On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

by Ken Follett

Joe Poche had a good feeling. He had felt this way as captain of a rugby club in Minnesota, at the end of a long match when his side had won. The same feeling had come to him when he had returned from Vietnam. He had been part of a good team, he had survived, he had learned a lot, he had grown.

  Now all he wanted to make him perfectly happy was some clean underwear.

  Ron Davis was sitting next to Jay Coburn. "Hey, Jay, what'll we do for a living now?"

  Coburn smiled. "I don't know."

  It would be strange, Davis thought, to sit behind a desk again. He was not sure he liked the idea.

  He suddenly remembered that Marva was now three months pregnant. It would be starting to show. He wondered how she would look, with a bulging tummy.

  I know what I need, he thought. I need a Coke. In the can. From a machine. In a gas station. And Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  Pat Sculley was thinking: no more orange cabs.

  Sculley was sitting next to Jim Schwebach: they were together again, the short but deadly duo, having fired not a single shot at anyone during the whole adventure. They had been talking about what EDS could learn from the rescue. The company had projects in other Middle Eastern countries and was pushing into the Far East: should there perhaps be a permanent rescue team, a group of troubleshooters trained and fit and armed and willing to do covert operations in faraway countries? No, they decided: this had been a unique situation. Sculley realized he did not want to spend any more time in primitive countries. In Tehran he had hated the morning trial of squeezing into an orange cab with two or three grumpy people, Persian music blaring from the car radio, and the inevitable quarrel with the driver over the fare. Wherever I work next, he thought, whatever I do, I'm going to ride to the office by myself, in my own car, a big fat American automobile with air-conditioning and soft music. And when I go to the bathroom, instead of squatting over a hole in the damn floor, there will be a clean white American toilet.

  As the plane touched down Perot said to him: "Pat, you'll be last out. I want you to make sure everyone gets through the formalities and deal with any problems."

  "Sure."

  The plane taxied to a halt. The door was opened, and a woman came aboard. "Where is the man?" she said.

  "Here," said Perot, pointing to Rashid.

  Rashid was first off the plane.

  Perot thought: Merv Stauffer has all that taken care of.

  The others disembarked and went through customs.

  On the other side, the first person Coburn saw was stocky, bespectacled Merv Stauffer, grinning from ear to ear. Coburn put his arms around Stauffer and hugged him. Stauffer reached into his pocket and pulled out Coburn's wedding ring.

  Coburn was touched. He had left the ring with Stauffer for safekeeping. Since then, Stauffer had been the linchpin of the whole operation, sitting in Dallas with a phone to his ear making everything happen. Coburn had talked to him almost every day, relaying Simons's orders and demands, receiving information and advice: he knew better than anyone how important Stauffer had been, how they had all just relied on him to do whatever had to be done. Yet with all that happening, Stauffer had remembered the wedding band.

  Coburn slipped it on. He had done a lot of hard thinking about his marriage, during the empty hours in Tehran; but now all that went out of his mind, and he looked forward to seeing Liz.

  Merv told him to walk out of the airport and get on a bus that was waiting outside. Coburn followed directions. On the bus he saw Margot Perot. He smiled and shook hands. Then, suddenly, the air was filled with screams of joy, and four wildly excited children threw themselves at him: Kim, Kristi, Scott, and Kelly. Coburn laughed out loud and tried to hug them all at the same time.

  Liz was standing behind the kids. Gently Coburn disentangled himself. His eyes filled with tears. He put his arms around his wife, and he could not speak.

  When Keane Taylor got on the bus, his wife did not recognize him. Her normally elegant husband was wearing a filthy orange ski jacket and a knitted cap. He had not shaved for a week and he had lost fifteen pounds. He stood in front of her for several seconds, until Liz Coburn said: "Mary, aren't you going to say hello to Keane?" Then his children, Mike and Dawn, grabbed him.

  Today was Taylor's birthday. He was forty-one. It was the happiest birthday of his life.

  John Howell saw his wife, Angela, sitting at the front of the bus, behind the driver, with Michael, eleven months, on her lap. The baby was wearing blue jeans and a striped rugby shirt. Howell picked him up and said: "Hi, Michael, do you remember your daddy?"

  He sat next to Angie and put his arms around her. It was kind of awkward, on the bus seat, and Howell was normally too shy for public displays of affection, but he kept right on hugging her because it felt so good.

  Ralph Boulware was met by Mary and the girls, Stacy and Kecia. He picked Kecia up and said: "Happy birthday!" Everything was as it should be, he thought as he embraced them. He had done what he was supposed to do, and the family was here, where they were supposed to be. He felt as though he had proved something, if only to himself. All those years in the air force, tinkering with instrumentation or sitting in a plane watching bombs drop, he had never felt his courage was being tested. His relations had medals for ground fighting, but he had always had the uncomfortable feeling that he had an easy role, like the guy in the war movies who slops out the food at breakfast time before the real soldiers go off to fight. He had always wondered whether he had the right stuff. Now he thought about Turkey, getting stuck in Adana, and driving through the blizzard in that damn '64 Chevy, and changing the wheel in Blood Alley with the sons of Mr. Fish's cousin; and he thought about Perot's toast, to the men who said what they were going to do, then went out and did it; and he knew the answer. Oh, yes. He had the right stuff.

  Paul's daughters, Karen and Ann Marie, were wearing matching plaid skirts. Ann Marie, the littlest, got to him first, and he swept her up in his arms and squeezed her tight. Karen was too big to be picked up, but he hugged her just as hard. Behind them was Ruthie, his biggest little girl, all dressed in shades of honey and cream. He kissed her long and hard, then looked at her, smiling. He could not have stopped smiling if he had wanted to. He felt very mellow inside. It was the best feeling he had ever known.

  Emily was looking at Bill as if she did not believe he was really there. "Gosh," she said lamely, "it's good to see you again, sweetie."

  The bus went rather quiet as he kissed her. Rachel Schwebach began to cry.

  Bill kissed the girls, Vicki, Jackie, and Jenny; then he looked at his son. Chris was very grown up in a blue suit he had been given for Christmas. Bill had seen that suit before. He remembered a photograph of Chris, standing in front of the Christmas tree in his new suit: that photograph had been above Bill's bunk, in a prison cell, long ago and far away ...

  Emily kept touching him to make sure he was really there. "You look marvelous," she said.

  Bill knew he looked absolutely terrible. He said: "I love you."

  Ross Perot got on the bus and said: "Is everybody here?"

  "Not my dad!" said a plaintive small voice. It was Sean Sculley.

  "Don't worry," said Perot. "He'll be right out. He's our straight man."

  Pat Sculley had been stopped by a customs agent and asked to open his suitcase. He was carrying all the money, and of course the agent had seen it. Several more agents were summoned, and Sculley was taken into an office to be interrogated.

  The agents got out some forms. Sculley began to explain, but they did not want to listen; they only wanted to fill out the forms.

  "Is the money yours?"

  "No, it belongs to EDS."

  "Did you have it when you left the States?"

  "Most of it."

  "When and how did you leave the States?"

  "A week ago on a private 707."

  "Where did you go?"

  "To Istanbul, then to the Iranian border."

  Another man came into the office and said: "Are you Mr. Sculley?"


  "Yes."

  "I'm terribly sorry you've been troubled like this. Mr. Perot is waiting for you outside." He turned to the agents. "You can tear up those forms."

  Sculley smiled and left. He was not in the Middle East anymore. This was Dallas, where Perot was Perot.

  Sculley got on the bus, and saw Mary, Sean, and Jennifer. He hugged and kissed them all, then said: "What's happening?"

  "There's a little reception for you," said Mary.

  The bus started to move, but it did not go far. It stopped again a few yards away at a different gate, and they were all ushered back into the airport and led to a door marked "Concorde Room."

  As they walked in, a thousand people rose to their feet, cheering and clapping.

  Someone had put up a huge banner reading:JOHN HOWELL

  NO. 1

  DADDY

  Jay Coburn was overwhelmed by the size of the crowd and their reaction. What a good idea the buses had been, to give the men a chance to greet their families in private before coming in here. Who had arranged that? Stauffer, of course.

  As he walked through the room toward the front, people in the crowd reached over to shake his hand, saying: Good to see you! Welcome back! He smiled and shook hands--there was David Behne, there was Dick Morrison, the faces blurred and the words melted into one big warm hello.

  When Paul and Bill walked in with their wives and children, the cheering rose to a roar.

  Ross Perot, standing at the front, felt tears come to his eyes. He was more tired than he had ever been in his life, but immensely satisfied. He thought of all the luck and all the coincidences that had made the rescue possible: the fact that he knew Simons, that Simons had been willing to go, that EDS had hired Vietnam veterans, that they had been willing to go, that the seventh floor knew how to get things achieved around the world because of their experience with the POW campaign, that T. J. had been able to rent a plane, that the mob had stormed the Gasr Prison...

  And he thought of all the things that might have gone wrong. He recalled the proverb: success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan. In a few minutes he would stand up and tell these people a little of what had happened and how Paul and Bill were brought home. But it would be hard to put into words the risks that had been taken, the awful cost if the thing had gone badly and ended in the criminal courts or worse. He remembered the day he left Tehran, and how he had superstitiously thought of luck as sand running through an hourglass. Suddenly he saw the hourglass again, and all the sand had run out. He grinned to himself, picked up the imaginary glass, and turned it upside down.

  Simons bent down and spoke in Perot's ear. "Remember you offered to pay me?"

  Perot would never forget it. When Simons gave you that icy look, you froze. "I sure do."

  "See this?" said Simons, inclining his head.

  Paul was walking toward them, carrying Ann Marie in his arms, through the crowd of cheering friends. "I see it," said Perot.

  Simons said: "I just got paid." He drew on his cigar.

  At last the room quieted down, and Perot began to speak. He called Rashid over and put his arm around the young man's shoulders. "I want you to meet a key member of the rescue team," he said to the crowd. "As Colonel Simons said, Rashid only weighs a hundred and forty pounds, but he has five hundred pounds of courage."

  They all laughed and clapped again. Rashid looked around. Many times, many times he had thought about going to America; but in his wildest dreams he had never imagined that his welcome would be like this!

  Perot began to tell the story. Listening, Paul felt oddly humble. He was not a hero. The others were the heroes. He was privileged. He belonged with just about the finest bunch of people in the whole world.

  Bill looked around the crowd and saw Ron Sperberg, a good friend and a colleague for years. Sperberg was wearing a great big cowboy hat. We're back in Texas, Bill thought. This is the heartland of the U.S.A., the safest place in the world; they can't reach us here. This time, the nightmare is really over. We're back. We're safe.

  We're home.

  EPILOGUE

  Jay and Liz Coburn were divorced. Kristi, the second daughter, the emotional one, chose to live with her father. Coburn was made Manager of Human Resources for EDS Federal. In September 1982 he and Ross Perot, Jr., became the first men to fly around the world in a helicopter. The aircraft they used is now in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. It is called Spirit of Texas.

  Paul became Comptroller of EDS and Bill became Medicaid Marketing Director in the Health Care Division.

  Joe Poche, Pat Sculley, Jim Schwebach, Ron Davis, and Rashid all continued to work for EDS in various parts of the world. Davis's wife, Marva, gave birth to a boy, Benjamin, on July 18, 1979.

  Keane Taylor was made Country Manager for EDS in the Netherlands, where he was joined by Glenn Jackson. Gayden continued to be head of EDS World, and therefore Taylor's boss.

  John Howell was made a full partner in Tom Luce's law firm, Hughes and Hill. Angela Howell had another baby, Sarah, on June 19, 1980.

  Rich Gallagher left EDS on July 1, 1979. An easterner, he had never quite felt one of the boys at EDS. Lloyd Briggs and Paul Bucha, two more easterners, left around the same time.

  Ralph Boulware also parted company with EDS.

  Lulu May Perot, Ross Perot's mother, died on April 3, 1979.

  Ross Perot, Jr., graduated from college and went to work for his father in the fall of 1981. A year later Nancy Perot did the same. Perot himself just went on making more and more money. His real estate appreciated, his oil company found wells, and EDS won more and bigger contracts. EDS shares, priced around eighteen dollars apiece when Paul and Bill were arrested, were worth six times that four years later.

  Colonel Simons died on May 21, 1979, after a series of heart attacks. In the last few weeks of his life, his constant companion was Anita Melton, the zany stewardess from the Boeing 707. They had an odd, tragic relationship: they never became lovers in the physical sense, but they were in love. They lived together in the guest cottage at Perot's Dallas house. She taught him to cook, and he started her jogging, timing her with a stopwatch. They held hands a lot. After Simons died, his son Harry and Harry's wife, Shawn, had a baby boy. They named him Arthur Simons, Jr.

  On November 4, 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was once again overrun by militant Iranians. This time they took hostages. Fifty-two Americans were held prisoner for more than a year. A rescue mission mounted by President Carter came to an ignominious end in the deserts of central Iran.

  But then, Carter did not have the help of Bull Simons.

  APPENDIX

  IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS, DALLAS DIVISION

  ELECTRONIC DATA SYSTEMS CORP. IRAN

  VS.

  SOCIAL SECURITY ORGANIZATION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF IRAN, THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH AND WELFARE OF THE GOVERNMENT OF IRAN, THE GOVT. OF IRAN

  NO. CA3-79-218-F

  (Extracts from the Findings of Fact)

  Neither EDSCI nor anyone on its behalf procured the contract unlawfully. No evidence showed bribery of any official or employee of Defendants in order to secure the contract, nor did the evidence suggest the existence of fraud or public corruption in procurement of the contract ...

  The price of the contract was not exorbitant; rather, the evidence showed that the price was reasonable and in accordance with amounts charged by EDS to others for similar services. The price did not compare unfavorably with amounts charged by others in the health care industry for similar services ...

  The failure by SSO and the Ministry to provide written notice of nonacceptance of unpaid invoices was inexcusable and therefore constituted a breach of the contract. The assignment of Dr. Towliati to SSO as Deputy Managing Director did not effect such an excuse. I do not find evidence that Dr. Towliati's services influenced the process of approval for invoices, nor do I find evidence that Dr. Towliati functioned improperly in his review of
performance under the contract. Rather, the evidence showed that the Ministry and SSO had full and continuous opportunity to monitor EDSCI's performance. Moreover, I do not find credible evidence of trickery or that EDSCI conspired with anyone to gain wrongful approval for payment of its invoices or to deny the Defendants fair opportunity for their evaluation of EDSCI's performance under the contract ...

  EDSCI did not materially breach its performance obligations under the contract; rather, EDSCI substantially performed in accordance with the description and timing of its duties for each applicable phase up until January 16, 1978, the date of termination of the contract ...

  Recovery under the contract is not barred by Defendants' claims, unsupported by the evidence, that EDSCI procured the contract by fraud, bribery or public corruption. Specifically, the evidence did not demonstrate that EDS' relationship with the Mahvi Group was illegal. EDSCI's execution of and performance under the contract violated no Iranian law...

  Plaintiff introduced a plethora of evidence showing the fact and result of its services: testimony from those who managed and implemented the data processing systems, photographic evidence illustrating aspects of the data preparations functions developed, as well as reports jointly prepared by EDSCI and the Ministry of benefits being realized from the contract. Credible evidence failed to directly rebut this showing ...

  (Extract from the Final Judgment)

  IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that Plaintiff Electronic Data Systems Corporation Iran have and recover of Defendants The Government of Iran, The Social Security Organization of The Government of Iran, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare of The Government of Iran, jointly and severally, the sum of fifteen million, one hundred and seventy-seven thousand, four hundred and four dollars ($15,177,404), plus two million, eight hundred twelve thousand, two hundred fifty-one dollars ($2,812,251) as prejudgment interest, plus one million, seventy-nine thousand, eight hundred seventy-five dollars ($1,079,875) as attorneys' fees, plus interest on all such sums at the rate of nine percent (9%) per annum from the date hereof, plus all costs of suit herein...