On Wings of Eagles

ON WINGS OF EAGLES

by

Ken Follett

    A SIGNET BOOK

SIGNET

Published by the Penguin Group

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A hardcover edition of this book was published by William Morrow and

Company, Inc.

First Signet Printing, September, 1984

23 22 21

Copyright C 1983 by Petancor BV All rights reserved. For information

address Penguin Books USA Inc.

The excerpt from Night Over Water. by Ken Follett, appeared previously in

a William Morrow hardcover edition. Copyright 0 1991 by Ken Follett.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use the following

photographs:

p. 1: top, Skeeter Hagler; bottom, UP[; p. 3: top and bottom, Skeeter

Hagler; p. 4: top and bottom, UPI; p. 5: top, UPI; bottom, Skeeter Hagler;

pp. 6-7, Skeeter Hagler; p. 8: top, Carl Covington; bottom, UPI; p. 9: UPI;

pp. 10-13, photographs taken by unidentified members of rescue team; pp.

14-15, Dale Walker; p. 16: top, Dale Walker; bottom, unidentified member of

rescue team.

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

DALLAS

Ross Perot, Chairman of the Board, Electronic Data Systems Corporation,

Dallas, Texas

Merv Stauffer, Perot's right-hand man

T. J. Marquez, a vice-president of EDS

Tom Walter, chief financial officer of EDS

Mitch Hart, a former president of EDS who had good connections in the

Democratic party

Tom Luce, founder of the Dallas law firm Hughes & Hill

Bill Gayden, president of EDS World, a subsidiary of EDS

Mort Meyerson, a vice-president of EDS

TEHRAN

Paul Chiapparone, Country Manager, EDS Corporation Iran; Ruthie Chiapparone,

his wife

Bill Gaylord, Paul's deputy; Endly Gaylord, Bill's wife

Lloyd Briggs, Paul's Number 3

Rich Gallagher, Paul's administrative assistant; Cathy Gallagher, Rich's

wife; Buffy, Cathy's poodle

Paul Bucha, formerly Country Manager of EDS Corporation Iran, latterly based

in Paris

Bob Young, Country Manager for EDS in Kuwait

John Howell, lawyer with Hughes & Hill

Keane Taylor, manager of the Bank Orman project

THE TEAM

Lt. Col. Arthur D. "Bull" Simons, in command

Jay Coburn, second-in-command

Ron Davis, point

Ralph Boulware, shotgun

Joe Pochk, driver

Glenn Jackson, driver

Pat Sculley, flank

Jim Schwebach, flank and explosives

THE IRANIANS

Abolhasan, Lloyd Briggs's deputy and the most senior Iranian

    employee

Majid, assistant to Jay Coburn; Fara, Majid's daughter

Rashid

Seyyed trainee systems engineers

"the Cycle Man" I

Gholam, personnel/purchasing officer under Jay Coburn

Hosain Dadpr, examining magistrate

AT THE U.S. EMBASSY

William Sullivan, Ambassador

Charles Naas, Minister Counselor, Sullivan's deputy

Lou Goelz, Consul General

Bob Sorenson, Embassy official

Ali Jordan, Iranian employed by the Embassy

Barry Rosen, press attach6

ISTANBUL

"Mr. Fish," resourceful travel agent

Ilsman, employee of MIT, the Turkish intelligence agency

"Charlie Brown," interpreter

WASHINGTON

Zbignkw Brzezinski, National Security Advisor Cyrus Vance, Secretary of

State David Newsom, Undersecretary at the State Department Henry Precht,

head of the h-an Desk at the State Department Mark Ginsberg, White

House-State Department liaison Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff

    PREFACE

This is a true story about a group of people who, accused of crimes they did

not commit, decided to make their own justice.

    When the adventure was over there was a court case, and they were cleared

    of all charges. The case is not part of my story, but because it

    established their innocence I have included details of the court's Findings

    and Judgment as an appendix to this book.

    In telling the story I have taken two small liberties with the truth.

    Several people are referred to by pseudonyms or nicknames, usually to

    protect them from the revenge of the government of Iran. The false names

    are: Majid, Fara, Abolhasan, Mr. Fish, Deep Throat, Rashid, the Cycle Man,

    Mehdi, Malek, Gholam, Seyyed, and Charlie Brown. All other names are real.

    Secondly, in recalling conversations that took place three or four years

    ago, people rarely remember the exact words used; furthermore, real-Iffe

    conversation, with its gestures and interruptions and unfinished sentences,

    often makes no sense when it is written down. So the dialogue in this book

    is both reconstructed and edited. However, every reconstructed conversation

    has been shown to at least one of the participants for correction or

    approval.

    With those two qualifications, I believe every word of what follows is

    true. This is not a "fictionalization" or a "nonfiction novel. " I have not

    invented anything. What you are about to read is what really happened.

I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.

    -EXODUS 19:4

    ONE

It all started on December 5, 1978.

    Jay Coburn, Director of Personnel for EDS Corporation Iran, sat in his

    office in uptown Tehran with a lot on his mind.

    The office was in a three-story concrete building known as Bucharest

    (because it was in an alley off Bucharest Street). Coburn was on the second

    floor, in a room large by American standards. It had a parquet floor, a

    smart wood executive desk, and a picture of the Shah on the wall. He sat

    with his back to the window. Through the glass door he could see into the

    open-plan office where his staff sat at typewriters and telephones. The

    glass door had curtains, but Coburn never closed them.

    It was cold. It was always cold: thousands of Iranians were on strike, the

    city's power supply was intermittent, and the heating was off for several

    hours most days.

    Coburn was a tall, broad-shouldered man, five feet eleven inches and two

    hundred pounds. His red-brown hair was cut businessman-short and carefully

    combed, with a part. Although he was only thirty-two, he looked nearer to

    forty. On closer examination his youth showed in his attractive, open face

    and ready smile; but he had an air of early maturity, the look of a man who

    grew up too fast.

    All his life he had shouldered responsibility: as a boy, working in his

    father's flower shop; at the age of twenty, as a helicopter pilot in

    Vietnam; as a young husband and father; and now, as Personnel Director,

    holding in his hands the safety of 131 American employees and their 220

    dependents in a city where mob violence ruled the streets.

    Today, like every day, he was making phone calls around Tehran trying to

    find out where the fighting was, where it would

    13

14 Ken Folleu

break out next, and what the prospects were for the next few days.

    He called the U.S. Embassy at least once a day. The Embassy had an

    information room that was manned twenty-four hours a day. Americans would

    call in from different areas of the city to report demonstrations and

    riots, and the Embassy would spread the news that this district or that was

    to be avoided. But for advance information and advice Coburn found the

    Embassy close to useless. At weekly briefings, which he attended

    faidifully, he would always be told that Americans should stay indoors as

    much as possible and keep away from crowds at all costs, but that the Shah

    was in control and evacuation was not recommended at this time. Coburn

    understood their probleni--if the U.S. Embassy said the Shah was tottering,

    the Shah would surely fall--but they were so cautious they hardly gave out

    any information at all. Disenchanted with the Embassy, the American

    business community in Tehran had set up its own information network. The

    biggest U.S. corporation in town was Bell Helicopter, whose Iran operation

    was run by a retired major general, Robert N. Mackinnon. Mackinnon had a

    first-class intelligence service and he shared everything. Coburn also knew

    a couple of intelligence officers in the U.S. military and he called them.

    Today the city was relatively quiet: There were no major demonstrations.

    The last outbreak of serious trouble had been three days earlier, on

    December 2, the first day of the general strike, when seven hundred people

    had been reported killed in street fighting. According to Coburn's sources

    the lull could be expected to continue until December 10, the Muslim holy

    day of Ashura.

    Coburn was worried about Ashura. The Muslim winter holiday was not a bit

    like Christmas. A day of fasting and mourning for the death of the

    Prophet's grandson Husayn, its keynote was remorse. There would be massive

    street processions, during which the more devout believers would flog

    themselves. In that aftnosphere hysteria and violence could erupt fast.

    This year, Coburn feared, the violence might be directed against Americans.

    A series of nasty incidents had convinced him that anti-American feeling

    was growing rapidly. A card had been pushed through his door saying: "If

    you value your life and possessions, get out of Iran." Friends of his had

    received similar postcards. Spray-can artists had painted "Americans live

    here" on the wall of his

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 15

house. The bus that took his children to the Tehran American School had been

rocked by a crowd of demonstrators. Other EDS employees had been yelled at

in the streets and had their cars damaged. One scary afternoon Iranians at

the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare-EDS's biggest customer--had gone

on the rampage, smashing windows and burning pictures of the Shah, while EDS

executives in the building barricaded themselves inside an office until the

mob went away.

    In some ways the most sinister development was the change in the attitude

    of Coburn's landlord.

    Like most Americans in Tehran, Coburn rented half of a two-family home: he

    and his wife and children lived upstairs, and the landlord's family lived

    on the ground floor. When the Coburns had arrived, in March of that year,

    the landlord had taken them under his wing. The two families had become

    friendly. Coburn and the landlord discussed religion: the landlord gave him

    an English translation of the Koran, and the landlord's daughter would read

    to her father out of Coburn's Bible. They all went on weekend trips to the

    countryside together. Scott, Coburn's sevenyear-old son, played soccer in

    the street with the landlord's boys. One weekend the Coburns had the rare

    privilege of attending a Muslim wedding. It had been fascinating. Men and

    women had been segregated all day, so Coburn and Scott went with the men,

    Coburn's wife Liz and their three daughters went with the women, and Coburn

    never got to see the bride at all.

    After the summer, things had gradually changed. The weekend trips stopped.

    The landlord's sons were forbidden to play with Scott in the street.

    Eventually all contact between the two families ceased even within the

    confines of the house and its courtyard, and the children would be