Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt
Page 1
ON WINGS OF EAGLES
by
Ken Follett
A SIGNET BOOK
SIGNET
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Law,
London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,
Toronto. Ontario, Canada M4V 3112
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,
Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
A hardcover edition of this book was published by William Morrow and
Company, Inc.
First Signet Printing, September, 1984
23 22 21
Copyright C 1983 by Petancor BV All rights reserved. For information
address Penguin Books USA Inc.
The excerpt from Night Over Water. by Ken Follett, appeared previously in
a William Morrow hardcover edition. Copyright 0 1991 by Ken Follett.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use the following
photographs:
p. 1: top, Skeeter Hagler; bottom, UP[; p. 3: top and bottom, Skeeter
Hagler; p. 4: top and bottom, UPI; p. 5: top, UPI; bottom, Skeeter Hagler;
pp. 6-7, Skeeter Hagler; p. 8: top, Carl Covington; bottom, UPI; p. 9: UPI;
pp. 10-13, photographs taken by unidentified members of rescue team; pp.
14-15, Dale Walker; p. 16: top, Dale Walker; bottom, unidentified member of
rescue team.
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CAST OF CHARACTERS
DALLAS
Ross Perot, Chairman of the Board, Electronic Data Systems Corporation,
Dallas, Texas
Merv Stauffer, Perot's right-hand man
T. J. Marquez, a vice-president of EDS
Tom Walter, chief financial officer of EDS
Mitch Hart, a former president of EDS who had good connections in the
Democratic party
Tom Luce, founder of the Dallas law firm Hughes & Hill
Bill Gayden, president of EDS World, a subsidiary of EDS
Mort Meyerson, a vice-president of EDS
TEHRAN
Paul Chiapparone, Country Manager, EDS Corporation Iran; Ruthie Chiapparone,
his wife
Bill Gaylord, Paul's deputy; Endly Gaylord, Bill's wife
Lloyd Briggs, Paul's Number 3
Rich Gallagher, Paul's administrative assistant; Cathy Gallagher, Rich's
wife; Buffy, Cathy's poodle
Paul Bucha, formerly Country Manager of EDS Corporation Iran, latterly based
in Paris
Bob Young, Country Manager for EDS in Kuwait
John Howell, lawyer with Hughes & Hill
Keane Taylor, manager of the Bank Orman project
THE TEAM
Lt. Col. Arthur D. "Bull" Simons, in command
Jay Coburn, second-in-command
Ron Davis, point
Ralph Boulware, shotgun
Joe Pochk, driver
Glenn Jackson, driver
Pat Sculley, flank
Jim Schwebach, flank and explosives
THE IRANIANS
Abolhasan, Lloyd Briggs's deputy and the most senior Iranian
employee
Majid, assistant to Jay Coburn; Fara, Majid's daughter
Rashid
Seyyed trainee systems engineers
"the Cycle Man" I
Gholam, personnel/purchasing officer under Jay Coburn
Hosain Dadpr, examining magistrate
AT THE U.S. EMBASSY
William Sullivan, Ambassador
Charles Naas, Minister Counselor, Sullivan's deputy
Lou Goelz, Consul General
Bob Sorenson, Embassy official
Ali Jordan, Iranian employed by the Embassy
Barry Rosen, press attach6
ISTANBUL
"Mr. Fish," resourceful travel agent
Ilsman, employee of MIT, the Turkish intelligence agency
"Charlie Brown," interpreter
WASHINGTON
Zbignkw Brzezinski, National Security Advisor Cyrus Vance, Secretary of
State David Newsom, Undersecretary at the State Department Henry Precht,
head of the h-an Desk at the State Department Mark Ginsberg, White
House-State Department liaison Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff
PREFACE
This is a true story about a group of people who, accused of crimes they did
not commit, decided to make their own justice.
When the adventure was over there was a court case, and they were cleared
of all charges. The case is not part of my story, but because it
established their innocence I have included details of the court's Findings
and Judgment as an appendix to this book.
In telling the story I have taken two small liberties with the truth.
Several people are referred to by pseudonyms or nicknames, usually to
protect them from the revenge of the government of Iran. The false names
are: Majid, Fara, Abolhasan, Mr. Fish, Deep Throat, Rashid, the Cycle Man,
Mehdi, Malek, Gholam, Seyyed, and Charlie Brown. All other names are real.
Secondly, in recalling conversations that took place three or four years
ago, people rarely remember the exact words used; furthermore, real-Iffe
conversation, with its gestures and interruptions and unfinished sentences,
often makes no sense when it is written down. So the dialogue in this book
is both reconstructed and edited. However, every reconstructed conversation
has been shown to at least one of the participants for correction or
approval.
With those two qualifications, I believe every word of what follows is
true. This is not a "fictionalization" or a "nonfiction novel. " I have not
invented anything. What you are about to read is what really happened.
I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.
-EXODUS 19:4
ONE
It all started on December 5, 1978.
Jay Coburn, Director of Personnel for EDS Corporation Iran, sat in his
office in uptown Tehran w
ith a lot on his mind.
The office was in a three-story concrete building known as Bucharest
(because it was in an alley off Bucharest Street). Coburn was on the second
floor, in a room large by American standards. It had a parquet floor, a
smart wood executive desk, and a picture of the Shah on the wall. He sat
with his back to the window. Through the glass door he could see into the
open-plan office where his staff sat at typewriters and telephones. The
glass door had curtains, but Coburn never closed them.
It was cold. It was always cold: thousands of Iranians were on strike, the
city's power supply was intermittent, and the heating was off for several
hours most days.
Coburn was a tall, broad-shouldered man, five feet eleven inches and two
hundred pounds. His red-brown hair was cut businessman-short and carefully
combed, with a part. Although he was only thirty-two, he looked nearer to
forty. On closer examination his youth showed in his attractive, open face
and ready smile; but he had an air of early maturity, the look of a man who
grew up too fast.
All his life he had shouldered responsibility: as a boy, working in his
father's flower shop; at the age of twenty, as a helicopter pilot in
Vietnam; as a young husband and father; and now, as Personnel Director,
holding in his hands the safety of 131 American employees and their 220
dependents in a city where mob violence ruled the streets.
Today, like every day, he was making phone calls around Tehran trying to
find out where the fighting was, where it would
13
14 Ken Folleu
break out next, and what the prospects were for the next few days.
He called the U.S. Embassy at least once a day. The Embassy had an
information room that was manned twenty-four hours a day. Americans would
call in from different areas of the city to report demonstrations and
riots, and the Embassy would spread the news that this district or that was
to be avoided. But for advance information and advice Coburn found the
Embassy close to useless. At weekly briefings, which he attended
faidifully, he would always be told that Americans should stay indoors as
much as possible and keep away from crowds at all costs, but that the Shah
was in control and evacuation was not recommended at this time. Coburn
understood their probleni--if the U.S. Embassy said the Shah was tottering,
the Shah would surely fall--but they were so cautious they hardly gave out
any information at all. Disenchanted with the Embassy, the American
business community in Tehran had set up its own information network. The
biggest U.S. corporation in town was Bell Helicopter, whose Iran operation
was run by a retired major general, Robert N. Mackinnon. Mackinnon had a
first-class intelligence service and he shared everything. Coburn also knew
a couple of intelligence officers in the U.S. military and he called them.
Today the city was relatively quiet: There were no major demonstrations.
The last outbreak of serious trouble had been three days earlier, on
December 2, the first day of the general strike, when seven hundred people
had been reported killed in street fighting. According to Coburn's sources
the lull could be expected to continue until December 10, the Muslim holy
day of Ashura.
Coburn was worried about Ashura. The Muslim winter holiday was not a bit
like Christmas. A day of fasting and mourning for the death of the
Prophet's grandson Husayn, its keynote was remorse. There would be massive
street processions, during which the more devout believers would flog
themselves. In that aftnosphere hysteria and violence could erupt fast.
This year, Coburn feared, the violence might be directed against Americans.
A series of nasty incidents had convinced him that anti-American feeling
was growing rapidly. A card had been pushed through his door saying: "If
you value your life and possessions, get out of Iran." Friends of his had
received similar postcards. Spray-can artists had painted "Americans live
here" on the wall of his
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 15
house. The bus that took his children to the Tehran American School had been
rocked by a crowd of demonstrators. Other EDS employees had been yelled at
in the streets and had their cars damaged. One scary afternoon Iranians at
the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare-EDS's biggest customer--had gone
on the rampage, smashing windows and burning pictures of the Shah, while EDS
executives in the building barricaded themselves inside an office until the
mob went away.
In some ways the most sinister development was the change in the attitude
of Coburn's landlord.
Like most Americans in Tehran, Coburn rented half of a two-family home: he
and his wife and children lived upstairs, and the landlord's family lived
on the ground floor. When the Coburns had arrived, in March of that year,
the landlord had taken them under his wing. The two families had become
friendly. Coburn and the landlord discussed religion: the landlord gave him
an English translation of the Koran, and the landlord's daughter would read
to her father out of Coburn's Bible. They all went on weekend trips to the
countryside together. Scott, Coburn's sevenyear-old son, played soccer in
the street with the landlord's boys. One weekend the Coburns had the rare
privilege of attending a Muslim wedding. It had been fascinating. Men and
women had been segregated all day, so Coburn and Scott went with the men,
Coburn's wife Liz and their three daughters went with the women, and Coburn
never got to see the bride at all.
After the summer, things had gradually changed. The weekend trips stopped.
The landlord's sons were forbidden to play with Scott in the street.
Eventually all contact between the two families ceased even within the
confines of the house and its courtyard, and the children would be
reprimanded for just speaking to Coburn's family.
The landlord had not suddenly started hating Americans. One evening he had
proved that he still cared for the Coburns. There had been a shooting
incident in the street: one of his sons had been out after curfew, and
soldiers had fired at the boy as he ran home and scrambled over the
courtyard wall. Coburn and Liz had watched the whole thing from their
upstairs verandah, and Liz had been scared. The landlord had come up to
tell them what had happened and to reassure them that all was well. But he
clearly felt that for the safety of his family he could not be seen to be
friendly with Americans: he knew which way the wind was blowing. For Coburn
it was yet another bad sign.
16 Ken FoUett
Now, Coburn heard on the grapevine, there was wild talk in the mosques and
bazaars of a holy war against Americans beginning on Ashura. It was five
days away, yet the Americans in Tehran were surprisingly calm.
Coburn remembered when the curfew had been introduced: it had not even
interfered with the monthly EDS poker game. He and his fellow gamblers had
simply brought their wives and children, turned it into a slumber party,
and stayed until morning.
They had got used to the sound of gunfire. Most
of the heavy fighting was in the older, southern sector where the bazaar
was, and in the area around the University; but everyone heard shots from
tune to tune. After the first few occasions they had become curiously
indifferent to it. Whoever was speaking would pause, then continue when the
shooting stopped, just as he might in the States when a jet aim-raft passed
overhead. It was as if they could not imagine that shots might be aimed at
them.
Coburn was not blas6 about gunfire. He had been shot at rather a lot during
his young life. In Vietnam he had piloted both helicopter gunships, in
support of ground operations, and trooptsupply-carrying ships, landing and
taking off in battlefields. He had killed people, and he had seen men die.
In those days the army,gave an Air Medal for every twenty-five hours of
combat flying: Coburn had come home with thirty-nine of them. He also got
two Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Silver Star, and a bullet in the
calf---the most vulnerable part of a helicopter pilot. He had learned,
during that year, that he could handle himself pretty well in action, when
there was so much to do and no time to be frightened; but every time he
returned from a mission, when it was all over and he could think about what
he had done, his knees would shake.
in a strange way he was grateful for the experience. He had grown up fast,
and it had given him an edge over his contemporaries in business life. It
had also given him a healthy respect for the sound of gunfire.
But most of his colleagues did not feel that way, nor did their wives.
Whenever evacuation was discussed they resisted the idea. They had time,
work, and pride invested in EDS Corporation Iran, and they did not want to
walk away from it. Their wives had turned the rented apartments into real
homes, and they were making p1m for Christmas. The children had their
schools, their friends, their bicycles, and their pets. Surely, they were
telling themselves, if we just lie low and hang on, the trouble will blow