Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt
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24 Ken Follett
what to do. He just had to fill in the blanks with dates, times, and flight
numbers, then have the leaflets duplicated and distributed.
He had picked a lively and imaginative young Iranian systems
engineer, Rashid, and given him the job of taking care of the
homes, cars, and pets that would be left behind by the fleeing
Americans and--eventually --- shipping their possessions to the
U.S. He had appointed a small logistics group to organize plane
tickets and transportation to the airport.
Finally he had conducted a small-scale rehearsal of the evacuation with a
few people. It had worked.
Coburn got dressed and made coffee. There was nothing he could do for the
next couple of hours, but he was too anxious and impatient to sleep.
At four A.m. he called the half-dozen members of the logistics group, woke
them, and told them to meet him at the "Bucharest" office immediately after
curfew.
Curfew began at nine each evening and ended at five in the morning. For an
hour Coburn sat waiting, smoking and drinking a lot of coffee and going
over his notes.
When the cuckoo clock in the hall chirped five he was at the front door,
ready to go.
Outside there was a thick fog. He got into his car and headed for
Bucharest, crawling along at fifteen miles per hour.
Three blocks from his house, half a dozen soldiers leaped out of the fog
and stood in a semicircle in front of his car, pointing their rifles at his
windshield.
"Oh, shit," Coburn said.
One of the soldiers was still loading his gun. He was trying to put the
clip in backward, and it would not fit. He dropped it and went down on one
knee, scrabbling around on the ground looking for it. Coburn would have
laughed if he had not been scared.
An officer yelled at Coburn in Farsi. Coburn lowered the window. He showed
the officer his wristwatch and said: "It's after five."
The soldiers had a conference. The officer came back and asked Coburn for
his identification.
Coburn waited anxiously. This would be the worst possible day to get
arrested. Would the officer believe that Coburn's watch was right and his
was wrong?
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 25
At last the soldiers got out of the road and the officer waved Coburn on.
Coburn breathed a sigh of relief and drove slowly on. Iran was like that.
2
Coburn's logistics group went to work making plane reservations, chartering
buses to take people to the airport, and photocopying handout leaflets. At
ten A.M. Coburn got the team leaders into Bucharest and started them calling
the evacuees.
He got reservations for most of them on a Pan Am flight to Istanbul on
Friday, December 8. The remainder-including Liz Coburn and the four
children-would get a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt that same day.
As soon as the reservations were confirmed, two top executives at EDS
headquarters, Merv Stauffer and T. J. Marquez, left Dallas for Istanbul to
meet the evacuees, shepherd them to hotels, and organize the next stage of
their flight back home.
During the day there was a small change in plan. Paul was still reluctant
to abandon his work in Iran. He proposed that a skeleton staff of about ten
senior men stay behind, to keep the office ticking over, in the hope that
Iran would quiet down and EDS would eventually be able to resume working
normally. Dallas agreed. Among those who volunteered to stay were Paul
himself, his deputy Bill Gaylord, Jay Coburn, and most of Coburn's
evacuation logistics group. Two people who stayed behind rehictantly were
Carl and Vicki Commons: Vicki was nine months pregnant and would leave
after her baby was born.
On Friday morning Coburn's team, their pockets full of tenthousand-rial
(about $140) notes for bribes, virtually took over a section of Mehrabad
Airport in western Tehran. Coburn had people writing tickets behind the Pan
Am counter, people at passport control, people in the departure lounge, and
people running baggage-handling equipment. The plane was overbooked: bribes
ensured that no one from EDS was bumped off the flight.
There were two especially tense moments. An EDS wife with an Australian
passport had been unable to get an exit visa because the Iranian government
offices that issued exit visas
26 Ken Follett
were all on strike. (Her husband and children had American passports and
therefore did not need exit visas.) When the husband reached the
passport-control desk, he handed over his passport and his children's in a
stack with six or seven other passports. As the guard tried to sort them
out, EDS people in the queue behind began to push forward and cause a
commotion. Some of Coburn's team gathered around the desk asking loud
questions and pretending to get angry about the delay. In the confusion the
woman with the Australian passport walked through the departure lounge
without being stopped.
Another EDS family had adopted an Iranian baby and had not yet been able to
get a passport for the child. Only a few months old, the baby would fall
asleep, lying face down, on its mother's forearm. Another EDS wife, Kathy
Marketos--of whom it was said that she would try anything once-put the
sleeping baby on her own forearm, draped her raincoat over it, and carried
it onto the plane.
However, it was many hours before anyone got on a plane. Both flights were
delayed. There was no food to be bought at the airport and the evacuees
were famished, so just before curfew some of Coburn's team drove around the
city buying anything edible they could find. They purchased the entire
contents of several kuche stalls--streetcomer stands that sold candy,
fruit, and cigarettes-and they went into a Kentucky Fried Chicken and did
a deal for its stock of bread rolls. Back at the airport, passing food out
to EDS people in the departure lounge, they were almost mobbed by the other
hungry passengers waiting for the same flights. On the way back downtown
two of the team were caught and arrested for being out after curfew-but the
soldier who stopped them got distracted by another car, which tried to
escape, and the EDS men drove off while he was shooting the other way.
The Istanbul flight left just after midnight. The Frankfurt flight took off
the next day, thirty-one hours late.
Coburn and most of the team spent the night at Bucharest. They had no one
to go home to.
While Coburn was running the evacuation, Paul had been trying to find out
who wanted to confiscate his passport and why.
His administrative assistant, Rich Gallagher, was a young American who was
good at dealing with the Iranian bureaucracy. Gallagher was one of those
who had volunteered to stay in
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 27
Tehran. His wife, Cathy, had also stayed behind. She had a good job with the
U.S. military in Tehran. The Gallaghers did not want to leave. Furthermore,
they had no children to worry about-just a poodle called Buffy.
The day Fara was asked to take the passports-December 5 --
Gallagher visited
the U.S. Embassy with one of the people whose passports had been demanded:
Paul Bucha, who no longer worked in Iran but happened to be in town on a
visit.
They met with Consul General Lou Goelz. Goelz, an experienced consul in his
fifties, was a portly, balding man with a fringe of white hair: he would
have made a good Santa Claus. With Goelz was an Iranian member of the
consular staff, Ali Jordan.
Goelz advised Bucha to catch his plane. Fara had told the police-4n all
innocence-4hat Bucha was not in Iran, and they had appeared to believe her.
There was every chance that Bucha could sneak out.
Goelz also offered to hold the passports and residence permits of Paul and
Bill for safekeeping. That way, if the police made a formal demand for the
documents, EDS would be able to refer them to the Embassy.
Meanwhile, Ali Jordan would contact the police and try to find out what the
hell was going on.
Later that day the passports and papers were delivered to the Embassy.
The next morning Bucha caught Ins plane and got out. Gallagher called the
Embassy. Ali Jordan had talked to General Biglari of the Tehran Police
Department. Biglari had said that Paul and Bill were being detained in the
country and would be arrested if they tried to leave.
Gallagher asked why.
They were being held as "material witnesses in an investigation," Jordan
understood.
"What investigation?"
Jordan did not know.
Paul was puzzled, as well as anxious, when Gallagher reported all this. He
had not been involved in a road accident, had not witnessed a crime, had no
connections with the CIA ... Who or what was being investigated? EDS? Or
was the investigation just an excuse for keeping Paul and Bill in Iran so
that they would continue to run the social-security system's computers?
The police had made one concession. Ali Jordan had argued
28 Ken Follett
that the police were entitled to confiscate the residence permits, which
were the property of the Iranian government, but not the passports, which
were U.S. government property. General Biglari had conceded this.
The next day Gallagher and Ali Jordan went to the police station to hand
the documents over to Biglari. On the way Gallagher asked Jordan whether he
thought there was a chance Paul and Bill would be accused of wrongdoing.
"I doubt that very much," said Jordan.
At the police station the general warned Jordan that the Embassy would be
held responsible if Paul and Bill left the country by any mean&-such as a
U.S. military aircraft.
The following day-December 8, the day of the evacuationLou Goetz called
EDS. He had found out, through a "source" at the Iranian Ministry of
Justice, that the investigation in which Paul and Bill were supposed to be
material witnesses was an investigation into corruption charges against the
jailed Minister of Health, Dr. Sheikholeslamizadeh-
It was something of a relief to Paul to know, at last, what the whole thing
was about. He could happily tell the investigators the truth: EDS had paid
no bribes. He doubted whether anyone had bribed the Minister. Iranian
bureaucrats were notoriously corrupt, but Dr. Sheik-as Paul called him for
short--seemed to come from a different mold. An orthopedic surgeon by
training, he had a perceptive mind and an impressive ability to master
detail. In the Ministry of Health he had surrounded himself with a group of
progressive young technocrats who found ways to cut through red tape and
get things done. The EDS project was only part of his ambitious plan to
bring Iranian health and welfare services up to American standards. Paul
did not think Dr. Sheik was lining his own pockets at the same time.
Paul had nothing to fear-if Goetz's "source" was telling the truth. But was
he? Dr. Sheik had been arrested three months Ago. Was it a coincidence that
the Iranians had suddenly realized that Paul and Bill were material
witnesses when Paul told them that EDS would leave Iran unless the Ministry
paid its bills?
After the evacuation the remaining EDS men moved into two houses and stayed
there, playing poker, during December 10 and 11, the holy days of Ashura.
There was a high-stakes house and a low-stakes house. Both Paul and Coburn
were at the high-stakes house. For protection they invited Coburn's
"spooks"--his two contacts in military intelligence.---who carried guns. No
weapons
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 29
were allowed at the poker table, so the spooks had to leave their firearms
in the hall.
Contrary to expectations, Ashura passed relatively peacefully: millions of
Iranians attended anti-Shah demonstrations all over the country, but there
was little violence.
After Ashura, Paul and Bill again considered skipping the country, but they
were in for a shock. As a preliminary they asked Lou Goelz at the Embassy
to give them back their passports. Goelz said that if he did that he would
be obliged to inform General Biglari. That would amount to a warning to the
police that Paul and Bill were trying to sneak out.
Goelz insisted that he had told EDS, when he took the passports, that this
was his deal with the police; but he must have said it rather quietly,
because no one could remember it.
Paul was furious. Why had Goelz had to make any kind of deal with the
police? He was under no obligation to tell them what he did with an
American passport. It was not his job to help the police detain Paul and
Bill in Iran, for God's sake! The Embassy was there to help Americans,
wasn't it?
Couldn't Goelz renege on his stupid agreement, and return the passports
quietly, perhaps informing the police a couple of days later, when Paul and
Bill were safely home? Absolutely not, said Goelz. If he quarreled with the
police they would make trouble for everyone else, and Goelz had to worry
about the other twelve thousand Americans still in Iran. Besides, the names
of Paul and Bill were now on the "stop list" held by the airport police:
even with all their documents in order they would never get through
passport control.
When the news that Paul and Bill were well and truly stuck in Iran reached
Dallas, EDS and its lawyers went into high gear. Their Washington contacts
were not as good as they would have been under a Republican administration,
but they still had some friends. They talked to Bob Strauss, a high-powered
White House troubleshooter who happened to be a Texan; Admiral Tom Moorer,
a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who knew many of the
generals now running Iran's military government; and Richard Helms, past
Director of the CIA and a former U.S. Ambassador to Iran. As a result of
the pressure they put on the State Department, the U.S. Ambassador in
Tehran, William Sullivan, raised the case of Paul and Bill in a meeting
with the Iranian Prime Minister, General Azhari.
None of this brought any results.
30 Ken Follett
The thirty days that Paul had given the Iranians to pay their bill ran out,
and o
n December 16 he wrote to Dr. Emrani formally terminating the
contract. But he had not given up. He asked a handful of evacuated
executives to come back to Tehran, as a sign of EDS's willingness to try to
resolve its problems with the Ministry. Some of the returning executives,
encouraged by the peaceful Ashura, even brought their families back.
Neither the Embassy nor EDS's lawyers in Tehran had been able to find out
who had ordered Paul and Bill detained. It was Majid, Fara's father, who
eventually got the information out of General Biglari. The investigator was
Examining Magistrate Hosain Dadgar, a midlevel functionary within the
office of the public prosecutor, in a department that dealt with crimes by
civil servants and had very broad powers. Dadgar was conducting the inquiry
into Dr. Sheik, the jailed former Minister of Health.
Since the Embassy could not persuade the Iranians to let Paul and Bill
leave the country, and would not give back their passports quietly, could
they at least arrange for this Dadgar to question Paul and Bill as soon as
possible so that they could go home for Christmas? Christmas did not mean
much to the Iranians, said Goelz, but New Year did, so he would try to fix
a meeting before then.
During the second half of December the rioting started again (and the first
thing the returning executives did was plan for a second evacuation). The
general strike continued, and petroleum exports-the government's most
important source of income-ground to a halt, reducing to zero EDS's chances
of getting paid. So few Iranians turned up for work at the Ministry that
there was nothing for the EDS men to do, and Paul sent half of them home to
the States for Christmas.
Paul packed his bags, closed up his house, and moved into the Hilton, ready
to go home at the first opportunity.
The city was thick with rumors. Jay Coburn fished up most of them in his
net and brought the interesting ones to Paul. One more disquieting than
most came from Bunny Fleischaker, an American girl with friends at the
Ministry of Justice. Bunny had worked for EDS in the States, and she kept
in touch here in Tehran although she was no longer with the company. She
called Coburn to say that the Ministry of Justice planned to arrest Paul