On Wings of Eagles (33 page)

    Everyone had gone to great lengths to hide Perot in Tehran, for fear that

    Dadgar-seeing a far more valuable hostage than Paul or Bill-would arrest

    him and throw him in jail. Yet here he was, heading for the jail of his own

    ftee will, with his own passport in his pocket for identification.

    His hopes were pinned on the notorious inability of government everywhere

    to let its right hand know what its left was doing. The Ministry of Justice

    might want to arrest him, but it was the military who ran the jails, and

    the military had no interest in him.

    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

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    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 201

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 Amefican crew.

What the hell were they doing there?

    He kept his head down as he pushed his way duough 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 hem had heard of Ross Perot.

He walked on into a waiting room--aiid 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, them's Ross

    Perot of EDS,- and if I look as if I'm trying to hide, it will be even

    worse.

202 Ken Follett

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 hmm 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 twentyfive or thirty feet

    high, and an outer wall twelve feet high. Inside

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 203

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 tron 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

    pme aves. 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 wag 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 fiffies 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 ran over to Perot: the guard jerked

    him back.

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

204 Ken Folktt

    The guard hustled hun 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 ballroom. 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 just to visit him.

    Perot and Bill embraced and shook hands. Bin 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

    Jun 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

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 205

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 goodies, 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 faqade 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 gall bladder 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