Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt
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how we go about paying it. You can bet they won't take American Express."
"Okay," Gayden said.
A voice from behind said: "Hi, Ross!"
Perot looked around and saw T. J. Marquez. "Hi, Tom." T.J, was a tall, slim
man of forty with Spanish good looks: olive skin, short, curly black hair,
and a big smile that showed lots of white teeth. The first employee Perot
ever hired, he was living evidence that Perot had an uncanny knack of
picking good men. T.J. was now a vice-president of EDS, and his personal
shareholding in the company was worth millions of dollars. "The Lord has
been good to us," T.J. would say. Perot knew that T.J.'s parents had really
struggled to send him to college. Their sacrifices had been well rewarded.
One of the best things about the meteoric success of EDS, for Perot, had
been sharing the triumph with people like T.J.
T.J. sat down and talked fast. "I called Claude."
Perot nodded: Claude Chappelear was the company's in-house lawyer.
"Claude's friendly with Matthew Nimetz, counselor to Secretary of State
Vance. I thought Claude might get Nimetz to talk to Vance himself. Nimetz
called personally a little later: he wants to help us. He's going to send
a cable under Vance's name to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, telling them to
get off their butts; and he's going to write a personal note to Vance about
Paul and Bill."
"Good."
"We also called Admiral Moorer. He's up to speed on this whole thing
because we consulted him about the passport problem. Moorer's going to talk
to Ardeshir Zahedi. Now, Zahedi is not just the Iranian Ambassador in
Washington but also the Shah's brother-in-law, and he's now back in
Iran-running the country, some say. Moorer will ask Zahedi to vouch for
Paul and Bill. Right now we're drafting a cable for Zahedi to send to the
Ministry of Justice."
"Who's drafting it?"
"Tom Luce."
"Good." Perot summed up: "We've got the Secretary of State, the head of the
Iran Desk, the Embassy, and the Iranian
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 67
Ambassador all working on the case. That's good. Now let's talk about what
else we can do."
T.J. said: "Tom Luce and Tom Walter have an appointment with Admiral Moorer
in Washington tomorrow. Moorer also suggested we call Richard Helms-he used
to be Ambassador to Iran after he quit the CIA."
"I'll call Helms," Perot said. "And I'll call Al Haig and Henry Kissinger.
I want you two to concentrate on getting all our people out of Iran."
Gayden said: "Ross, I'm not sure that's necessary-"
"I don't want a discussion, Bill," said Perot. "Let's get it done. Now,
Lloyd Briggs has to stay there and deal with the problem-he's the boss,
with Paul and Bill in jail. Everyone else comes home."
"You can't make them come home if they don't want to," Gayden said.
"Who'll want to stay?"
"Rich Gallagher. His wife-"
"I know. Okay, Briggs and Gallagher stay. Nobody else." Perot stood up.
"I'll get started on those calls."
He took the elevator to the seventh floor and walked through his
secretary's office. Sally Walther was at her desk. She had been with him
for years, and had been involved in the prisonersof-war campaign and the
San Francisco party. (She had come back from that weekend with a Son Tay
Raider in tow, and Captain Udo Walther was now her husband.) Perot said to
her: "Call Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and Richard Helms."
He went through to his own office and sat at his desk. The office, with its
paneled walls, costly carpet, and shelves of antiquarian books, looked more
like a Victorian library in an English country house. He was surrounded by
souvenirs and his favorite art. For the house Margot bought Impressionist
paintings, but in his office Perot preferred American art: Norman Rockwell
originals and the Wild West bronzes of Frederic Remington. Through the
window he could see the slopes of the old golf course.
Perot did not know where Henry Kissinger might be spending the holidays: it
could take Sally a while to find him. There was time to think about what to
say. Kissinger was not a close friend. It would need all his salesmanship
to grab Kissinger's attention and, in the space of a short phone call, win
his sympathy.
68 Ken Follett
The phone on his desk buzzed, and Sally called: "Henry Kissinger for you."
Perot picked it up. "Ross Perot."
"I have Henry Kissinger for you."
Perot waited.
Kissinger had once been called the most powerful man in the world. He knew
the Shah personally. But how well would he remember Ross Perot? The
prisoners-of-war campaign had been big, but Kissinger's projects had been
bigger: peace in the Middle East, rapprochement between the U.S. and China,
the ending of the Vietnam War ...
"Kissinger here." It was the familiar deep voice, its accent a curious
mixture of American vowels and German consonants.
"Dr. Kissinger, this is Ross Perot. I'm a businessman in Dallas, Texas,
and-"
"Hell, Ross, I know who you are," said Kissinger.
Perot's heart leaped. Kissinger's voice was warm, friendly, and informal.
This was great! Perot began to tell him about Paul and Bill: how they had
gone voluntarily to see Dadgar, how the State Department had let them down.
He assured Kissinger they were innocent, and pointed out that they had not
been charged with any crime, nor had the Iranians produced an atom of
evidence against them. "These are my men, I sent them there, and I have to
get them back," he finished.
"I'll see what I can do," Kissinger said.
Perot was exultant. "I sure appreciate it!"
"Send me a short briefing paper with all the details."
"We'll get it to you today."
"I'll get back to you, Ross."
"Thank you, sir."
The line went dead.
Perot felt terrific. Kissinger had remembered him, had been friendly and
willing to help. He wanted a briefing paper: EDS could send it today-
Perot was struck by a thought. He had no idea where Kissinger had been
speaking from-it might have been London, Monte Carlo, Mexico ...
I 'Sally?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Did you find out where Kissinger is?"
"Yes, sir."
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 69
Kissinger was in New York, in his duplex at the exclusive River House
apartment complex on East Fifty-second Street. From the window he could see
the East River.
Kissinger remembered Ross Perot clearly. Perot was a rough diamond. He
helped causes with which Kissinger was sympathetic, usually causes having
to do with prisoners. In the Vietnam War Perot's campaign had been
courageous, even though he had sometimes harassed Kissinger beyond the
point of what was doable. Now some of Perot's own people were prisoners.
Kissinger could readily believe that they were innocent. Iran was on the
brink of civil war: justice and due process meant little over there now. He
wondered whether he could help. He wanted to: it was a good cause. He was
no longer in office, but he still had friends, He
would call Ardeshir
Zahedi, he decided, as soon as the briefing paper arrived from Dallas.
Perot felt good about the conversation with Kissinger. HeU, Ross, I know who
you are. That was worth more than money. The only advantage of being famous
was that it sometimes helped get important things done.
T.J. came in. "I have your passport," he said. "It already has a visa for
Iran, but, Ross, I don't think you should go. All of us here can work on
the problem, but you're the key man. The last thing we need is for you to
be out of contact-in Tehran or just up in a plane sornewhere--at a moment
when we have to make a crucial decision."
Perot had forgotten all about going to Tehran. Everything he
had heard in the last hour encouraged him to think it would not
be necessary. "You might be right," he said to T.J. "We have
so many things going in the area of negotiation --- only one of
them has to work. I won't go to Tehran. Yet."
4-
Henry Precht was probably the most harassed man in Washington. A long-serving
State Department official with a bent for art and philosophy and a wacky
sense of humor, he had been making American policy on Iran more or less by
himself for much of 1978, while his superiors---right up to President
Carter-
70 Ken Follett
focused on the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel.
Since early November, when things had really started to warm up in Iran,
Precht had been working seven days a week from eight in the morning until
nine at night. And those damn Texans seemed to think he had nothing else to
do but talk to them on the phone.
The trouble was, the crisis in Iran was not the only power struggle Precht
had to worry about. There was another fight going on, in Washington,
between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance--Precht's bos&-and Zbigniew
Brzezinski, the President's National Security Advisor.
Vance believed, like President Carter, that American foreign policy should
reflect American morality. The American people believed in freedom,
justice, and democracy, and they did not want to support tyrants. The Shah
of Iran was a tyrant. Amnesty International had called Man's human-rights
record the worst in the world, and the many reports of the Shah's
systematic use of torture had been confirmed by the International
Commission of Jurists. Since the CIA had put the Shah in power and the
U.S.A. had kept him there, a President who talked a lot about human rights
had to do something.
In January 1977 Carter had hinted that tyrants might be denied American
aid. Carter was indecisive-later that year he visited Iran and lavished
praise on the Shah-but Vance believed in the human-rights approach.
Zbigniew Brzezinski did not. The National Security Advisor believed in
power. The Shah was an ally of the United States, and should be supported.
Sure, he should be encouraged to stop torturing peopl"ut not yet. His
regime was under attack: this was no time to liberalize it.
When would be the time? asked the Vance faction. The Shah had been strong
for most of his twenty-five years of rule, but had never shown much
inclination toward moderate government. Brzezinski replied: "Name one
single moderate government in that region of the world."
There were those in the Carter administration who thought that if America
did not stand for freedom and democracy there was no point in having a
foreign policy at all; but that was a somewhat extreme view, so they fell
back on a pragmatic argument: the Iranian people had had enough of the
Shah, and they were going to get rid of him regardless of what Washington
thought.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 71
Rubbish, said Brzezinski. Read history. Revolutions succeed when rulers
make concessions, and fail when those in power crush the rebels with an
iron fist. The Iranian Army, four hundred thousand strong, can easily put
down any revolt.
The Vance faction--4ricluding'Henry Precht-
Brzezinski Theory of Revolutions: threatened tyrants make concessions
because the rebels are strong, not the other way around, they said. More
importantly, they did not believe that the Iranian Army was four hundred
thousand strong. Figures were hard to get, but soldiers were deserting at
a rate that fluctuated around 8 percent per month, and there were whole
units that would go over to the revolutionaries intact in the event of
all-out civil war.
The two Washington factions were getting their information f1rom different
sources. Brzezinski was listening to Ardeshir Zahedi, the Shah's
brother-in-law and the most powerful proShah figure in Iran. Vance was
listening to Ambassador Sullivan. Sullivan's cables were not as consistent
as Washington could have wished--perhaps because the situation in Iran was
sometimes confusing-but, since September, the general trend of his reports
had been to say that the Shah was doomed.
Brzezinski said Sullivan was running around with his head cut off and could
not be trusted. Vance's supporters said that Brzezinski dealt with bad news
by shooting the messenger.
The upshot was that the United States did nothing. One time the State
Department drafted a cable to Ambassador Sullivan, instructing him to urge
the Shah to form a broad-based civilian coalition government: Brzezinski
killed the cable. Another time Brzezinski phoned the Shah and assured him
that he had the support of President Carter; the Shah asked for a
confirming cable; the State Department did not send the cable. In their
frustration both sides leaked information to the newspapers, so that the
whole world knew that Washington's policy on Iran was paralyzed by
infighting.
With all that going on, the last thing Precht needed was a gang of Texans
on his tail thinking they were the only people in the world with a problem.
Besides, he knew, he thought, exactly why EDS was in trouble. On asking
whether EDS was represented by an agent in h-an, he was told: Yes--t&.
Abolfath Mahvi. That explained everything. Mahvi was a well-known Tehran
middleman, nicknamed "the king of the five percenters" for his dealings in
72 Ken Follett
military contracts. Despite his high-level contacts the Shah had put him on
a blacklist of people banned from doing business in Iran. This was why EDS
was suspected of corruption.
Precht would do what he could. He would get the Embassy in Tehran to look
into the case, and perhaps Ambassador Sullivan might be able to put
pressure on the Iranians to release Chiapparone and Gaylord. But there was
no way the United States government was going to put all other Iranian
questions on the back burner. They were attempting to support the existing
regime, and this was no time to unbalance that regime further by
threatening a break in diplomatic relations over two jailed businessmen,
especially when there were another twelve thousand U.S. citizens in Iran,
all of whom the State Department was supposed to look after. It was
unfortunate, but Chiapparone and Gaylord would just have to sweat it out.
Henry Precht meant well. However, early in his involvement with Paul and
Bill, he-like Lou Goelz--made a mistake that at first wrongly colored his
attitude to the problem and later made him defensive in all his dealings
with EDS. Precht acted as if the investigation in which Paul and Bin were
supposed to be witnesses were a legitimate judicial inquiry into allegations
of corruption, rather than a barefaced act of blackmail. Goelz, on this
assumption, decided to cooperate with General Biglari. Precht, making the
same mistake, refused to treat Paul and Bill as criminally kidnapped
Americans.
Whether Abolfath Mahvi was corrupt or not, the fact was that he had not
made a penny out of EDS's contract with the Ministry. Indeed, EDS had got
into trouble in its early days for refusing to give Mahvi a piece of the
action.
It happened like this. Mahvi helped EDS get its first, small contract in
Iran, creating a document-control system for the Iranian Navy. EDS, advised
that by law they had to have a local partner, promised Mahvi a third of the
profit. When the contract was completed, two years later, EDS duly paid
Mahvi four hundred thousand dollars.
But while the Ministry contract was being negotiated, Mahvi was on the
blacklist. Nevertheless, when the deal was about to be signed, Mahvin-who
by this time was off the blacklist againdemanded that the contract be given
to a joint company owned by lum. and EDS.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 73
EDS refused. While Mahvi had earned his share of the navy contract, he had
done nothing for the Ministry deal.
Mahvi claimed that EDS's association with him had smoothed the way for the
Ministry contract through the twenty-four different government bodies that
had to approve it. Furthermore, he said, he had helped obtain a tax ruling
favorable to EDS that was written into the contract: EDS only got the
ruling because Mahvi had spent time with the Minister of Finance in Monte
Carlo.
EDS had not asked for his help, and did not believe that he had given it.
Furthermore, Ross Perot did not like the kind of "help" that takes place in
Monte Carlo.
EDS's Iranian attorney complained to the Prime Minister, and Mahvi was
carpeted for demanding bribes. Nevertheless, his influence was so great