by Ken Follett
The phone woke Sullivan in the early hours of the morning.
It was the duty officer, calling from the communications vault in the Embassy Building just a few yards away. An urgent cable had arrived from Washington. The Ambassador might want to read it immediately.
Sullivan got out of bed and walked across the lawns to the Embassy, full of foreboding.
The cable said that the Eliot Mission was canceled.
The decision had been taken by the President. Sullivan's comments on the change of plan were not invited. He was instructed to tell the Shah that the United States government no longer intended to hold talks with the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Sullivan was heartbroken.
This was the end of America's influence in Iran. It also meant that Sullivan personally had lost his chance of distinguishing himself as Ambassador by preventing a bloody civil war.
He sent an angry message back to Vance, saying the President had made a gross mistake and should reconsider.
He went back to bed, but he could not sleep.
In the morning another cable informed him that the President's decision would stand.
Wearily, Sullivan made his way up the hill to the palace to tell the Shah.
The Shah appeared drawn and tense that morning. He and Sullivan sat down and drank the inevitable cup of tea. Then Sullivan told him that President Carter had canceled the Eliot Mission.
The Shah was upset. "But why have they canceled it?" he said agitatedly.
"I don't know," Sullivan replied.
"But how do they expect to influence those people if they won't even talk to them?"
"I don't know."
"Then what does Washington intend to do now?" asked the Shah, throwing up his hands in despair.
"I don't know," said Sullivan.
4___
"Ross, this is idiotic," Tom Luce said loudly. "You're going to destroy the company and you're going to destroy yourself."
Perot looked at his lawyer. They were sitting in Perot's office. The door was closed.
Luce was not the first to say this. During the week, as the news had spread through the seventh floor, several of Perot's top executives had come in to tell him that a rescue team was a foolhardy and dangerous notion, and he should drop the idea. "Stop worrying," Perot had told them. "Just concentrate on what you have to do."
Tom Luce was characteristically vociferous. Wearing an aggressive scowl and a courtroom manner, he argued his case as if a jury were listening.
"I can only advise you on the legal situation, but I'm here to tell you that this rescue can cause more problems, and worse problems, than you've got now. Hell, Ross, I can't make a list of the laws you're going to break!"
"Try," said Perot.
"You'll have a mercenary army--which is illegal here, in Iran, and in every country the team would pass through. Anywhere they go they'd be liable to criminal penalties and you could have ten men in jail instead of two.
"But it's worse than that. Your men would be in a position much worse than soldiers in battle--international laws and the Geneva Convention, which protect soldiers in uniform, would not protect the rescue team.
"If they get captured in Iran ... Ross, they'll be shot. If they get captured in any country that has an extradition treaty with Iran, they'll be sent back and shot. Instead of two innocent employees in jail, you could have eight guilty employees dead.
"And if that happens, the families of the dead men may turn on you--understandably, because this whole thing will look stupid. The widows will have huge claims against EDS in the American courts. They could bankrupt the company. Think of the ten thousand people who would be out of a job if that happened. Think of yourself--Ross, there might even be criminal charges against you that could put you in jail!"
Perot said calmly: "I appreciate your advice, Tom."
Luce stared at him. "I'm not getting through to you, am I?"
Perot smiled. "Sure you are. But if you go through life worrying about all the bad things that can happen, you soon convince yourself that it's best to do nothing at all."
The truth was that Perot knew something Luce did not.
Ross Perot was lucky.
All his life he had been lucky.
As a twelve-year-old boy he had had a paper route in the poor black district of Texarkana. The Texarkana Gazette cost twenty-five cents a week in those days, and on Sundays, when he collected the money, he would end up with forty or fifty dollars in quarters in his pocket. And every Sunday, somewhere along the route, some poor man who had spent his week's wages in a bar the previous night would try to take the money from little Ross. This was why no other boy would deliver papers in that district. But Ross was never scared. He was on a horse; the attempts were never very determined; and he was lucky. He never lost his money.
He had been lucky again in getting admitted to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Applicants had to be sponsored by a senator or a congressman, and of course the Perot family did not have the right contacts. Anyway, young Ross had never even seen the sea--the farthest he had ever traveled was to Dallas, 180 miles away. But there was a young man in Texarkana called Josh Morriss, Jr., who had been to Annapolis and told Ross all about it, and Ross had fallen in love with the navy without ever seeing a ship. So he just kept writing to senators begging for sponsorship. He succeeded--as he would many times during later life--because he was too dumb to know it was impossible.
It was not until many years later that he found out how it had happened. One day back in 1949 Senator W. Lee O'Daniel was clearing out his desk: it was the end of his term and he was not going to run again. An aide said: "Senator, we have an unfilled appointment to the Naval Academy."
"Does anyone want it?" the senator said.
"Well, we've got this boy from Texarkana who's been trying for years ..."
"Give it to him," said the senator.
The way Perot heard the story, his name was never actually mentioned during the conversation.
He had been lucky once again in setting up EDS when he did. As a computer salesman for IBM, he realized that his customers did not always make the best use of the machines he sold them. Data processing was a new and specialized skill. The banks were good at banking, the insurance companies were good at insurance, the manufacturers were good at manufacturing--and the computer men were good at data processing. The customer did not want the machine, he wanted the fast, cheap information it could provide. Yet, too often, the customer spent so much time creating his new data-processing department and learning how to use the machine that his computer caused him trouble and expense instead of saving them. Perot's idea was to sell a total package--a complete data-processing department with machinery, software, and staff. The customer had only to say, in simple language, what information he needed, and EDS would give it to him. Then he could get on with what he was good at--banking, insurance, or manufacturing.
IBM turned down Perot's idea. It was a good concept but the pickings would be small. Out of every dollar spent on data processing, eighty cents went into hardware--the machinery--and only twenty cents into software, which was what Perot wanted to sell. IBM did not want to chase pennies under the table.
So Perot drew a thousand dollars out of his savings and started up on his own. Over the next decade the proportions changed until software was taking seventy cents of every data-processing dollar, and Perot became one of the richest self-made men in the world.
The chairman of IBM, Tom Watson, met Perot in a restaurant one day and said: "I just want to know one thing, Ross. Did you foresee that the ratio would change?"
"No," said Perot. "The twenty cents looked good enough to me."
Yes, he was lucky; but he had to give his luck room to operate. It was no good sitting in a corner being careful. You never got the chance to be lucky unless you took risks. All his life Perot had taken risks.
This one just happened to be the biggest.
Merv Stauffer walked into the office. "Ready to go?" h
e said.
"Yes."
Perot got up and the two men left the office. They went down in the elevator and got into Stauffer's car, a brand-new four-door Lincoln Versailles. Perot read the nameplate on the dashboard: "Merv and Helen Stauffer." The interior of the car stank of Simons's cigars.
"He's waiting for you," Stauffer said.
"Good."
Perot's oil company, Petrus, had offices in the next building along Forest Lane. Merv had already taken Simons there, then come for Perot. Afterward he would take Perot back to EDS, then return for Simons. The object of the exercise was secrecy: as few people as possible were to see Simons and Perot together.
In the last six days, while Simons and the rescue team had been doing their thing out at Lake Grapevine, the prospects of a legal solution to the problem of Paul and Bill had receded. Kissinger, having failed with Ardeshir Zahedi, was unable to do anything else to help. Lawyer Tom Luce had been busy calling every single one of the twenty-four Texas congressmen, both Texas senators, and anyone else in Washington who would take his calls; but what they all did was to call the State Department to find out what was going on, and all the calls ended up on the desk of Henry Precht.
EDS's chief financial officer, Tom Walter, still had not found a bank willing to post a letter of credit for $12,750,000. The difficulty, Walter had explained to Perot, was this: under American law, an individual or a corporation could renege on a letter of credit if there was proof that the letter had been signed under illegal pressure--for example, blackmail or kidnapping. The banks saw the imprisonment of Paul and Bill as a straightforward piece of extortion, and they knew EDS would be able to argue, in an American court, that the letter was invalid and the money should not be paid. In theory that would not matter, for by then Paul and Bill would be home, and the American bank would simply--and quite legally--refuse to honor the letter of credit when it was presented for payment by the Iranian government. However, most American banks had large loans outstanding with Iran, and their fear was that the Iranians would retaliate by deducting $12,750,000 from what they owed. Walter was still searching for a large bank that did no business with Iran.
So, unfortunately, Operation Hotfoot was still Perot's best bet.
Perot left Stauffer in the car park and went into the oil company building.
He found Simons in the little office reserved for Perot. Simons was eating peanuts and listening to a portable radio. Perot guessed that the peanuts were his lunch and the radio was to swamp any eavesdropping devices that might be hidden in the room.
They shook hands. Perot noticed that Simons was growing a beard. "How are things?" he said.
"They're good," Simons answered. "The men are beginning to pull together as a team."
"Now," said Perot, "you realize you can reject any member of the team you find unsatisfactory." A couple of days earlier Perot had proposed an addition to the team, a man who knew Tehran and had an outstanding military record, but Simons had turned him down after a short interview, saying: "That guy believes his own bullshit." Now Perot wondered whether Simons had found fault, during the training period, with any of the others. He went on: "You're in charge of the rescue, and--"
"There's no need," Simons said. "I don't want to reject anyone." He laughed softly. "They're easily the most intelligent squad I've ever worked with, and that does create a problem, because they think orders are to be discussed, not obeyed. But they're learning to turn off their thinking switches when necessary. I've made it very clear to them that at some point in the game discussion ends and blind obedience is called for."
Perot smiled. "Then you've achieved more in six days than I have in sixteen years."
"There's no more we can do here in Dallas," Simons said. "Our next step is to go to Tehran."
Perot nodded. This might be his last chance to call off Operation Hotfoot. Once the team left Dallas, they might be out of touch and they would be out of his control. The die would be cast.
Ross, this is idiotic. You're going to destroy the company and you're going to destroy yourself.
Hell, Ross, I can't make a list of the laws you're going to break!
Instead of two innocent employees in jail, you could have eight guilty employees dead.
Well, we've got this boy from Texarkana who's been trying for years ...
"When do you want to leave?" Perot asked Simons.
"Tomorrow."
"Good luck," said Perot.
Five
1____
While Simons was talking to Perot in Dallas, Pat Sculley--the world's worst liar--was in Istanbul, trying and failing to pull the wool over the eyes of a wily Turk.
Mr. Fish was a travel agent who had been "discovered" during the December evacuation by Merv Stauffer and T. J. Marquez. They had hired him to make arrangements for the evacuees' stopover in Istanbul, and he had worked miracles. He had booked them all into the Sheraton and organized buses to take them from the airport to the hotel. When they arrived there had been a meal waiting for them. They left him to collect their baggage and clear it through customs, and it appeared outside their hotel rooms as if by magic. The next day there had been video movies for the children and sight-seeing tours for the adults to keep everyone occupied while they waited for their flights to New York. Mr. Fish achieved all this while most of the hotel staff were on strike--T. J. found out later that Mrs. Fish had made the beds in the hotel rooms. Once onward flights had been reserved, Merv Stauffer had wanted to duplicate a handout sheet with instructions for everyone, but the hotel's photocopier was broken: Mr. Fish got an electrician to mend it at five o'clock on a Sunday morning. Mr. Fish could make it happen.
Simons was still worried about smuggling the Walther PPKs into Tehran, and when he heard how Mr. Fish had cleared the evacuees' baggage through Turkish customs he proposed that the same man be asked to solve the problem of the guns. Sculley had left for Istanbul on January 8.
The following day he met Mr. Fish at the coffee shop in the Sheraton. Mr. Fish was a big, fat man in his late forties, dressed in drab clothes. But he was shrewd: Sculley was no match for him.
Sculley told him that EDS needed help with two problems. "One, we need an aircraft that can fly into and out of Tehran. Two, we want to get some baggage through customs without its being inspected. Naturally, we'll pay you anything reasonable for help with these problems."
Mr. Fish looked dubious. "Why do you want to do these things?"
"Well, we've got some magnetic tapes for computer systems in Tehran," Sculley said. "We've got to get them in there and we can't take any chances. We don't want anyone to X-ray those tapes or do anything that could damage them, and we can't risk having them confiscated by some petty customs official."
"And for this, you need to hire a plane and get your bags through customs unopened?"
"Yes, that's right." Sculley could see that Mr. Fish did not believe a word of it.
Mr. Fish shook his head. "No, Mr. Sculley. I have been happy to help your friends before, but I am a travel agent, not a smuggler. I will not do this."
"What about the plane--can you get us a plane?"
Mr. Fish shook his head again. "You will have to go to Amman, Jordan. Arab Wings run charter flights from there to Tehran. That is the best suggestion I can make."
Sculley shrugged. "Okay."
A few minutes later he left Mr. Fish and went up to his room to call Dallas.
His first assignment as a member of the rescue team had not gone well.
When Simons got the news he decided to leave the Walther PPKs in Dallas.
He explained his thinking to Coburn. "Let's not jeopardize the whole mission, right at the start, when we're not even sure we're going to need the handguns: that's a risk we don't have to take, not yet anyway. Let's get in the country and see what we're up against. If and when we need the guns, Schwebach will go back to Dallas and get 'em."
The guns were put in the EDS vault, together with a tool Simons had ordered for filing off the serial
numbers. (Since that was against the law it would not be done until the last possible moment.)
However, they would take the false-bottomed suitcase and do a dry run. They would also take the Number 2 shot--Davis would carry it in his beanbag--and the equipment Simons needed for reloading the shot into birdshot cartridges--Simons would carry that himself.
There was now no point in going via Istanbul, so Simons sent Sculley to Paris to book hotel rooms there and try to get reservations for the team on a flight into Tehran.
The rest of the team took off from the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport at 11:05 A.M. on January 10 aboard Braniff flight 341 to Miami, where they transferred to National 4 to Paris.
They met up with Sculley at Orly Airport, in the picture gallery between the restaurant and the coffee shop, the following morning.
Cobum noticed that Sculley was jumpy. Everyone was becoming infected with Simons's security-consciousness, he realized. Coming over from the States, although they had all been on the same plane, they had traveled separately, sitting apart and not acknowledging one another. In Paris Sculley had got nervous about the staff at the Orly Hilton and suspected that someone was listening to his phone calls, so Simons--who was always uneasy in hotels anyway--had decided they would talk in the picture gallery.
Sculley had failed in his second assignment, to get onward reservations from Paris to Tehran for the team. "Half the airlines have just stopped flying to Iran, because of the political unrest and the strike at the airport," he said. "What flights there are are overbooked with Iranians trying to get home. All I have is a rumor that Swissair is flying in from Zurich."
They split into two groups. Simons, Coburn, Poche, and Boulware would go to Zurich and try for the Swissair flight. Sculley, Schwebach, Davis, and Jackson would stay in Paris.
Simons's group flew Swissair first class to Zurich. Coburn sat next to Simons. They spent the whole of the flight eating a splendid lunch of shrimp and steak. Simons raved about how good the food was. Coburn was amused, remembering how Simons had said: "When you're hungry, you open a can."
At Zurich Airport the reservations desk for the Tehran flight was mobbed by Iranians. The team could get only one seat on the plane. Which of them should go? Coburn, they decided. He would be the logistics man: as Director of Personnel and as evacuation mastermind he had the most complete knowledge of EDS resources in Tehran: 150 empty houses and apartments, 60 abandoned cars and jeeps, 200 Iranian employees--those who could be trusted and those who could not--and the food, drink, and tools left behind by the evacuees. Going in first, Coburn could arrange transport, supplies, and a hideout for the rest of the team.