On Wings of Eagles (7 page)

They handed them over. Paul kept back a hundred dollars.

To you know where the jail is?" Paul asked Abolhasan.

    'You're going to a Temporary Detention Facility at the Ministry of Justice

    on Khayyam Street."

    -Get back to Bucharest fast and give Lloyd Briggs all the details. "

"Sure.

    One of the plain-clothes policemen held the door open. Bill looked at Paul.

    Paul shrugged.

They went out.

    The policemen escorted them downstairs and into a little car. "I guess

    we'll have to stay in jail for a couple of hours," Paul said. "It'll take

    that long for the Embassy and EDS to get people down there to bail us out."

'They might be there already," Bill said optimistically.

    The bigger of the two policemen got behind the wheel. His colleague sat

    beside him in the front. They pulled out of the courtyard and onto

    Eisenhower Avenue, driving fast. Suddenly they turned into a narrow one-way

    street, heading the wrong way at top speed. Hill clutched the seat in front

    of him. They swerved in and out, dodging the cars and buses coming the

    other way, other drivers honking and shaking their fists.

    They headed south and slightly east. Bill thought ahead to their arrival at

    the jail. Would people from EDS or the Embassy be there to negotiate a

    reduction in the bail so that they could go home instead of to a cell?

    Surely the Embassy staff would be outraged at what Dadgar had done.

    Ambassador Sullivan would intervene to get them released at once. After

    all, it was iniquitous to put two Americans in an Iranian jail when no

    crime had '6een committed and then set bail at thirteen million dollars.

    The whole situation was ridiculous.

    Except that here he was, sitting in the back of this car, silently looking

    out of the windows and wondering what would happen next.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 43

    As they went farther south, what he saw through the window frightened him

    even more.

    In the north of the city, where the Americans lived and worked, riots and

    fighting were still an occasional phenomenon, but here-Bill now

    realized--4hey must be continuous. The black hulks of burned buses

    smoldered in the streets. Hundreds of demonstrators were running riot,

    yelling and chanting, setting fires and building barricades. Young

    teenagers threw Molotov cocktails--bottles of gasoline with blazing rag

    fuses-at cars. Their targets seemed random. We might be next, Bill thought.

    He heard shooting, but it was dark and he could not see who was firing at

    whom. The driver never went at less than top speed. Every other street was

    blocked by a mob, a barricade, or a blazing car: the driver turned around,

    blind to all traffic signals, and raced through side streets and back

    alleys at breakneck speed to circumvent the obstacles. We're not going to

    get there alive, Bill thought. He touched the rosary in his pocket.

    It seemed to go on forever-then, suddenly, the little car swung into a

    circular courtyard and pulled up. Without speaking, the burly driver got

    out of the car and went into the building.

    The Ministry of Justice was a big place, occupying a whole city block. In

    darkness-the streedights were all off-Bill could make out what seemed to be

    a five-story building. The driver was inside for ten or fifteen minutes.

    When he came out he climbed behind the wheel and drove around the block.

    Bill assumed he had registered his prisoners at the front desk.

    At the rear of the building the car mounted the curb and stopped on the

    sidewalk by a pair of steel gates set into a long, high brick wall.

    Somewhere over to the right, where the wall ended, there was the vague

    outline of a small park or garden. The driver got out. A peephole opened in

    one of the steel doors, and there was a short conversation in Farsi. Then

    the doors opened. The driver motioned Paul and Bill to get out of the car.

They walked through the doors.

    Bill looked around. They were in a small courtyard. He saw ten or fifteen

    guards armed with automatic weapons scattered around the courtyard. In

    front of him was a circular driveway with parked cars and trucks. To his

    left, up against the brick wall, was a single-story building. On his right

    was another steel door.

    The driver went up to the second steel door and knocked. There was another

    exchange in Farsi through another peephole. Then the door was opened, and

    Paul and Bill were ushered inside.

44 Ken Folleu

    They were in a small reception area with a desk and a few chairs. Bill

    looked around. There were no lawyers, no Embassy staff, no EDS executives

    here to spring him from jail. We're on our own, he thought, and this is

    going to be dangerous.

    A guard stood behind the desk with a ball-point pen and a pile of forms. He

    asked a question in Farsi. Guessing, Paul said: "Paul Chiapparone," and

    spelled it.

    Filling out the forms took close to an hour. An Englishspeaking prisoner

    was brought from the jail to help translate. Paul and Bill gave their

    Tehran addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, and listed their

    possessions. Their money was taken away and they were each given two

    thousand rials, about thirty dollars.

    They were taken into an adjoining room and told to remove their clothes.

    They both stripped to their undershorts. Their clothing and their bodies

    were searched. Paul was told to get dressed again, but not Bill. It was

    very cold: the heat was off here, too. Naked and shivering, Bill wondered

    what would happen now. Obviously they were the only Americans in the jail.

    Everything he had ever read or heard about being in prison was awful. What

    would the guards do to him and Paul? What would the other prisoners do?

    Surely any minute now someone would come to get him released.

"Can I put on my coat?" he asked the guard.

ne guard did not understand.

"Coat," Bill said, and mimed putting on a coat.

The guard handed him his coat.

    A little later another guard came in and told Bill to get dressed.

    They were led back into the reception area. Once again, Bill looked around

    expectantly for lawyers or friends; once again, he was disappointed.

    They were taken through the reception area. Another door was opened. They

    went down a flight of stairs into the basement.

    It was cold, dim, and dirty. There were several cells, all crammed with

    prisoners, all of them Iranian. The stink of urine made Bill close his

    mouth and breathe shallowly through his nose. The guard opened the door to

    Cell Number 9. Paul and Bill walked in.

    Sixteen unshaven faces stared at them, alive with curiosity. Paul and Bill

    stared back, horrified.

The cell door clanged shut behind them.

TWO

    1

Until this moment life had been extremely good to Ross Perot.

    On the morning of December 28, 1978, he sat at the breakfast table in his

    mountain cabin at Vail, Colorado, and was served breakfast by Holly, the

    cook.

    Perched on the mountainside and half-hidden in the aspen forest, the "log

    cabin" had six bedroorns, five bathrooms, a thirty-foot living room, and an

    apr6s-ski "recuperation room" with a Jacuzzi pool in front of the

    fireplace. It was just a holiday home.

Ross Perot was rich.

    He had started EDS with a thousand dollars, and now the shares in the

    company-more than half of which he still owned personally-were worth

    several hundred million dollars. He was the sole owner of the Petrus Oil

    and Gas Company, which had reserves worth hundreds of millions. He also had

    an awful lot of Dallas real estate. It was difficult to figure out exactly

    how much money he had-a lot depended on just how you counted it-but it was

    certainly more than five hundred million dollars and probably less than a

    billion.

. In novels, fantastically rich people were portrayed as greedy, power-mad,

neurotic, hated, and unhappy-always unhappy. Perot did not read many novels.

He was happy.

    He did not think it was the money that made him happy. He believed in

    money-making, in business and profits, because that was what made America

    tick; and he enjoyed a few of the toys money could buy--the cabin cruiser,

    the speedboats, the helicopter; but rolling around in hundred-dollar bills

    had never been one of his daydreams. He had dreamed of building a

    successful business that would employ thousands of people; but his greatest

    45

46 Ken Follen

dream-come-true was right hem in front of his eyes. Running around in

thermal underwear, getting ready to go skiing, was his family. Here was Ross

Junior, twenty years old, and if there was a finer young man in the state of

Texas, Perot had yet to meet him. Here were four-count 'em, four--daughters:

Nancy-, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine. They were all healthy, smart, and

lovable. Perot had sometimes told interviewers that he would measure his

success in life by how his children turned out. If they grew into good

citizens with a deep concern for other people, he would consider his life

worthwhile. (The interviewers would say: "Hell, I believe you, but if I put

stuff like that in the article the readers will think I've been bought off!"

And Perot would just say: "I don't care. I'll tell you the truth-you write

whatever you like.") And the children had turned out just exactly how he had

wished, so far. Being brought up in circumstances of great wealth and

privilege had not spoiled them at all. It was almost miraculous.

    Running around after the children with ski-lift tickets, wool socks, and

    sunscreen lotion was the person responsible for this miracle, Margot Perot.

    She was beautiful, loving, intelligent, classy, and a perfect mother. She

    could, if she had wanted to, have married a John Kennedy, a Paul Newman, a

    Prince Ranier, or a Rockefeller. Instead, she had fallen in love with Ross

    Perot from Texarkana, Texas; five feet seven with a broken nose and nothing

    in his pocket but hopes. All his life Perot had believed he was lucky. Now,

    at the age of forty-eight, he could look back and see that the luckiest

    thing that ever happened to him was Margot.

    He was a happy man with a happy family, but a shadow had fallen over them

    this Christmas. Perot's mother was dying. She had bone cancer. On Christmas

    Eve she had fallen at home: it was not a heavy fall, but because the cancer

    had weakened her bones, she had broken her hip and had to be rushed to

    Baylor Hospital in downtown Dallas.

    Perot's sister, Bette, spent that night with their mother, then, on

    Christmas Day, Perot and Margot and the five children loaded the presents

    into the station wagon and drove to the hospital. Grandmother was in such

    good spirits that they all thoroughly enjoyed their day. However, she did

    not want to see them the following day: she knew they had planned to go

    skiing, and she insisted they go, despite her illness. Margot and the

    children left for Vail on December 26, but Perot stayed behind.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 47

    There followed a battle of wills such as Perot had fought with his mother

    in childhood. Lulu May Perot was only an inch or two, over five feet, and

    slight, but she was no more fi-ail than a sergeant in the marines. She told

    him he worked hard and he needed the holiday. He replied that he did not

    want to leave her. Eventually the doctors intervened, and told him he was

    doing her no good by staying against her will. The next day he joined his

    family in Vail. She had won, as she always had when he was a boy.

    One of their battles had been fought over a Boy Scout trip. There had been

    flooding in Texarkana, and the Scouts were planning to camp near the

    disaster area for three days and help with relief work. Young Perot was

    determined to go, but his mother knew that he was too young-he would only

    be a burden to the scoutmaster. Young Ross kept on and on at her, and she

    just smiled sweetly and said no.

    The time he won a concession from her: he was allowed to go and help pitch

    tents the first day, but he had to come home in the evening. It wasn't much

    of a compromise. But he was quite incapable of defying her. He just had to

    imagine the scene when he would come home, and think of the words he would

    use to tell her that he had disobeyed her---and he knew he cotdd not do it.

    He was never spanked. He could not remember even being yelled at. She did

    not rule him by fear. With her fair hair, blue eyes, and sweet nature, she

    bound him-and his sister, Beft-in chains of love. She would just look you

    in the eye and ten you what to do, and you simply could not bring yourself