On Wings of Eagles (45 page)

"Let's give it a try."

    Paul stood at the roadside and waved at the next car that came along. (He

    remembered not to stick out his thumb the American way---this was an

    obscene gesture i Iran.) The car stopped. There were two Iranian men in it.

    Paul and Bill got in the back.

    Paul decided not to mention the name of the hotel. "We're going to TaJrish,

    " he said. That was a bazaar area to the north of the city.

"We can take you part of the way," said the driver.

    "Thanks." Paul offered them cigarettes, then sat back gratefully and lit

    one for himself.

    The Iranians dropped them off at Kurosh-e-Kabir, several miles south of

    Tajrish, not far from where Paul had lived. They were in a main street,

    with plenty of traffic and a lot more people around. Paul decided not to

    make himself conspicuous by hitchhiking here.

"We could take refuge in the Catholic Mission," Bill suggested.

    Paul considered. The authorities presumably knew that Father Williams had

    visited them in Gasr Prison just two days ago. "The Mission might be the

    first place Dadgar looks for us."

    Maybe. "

"We should go to the Hyatt."

"The guys may not be there any longer."

"But there'll be phones, some way to get plane tickets .

"And hot showers."

'Right. "

They walked on.

Suddenly a voice called: "Mr. Paul! Mr. Bill!"

Paul's heart stopped. He looked around. He saw a car full of

274 Ken Folleu

people moving slowly along the road beside him. He recognized one of the

passengers: it wa's a guard from the Gasr Prison.

    The guard had changed into civilian clothes, and looked as if he had joined

    the revolution. His big smile seemed to say: don't tell who I am, and I

    won't tell who you are.

He waved, then the car gathered speed and passed on.

Paul and Bill laughed with a mixture of amusement and relief.

    They turned into a quiet street, and Paul started to hitchhike again. He

    stood in the road waving while Bill stayed on the sidewalk, so that

    motorists might think there was only one man, an Iranian.

    A young couple stopped. Paul got into the car and Bill jumped in after him.

"We're headed north," Paul said.

The woman looked at her man.

The man said: "We could take you to Niavron Palace."

-Mank YOU. 11

The car pulled away.

    The scene in the streets changed again. They could hear much more gunfire,

    and the traffic became heavier and more frantic, with all the cars honking

    continually. They saw press cameramen and television crews standing on car

    roofs taking pictures. The mob was burning the police stations near where

    Bill had lived. The Iranian couple looked nervous as the car inched through

    the crowd: having two Americans in their car could get them into trouble in

    this atmosphere.

ft began to get dark.

    Bill leaned forward. "Boy, it's getting a bit late," he said. "It sure

    would be nice if y'all could take us to the Hyatt Hotel. We'd be happy to,

    you know, thank you and give you something for taking us there."

"Okay," said the driver.

He did not ask how much.

    They passed the Niavron Palace, the Shah's winter residence. 17here were

    tanks outside, as always, but now they had white flags attached to their

    antennae: they had surrendered to the revolution.

    The car went on, past wrecked and burning buildings, turned back every now

    and again by street barricades.

At last they saw the Hyatt.

"Oh, boy," Paul said feelingly. "An American hotel."

They drove into the forecourt.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 275

    Paul was so grateful that he gave the Iranian couple two hundred dollars.

    The car drove off. Paul and Bill waved, then walked into the hotel.

    Suddenly Paul wished he were wearing his EDS uniform of business suit and

    white shirt, instead of prison dungarees and a dirty raincoat.

The magnificent lobby was deserted.

    They walked to the reception desk. After a moment someone came out from an

    office.

Paul asked for Bill Gayden's room number.

    The clerk checked, then told him there was no one of that name registered.

"How about Bob Young?"

    'No. -

"Rich Gallagher?"

"No. 1~

"Jay Coburn?"

"No. 91

    I've got the wrong hotel, Paul thought. How could I have made a mistake

    like that?

"What about John Howell?" he said, remembering the lawyer.

    "Yes," the clerk said at last, and he gave them a room number on the

    eleventh floor.

They went up in the elevator.

They found Howell's mom and knocked. There was no answer.

"What do you think we ought to do?" Bill said.

    "I'm going to check in," said Paul. "I'm fired. Why don't we check in, have

    a meal. We'll call the States, tell them we're out of jail, everything will

    be fine."

"Okay. "

They walked back to the elevator.

Bit by bit, Keane Taylor got the story out of Rashid.

    He had stood just inside the prison gates for about an hour. The scene was

    a shambles; eleven thousand people were trying to get out through a small

    doorway, and in the panic women and old men were getting trampled. Rashid

    had waited, thinking of what he would say to Paul and Bill when he saw

    them. After an hour the flood of people slowed to a trickle, and he

    concluded that most people were out. He started asking: "Have you seen any

    Americans?" Someone told him that A the foreigners had

276 Ken Folleu

been kept in Building Number 8. He went there and found it empty. He

searched every building in the compound. He then returned to the Hyatt by

the route Paul and Bill were most likely to take. Walking and hitching

rides, he had looked for them all the way. At the Hyatt he had been refused

admission because he was still carrying his rifle. He gave the gun away to

the nearest youngster and came in.

    While he was telling his story Coburn arrived, all set to go looking for

    Paul and Bill on Majid's motorcycle. He had a crash helmet with a visor

    that would hide his white face.

    Rashid offered to take an EDS car and drive the route between the hotel and

    the prison, making one more sweep there and back before Coburn risked his

    neck in the mobs. Taylor gave him the keys to a car. Gayden got on the

    phone to tell Dallas the latest news. Rashid and Taylor left the suite and

    walked down the corridor.

    Suddenly Rashid yelled: "I thought you were dead!" and broke into a run.

Then Taylor saw Paul and Bill.

    Rashid was hugging them both, screaming: "I couldn't find you! I couldn't

    find you!"

    Taylor ran up and embraced Paul and Bill. "Thank Godl- he said.

    Rashid ran back into Gayden's suite, yelling: "Paul and Bill are here! Paul

    and Bill are here!"

    An instant later Paul and Bill walked in, and all hell broke loose.

    TEN

It was an unforgettable moment.

    Everyone was yelling, no one was listening, and they all wanted to hug Paul

    and Bill at the same time.

    Gayden was bellowing into the phone: "We got the guys! We got the guys!

    Fantastic! They just walked in the door! Fantastic! -

Somebody yelled: "We beat them! We beat those sonsabitches! -

"We did it!"

"In your ear, Dadgar!"

Buffy barked like a mad thing.

    Paul looked around at his friends, and realized that they had stayed here

    in the middle of a revolution to help him, and he found he had difficulty

    speaking.

    Gayden dropped the phone and came over to shake hands. Paul, with tears in

    his eyes, said: "Gayden, I just saved you twelve and a half million

    dollars-I think you ought to buy me a drink. I I

Gayden fixed him a stiff scotch.

Paul tasted his first alcoholic drink for six weeks.

    Gayden said into the phone: "I have somebody would like to speak to you."

    He handed the phone to Paul.

Paul said: "Hello."

He heard the syrupy voice of Tom Walter. "Hi, there, buddy!"

    "God almighty, - said Paul, out of general exhaustion and relief.

"We were wondering where you guys were!"

"So was 1, for the last three hours."

"How'd you get to the hotel, Paul?"

    Paul did not have the energy to tell Walter the whole story. "Fortunately

    Keane left me a lot of money one day."

    277

278 Ken Follett

"Fantastic. Golly, Paul! Is Bill okay?"

"Yeah, he's a little shook up but he's all right."

    "We're all a little shook up. Oh, boy. Boy, it's good to hear you. 11

    Another voice came on the line. "Paul? This is Mitch." Mitch Hart was a

    former president of EDS. "I figured that Italian street fighter would get

    out of there."

"How's Ruthie?" said Paul.

    Tom Walter answered. They must be using the telephone conference circuit,

    Paul guessed. "Paul, she's great. I just talked to her a little while ago.

    Jean's calling her right now, she's on the other phone." .

"Kids doing all right?"

"Yeah, fine. Boy, she'll be glad to hear!"

    "Okay, I'll let you talk to my other half." Paul handed the phone to Bill.

    While he had been speaking, an Iranian employee, Gholam, had arrived. He

    had heard about the jailbreak and had gone looking for Paul and Bill in the

    streets around the prison.

    Jay Coburn was worried by the arrival of Gholam. For a few minutes there,

    Coburn had been too full of tearful joy to think of anything else, but now

    he reverted to his role as Simons's lieutenant. He quietly left the suite,

    found another open door, went into the room, and called the Dvoranchik

    apartment.

Simons answered the phone.

"It's Jay. They got here."

"Good.-

    "The security is all shot to hell here. They're using the names over the

    phone, everybody's wandering around, we have Iranian employees walking in

    . . .-

    -Get a couple of rooms away from the others. We'll be right there. "

"Okay." Coburn hung up.

    He went down to the reception desk and asked for a two-bedroom suite on the

    tweft floor. There was no problem: the hotel had hundreds of empty rooms.

    He gave a false name. He was not asked for his passport.

He returned to Gayden's suite.

    A few minutes later Simons walked in and said: "Hang up the goddam phone."

    Bob Young, who was holding the line open to Dallas, put down the phone.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 279

    Joe Poch6 walked in behind Simons and started closing the curtains.

    It was incredible. Suddenly Simons was in charge. Gayden, the president of

    EDS World, was the senior man there; and an hour ago he had told Tom Walter

    that "The Sunshine Boys" -Simons, Coburn, and Poch6--seemed useless and

    ineffectual; yet now he deferred to Simons without even thinking about it.

    "Take a look around, Joe," Simons said to Poch6. Coburn knew what this

    meant. The team had scouted the hotel and its grounds during their weeks of

    waiting, and Poch6 would now see whether there had been any changes.

    T'he phone rang. John Howell answered it. "It's Abolhasan," he said to the

    others. He listened for a couple of minutes, then said: "Hold on." He

    covered the mouthpiece with his hand and spoke to Simons. "This is an

    Iranian employee who translates for me at meetings with Dadgar. His father

    is a friend of Dadgar's. He's at his father's house, and just got a call

    from Dadgar. 11

The room went very quiet.

    "Dadgar said: 'Did you know the Americans are out of jail?' Abolhasan said:

    'It's news to me.' Dadgar said: 'Get hold of EDS and tell them that if they

    find Chiapparone and Gaylord they are to turn them in, that I'm now willing

    to renegotiate the bail and it ought to be much more reasonable.'

Gayden said: "Fuck him."

    "All right," Simons said. "Tell Abolhasan to give Dadgar a message. Say we

    are searching for Paul and Bill, but meanwhile we hold Dadgar personally

    responsible for their safety."

Howell smiled and nodded, and began speaking to Abolhasan.

    Simons turned to Gayden. "Call the American Embassy. Yell at them a little.

    They got Paul and Bill thrown in jail, now the jail has been stormed and we

    don't know where Paul and Bill are, but we hold the Embassy responsible for

    their safety. Make it convincing. There must be Iranian spies at the

    Embassy-you can bet your ass Dadgar will have the text of the message in

    minutes. -

Gayden went to find a phone.

    Simons, Coburn, and Pochd, with Paul and Bill, moved to the new suite

    Coburn had taken on the floor above.

    Coburn ordered two steak dinners for Paul and Bill. He told room service to

    send them to Gayden's suite: there was to be no unnecessary traffic in and