On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

by Ken Follett

  An athletic prisoner managed to get up onto the top of the wall. Another man stood at its foot and beckoned. A third prisoner went forward. The man on the ground pushed him up, the one on top pulled, and the prisoner went over the wall.

  It happened very quickly then.

  Paul took a run at the wall.

  Bill was right behind him.

  Bill's mind was a blank. He ran. He felt a push, helping him up; then a pull; then he was at the top, and he jumped.

  He landed on the pavement.

  He got to his feet.

  Paul was right beside him.

  We're free! thought Bill. We're free!

  He felt like dancing.

  Coburn put down the phone and said: "That was Majid. The mob has overrun the prison."

  "Good," said Simons. He had told Coburn, earlier that morning, to send Majid down to Gasr Square.

  Simons was very cool, Coburn thought. This was it--this was the big day! Now they could get out of the apartment, get on the move, activate their plans for "getting out of Dodge." Yet Simons showed no signs of excitement.

  "What do we do now?" said Coburn.

  "Nothing. Majid is there, Rashid is there. If those two can't take care of Paul and Bill, we sure as hell won't be able to. If Paul and Bill don't turn up by nightfall, we'll do what we discussed: you and Majid will go out on a motorcycle and search."

  "And meanwhile?"

  "We stick to the plan. We sit tight. We wait."

  There was a crisis at the U.S. Embassy.

  Ambassador William Sullivan had got an emergency call for help from General Gast, head of the Military Assistance Advisory Group. MAAG Headquarters was surrounded by a mob. Tanks were drawn up outside the building and shots were being exchanged. Gast and his officers, together with most of the Iranian general staff, were in a bunker underneath the building.

  Sullivan had every able-bodied man in the Embassy making phone calls, trying to find revolutionary leaders who might have the authority to call off the mob. The phone on Sullivan's desk was ringing constantly. In the middle of the crisis he got a call from Undersecretary Newsom in Washington.

  Newsom was calling from the Situation Room in the White House, where Zbigniew Brzezinski was chairing a meeting on Iran. He asked for Sullivan's assessment of the current position in Tehran. Sullivan gave it to him in a few short phrases, and told him that right at that moment he was preoccupied with saving the life of the senior American military officer in Iran.

  A few minutes later Sullivan got a call from an Embassy official who had succeeded in reaching Ibrahim Yazdi, a Khomeini sidekick. The official was telling Sullivan that Yazdi might help when the call was overridden and Newsom came on the line again.

  Newsom said: "The National Security Advisor has asked for your view of the possibility of a coup d'etat by the Iranian military to take over from the Bakhtiar government, which is clearly faltering."

  The question was so ridiculous that Sullivan blew his cool. "Tell Brzezinski to fuck off," he said.

  "That's not a very helpful comment," said Newsom.

  "You want it translated into Polish?" Sullivan said, and he hung up the phone.

  On the roof of Bucharest, the negotiating team could see the fires spreading uptown. The noise of shooting was also coming closer to where they stood.

  John Howell and Abolhasan returned from their meeting with Dadgar. "Well?" Gayden said to Howell. "What did that bastard say?"

  "He won't let them go."

  "Bastard."

  A few minutes later they all heard a noise that sounded distinctly like a bullet whistling by. A moment later the noise came again. They decided to get off the roof.

  They went down to the offices and watched from the windows. They began to see, in the street below, boys and young men with rifles. It seemed the mob had broken into a nearby armory. This was too close for comfort: it was time to abandon Bucharest and go to the Hyatt, which was farther uptown.

  They went out and jumped into two cars, then headed up the Shahanshahi Expressway at top speed. The streets were packed, and there was a carnival atmosphere. People were leaning out of windows yelling "Allahar Akbar!" God is great! Most of the traffic was headed downtown, toward the fighting. Taylor drove straight through three roadblocks, but nobody minded: they were all dancing.

  They reached the Hyatt and assembled in the sitting room of the eleventh-floor corner suite that Gayden had taken over from Perot. They were joined by Rich Gallagher's wife, Cathy, and her white poodle, Buffy.

  Gayden had stocked the suite with booze from the abandoned homes of EDS evacuees, and he now had the best bar in Tehran; but no one felt much like drinking.

  "What do we do next?" Gayden asked.

  Nobody had any ideas.

  Gayden got on the phone to Dallas, where it was now six A.M. He reached Tom Walter and told him about the fires, the fighting, and the kids on the streets with their automatic rifles.

  "That's all I got to report," he finished.

  In his slow Alabama drawl, Walter said: "Other than that a quiet day, huh?"

  They discussed what they would do if the phone lines went down. Gayden said he would try to get messages through via the U.S. military: Cathy Gallagher worked for the army and she thought she could swing it.

  Keane Taylor went into the bedroom and lay down. He thought about his wife, Mary. She was in Pittsburgh, staying with his parents. Taylor's mother and father were both past eighty and in failing health. Mary had called to tell him his mother had been rushed to the hospital: it was her heart. Mary wanted Taylor to come home. He had spoken to his father, who had said ambiguously: "You know what you have to do." It was true: Taylor knew he had to stay here. But it was not easy, not for him or for Mary.

  He was dozing on Gayden's bed when the phone rang. He reached out to the bedside table and picked it up. "Hello?" he said sleepily.

  A breathless Iranian voice said: "Are Paul and Bill there?"

  "What?" said Taylor. "Rashid--is that you?"

  "Are Paul and Bill there?" Rashid repeated.

  "No. What do you mean?"

  "Okay, I'm coming, I'm coming."

  Rashid hung up.

  Taylor got off the bed and went into the sitting room. "Rashid just called," he told the others. "He asked me if Paul and Bill were here."

  "What did he mean?" said Gayden. "Where was he calling from?"

  "I couldn't get anything else out of him. He was all excited, and you know how bad his English is when he gets wound up."

  "Didn't he say any more?"

  "He said: 'I'm coming,' then he hung up."

  "Shit." Gayden turned to Howell. "Give me the phone." Howell was sitting with the phone to his ear, saying nothing: they were keeping the line to Dallas open. At the other end an EDS switchboard operator was listening, waiting for someone to speak. Gayden said: "Let me talk to Tom Walter again, please."

  As Gayden told Walter about Rashid's call, Taylor wondered what it meant. Why would Rashid imagine Paul and Bill might be at the Hyatt? They were in jail--weren't they?

  A few minutes later Rashid burst into the room, dirty, smelling of gunsmoke, with clips of G3 ammunition falling out of his pockets, talking a mile a minute so that nobody could understand a word. Taylor calmed him down. Eventually he said: "We hit the prison. Paul and Bill were gone."

  Paul and Bill stood at the foot of the prison wall and looked around.

  The scene in the street reminded Paul of a New York parade. In the apartment buildings across from the jail everyone was at the windows, cheering and applauding as they watched the prisoners escape. At the street corner a vendor was selling fruit from a stall. There was gunfire not far away, but in the immediate vicinity nobody was shooting. Then, as if to remind Paul and Bill that they were not yet out of danger, a car full of revolutionaries raced by with guns sticking out of every window.

  "Let's get out of here," said Paul.

  "Where do we go? The U.S. Embassy? The French Embassy?"
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br />   "The Hyatt."

  Paul started walking, heading north. Bill walked a little behind him, with his coat collar turned up and his head bent to hide his pale American face. They came to an intersection. It was deserted: no cars, no people. They started across. A shot rang out.

  Both of them ducked and ran back the way they had come.

  It was not going to be easy.

  "How are you doing?" said Paul.

  "Still alive."

  They walked back past the prison. The scene was the same: at least the authorities had not yet got organized enough to start rounding up the escapees.

  Paul headed south and east through the streets, hoping to circle around until he could go north again. Everywhere there were boys, some only thirteen or fourteen, with automatic rifles. On every corner was a sandbagged bunker, as if the streets were divided up into tribal territories. Farther on they had to push their way through a crowd of yelling, chanting, almost hysterical people: Paul carefully avoided meeting people's eyes, for he did got want them to notice him, let alone speak to him--if they were to learn there were two Americans in their midst they might turn ugly.

  The rioting was patchy. It was like New York, where you had only to walk a few steps and turn a corner to find the character of the district completely changed. Paul and Bill went through a quiet area for half a mile, then ran into a battle. There was a barricade of overturned cars across the road and a bunch of youngsters with rifles shooting across the barricade toward what looked like a military installation. Paul turned away quickly, fearful of being hit by a stray bullet.

  Each time he tried to turn north he ran into some obstruction. They were now farther from the Hyatt than they had been when they started. They were moving south, and the fighting was always worse in the south.

  They stopped outside an unfinished building. "We could duck in there and hide until nightfall," Paul said. "After dark nobody will notice that you're American."

  "We might get shot for being out after curfew."

  "You think there's still a curfew?"

  Bill shrugged.

  "We're doing all right so far," Paul said. "Let's go on a little longer."

  They went on.

  It was two hours--two hours of crowds and street battles and stray sniper fire--before at last they could turn north. Then the scene changed. The gunfire receded, and they found themselves in a relatively affluent area of pleasant villas. They saw a child on a bicycle, wearing a T-shirt that said something about southern California.

  Paul was tired. He had been in jail for forty-five days, and during most of that time he had been sick: he was no longer strong enough to walk for hours. "What do you say we hitchhike?" he asked Bill.

  "Let's give it a try."

  Paul stood at the roadside and waved at the next car that came along. (He remembered not to stick out his thumb the American way--this was an obscene gesture in Iran.) The car stopped. There were two Iranian men in it. Paul and Bill got in the back.

  Paul decided not to mention the name of the hotel. "We're going to Tajrish," he said. That was a bazaar area to the north of the city.

  "We can take you part of the way," said the driver.

  "Thanks." Paul offered them cigarettes, then sat back gratefully and lit one for himself.

  The Iranians dropped them off at Kurosh-e-Kabir, several miles south of Tajrish, not far from where Paul had lived. They were in a main street, with plenty of traffic and a lot more people around. Paul decided not to make himself conspicuous by hitchhiking here.

  "We could take refuge in the Catholic Mission," Bill suggested.

  Paul considered. The authorities presumably knew that Father Williams had visited them in Gasr Prison just two days ago. "The Mission might be the first place Dadgar looks for us."

  "Maybe."

  "We should go to the Hyatt."

  "The guys may not be there any longer."

  "But there'll be phones, some way to get plane tickets..."

  "And hot showers."

  "Right."

  They walked on.

  Suddenly a voice called: "Mr. Paul! Mr. Bill!"

  Paul's heart stopped. He looked around. He saw a car full of people moving slowly along the road beside him. He recognized one of the passengers: it was a guard from the Gasr Prison.

  The guard had changed into civilian clothes, and looked as if he had joined the revolution. His big smile seemed to say: don't tell who I am, and I won't tell who you are.

  He waved; then the car gathered speed and passed on.

  Paul and Bill laughed with a mixture of amusement and relief.

  They turned into a quiet street, and Paul started to hitchhike again. He stood in the road waving while Bill stayed on the sidewalk, so that motorists might think there was only one man, an Iranian.

  A young couple stopped. Paul got into the car and Bill jumped in after him.

  "We're headed north," Paul said.

  The woman looked at her man.

  The man said: "We could take you to Niavron Palace."

  "Thank you."

  The car pulled away.

  The scene in the streets changed again. They could hear much more gunfire, and the traffic became heavier and more frantic, with all the cars honking continually. They saw press cameramen and television crews standing on car roofs taking pictures. The mob was burning the police stations near where Bill had lived. The Iranian couple looked nervous as the car inched through the crowd: having two Americans in their car could get them into trouble in this atmosphere.

  It began to get dark.

  Bill leaned forward. "Boy, it's getting a bit late," he said. "It sure would be nice if y'all could take us to the Hyatt Hotel. We'd be happy to, you know, thank you and give you something for taking us there."

  "Okay," said the driver.

  He did not ask how much.

  They passed the Niavron Palace, the Shah's winter residence. There were tanks outside, as always, but now they had white flags attached to their antennae: they had surrendered to the revolution.

  The car went on, past wrecked and burning buildings, turned back every now and again by street barricades.

  At last they saw the Hyatt.

  "Oh, boy," Paul said feelingly. "An American hotel."

  They drove into the forecourt.

  Paul was so grateful that he gave the Iranian couple two hundred dollars.

  The car drove off. Paul and Bill waved, then walked into the hotel.

  Suddenly Paul wished he were wearing his EDS uniform of business suit and white shirt, instead of prison dungarees and a dirty raincoat.

  The magnificent lobby was deserted.

  They walked to the reception desk. After a moment someone came out from an office.

  Paul asked for Bill Gayden's room number.

  The clerk checked, then told him there was no one of that name registered.

  "How about Bob Young?"

  "No."

  "Rich Gallagher?"

  "No."

  "Jay Coburn?"

  "No."

  I've got the wrong hotel, Paul thought. How could I have made a mistake like that?

  "What about John Howell?" he said, remembering the lawyer.

  "Yes," the clerk said at last, and he gave them a room number on the eleventh floor.

  They went up in the elevator.

  They found Howell's room and knocked. There was no answer.

  "What do you think we ought to do?" Bill said.

  "I'm going to check in," said Paul. "I'm tired. Why don't we check in, have a meal. We'll call the States, tell them we're out of jail, everything will be fine."

  "Okay."

  They walked back to the elevator.

  Bit by bit, Keane Taylor got the story out of Rashid.

  He had stood just inside the prison gates for about an hour. The scene was a shambles; eleven thousand people were trying to get out through a small doorway, and in the panic women and old men were getting trampled. Rashid had waited, thinki
ng of what he would say to Paul and Bill when he saw them. After an hour the flood of people slowed to a trickle, and he concluded that most people were out. He started asking: "Have you seen any Americans?" Someone told him that all the foreigners had been kept in Building Number 8. He went there and found it empty. He searched every building in the compound. He then returned to the Hyatt by the route Paul and Bill were most likely to take. Walking and hitching rides, he had looked for them all the way. At the Hyatt he had been refused admission because he was still carrying his rifle. He gave the gun away to the nearest youngster and came in.

  While he was telling his story Coburn arrived, all set to go looking for Paul and Bill on Majid's motorcycle. He had a crash helmet with a visor that would hide his white face.

  Rashid offered to take an EDS car and drive the route between the hotel and the prison, making one more sweep there and back before Coburn risked his neck in the mobs. Taylor gave him the keys to a car. Gayden got on the phone to tell Dallas the latest news. Rashid and Taylor left the suite and walked down the corridor.

  Suddenly Rashid yelled: "I thought you were dead!" and broke into a run.

  Then Taylor saw Paul and Bill.

  Rashid was hugging them both, screaming: "I couldn't find you! I couldn't find you!"

  Taylor ran up and embraced Paul and Bill. "Thank God!" he said.

  Rashid ran back into Gayden's suite, yelling: "Paul and Bill are here! Paul and Bill are here!"

  An instant later Paul and Bill walked in, and all hell broke loose.

  Ten

  1___

  It was an unforgettable moment.

  Everyone was yelling, no one was listening, and they all wanted to hug Paul and Bill at the same time.

  Gayden was bellowing into the phone: "We got the guys! We got the guys! Fantastic! They just walked in the door! Fantastic!"

  Somebody yelled: "We beat them! We beat those sonsabitches!"

  "We did it!"

  "In your ear, Dadgar!"

  Buffy barked like a mad thing.

  Paul looked around at his friends, and realized that they had stayed here in the middle of a revolution to help him, and he found he had difficulty speaking.