning and coming down a thousand feet.”

Alastair nodded as he pressed the transmit button. “EuroAir Ten-Twenty is declaring a Pan Pan Pan, potential fuel emergency at this time. We’re reversing course and descending to flight level three six zero pending clearance, and we request to leave the NatTracks and proceed direct Dublin.”