On Wings of Eagles (40 page)

    "Some of these men have been languishing in prison for five years," Senator

    Kennedy replied: "And they're still there!"

    Simons went to the White House to receive the Distinguished Service Cross

    for "extraordinary heroism" from President Nixon. The rest of the Raiders

    were to be decorated by Defense Secretary Laird. Simons was enraged to

    learn that over half of his men were to get nothing more than the Army

    Commendation Ribbon, only slightly better than a Good Conduct Ribbon, and

    known to soldiers as a "Green Weenie." Mad as hell, he picked up the phone

    and asked for the Army Chief of Staff, General Westmoreland. He got the

    Acting Chief, General Palmer. Simons told Palmer about the Green Weenies

    and said: "General, I don't want to embarrass the army, but one of my men

    is just likely to shove an Army Commendation Ribbon up Mr. Laird's ass." He

    got his way: Land awarded four Distinguished Service Crosses, fifty Silver

    Stars, and no Green Weenies.

    The POWs got a huge monde boost from the Son Tay Raid (which they heard

    about from incoming prisoners). An important

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 245

side effect of the raid was that the POW camps-where many prisoners had been

kept permanently in solitary confinement-were closed, and all the Americans

were brought into two large prisons where there was not enough room to keep

them apart. Nevertheless, the world branded the raid a failure, and Simons

felt a grave injustice had been done to his men.

    The disappointment rankled with him for years-_itntil, one weekend, Ross

    Perot threw a mammoth party in San Francisco, persuaded the army to round

    up the Son Tay Raiders from all over the world, and introduced them to the

    prisoners they had tried to rescue. That weekend, Simons felt, his Raiders

    had at last got the thanks they deserved. And Ross Perot had been

    responsible.

    "That's why 1, in here," Simons told Coburn. "Sure as hell, I wouldn't do

    this for anyone else."

    Coburn, thinking of his son Scott, knew exactly what Simons meant.

    4-

On January 22 hundreds of hornafars-young air force officersmutinied at

bases in Dezful, Hamadan, Isfahan, and Mashad, and declared themselves loyal

to the Ayatollah Khomeini.

    The significance of the event was not apparent to National Security Advisor

    Zbigniew Brzezinski, who still expected the Iranian military to crush the

    Islamic revolution; nor to Premier Shahpour Bakhtiar, who was talking about

    meeting the revolutionary challenge with a minimum of force; nor to the

    Shah, who instead of going to the United States was hanging on in Egypt,

    waiting to be summoned back to save his country in its hour of need.

    Among the people who did see its significance were Ambassador William

    Sullivan and General Abbas Gharabaghi, the Iranian Chief of Staff.

    Sullivan told Washington that the idea of a pro-Shah countercoup was

    moonshine, the revolution was going to succeed and the U.S. had better

    start thinking about how it would live with the new order. He received a

    harsh reply from the White House suggesting that he was disloyal to the

    President. He decided to

246 Ken FoUeft

resign, but his wife talked him out of it: he had a responsibility to the

thousands of Americans still in Iran, she pointed out, and he could hardly

walk out on them now.

    General Gharabaghi also contemplated resigning. He was in an impossible

    position. He had sworn his oath of loyalty, not to the parliament or the

    government of Iran, but to the Shah personally; and the Shah was gone. For

    the time being Gharabaghi took the view that the military owed loyalty to

    the Constitution of 1906, but that meant little in practice. Theoretically

    the military ought to support the Bakhtiar government. Gharabaghi had been

    wondering for some weeks whether he could rely on his soldiers to follow

    orders and fight for Bakhtiar against the revolutionary forces. Ile revolt

    of the hornafars showed that he could not. He reWized-as Brzezinski did

    not-that an army was not a machine to be switched on and off at will, but

    a collection of people, sharing the aspirations, the anger, and the

    revivalist religion of the rest of the country. The soldiers wanted a

    revolution as much as the civilians. Gharabaghi concluded that he could no

    longer control his troops, and he decided to resign.

    On the day that he announced his intention to his fellow generals,

    Ambassador William Sullivan was summoned to Prime Minister Bakhtiar's

    office at six o'clock in the evening. Sullivan had heard, from U.S. General

    "Dutch" Huyser, of Gharabaghi's intended resignation, and he assumed that

    this was what Bakhtiar wanted to talk about.

    Bakhtiar waved Sullivan to a seat, Saying with an enigmatic smile. "Nous

    serons trois." There will be three of us. Bakhtiar always spoke French with

    Sullivan.

    A few minutes later General Gharabaghi walked in. Bakhttar spoke of the

    difficulties that would be created if the general were to resign.

    Gharabaghi began to reply in Farsi, but Bakhtiar made him speak French. As

    the general talked, he toyed with what seemed to be an envelope in his

    pocket: Sullivan guessed it was his letter of resignation.

    As the two Iranians argued in French, Bakhtiar kept turning to the American

    Ambassador for support. Sullivan secretly thought Gbarabaghi was absolutely

    right to resign, but his orders from the White House were to encourage the

    military to support Bakhtiar, so he doggedly argued, against his own

    convictions, that Gharabaghi should not resign. After a discussion of half

    an hour, the general left without delivering his letter of resignation.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 247

Bakhtiar thanked Sullivan profusely for his help. Sullivan knew it would do

no good.

    On January 24 Bakhtiar closed Tehran's airport to stop Khomeini from

    entering Iran. It was like opening an umbrella against a tidal wave. On

    January 26 soldiers killed fifteen pro-Khomeini protestors in street

    fighting in Tehran. Two days later Bakhtiar offered to go to Paris for

    talks with the Ayatollah. For a ruling Prime Minister to offer to visit an

    exiled rebel was a fantastic admission of weakness, and Khomeini saw it

    that way: he refused to talk unless Bakhtiar first resigned. On January 29,

    thirty-five people died in the fighting in Tehran and another fifty in the

    rest of the country. Gharabaghi, bypassing his Prime Minister, began talks

    with the rebels in Tehran, and gave his consent to the return of the

    Ayatollah. On January 30 Sullivan ordered the evacuation of all

    nonessential Embassy personnel and all dependents. On February I Khomeini

    came home.

    Ifis Air France jumbo jet landed at 9:15 A.m. Two million hinians turned

    out to greet him. At the airport the Ayatollah made his first public

    statement. "I beg God to cut off the hands of all evil foreigners and all

    their helpers."

    Simons saw it all on TV, then he said to Coburn: "That's it. The people are

    going to do it for us. The mob will take that jail. "

    NINE

At midday on February 5 John Howell was on the point of getting Paul and

Bill out of jail.

    Dadgar had said that he would accept bail in one of three forms: cash, a

    bank guarantee, or a lien on property. Cash was out of the question. First,

    anyone who flew into the lawless city of Tehran with $12,750,000 in a

    suitcase might never reach Dadgar's office alive. Second, Dadgar might take

    the money and still keep Paul and Bill, either by raising the bail or by

    rean-estmg them on some new pretext. (Tom Walter suggested using

    counterfeit money, but nobody knew where to get it.) There had to be a

    document that gave Dadgar the money and at the same time gave Paul and Bill

    their freedom. In Dallas Tom Walter had at last found a bank willing to

    issue a letter of credit for the bail, but Howell and Taylor were having

    trouble finding an Iranian bank to accept it and issue the guarantee Dadgar

    required. Meanwhile, Howell's boss Tom Luce thought about the third option,

    a lien on property, and came up with a wild and whacky idea that just might

    work: pledging the U.S. Embassy in Tehran as bail for Paul and Bill.

    The State Department was by now loosening up, but was not =rely tog pledge

    its Tehran embassy as bail. However, it to ive the guarantee of the United

    States government. Mat in itself was unique: the U.S.A. standing bad for

    two jailed menl

    First, Torn Walter in Dallas got a bank to issue a letter of credit in

    favor of the State Department for $12,750,000. Because this transaction

    took place entirely within the U.S., it was accomplished in hours rather

    than days. Once the State Department in Washington had the letter, Minister

    Counselor Charles Naas--

    248

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 249

Ambassador Sullivan's deputy-would deliver a diplomatic note saying that

Paul and Bill, once released, would make themselves available to Dadgar for

questioning; otherwise, the bail would be paid by the Embassy.

    Right now Dadgar was in a meeting with Lou Goelz, Consul General at the

    Embassy. Howell had not been invited to attend, but Abolhasan was there for

    EDS.

    Howell had had a preliminary meeting with Goelz yesterday. Together they

    had gone over the terms of the guarantee, with Goelz reading the phrases in

    his quiet, precise voice. Goelz was changing. Two months ago Howell had

    found him maddemngly correct: it was Goelz who had refused to give back

    Paul and Bill's passports without telling the Iranians. Now Goelz seemed

    ready to try the unconventional. Perhaps living in the middle of a

    revolution had made the old boy unbend a little.

    Goeiz had told Howell that the decision to release Paul and Bill would be

    made by Prime Minister Bakhtiar, but it must first be cleared with Dadgar.

    Howell was hoping Dadgar would not make trouble, for Goelz was not the type

    of man to bang the table and force Dadgar to back down.

lime was a tap at the door and Abolhasan walked in.

Howell could tell from his face that he brought bad news.

"What happened?"

"He turned us down," Abolhasan said.

"Why?"

    "He won't accept the guarantee of the United States govemment. 9 0

"Did he give a reason?"

    "There's nothing in the law that says he can accept that as bail. He has to

    have cash, a bank guarantee-"

    "or a lien on property, I know." Howell felt numb. 'Mere had been so many

    disappointments, so many dead ends, he was no longer capable of resentment

    or anger. "Did you say anything about the Prime Minister?"

"Yes. Goelz told hirn we would take this proposal to Bakhtiar.

"What did Dadgar say to that?"

    "He said it was typical of the Americans. They try to resolve things by

    bringing influence to bear at high levels, with no concern for what is

    happening at lower levels. He also said that if his superiors did not like

    the way he was handling this case, they could take him off it, and he would

    be very happy, because he was weary Of it.,,

250 Ken FoUett

    Howell frowned. What did all this mean? He had recently concluded that what

    the Iranians really wanted was the money. Now they had flatly turned it

    down. Was this genuinely because of the technical problem that the law did

    not specify a government guarantee as an acceptable form of bail--or was

    that an excuse? Perhaps it was genuine. The EDS case had always been

    politically sensitive, and now that the Ayatollah had returned, Dadgar

    might well be terrified of doing anything that could be construed as

    pro-American. Bending the rules to accept an unconventional form of bad

    might get him into trouble. What would happen if Howell succeeded in

    putting up bail in the legally required form? Would Dadgar then feel he had

    covered his rear, and release Paul and Bill? Or would he invent another

    excuse?

There was only one way to find out.

The week the Ayatollah returned to Iran, Paul and Bill asked for a priest.

    Paul's cold seemed to have turned to bronchitis. He had asked for the

    prison doctor. The doctor did not speak English, but Paul had no trouble

    explaining his problem: he coughed, and the doctor nodded.

    Paul was given some pills that he assumed were penicillin, and a bottle of

    cough medicine. The taste of the medicine was strikingly familiar, and he

    had a sudden, vivid flashback: he saw himself as a little boy, and his

    mother pouring the glutinous syrup from an old-fashioned bottle onto a