'Nothing. "
"Right. There is no agriculture here, no industry. How do you think these
people make a living? They're all smugglers. "
They returned to the Range Rover and drove back into Rezaiyeh. That evening
Simons explained his plan to Coburn.
Simons, Coburn, Poch6, Paul, and Bill would drive from Tehran to Rezaiyeh
in the two Range Rovers. They would bring Majid and the professor with them
as interpreters. In Rezaiyeh they would stay at the professor's house. The
villa was ideal: no one else lived there, it was detached from other
houses, and from there quiet roads led out of the city. Between Tehran and
Rezaiyeh they would be unarmed: judging by what had happened at the
roadblocks, guns would get them into trouble. However, at Rezaiyeh they
would buy guns. Majid had made a contact in the city who would sell them
Browning 12-gauge shotguns for six thousand dollars apiece. The same man
could also get Llama pistols.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 239
Coburn would cross the border legitimately in one of the Range Rovers and
link up with Boulware, who would also have a car, on the Turkish side.
Simons, Pbch6, Paul, and Bill would cross on horseback with the smugglers.
(That was why they needed the guns: in case the smugglers should decide to
"lose" them in the mountains.) On the other side they would meet Coburn and
Boulware. They would all drive to the nearest American Consulate and get
new passports for Paul and Bill. Then they would fly to Dallas.
it was a good plan, Coburn thought; and he now saw that Simons was right to
insist on Sero rather than Barzagan, for it would be difficult to sneak
across the border in a more civilized, heavily populated area.
They returned to Tehran the next day. They left late and did most of the
journey by night, so as to be sure to arrive in the morning, after curfew
was lifted. They took the southerly route, passing through the small town
of Mahabad. The road was a singk-lane dirt track through the mountains, and
they had the worst possible weather: snow, ice, and high winds.
Nevertheless, the road was passable, and Simons determined to use this
route, rather than the northerly one, for the escape itself.
If it ever happened.
3
One evening Coburn went to the Hyatt and told Keane Taylor he needed
twenty-five thousand dollars in Iranian rials by the following morning.
He didn't say why.
Taylor got twenty-five thousand dollars in hundreds from Gayden, then
called a carpet dealer he knew in the south of the city and agreed on an
exchange rate.
Taylor's driver, Ali, was highly reluctant to take him downtown, especially
after dark, but after some argument he agreed.
They went to the shop. Taylor sat down and drank tea with the carpet
dealer. Two more Iramans came in: one was introduced as the man who would
exchange Taylor's money; the other was his bodyguard, and looked like a
hoodlum.
240 Ken Follett
Since Taylor's phone call, the carpet dealer said, the exchange rate had
changed rather dramatically-in the carpet dealer's favor.
"I'm insulted!" Taylor said angrily. "I'm not going to do business with you
people!"
"This is the best exchange rate you can get," said the carpet man.
"The hell it isl"
"It's very dangerous for you to be in this part of the city, carrying all
that money."
I 'I'm not alone," Taylor said. "I've got six people outside waiting for
me."
He finished his tea and stood up. He walked slowly out of the shop and
jumped into the car. "Ali, let's get out of here, fast."
They drove north. Taylor directed Ali to another carpet dealer, an Iranian
Jew with a shop near the palace. The man was just closing up when Taylor
walked in.
"I need to change some dollars for rials," Taylor said.
"Come back tomorrow," said the man.
"No, I need them tonight."
"How much?"
"Twenty-five thousand dollars."
"I don't have anything like that much."
"I've really got to have them tonight-,,
-What's it for?"
"It's to do with Paul and Bill."
The carpet dealer nodded. He had done business with several EDS people and
he knew that Paul and Bill were in jail. "I'll see what I can do. "
He called his brother from the back of the shop and sent him out. Then he
opened his safe and took out all his rials. He and Taylor stood there
counting money: the dealer counted the dollars; and Taylor the rials. A few
minutes later a kid came in with his hands full of rials and dumped them on
the counter. He left without speaking. Taylor realized the carpet dealer
was rounding up all the cash he could lay his hands on.
A young man came up on a motor scooter, parked outside, and walked in with
a bag full of rials. While he was in the shop someone stole his motor
scooter. The young man dropped the bag of money and ran after the thief,
yelling at the top of his voice.
Taylor went on counting.
Just another normal business day in revolutionary Tehran.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 241
John Howell was changing. With each day that went by he became a little less
the uptight American lawyer and a little more the devious Persian
negotiator. In particular, he began to see bribery in a different light.
Mehdi, an Iranian accountant who had done occasional work fbr EDS, had
explained things to him like this: "In Iran many things are achieved by
friendship. There are several ways to become Dadgar's friend. Me, I would
sit outside his house every day until he talked to me. Another way for me
to become his friend would be to give him two hundred thousand dollars. If
you like, I could arrange something like this for you."
Howell discussed this proposal with the other members of the negotiating
team. They assumed that Mehdi was offering himself as a bribe intermediary,
as Deep Throat had. But this time Howell was not so quick to reject the
idea of a corrupt deal for Paul and Bill's freedom.
They decided to play along with Mehdi. They might be able to expose the
deal and discredit Dadgar. Alternatively, they might decide the arrangement
was solid and pay up. Either way, they wanted a clear sign from Dadgar that
he was bribable.
Howell and Keane Taylor had a series of meetings with MehdiThe accountant
was as jumpy as Deep Throat had been, and would not let the EDS people come
to his office during normal working hours: he always met them early in the
morning or late at night, or at his house or down back alleys. Howell kept
pressing him for an unmistakable signal: Dadgar was to come to a meeting
wearing odd socks, or with his tie on backward. Mehdi would propose
ambiguous signals, such as Dadgar giving the Americans a hard time. On one
occasion Dadgar did give them a hard time, as Mehdi had forecast, but that
might have happened anyway.
Dadgar was not the only one giving Howell a hard time. Howell was talking
to Angela on the phone every four or five days, and she wanted to know when
he was coming home. He did not k
now. Paul and Bill were naturally pressing
him for hard news, but his progress was so slow and indefinite that he
could not possibly give them deadlines. He found this frustrating, and when
Angela started questioning him on the same point he had to suppress his
irritation.
The Mehdi initiative came to nothing. Mehdi introduced Howell to a lawyer
who claimed to be close to Dadgar. The lawyer
242 Ken Follett
did not want a bribe-just normal legal fees. EDS retained him, but at the
next meeting Dadgar said: "Nobody has any special relationship with me. If
anybody tries to tell you differently, don't believe them."
Howell was not sure what to make of all this. Had there been nothing in it
right from the start? Or had EDS's caution frightened Dadgar into dropping
a demand for a bribe? He would never know.
On January 30 Dadgar told Howell he was interested in Abolfkth Mahvi, EDS's
h-drdan partner. Howell began to prepare a dossier on EDS's dealings with
Mahvi.
Howell now believed that Paul and Bill were straightforward commercial
hostages. Dadgar's investigation into corruption might be genuine, but he
knew by now that Paul and Bill were innocent; therefore, he must be holding
them on orders from above. 'Me Iranians had originally wanted either their
promised computerized welfare system or their money back. Giving them their
welfare system meant renegotiating the contract-but the new government was
not interested in renegotiating and in any case was unlikely to stay in
power long enough to consummate a deal.
If Dadgar could not be bribed, convinced of Paul's and Bill's innocence, or
ordered by his superiors to release them on the basis of a new contract
between EDS and the Ministry, there remained to Howell only one option: pay
the bail. Dr. Hournan's efforts to get the amount reduced had come to
nothing. Howell now concentrated on ways of getting thirteen million
dollars from Dallas to Tehran.
He had learned, bit by bit, that there was an EDS rescue team in Tehran. He
was astonished that the head of an American corporation would set in motion
something like that. He was also reassured, for if he could only get Paul
and Bill out of jail, somebody else was standing by to get them out of
Iran.
Liz Coburn was frantic with worry.
She sat in the car with Toni Dvoranchik and Toni's husband, Bill. They were
heading for the Royal Tokyo restaurant. It was on Greenville Avenue, not
far from Recipes, the place where Liz and Toni had drunk Daiquiris with
Mary Sculley and Mary had shattered Liz's world by saying, "They're all in
Tehran, I guess. I I
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 243
Since that moment Liz had been living in constant, stark terror.
Jay was everything to her. He was Captain America, he was Superman, he was
her whole life. She did not see how she could live without him. The thought
of losing him. scared her to death.
She called Tehran constantly but never reached turn. She called Merv
Stauffer every day, asking, "When is Jay coming home? Is he all right? Will
he get out alive?" Merv tried to soothe her, but he would not give her any
information, so she would demand to speak to Ross Perot, and Merv would teR
her that was not possible. Then she would call her mother and burst into
tears and pour out all her anxiety and fear and frustration over die phone.
The Dvoranchiks were kind. They were trying to take her mind off her
worries.
"What did you do today?" Toni asked.
"I went shopping,- Liz said.
"Did you buy anything?"
"Yes." Liz started to cry. "I bought a black dress. Because Jay isn't
coming home."
During those days of waiting, Jay Coburn learned a good deal about Simons.
One day Merv Stauffer called from Dallas to say that Simons's son Harry had
been on the phone, worried. Harry had called his father's house and spoken
to Paul Walker, who was minding the farm. Walker had said he did not know
where Simons was, and had advised- Harry to call Merv Stauffer at EDS.
Harry was naturally worried, Stauffer said. Simons called Harry from Tehran
and reassured him.
Simons told Coburn that Harry had had some problems, but he was a good boy
at heart. He spoke of his son with a kind of resigned affection. (He never
mentioned Bruce, and it was not until much later that Coburn realized
Simons had two sons.)
Simons talked a lot about his late wife, Lucille, and how happy the two of
them had been after Simons retired. They had been very close during the
last few years, Coburn gathered, and Simons seemed to regret that it had
taken him so long to realize how much he loved her. "Hold on to your mate,"
he advised Coburn. "She's the most important person in your life."
Paradoxically, Simons's advice had the opposite effect on Coburn. He envied
the companionship Simons and Lucille had
244 Ken Follett
had, and he wanted that for himself, but he was so sure he could never
achieve it with Liz that he wondered if someone else would be his true soul
mate.
One evening Simons laughed and said: "You know, I wouldn't do this for
anyone else."
It was a characteristically cryptic Simons remark. Sometimes, Coburn had
learned, you got an explanation; sometimes you did not. This time Coburn
got an explanation: Simons told him why he felt indebted to Ross Perot.
The aftermath of the Son Tay Raid had been a bitter experience for Simons.
Although the Raiders had not brought back any American POWs, it had been a
brave try, and Simons expected the American public to see it that way.
Indeed, he had argued, at a breakfast meeting with Defense Secretary Melvin
Laird, in favor of releasing the news of the raid to the press. "This is a
perfectly legitimate operation," he had told Laird. "These are American
prisoners. This is something Americans traditionally do for Americans. For
Christ's sake, what is it we're afraid of here?"
He soon found out. The press and the public saw the raid as a failure and
yet another intelligence foul-up. The banner headline on the front page of
the next day's Washington Post read: u.s. RAm To RmcuE Pows FAiLs. When
Senator Robert Dole introduced a resolution praising the raid and said:
"Some of these men have been languishing in prison for five years," Senator
Kennedy replied: "And they're still there!"
Simons went to the White House to receive the Distinguished Service Cross
for "extraordinary heroism" from President Nixon. The rest of the Raiders
were to be decorated by Defense Secretary Laird. Simons was enraged to
learn that over half of his men were to get nothing more than the Army
Commendation Ribbon, only slightly better than a Good Conduct Ribbon, and
known to soldiers as a "Green Weenie." Mad as hell, he picked up the phone
and asked for the Army Chief of Staff, General Westmoreland. He got the
Acting Chief, General Palmer. Simons told Palmer about the Green Weenies
and said: "General, I don't want to embarrass the army, but one of my men
is just likely to shove an Army Commendation Ribbon up Mr. Lai
rd's ass." He
got his way: Land awarded four Distinguished Service Crosses, fifty Silver
Stars, and no Green Weenies.
The POWs got a huge monde boost from the Son Tay Raid (which they heard
about from incoming prisoners). An important
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 245
side effect of the raid was that the POW camps-where many prisoners had been
kept permanently in solitary confinement-were closed, and all the Americans
were brought into two large prisons where there was not enough room to keep
them apart. Nevertheless, the world branded the raid a failure, and Simons
felt a grave injustice had been done to his men.
The disappointment rankled with him for years-_itntil, one weekend, Ross
Perot threw a mammoth party in San Francisco, persuaded the army to round
up the Son Tay Raiders from all over the world, and introduced them to the
prisoners they had tried to rescue. That weekend, Simons felt, his Raiders
had at last got the thanks they deserved. And Ross Perot had been
responsible.
"That's why 1, in here," Simons told Coburn. "Sure as hell, I wouldn't do
this for anyone else."
Coburn, thinking of his son Scott, knew exactly what Simons meant.
4-
On January 22 hundreds of hornafars-young air force officersmutinied at
bases in Dezful, Hamadan, Isfahan, and Mashad, and declared themselves loyal
to the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The significance of the event was not apparent to National Security Advisor
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who still expected the Iranian military to crush the
Islamic revolution; nor to Premier Shahpour Bakhtiar, who was talking about
meeting the revolutionary challenge with a minimum of force; nor to the
Shah, who instead of going to the United States was hanging on in Egypt,
waiting to be summoned back to save his country in its hour of need.
Among the people who did see its significance were Ambassador William
Sullivan and General Abbas Gharabaghi, the Iranian Chief of Staff.
Sullivan told Washington that the idea of a pro-Shah countercoup was
moonshine, the revolution was going to succeed and the U.S. had better
start thinking about how it would live with the new order. He received a
harsh reply from the White House suggesting that he was disloyal to the
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