aterm -e sh -c "cat file && echo -e "\n\n" && exec sh"
Thanks for the suggestion.  Using double quotes around the newline characters produced 
nn.  Replacing the double quotes with single quotes gave the desired result.
aterm -e sh -c "cat file && echo -e '\n\n' && exec sh"Works as wanted.
This post was made at the same time as a similar reply from 
^thehatsrule^