On Wings of Eagles

by Ken Follett

  There was a knock at Perot's door, and Taylor came in, carrying his usual drink. He was followed by John Howell, Rich Gallagher, and Bob Young. They all sat down.

  "Now," said Perot, "did you tell them that we'd guarantee to produce Paul and Bill for questioning anywhere in the U.S. or Europe, on thirty days' notice, at any time in the next two years?"

  "They're not interested in that idea," said Howell.

  "What do you mean, they're not interested?"

  "I'm just telling you what they said--"

  "But if this is an investigation, rather than a blackmail attempt, all they need is to be sure that Paul and Bill will be available for questioning."

  "They're sure already. I guess they see no reason to make changes."

  It was maddening. There seemed no way to reason with the Iranians, no way to reach them. "Did you suggest they release Paul and Bill into the custody of the U.S. Embassy?"

  "They turned that down, too."

  "Why?"

  "They didn't say."

  "Did you ask them?"

  "Ross, they don't have to give reasons. They're in charge here, and they know it."

  "But they're responsible for the safety of their prisoners."

  "It's a responsibility that doesn't seem to weigh too heavily on them."

  Taylor said: "Ross, they're not playing by our rules. Putting two men in jail is not a big deal to them. Paul's and Bill's safety is not a big deal--"

  "So what rules are they playing by? Can you tell me that?"

  There was a knock at the door and Coburn walked in, wearing his Michelin Man coat and his black knit hat. Perot brightened: perhaps he would have good news. "Did you meet with Deep Throat?"

  "Sure did," said Coburn, taking off his coat.

  "All right, let's have it."

  "He says he can get Paul and Bill released for six million dollars. The money would be paid into an escrow account in Switzerland and released when Paul and Bill leave Iran."

  "Hell, that ain't bad," said Perot. "We get out with fifty cents on the dollar. Under U.S. law it would even be legal--it's a ransom. What kind of guy is Deep Throat?"

  "I don't trust the bastard," said Coburn.

  "Why?"

  Coburn shrugged. "I don't know, Ross ... He's shifty, flaky ... A bullshitter ... I wouldn't give him sixty cents to go to the store and get me a pack of cigarettes. That's my gut feeling."

  "But, listen, what do you expect?" Perot said. "This is bribery--pillars of the community don't get involved in this kind of thing."

  Howell said: "You said it. This is bribery." His deliberate, throaty voice was unusually passionate. "I don't like this one bit."

  "I don't like it," Perot said. "But you've all been telling me that the Iranians aren't playing by our rules."

  "Yes, but listen," Howell said fervently. "The straw I've been clinging to all through this is that we've done nothing wrong--and someday, somehow, somewhere, somebody is going to recognize that, and then all this will evaporate ... I'd hate to give up that straw."

  "It hasn't got us far."

  "Ross, I believe that with time and patience we will succeed. But if we get involved in bribery we no longer have a case!"

  Perot turned to Coburn. "How do we know Deep Throat has a deal wired with Dadgar?"

  "We don't know," Coburn said. "His argument is, we don't pay until we get results, so what do we have to lose?"

  "Everything," Howell said. "Never mind what is legal in the United States. This could seal our fate in Iran."

  Taylor said: "It stinks. The whole thing stinks."

  Perot was surprised by their reactions. He, too, hated the idea of bribery, but he was prepared to compromise his principles to get Paul and Bill out of jail. The good name of EDS was precious to him, and he was loath to let it be associated with corruption, just as John Howell was; but Perot knew something Howell did not know: that Colonel Simons and the rescue team faced risks more grave than this.

  Perot said: "Our good name hasn't done Paul and Bill any good so far."

  "It's not just our good name," Howell persisted. "Dadgar must be pretty sure by now that we aren't guilty of corruption--but if he could catch us in a bribe situation he could still save face."

  That was a point, Perot thought. "Could this be a trap?"

  "Yes!"

  It made sense. Unable to get any evidence against Paul and Bill, Dadgar pretends to Deep Throat that he can be bribed, then--when Perot falls for it--announces to the world that EDS is, after all, corrupt. Then they would all be put in jail with Paul and Bill. And, being guilty, they would stay there.

  "All right," said Perot reluctantly. "Call Deep Throat and tell him no, thanks."

  Coburn stood up. "Okay."

  It had been another fruitless day, Perot thought. The Iranians had him all ways. Political pressure they ignored. Bribery could make matters worse. If EDS paid the bail, Paul and Bill would still be kept in Iran.

  Simons's team still looked like the best bet.

  But he was not going to tell the negotiating team that.

  "All right," he said. "We'll just try again tomorrow."

  3___

  Tall Keane Taylor and short John Howell, like Batman and Robin, tried again on January 17. They drove to the Ministry of Health building on Eisenhower Avenue, taking Abolhasan as interpreter, and met Dadgar at ten A.M. With Dadgar were officials of the Social Security Organization, the department of the Ministry that was run by EDS's computers.

  Howell had decided to abandon his initial negotiating position, that EDS could not pay the bail because of American securities law. It was equally useless to demand to know the charges against Paul and Bill and what evidence there was: Dadgar could stonewall that approach by saying he was still investigating. But Howell did not have a new strategy to replace the old. He was playing poker with no cards in his hand. Perhaps Dadgar would deal him some today.

  Dadgar began by explaining that the staff of the Social Security Organization wanted EDS to turn over to them what was known as the 125 Data Center.

  This small computer, Howell recalled, ran the payroll and pensions for the Social Security Organization staff. What these people wanted was to get their own wages, even while Iranians generally were not getting their social-security benefits.

  Keane Taylor said: "It's not that simple. Such a turnover would be a very complex operation needing many skilled staff. Of course they are all back in the States."

  Dadgar replied: "Then you should bring them back in."

  "I'm not that stupid," Taylor said.

  Taylor's Marine Corps sensitivity training was operating, Howell thought.

  Dadgar said: "If he speaks like this, he will go to jail."

  "Just as my staff would if I brought them back to Iran," said Taylor.

  Howell broke in: "Would you be able to give a legal guarantee that any returning staff would not be arrested or harassed in any way?"

  "I could not give a formal guarantee," Dadgar replied. "However, I would give my personal word of honor."

  Howell darted an anxious glance at Taylor. Taylor did not speak, but his expression said he would not give two cents for Dadgar's word of honor. "We could certainly investigate ways of arranging the turnover," Howell said. Dadgar had at last given him something to bargain with, even though it was not much. "There would have to be safeguards, of course. For example, you would have to certify that the machinery was handed over to you in good condition--but perhaps we could employ independent experts to do that ..." Howell was shadowboxing. If the data center was handed over, there would be a price: the release of Paul and Bill.

  Dadgar demolished that idea with his next sentence. "Every day new complaints are being made about your company to my investigators, complaints that would justify increases in the bail. However, if you cooperate in the turnover of the 125 Data Center, I can in return ignore the new complaints and refrain from increasing the bail."

  Taylor said: "Goddammit, this is nothing but blackma
il!"

  Howell realized that the 125 Data Center was a side-show. Dadgar had raised the question, no doubt at the urging of these officials, but he did not care about it enough to offer serious concessions. So what did he care about?

  Howell thought of Lucio Randone, the former cellmate of Paul and Bill. Randone's offer of help had been followed up by EDS manager Paul Bucha, who had gone to Italy to talk to Randone's company, Condotti d'Acqua. Bucha reported that the company had been building apartment blocks in Tehran when their Iranian financiers ran out of money. The company naturally stopped building; but many Iranians had already paid for apartments under construction. Given the present atmosphere, it was not surprising that the foreigners got blamed, and Randone had been jailed as a scapegoat. The company had found a new source of finance and resumed building, and Randone had got out of jail at the same time, in a package deal arranged by an Iranian lawyer, Ali Azmayesh. Bucha also reported that the Italians kept saying: "Remember, Iran will always be Iran. It never changes." He took this to be a hint that a bribe was part of the package deal. Howell also knew that a traditional channel for paying a bribe was a lawyer's fee: the lawyer would do, say, a thousand dollars' worth of work and pay a ten-thousand-dollar bribe, then charge his client eleven thousand dollars. This hint of corruption made Howell nervous, but despite that he had gone to see Azmayesh, who had advised him: "EDS does not have a legal problem--it has a business problem." If EDS could come to a business arrangement with the Ministry of Health, Dadgar would go away. Azmayesh had not mentioned bribery.

  All this had started, Howell thought, as a business problem: the customer unable to pay, the supplier refusing to go on working. Might a compromise be possible, under which EDS would switch on the computers and the Ministry would pay at least some money? He decided to ask Dadgar directly.

  "Would it help if EDS were to renegotiate its contract with the Ministry of Health?"

  "This might be very helpful," Dadgar answered. "It would not be a legal solution to our problem, but it might be a practical solution. Otherwise, to waste all the work that has been done in computerizing the Ministry would be a pity."

  Interesting, thought Howell. They want a modern social-security system--or their money back. Putting Paul and Bill in jail on thirteen million dollars' bail was their way of giving EDS those two options--and no others. We're getting straight talk, at last.

  He decided to be blunt. "Of course, it would be out of the question to begin negotiations while Chiapparone and Gaylord are still in jail."

  Dadgar replied: "Still, if you commit to good-faith negotiations, the Ministry will call me and the charges might be changed, the bail might be reduced, and Chiapparone and Gaylord might even be released on their personal guarantees."

  Nothing could be plainer than that, Howell thought. EDS had better go see the Minister of Health.

  Since the Ministry stopped paying its bills there had been two changes of government. Dr. Sheikholeslamizadeh, who was now in jail, had been replaced by a general; and then, when Bakhtiar became Prime Minister, the general had in turn been replaced by a new Minister of Health. Who, Howell wondered, was the new guy; and what was he like?

  "Mr. Young, of the American company EDS, is calling you, Minister," said the secretary.

  Dr. Razmara took a deep breath. "Tell him that American businessmen may no longer pick up the phone and call ministers of the Iranian government and expect to talk to us as if we were their employees," he said. He raised his voice. "Those days are over!"

  Then he asked for the EDS file.

  Manuchehr Razmara had been in Paris over Christmas. French-educated-he was a cardiologist--and married to a Frenchwoman, he considered France his second home, and spoke fluent French. He was also a member of the Iranian National Medical Council and a friend of Shahpour Bakhtiar, and when Bakhtiar had become Prime Minister he had called his friend Razmara in Paris and asked him to come home to be Minister of Health.

  The EDS file was handed to him by Dr. Emrani, the Deputy Minister in charge of Social Security. Emrani had survived the two changes of government: he had been here when the trouble had started.

  Razmara read the file with mounting anger. The EDS project was insane. The basic contract price was forty-eight million dollars, with escalators taking it up to a possible ninety million. Razmara recalled that Iran had twelve thousand working doctors to serve a population of thirty-two million, and that there were sixty-four thousand villages without tap water; and he concluded that whoever had signed the deal with EDS were fools or traitors, or both. How could they possibly justify spending millions on computers when the people lacked the fundamental necessities of public health like clean water? There could only be one explanation: they had been bribed.

  Well, they would suffer. Emrani had prepared this dossier for the special court that prosecuted corrupt civil servants. Three people were in jail: former Minister Dr. Sheikholeslamizadeh, and two of his Deputy Ministers, Reza Neghabat and Nili Arame. That was as it should be. The blame for the mess they were in should fall primarily on Iranians. However, the Americans were also culpable. American businessmen and their government had encouraged the Shah in his mad schemes, and had taken their profits: now they must suffer. Furthermore, according to the file, EDS had been spectacularly incompetent: the computers were not yet working, after two and a half years, yet the automation project had so disrupted Emrani's department that the old-fashioned systems were not working either, with the result that Emrani could not monitor his department's expenditure. This was a principal cause of the Ministry's overspending its budget, the file said.

  Razmara noted that the U.S. Embassy was protesting about the jailing of the two Americans, Chiapparone and Gaylord, because there was no evidence against them. That was typical of the Americans. Of course there was no proof: bribes were not paid by check. The Embassy was also concerned for the safety of the two prisoners. Razmara found this ironic. He was concerned for his safety. Each day when he went to the office he wondered whether he would come home alive.

  He closed the file. He had no sympathy for EDS or its jailed executives. Even if he had wanted to have them released, he would not have been able to, he reflected. The anti-American mood of the people was rising to fever pitch. The government of which Razmara was a part, the Bakhtiar regime, had been installed by the Shah and was therefore widely suspected of being pro-American. With the country in such turmoil, any Minister who concerned himself with the welfare of a couple of greedy American capitalist lackeys would be sacked if not lynched--and quite rightly. Razmara turned his attention to more important matters.

  The next day his secretary said: "Mr. Young, of the American company EDS, is here asking to see you, Minister."

  The arrogance of the Americans was infuriating. Razmara said: "Repeat to him the message I gave you yesterday--then give him five minutes to get off the premises."

  4____

  For Bill, the big problem was time.

  He was different from Paul. For Paul--restless, aggressive, strong-willed, ambitious--the worst of being in jail was the helplessness. Bill was more placid by nature: He accepted that there was nothing to do but pray, so he prayed. (He did not wear his religion on his sleeve: he did his praying late at night, before going to sleep, or early in the morning before the others woke up.) What got to Bill was the excruciating slowness with which time passed. A day in the real world--a day of solving problems, making decisions, taking phone calls, and attending meetings--was no time at all: a day in jail was endless. Bill devised a formula for conversion of real time to jail time.

  Time took on this new dimension for Bill after two or three weeks in jail, when he realized there was going to be no quick solution to the problem. Unlike a convicted criminal, he had not been sentenced to ninety days or five years, so he could gain no comfort from scratching a calendar on the wall as a countdown to freedom. It made no difference how many days had passed: his remaining time in jail was indefinite, therefore endless.

 
; His Persian cellmates did not seem to feel this way. It was a revealing cultural contrast: the Americans, trained to get fast results, were tortured by suspense; the Iranians were content to wait for fardah, tomorrow, next week, sometime, eventually--just as they had been in business.

  Nevertheless, as the Shah's grip weakened, Bill thought he saw signs of desperation in some of them, and he came to mistrust them. He was careful not to tell them who was in town from Dallas or what progress was being made in the negotiations for his release: he was afraid that, clutching at straws, they would have tried to trade information to the guards.

  He was becoming a well-adjusted jailbird. He learned to ignore dirt and bugs, and he got used to cold, starchy, unappetizing food. He learned to live within a small, clearly defined personal boundary, the prisoner's "turf." He stayed active.

  He found ways to fill the endless days. He read books, taught Paul chess, exercised in the hall, talked to the Iranians to get every word of the radio and TV news, and prayed. He made a minutely detailed survey of the jail, measuring the cells and the corridors and drawing plans and sketches. He kept a diary, recording every trivial event of jail life, plus everything his visitors told him and all the news. He used initials instead of names and sometimes put in invented incidents or altered versions of real incidents, so that if the diary were confiscated or read by the authorities it would confuse them.

  Like prisoners everywhere, he looked forward to visitors as eagerly as a child waiting for Christmas. The EDS people brought decent food, warm clothing, new books, and letters from home. One day Keane Taylor brought a picture of Bill's six-year-old son, Christopher, standing in front of the Christmas tree. Seeing his little boy, even in a photograph, gave Bill strength: a powerful reminder of what he had to hope for, it renewed his resolve to hang on and not despair.

  Bill wrote letters to Emily and gave them to Keane, who would read them to her over the phone. Bill had known Keane for ten years, and they were quite close--they had lived together after the evacuation. Bill knew that Keane was not as insensitive as his reputation would indicate--half of that was an act--but still it was embarrassing to write "I love you" knowing that Keane would be reading it. Bill got over the embarrassment, because he wanted very badly to tell Emily and the children how much he loved them, just in case he never got another chance to say it in person. The letters were like those written by pilots on the eve of a dangerous mission.