On Wings of Eagles (23 page)

    as enthusiastic about the Huyser Mission as he was about the Eliot

    Mission. Dutch Huyser, the deputy commander (under Haig) of U.S. forces

    in Europe, had arrived yesterday to persuade Iranian generals to

    support the new Bakhtiar government in Tehran. Sullivan knew Huyser.

    He was a fine soldier, but no diplomat. He spoke no Farsi and he did

    not know Iran. But even if he had been ideally qualified, his task

    would have been hopeless. The Bakhtiar government had failed to gain

    the support even of the moderates, and Shahpour Bakhtiar himself bad

    been expelled from the centrist National Front party inewly for

    accepting the Shah's invitation to form a government. Meanwhile, the

    army, which Huyser was trying futilely to swing to Bakhtiar, continued

    to weaken as thousands of soldiers deserted and joined the

    revolutionary mobs in the streets. The best Huyser could hope for was

    to hold the army together a little longer, while Eliot in Pans arranged

    for the peaceful return of the Ayatollah.

    If it worked it would be a great achievement for Sullivan, something

    any diplomat could be proud of for the rest of his life: his plan would

    have strengthened his country and saved lives.

    As he went to sleep, there was just one worry nagging at the back of

    his mind. The Eliot Mission, for which he had such high hopes, was a

    State Department scheme, identified in Washington with Secretary of

    State Vance. The Huyser Mission was the idea

Ir

140 Ken FoIku

of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor. The emmity between

Vance and Brzezinski was notorious. And at this moment Brzezinski, after the

summit meeting in Guadeloupe, was deep-sea fishing in the Caribbean with

President Carter. As they sailed over the clear blue sea, what was

Brzezinski whisper~ ing in the President's ear?

The phone woke Sullivan in the early hours of the morning.

    It was the duty officer, calling from the communications vault in the

    Embassy Budding just a few yards away. An urgent cable had arrived from

    Washington. The Ambassador might want to read it immediately.

    Sullivan got out of bed and walked across the lawns to the Embassy, full of

    foreboding.

The cable said that the Eliot Mission was canceled.

    The decision had been taken by the President. Sullivan's comments on the

    change of plan were not invited. He was instructed to tell the Shah that

    the United States government no longer intended to hold talks with the

    Ayatollah Khomeini.

Sullivan was heartbroken.

    This was the end of America's influence in Iran. It also meant that

    Sullivan personally had lost his chance of distinguishing himself as

    Ambassador by preventing a bloody civil war.

    He sent an angry message back to Vance, saying the President had in&& a

    gross mistake and should reconsider.

He went back to bed, but he could not sleep.

    In the morning another cable informed bun that the President's decision

    would Stand.

    Wearily, Sullivan made his way up the hill to the palace to tell the Shah.

    The Shah appeared drawn and tense that morning. He and Sullivan sat down

    and drank the inevitable cup of tea. Then Sullivan told him that President

    Carter had canceled the Eliot Mission.

    The Shah was upset. "But why have they canceled it?" he said agitatedly.

'I don't know," Sullivan replied.

    'But how do they expect to influence those people if they won't even talk

    to them?"

"I don't know."

    $'Then what does Washington intend to do now?" asked the Shah , throwing up

    his hands in despair.

I 'I don't know," said Sullivan.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 141

    4

"Ross, this is idiotic," Tom Luce said loudly. "You're going to destroy the

company and you're going to destroy yourse4f "

    Perot looked at his lawyer. They were sitting in Perot's office. The door

    was closed.

    Luce was not the first to say this. During the week, as the news had spread

    through the seventh floor, several of Perot's top executives had come in to

    tell him that a rescue team was a fbolhardy and dangerous notion, and he

    should drop the idea. "Stop worrying," Perot had told them. "Just

    concentrate on what you have to do."

    Tom Luce was characteristically vociferous. Wearing an aggressive scowl and

    a courtroom manner, he argued his case as if a jury were listening.

    "I can only advise you on the legal situation, but I'm here to tell you

    that this rescue can cause more problems, and worse problems, than you've

    got now. Hell, Ross, I can't make a list of the laws you're going to

    break!"

"Try,19 said Perot.

    "You'll have a mercenary army-which is illegal here, in Iran, and in every

    country the team would pass through- Anywhere they go they'd be liable to

    criminal penalties and you could have ten men in jail instead of two.

    "But it's worse than that. Your men would be in a position much worse than

    soldiers in battle-4nternational laws and the Geneva Convention, winch

    protect soldiers in utifform, would not protect the rescue Main.

    I Iff they get captured in Iran ... Ross, they'll be shot. If they get

    captured in any country that has an extradition treaty with Iran, they'll

    be sew back and shot. Instead of two innocent employees in jail, you could

    have eight guilty employees dead.

    "And if that happens, the families of the dead men may turn on

    you--understandably, because this whole dung will look stupid. The widows

    will have huge claims against EDS in the American courts. They could

    bankrupt the company. Think of the ten thousand people who would be out of

    a job if that

142 Ken Follett

happened. Think of yourself-Ross, there might even be criminal charges

against you that could put you in jail!"

Perot said calmly: "I appreciate your advice, Tom."

Luce stared at him. "I'm not getting through to you, am IT'

    Perot smiled. "Sure you are. But if you go through life worrying about all

    the bad things that can happen, you soon convince yourself that it's best

    to do nothing at all."

The truth was that Perot knew something Luce did not.

Ross Perot was lucky.

All his life he had been lucky.

    As a twelve-year-old boy he had had a paper route in the poor black

    district of Texarkana. The Texarkana Gazette cost twentyfive cents a week

    in those days, and on Sundays, when he collected the money, he would end up

    with forty or fifty dollars in quarters in his pocket. And every Sunday,

    somewhere along the route, some poor man who had spent his week's wages in

    a bar the previous night would try to take the money from little Ross. This

    was why no other boy would deliver papers in that district. But Ross was

    never scared. He was on a horse; the attempts were never very determined;

    and he was lucky. He never lost his money.

    He had been lucky again in getting admitted to the Naval Academy at

    Annapolis. Applicants had to be sponsored by a senator or a congressman,

    and of course the Perot family did not have the right contacts. Anyway,

    young Ross had never even seen the sea-4he farthest he had ever traveled

    was to Dallas, 180 miles away. But there was a young man in Texarkana

    called Josh Morriss, Jr., who had been to Annapolis and told Ross all about

    it, and Ross had fallen in love with the navy without ever seeing a ship.

    So he just kept writing to senators begging for sponsorship. He

    succeeded-as he would many times during later life-because he was too dumb

    to lmow it was impossible.

    It was not until many years later that he found out how it had happened.

    One day back in 1949 Senator W. Lee O'Daniel was clearing out his desk: it

    was the end of his term and he was not going to run again. An aide said:

    "Senator, we have an unfilled appointment to the Naval Academy."

"Does anyone want it?" the senator said.

    "Well, we've got this boy from Texarkana who's been trying for years ...

"Give it to him," said the senator.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 143

    The way Perot heard the story, his name was never actually mentioned during

    the conversation.

    He had been lucky once again in setting up EDS when he did. As a computer

    salesman for IBM, he realized that his customers did not always make the

    best use of the machines he sold them. Data processing was a new and

    specialized skill. The banks were good at banking, the insurance companies

    were good at insurance, the manufacturers were good at manufacturing---and

    the computer men were good at data processing. The customer did not want

    the machine, he wanted the fast, cheap information it could provide. Yet,

    too often, the customer spent go much time creating his new data-processing

    department and learning how to use the machine that his computer caused him

    trouble and expense instead of saving them. Perot's idea was to sell a

    total package-4 complete data-processing department with machinery,

    software, and staff. The customer had only to say, in simple language, what

    information he needed, and EDS would give it to him. Then he could get on

    with what he was good at---banking, insurance, or manufacturing.

    IBM turned down Perot's idea. It was a good concept but the pickings would

    be small. Out of every dollar spent on data processing, eighty cents went

    into hardware-the machineryand only twenty cents into software, which was

    what Perot wanted to sell. IBM did not want to chase pennies under the

    table.

    So Perot drew a thousand dollars out of his savings and started up on his

    own. Over the next decade the proportions changed until software was taking

    seventy cents of every data-processing dollar, and Perot became one of the

    richest self-made men in the world.

    The chairman of IBM, Tom Watson, met Perot in a restaurant one day and

    said: "I just want to know one thing, Ross. Did you foresee that the ratio

    would change?"

    "No," said Perot. "The twenty cents looked good enough to me. Is

    Yes, he was lucky; but he had to give his luck room to operate. It was no

    good sitting in a comer being careful. You never got the chance to be lucky

    unless you took risks. All his life Perot had taken risks.

This one just happened to be the biggest.

Merv Stauffer walked into the office. "Ready to go?" he said.

.'Yes. f9

144 Ken Follett

    Perot got up and the two men left the office. They went down in the

    elevator and got into Stauffer's car, a brand-new four-door Lincoln

    Versailles. Perot read the nameplate on the dashboard: "Merv and Helen

    Stauffer. " The interior of the car stank of Simons's cigars.

"He's waiting for you," Stauffer said.

-C

    3ood.

    Perot's oil company, Petrus, had offices in the next building along Forest

    Lane. Merv had already taken Simons there, then come for Perot. Afterward

    he would take Perot back to EDS, then return for Simons. The object of the

    exercise was secrecy: as few people as possible were to see Simons and

    Perot together.

    In the last six days, while Simons and the rescue team had been doing their

    thing out at Lake Grapevine, the prospects of a legal solution to the

    problem of Paul and Bill had receded. Kissinger, having failed with

    Ardeshir Zahedi, was unable to do anything else to help. Lawyer Tom Luce

    had been busy calling every single one of the twenty-four Texas

    congressmen, both Texas senators, and anyone else in Washington who would

    take his calls; but what they all did was to call the State Department to

    find out what was going on, and all the calls ended up on the desk of Henry

    Precht.

    EDS's chief financial officer, Tom Walter, still had not found a bank

    willing to post a letter of credit for $12,750,000. The difficulty, Walter

    had explained to Perot, was this: under American law, an individual or a

    corporation could renege on a letter of credit if there was proof that the

    letter had been signed under illegal pressure; for example, blackmail or

    kidnapping. The banks saw the imprisonment of Paul and Bill as a

    straightforward piece of extortion, and they knew EDS would be able to

    argue, in an American court, that the letter was invalid and the money

    should not be paid. In theory that would not matter, for by then Paul and

    Bill would be home, and-the American bank would simplyand quite

    legally-.refuse to honor the letter of credit when it was presented for

    payment by the Iranian government. However, most American banks had large

    loans outstanding with Iran, and their fear was that the Iranians would