On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

by Ken Follett

  Nevertheless, he was taking precautions. He would go in with a group of people--Rich Gallagher and Jay Coburn were on the bus, as well as some Embassy people who were going to visit an American woman in the jail--and he was wearing casual clothes and carrying a cardboard box containing groceries, books, and warm clothing for Paul and Bill.

  Nobody at the prison would know his face. He would have to give his name as he went in, but why would a minor clerk or prison guard recognize it? His name might be on a list at the airport, at police stations, or at hotels; but the prison would surely be the last place Dadgar would expect him to turn up.

  Anyway, he was determined to take the risk. He wanted to boost Paul's and Bill's morale, and to show them that he was willing to stick out his neck for them. It would be the only achievement of his trip: his efforts to get the negotiations moving had come to nothing.

  The bus entered Gasr Square and he got his first sight of the new prison. It was formidable. He could not imagine how Simons and his little rescue team could possibly break in there.

  In the square were scores of people, mostly women in chadors, making a lot of noise. The bus stopped near the huge steel doors. Perot wondered about the bus driver: he was Iranian, and he knew who Perot was ...

  They all got out. Perot saw a television camera near the prison entrance.

  His heart missed a beat.

  It was an American crew.

  What the hell were they doing there?

  He kept his head down as he pushed his way through the crowd, carrying his cardboard box. A guard looked out of a small window set into the brick wall beside the gates. The television crew seemed to be taking no notice of him. A minute later a little door in one of the gates swung open, and the visitors stepped inside.

  The door clanged shut behind them.

  Perot had passed the point of no return.

  He walked on, through a second pair of steel doors, into the prison compound. It was a big place, with streets between the buildings, and chickens and turkeys running around loose. He followed the others through a doorway into a reception room.

  He showed his passport: The clerk pointed to a register. Perot took out his pen and signed "H. R. Perot" more or less legibly.

  The clerk handed back the passport and waved him on.

  He had been right. Nobody here had heard of Ross Perot.

  He walked on into a waiting room--and stopped dead.

  Standing there, talking to an Iranian in general's uniform, was someone who knew perfectly well who Ross Perot was.

  It was Ramsey Clark, a Texan who had been U.S. Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Perot had met him several times and knew Clark's sister Mimi very well.

  For a moment Perot froze. That explains the television cameras, he thought. He wondered whether he could keep out of Clark's sight. Any moment now, he thought, Ramsey will see me and say to the general: "Lord, there's Ross Perot of EDS," and if I look as if I'm trying to hide, it will be even worse.

  He made a snap decision.

  He walked over to Clark, stuck out his hand, and said: "Hello, Ramsey, what are you doing in jail?"

  Clark looked down--he was six foot three--and laughed. They shook hands.

  "How's Mimi?" Perot asked before Clark had a chance to perform introductions.

  The general was saying something in Farsi to an underling.

  Clark said: "Mimi's fine."

  "Well, good to see you," Perot said, and walked on.

  His mouth was dry as he went out of the waiting room and into the prison compound with Gallagher, Coburn, and the Embassy people. That had been a close shave. An Iranian in colonel's uniform joined them: he had been assigned to take care of them, Gallagher said. Perot wondered what Clark was saying to the general now ...

  Paul was sick. The cold he had caught in the first jail had recurred. He was coughing persistently and had pains in his chest. He could not get warm, in this jail or in the old one: for three whole weeks he had been cold. He had asked his EDS visitors to get him warm underwear, but for some reason they had not brought any.

  He was also miserable. He really had expected that Coburn and the rescue team would ambush the bus that brought him and Bill here from the Ministry of Justice, and when the bus had entered the impregnable Gasr Prison he had been bitterly disappointed.

  General Mohari, who ran the prison, had explained to Paul and Bill that he was in charge of all the jails in Tehran, and he had arranged for their transfer to this one for their own safety. It was small consolation: being less vulnerable to the mobs, this place was also more difficult, if not impossible, for the rescue team to attack.

  The Gasr Prison was part of a large military complex. On its west side was the old Gasr Ghazar Palace, which had been turned into a police academy by the Shah's father. The prison compound had once been the palace gardens. To the north was a military hospital; to the east an army camp where helicopters took off and landed all day.

  The compound itself was bounded by an inner wall twenty-five or thirty feet high, and an outer wall twelve feet high. Inside were fifteen or twenty separate buildings, including a bakery, a mosque, and six cell blocks, one reserved for women.

  Paul and Bill were in Building Number 8. It was a two-story block in a courtyard surrounded by a fence of tall iron bars covered with chicken wire. The environment was not bad, for a jail. There was a fountain in the middle of the courtyard, rose bushes around the sides, and ten or fifteen pine trees. The prisoners were allowed outside during the day, and could play volleyball or Ping-Pong in the courtyard. However, they could not pass through the courtyard gate, which was manned by a guard.

  The ground floor of the building was a small hospital with twenty or so patients, mostly mental cases. They screamed a lot. Paul and Bill and a handful of other prisoners were on the first floor. They had a large cell, about twenty feet by thirty, which they shared with only one other prisoner, an Iranian lawyer in his fifties who spoke English and French as well as Farsi. He had showed them pictures of his villa in France. There was a TV set in the cell.

  Meals were prepared by some of the prisoners--who were paid for this by the others--and eaten in a separate dining room. The food here was better than at the first jail. Extra privileges could be bought, and one of the other inmates, apparently a hugely wealthy man, had a private room and meals brought in from outside. The routine was relaxed: there were no set times for getting up and going to bed.

  For all that, Paul was thoroughly depressed. A measure of extra comfort meant little. What he wanted was freedom.

  He was not much cheered when they were told, on the morning of January 19, that they had visitors.

  There was a visiting room on the ground floor of Building Number 8, but today, without explanation, they were taken out of the building and along the street.

  Paul realized they were headed for a building known as the Officers' Club, set in a small tropical garden with ducks and peacocks. As they approached the place he glanced around the compound and saw his visitors coming in the opposite direction.

  He could not believe his eyes.

  "My God!" he said delightedly. "It's Ross!"

  Forgetting where he was, he turned to run over to Perot: the guard jerked him back.

  "Can you believe this?" he said to Bill. "Perot's here!"

  The guard hustled him through the garden. Paul kept looking back at Perot, wondering whether his eyes were deceiving him. He was led into a big circular room with banqueting tables around the outside and walls covered with small triangles of mirrored glass: it was like a small ball-room. A moment later Perot came in with Gallagher, Coburn, and several other people.

  Perot was grinning broadly. Paul shook his hand, then embraced him. It was an emotional moment. Paul felt the way he did when he listened to "The Star Spangled Banner": a kind of shiver went up and down his spine. He was loved, he was cared for, he had friends, he belonged. Perot had come halfway across the world into the middle of a revolution j
ust to visit him.

  Perot and Bill embraced and shook hands. Bill said: "Ross, what in the world are you doing here? Have you come to take us home?"

  "Not quite," Perot said. "Not yet."

  The guards gathered at the far end of the room to drink tea. The Embassy staff who had come in with Perot sat around another table, talking to a woman prisoner.

  Perot put his box on a table. "There's some long underwear in here for you," he said to Paul. "We couldn't buy any, so this is mine, and I want it back, you hear?"

  "Sure," Paul grinned.

  "We brought you some books as well, and groceries--peanut butter and tuna fish and juice and I don't know what." He took a stack of envelopes from his pocket. "And your mail."

  Paul glanced at his. There was a letter from Ruthie. Another envelope was addressed to "Chapanoodle." Paul smiled: that would be from his friend David Behne, whose son Tommy, unable to pronounce "Chiapparone," had dubbed Paul "Chapanoodle." He pocketed the letters to read later, and said: "How's Ruthie?"

  "She's just fine. I talked to her on the phone," Perot said. "Now, we have assigned one man to each of your wives, to make sure everything necessary is done to take care of them. Ruthie's in Dallas now, Paul, staying with Jim and Cathy Nyfeler. She's buying a house, and Tom Walter is handling all the legal details for her."

  He turned to Bill. "Emily has gone to visit her sister Vickie in North Carolina. She needed a break. She's been working with Tim Reardon in Washington, putting pressure on the State Department. She wrote to Rosalynn Carter--you know, as one wife to another--she's trying everything. Matter of fact, we're all trying everything ..."

  As Perot ran down the long list of people who had been asked to help--from Texas congressmen all the way up to Henry Kissinger--Bill realized that the main purpose of Perot's visit was to boost his and Paul's morale. It was something of an anticlimax. For a moment back there, when he had seen Perot walking across the compound with the other guys, grinning all over his face, Bill had thought: here comes the rescue party--at last they've got this damn thing solved, and Perot is coming to tell us personally. He was disappointed. But he cheered up as Perot talked. With his letters from home and his box of good-ies, Perot was like Santa Claus; and his presence here, and the big grin on his face, symbolized a tremendous defiance of Dadgar, the mobs, and everything that threatened them.

  Bill was worried, now, about Emily's morale. He knew instinctively what was going on in his wife's mind. The fact that she had gone to North Carolina told him she had given up hope. It had become too much for her to keep up a facade of normality with the children at her parents' house. He knew, somehow, that she had started smoking again. That would puzzle little Chris. Emily had given up smoking when she went into the hospital to have her gallbladder removed, and she had told Chris then that she had had her smoker taken out. Now he would wonder how it had got back in.

  "If all this fails," Perot was saying, "we have another team in town who will get you out of here by other methods. You'll recognize all the members of the team except one, the leader, an older man."

  Paul said: "I have a problem with that, Ross. Why should a bunch of guys get cut up for the sake of two?"

  Bill wondered just what was being planned. Would a helicopter fly over the compound and pick them up? Would the U.S. Army storm the walls? It was hard to imagine--but with Perot, anything could happen.

  Coburn said to Paul: "I want you to observe and memorize all the details you can about the compound and the prison routine, just like before."

  Bill was feeling embarrassed about his mustache. He had grown it to make him look more Iranian. EDS executives were not allowed to have mustaches or beards, but he had not expected to see Perot. It was silly, he knew, but he felt uncomfortable about it. "I apologize for this," he said, touching his upper lip. "I'm trying to be inconspicuous. I'll shave it off as soon as I get out of here."

  "Keep it," Perot said with a smile. "Let Emily and the children see it. Anyway, we're going to change the dress code. We've had the results of the employee attitude survey, and we'll probably permit mustaches, and colored shirts, too."

  Bill looked at Coburn: "And beards?"

  "No beards. Coburn has a very special excuse."

  The guards came to break up the party: visiting time was over.

  Perot said: "We don't know whether we'll get you out quickly or slowly. Tell yourselves it will be slowly. If you get up each morning thinking 'Today could be the day,' you may have a lot of disappointments and become demoralized. Prepare yourselves for a long stay, and you may be pleasantly surprised. But always remember this: we will get you out."

  They all shook hands. Paul said: "I really don't know how to thank you for coming, Ross."

  Perot smiled. "Just don't leave without my underwear."

  They all walked out of the building. The EDS men headed across the compound toward the prison gate, leaving Paul and Bill and their guards watching. As his friends disappeared, Bill was seized by a longing just to go with them.

  Not today, he told himself, not today.

  Perot wondered whether he would be allowed to leave.

  Ramsey Clark had had a full hour to let the cat out of the bag. What had he said to the general? Would there be a reception committee waiting in the administration block at the prison entrance?

  His heart beat faster as he entered the waiting room. There was no sign of the general or of Clark. He walked through and into the reception area. Nobody looked at him.

  With Coburn and Gallagher close behind, he walked through the first set of doors.

  Nobody stopped him.

  He was going to get away with it.

  He crossed the little courtyard and waited by the big gates.

  The small door set into one of the gates was opened.

  Perot walked out of the prison.

  The TV cameras were still there.

  All I need, he thought, having gotten this far, is to have the U.S. networks show my picture ...

  He pushed his way through the crowd to the Embassy minibus and climbed aboard.

  Coburn and Gallagher got on with him, but the Embassy people had lagged behind.

  Perot sat on the bus, looking out the window. The crowd in the square seemed malevolent. They were shouting in Farsi. Perot had no idea what they were saying.

  He wished the Embassy people would hurry up.

  "Where are those guys?" he said tetchily.

  "They're coming," Coburn said.

  "I thought we'd all just come on out, get in the bus, and leave."

  A minute later the prison door opened again and the Embassy people came out. They got on the bus. The driver started the engine and pulled away across Gasr Square.

  Perot relaxed.

  He need not have worried quite so much. Ramsey Clark, who was there at the invitation of Iranian human-rights groups, did not have such a good memory. He had known that Perot's face was vaguely familiar, but thought he was Colonel Frank Borman, the president of Eastern Airlines.

  2___

  Emily Gaylord sat down with her needlepoint. She was making a nude for Bill.

  Jay Coburn: holding in his hands the safety of 131 employees in a city where mob violence ruled the streets

  Paul and Bill: their bail was S13 million.

  Ross Perot: until this moment, life had been good to him.

  Perot's parents: he had his father's love of jokes, his mother's iron will.

  Bull Simons. ABOVE with Lucille. BELOW, the San Francisco party.

  ABOVE. the Seventh Floor Squad.

  FROM LEFT: gentle Mery Stauffer. aggressive "Tom Luce, slow-talking Tom Walter, and argumentative T. J. Marquez.

  BELOW. Tehran negotiators. FROM LEFT jovial Bill Gayden. persistent John Howell, and quick-tempered keane Taylor.

  Sculley: world's worst liar

  Schwebach : explosives

  Boulware: independent

  The Dirty Dozen they were not.

  Davis: karate

&nb
sp; Jackson: rocket man

  Poche: iron man

  ABOVE, the code.

  BELOW, Ross Perot and his son.

  Fire and smoke seen from the roof of the EDS Bucharest office.

  Iran exploded into revolution on Friday, February 9, 1979.

  ON THE RUN

  Keane Taylor in cold-weather gear.

  Lunch break. FROM LEFT Rashid, Simons, Gayden, and Bill.

  The mountains of northwest Iran.

  Davis and Gayden.

  A beautiful sight: the bus at the border.

  ABOARD THE "PERSIAN WHOREHOUSE"

  Simons and Boulware.

  Pilot John Carlen.

  Davis, Perot, and Gayden.

  Taylor and Coburn.

  SLEEPING EAGLES

  Simons and Coburn

  Perot.

  Paul.

  Sculley.

  TOGETHER AGAIN

  Bill and Emily.

  Paul and Ruthie.

  John Howell with Angela and baby Michael.

  Bob, Molly, and Christine Young.

  Perot and Simons tell the story.