On Wings of Eagles

by Ken Follett

  But negotiations for the release of Paul and Bill were stalled, and Perot wanted to go to Tehran to kick ass in one last attempt at a legitimate solution before Simons and the team risked their lives in an assault on the prison.

  There had been times, in business, when EDS had been ready to admit defeat but had gone on to victory because Perot himself had insisted on going one more mile: this was what leadership was all about.

  That was what he told himself, and it was all true, but there was another reason for his trip. He simply could not sit in Dallas, comfortable and safe, while other people risked their lives on his instructions.

  He knew only too well that if he were jailed in Iran, he, and his colleagues, and his company, would be in much worse trouble than they were now. Should he do the prudent thing, and stay, he had wondered--or should he follow his deepest instincts, and go? It was a moral dilemma. He had discussed it with his mother.

  She knew she was dying. And she knew that, even if Perot should come back alive and well after a few days, she might no longer be there. Cancer was rapidly destroying her body, but there was nothing wrong with her mind, and her sense of right and wrong was as clear as ever. "You don't have a choice, Ross," she had said. "They're your men. You sent them over there. They didn't do anything wrong. Our government won't help them. You are responsible for them. It's up to you to get them out. You have to go."

  So here he was, feeling that he was doing the right thing, if not the smart thing.

  The Lear jet left the desert behind and climbed over the mountains of western Iran. Unlike Simons and Coburn and Poche, Perot was a stranger to physical danger. He had been too young for World War II and too old for Vietnam, and the Korean War had finished while Ensign Perot was on his way there aboard the destroyer USS Sigourney. He had been shot at just once, during the prisoners-of-war campaign, landing in a jungle in Laos aboard an ancient DC3: he had heard pinging noises but had not realized the aircraft had been hit until after it landed. His most frightening experience, since the days of the Texarkana paper-route thieves, had been in another plane over Laos, when a door right next to his seat fell off. He had been asleep. When he woke up he looked for a light for a second, before realizing he was leaning out of the aircraft. Fortunately he had been strapped in.

  He was not sitting next to a door today.

  He looked through the window and saw, in a bowl-shaped depression in the mountains, the city of Tehran, a mud-colored sprawl dotted with white skyscrapers. The plane began to lose height.

  Okay, he thought, now we're coming down. It's time to start thinking and using your head, Perot.

  As the plane landed he felt tense, wired, alert: he was pumping adrenaline.

  The plane taxied to a halt. Several soldiers with machine guns slung over their shoulders ambled casually across the tarmac.

  Perot got out. The pilot opened the baggage hold and handed him the net bag of tapes.

  Perot and the pilot walked across the tarmac. Howell and Young followed, carrying their suitcases.

  Perot felt grateful for his inconspicuous appearance. He thought of a Norwegian friend, a tall, blond Adonis who complained of looking too impressive. "You're lucky, Ross," he would say. "When you walk into a room no one notices you. When people see me, they expect too much--I can't live up to their expectations." No one would ever take him for a messenger boy. But Perot, with his short stature and homely face and off-the-rack clothes, could be convincing in the part.

  They entered the terminal. Perot told himself that the military, which was running the airport, and the Ministry of Justice, for which Dadgar worked, were two separate government bureaucracies; and if one of them knew what the other was doing, or whom it was seeking, why, this would have to be the most efficient operation in the history of government.

  He walked up to the desk and showed his passport.

  It was stamped and handed back to him.

  He walked on.

  He was not stopped by customs.

  The pilot showed him where to leave the bag of television tapes. Perot put them down, then said goodbye to the pilot.

  He turned around and saw another tall, distinguished-looking friend: Keane Taylor. Perot liked Taylor.

  "Hi, Ross, how did it go?" Taylor said.

  "Great," Perot said with a smile. "They weren't looking for the ugly American."

  They walked out of the airport. Perot said: "Are you satisfied that I didn't send you back here for any administrative b.s.?"

  "I sure am," Taylor said.

  They got into Taylor's car. Howell and Young got in the back.

  As they pulled away, Taylor said: "I'm going to take an indirect route, to avoid the worst of the riots."

  Perot did not find this reassuring.

  The road was lined with tall, half-finished concrete buildings with cranes on top. Work seemed to have stopped. Looking closely, Perot saw that people were living in the shells. It seemed an apt symbol of the way the Shah had tried to modernize Iran too quickly.

  Taylor was talking about cars. He had stashed all EDS's cars in a school playground and hired some Iranians to guard them, but he had discovered that the Iranians were busy running a used car lot, selling the damn things.

  There were long lines at every gas station, Perot noticed. He found that ironic in a country rich in oil. As well as cars, there were people in the queues, holding cans. "What are they doing?" Perot asked. "If they don't have cars, why do they need gas?"

  "They sell it to the highest bidder," Taylor explained. "Or you can rent an Iranian to stand in line for you."

  They were stopped briefly at a roadblock. Driving on, they passed several burning cars. A lot of civilians were standing around with machine guns. The scene was peaceful for a mile or two; then Perot saw more burning cars, more machine guns, another roadblock. Such sights ought to have been frightening, but somehow they were not. It seemed to Perot that the people were just enjoying letting loose for a change, now that the Shah's iron grip was at last being relaxed. Certainly the military was doing nothing to maintain order, as far as he could see.

  There was always something weird about seeing violence as a tourist. He recalled flying over Laos in a light plane and watching people fighting on the ground: he had felt tranquil, detached. He supposed that battle was like that: it might be fierce if you were in the middle of it, but five minutes away nothing was happening.

  They drove into a huge circle with a monument in its center that looked like a spaceship of the far future, towering over the traffic on four gigantic splayed legs. "What is that?" said Perot.

  "The Shahyad Monument," Taylor said. "There's a museum in the top."

  A few minutes later they pulled into the forecourt of the Hyatt Crown Regency. "This is a new hotel," Taylor said. "They just opened it, poor bastards. It's good for us, though--wonderful food, wine, music in the restaurant in the evenings ... We're living like kings in a city that's falling apart."

  They went into the lobby and took the elevator. "You don't have to check in," Taylor told Perot. "Your suite is in my name. No sense in having your name written down anywhere."

  "Right."

  They got out at the eleventh floor. "We've all got rooms along this hall," Taylor said. He unlocked a door at the far end of the corridor.

  Perot walked in, glanced around, and smiled. "Would you look at this?" The sitting room was vast. Next to it was a large bedroom. He looked into the bathroom: it was big enough for a cocktail party.

  "Is it all right?" Taylor said with a grin.

  "If you'd seen the room I had last night in Amman, you wouldn't bother to ask."

  Taylor left him to settle in.

  Perot went to the window and looked out. His suite was at the front of the hotel, so he could look down and see the forecourt. I might hope to have warning, he thought, if a squad of soldiers or a revolutionary mob comes for me.

  But what would I do?

  He decided to map an emergency escape route. He left his suite
and walked up and down the corridor. There were several empty rooms with unlocked doors. At either end was an exit to a staircase. He went down the stairs to the floor below. There were more empty rooms, some without furniture or decoration: the hotel was unfinished, like so many buildings in this town.

  I could take this staircase down, he thought, and if I heard them coming up I could duck back into one of the corridors and hide in an empty room. That way I could get to ground level.

  He walked all the way down the stairs and explored the ground floor.

  He wandered through several banqueting rooms that he supposed were unused most, if not all, of the time. There was a labyrinth of kitchens with a thousand hiding places: he particularly noted some empty food containers big enough for a small man to climb into. From the banqueting area he could reach the health club at the back of the hotel. It was pretty fancy, with a sauna and a pool. He opened a door at the rear and found himself outside, in the hotel parking lot. Here he could take an EDS car and disappear into the city, or walk to the next hotel, the Evin, or just run into the forest of unfinished skyscrapers that began on the far side of the parking lot.

  He reentered the hotel and took the elevator. As he rode up, he resolved always to dress casually in Tehran. He had brought with him khaki pants and some checkered flannel shirts, and he also had a jogging outfit. He could not help looking American, with his pale, clean-shaven face and blue eyes and ultra-short crewcut; but, if he should find himself on the run, he could at least make sure he did not look like an important American, much less the multimillionaire owner of Electronic Data Systems Corporation.

  He went to find Taylor's room and get a briefing. He wanted to go to the American Embassy and talk to Ambassador Sullivan; he wanted to go to the headquarters of MAAG, the U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group, and see General Huyser and General Gast; he wanted to get Taylor and John Howell hyped up to put a bomb under Dadgar's tail; he wanted to move, to go, to get this problem solved, to get Paul and Bill out, and fast.

  He banged on Taylor's door and walked in. "Okay, Keane," he said. "Bring me up to speed."

  Six

  1___

  John Howell was born in the ninth minute of the ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month of 1946, his mother often said.

  He was a short, small man with a bouncy walk. His fine light brown hair was receding early, he had a slight squint, and his voice was faintly hoarse, as if he had a permanent cold. He spoke very slowly and blinked a lot.

  Thirty-two years old, he was an associate in Tom Luce's Dallas law firm. Like so many of the people around Ross Perot, Howell had achieved a responsible position at a young age. His greatest asset as a lawyer was stamina--"John wins by outworking the opposition," Luce would say. Most weekends Howell would spend either Saturday or Sunday at the office, tidying up loose ends, finishing tasks that had been interrupted by the phone, and preparing for the week ahead. He would get frustrated when family activities deprived him of that sixth working day. In addition, he often worked late into the evening and missed dinner at home, which sometimes made his wife, Angela, unhappy.

  Like Perot, Howell was born in Texarkana. Like Perot, he was short in stature and long on guts. Nevertheless, at midday on January 14 he was scared. He was about to meet Dadgar.

  The previous afternoon, immediately after arriving in Tehran, Howell had met with Ahmad Houman, EDS's new local attorney. Dr. Houman had advised him not to meet Dadgar, at least not yet: it was perfectly possible that Dadgar intended to arrest all the EDS Americans he could find, and that might include lawyers.

  Howell had found Houman impressive. A big, rotund man in his sixties, well dressed by Iranian standards, he was a former president of the Iran Bar Association. Although his English was not good--French was his second language--he seemed confident and knowledgeable.

  Houman's advice jelled with Howell's instinct. He always liked to prepare very thoroughly for any kind of confrontation. He believed in the old maxim of trial lawyers: never ask a question unless you already know the answer.

  Houman's advice was reinforced by Bunny Fleischaker. An American girl with Iranian friends in the Ministry of Justice, Bunny had warned Jay Coburn, back in December, that Paul and Bill were going to be arrested, but at the time no one had believed her. Events had given her retrospective credibility, and she was taken seriously when, early in January, she called Rich Gallagher's home at eleven o'clock one evening.

  The conversation had reminded Gallagher of the phone calls in the movie All the President's Men, in which nervous informants talked to the newspaper reporters in improvised code. Bunny began by saying: "D'you know who this is?"

  "I think so," Gallagher said.

  "You've been told about me."

  "Yes."

  EDS's phones were bugged and the conversations were being taped, she explained. The reason she had called was to say that there was a strong chance Dadgar would arrest more EDS executives. She recommended they either leave the country or move into a hotel where there were lots of newspaper reporters. Lloyd Briggs, who as Paul's deputy seemed the likeliest target for Dadgar, had left the country--he needed to return to the States to brief EDS's lawyers anyway. The others, Gallagher and Keane Taylor, had moved into the Hyatt.

  Dadgar had not arrested any more EDS people--yet.

  Howell needed no more convincing. He was going to stay out of Dadgar's way until he was sure of the ground rules.

  Then, at eight-thirty this morning, Dadgar had raided Bucharest.

  He had turned up with half a dozen investigators and demanded to see EDS's files. Howell, hiding in an office on another floor, had called Houman. After a quick discussion he had advised all EDS personnel to cooperate with Dadgar.

  Dadgar had wanted to see Paul Chiapparone's files. The filing cabinet in Paul's secretary's office was locked and nobody could find the key. Of course that made Dadgar all the more keen to see the files. Keane Taylor had solved the problem in characteristically direct fashion: he had got a crowbar and broken the cabinet open.

  Meanwhile, Howell snuck out of the building, met Dr. Houman, and went to the Ministry of Justice.

  That, too, had been scary, for he had been obliged to fight his way through an unruly crowd that was demonstrating, outside the Ministry, against the holding of political prisoners.

  Howell and Houman had an appointment with Dr. Kian, Dadgar's superior.

  Howell told Kian that EDS was a reputable company that had done nothing wrong, and it was eager to cooperate in any investigation in order to clear its name, but it wanted to get its employees out of jail.

  Kian said he had asked one of his assistants to ask Dadgar to review the case.

  That sounded to Howell like nothing at all.

  He told Kian he wanted to talk about a reduction in the bail.

  The conversation took place in Farsi, with Houman translating. Houman said that Kian was not inflexibly opposed to a reduction in the bail. In Houman's opinion they might expect it to be halved.

  Kian gave Howell a note authorizing him to visit Paul and Bill in jail.

  The meeting had been just about fruitless, Howell thought afterward, but at least Kian had not arrested him.

  When he returned to Bucharest he found that Dadgar had not arrested anyone either.

  His lawyer's instinct still told him not to see Dadgar; but now that instinct struggled with another side of his personality: impatience. There were times when Howell wearied of research, preparation, foresight, planning--times when he wanted to move on a problem instead of thinking about it. He liked to take the initiative, to have the opposition reacting to him rather than the other way around. This inclination was reinforced by the presence in Tehran of Ross Perot, always up first in the morning, asking people what they had achieved yesterday and what tasks they intended to accomplish today, always on everyone's back. So impatience got the better of caution, and Howell decided to confront Dadgar.

  This was why he was scared.

>   If he was unhappy, his wife was more so.

  Angela Howell had not seen much of her husband in the last two months. He had spent most of November and December in Tehran, trying to persuade the Ministry to pay EDS's bill. Since getting back to the States he had been staying at EDS headquarters until all hours of the night, working on the Paul and Bill problem, when he was not dashing off to New York for meetings with Iranian lawyers there. On December 31 Howell had arrived home at breakfast time, after working all night at EDS, to find Angela and baby Michael, nine months old, huddled in front of a wood fire in a cold, dark house: the ice storm had caused a power failure. He had moved them into his sister's apartment and gone off to New York again.

  Angela had had about as much as she could take, and when he announced he was going to Tehran again she had been upset. "You know what's going on over there," she had said. "Why do you have to go back?"

  The trouble was, he did not have a simple answer to that question. It was not clear just what he was going to do in Tehran. He was going to work on the problem, but he did not know how. If he had been able to say, "Look, this is what has to be done, and it's my responsibility, and I'm the only one who can do it," she might have understood.

  "John, we're a family. I need your help to take care of all this," she had said, meaning the ice storm, the blackouts, and the baby.

  "I'm sorry. Just do the best you can. I'll try to stay in touch," Howell had said.

  They were not the kind of married couple to express their feelings by yelling at each other. On the frequent occasions when he upset her by working late, leaving her to sit alone and eat the dinner she had fixed for him, a certain coolness was the closest they came to fighting. But this was worse than missing supper: he was abandoning her and the baby just when they needed him.