On Wings of Eagles (4 page)

    sleeping baby on her own forearm, draped her raincoat over it, and carried

    it onto the plane.

    However, it was many hours before anyone got on a plane. Both flights were

    delayed. There was no food to be bought at the airport and the evacuees

    were famished, so just before curfew some of Coburn's team drove around the

    city buying anything edible they could find. They purchased the entire

    contents of several kuche stalls--streetcomer stands that sold candy,

    fruit, and cigarettes-and they went into a Kentucky Fried Chicken and did

    a deal for its stock of bread rolls. Back at the airport, passing food out

    to EDS people in the departure lounge, they were almost mobbed by the other

    hungry passengers waiting for the same flights. On the way back downtown

    two of the team were caught and arrested for being out after curfew-but the

    soldier who stopped them got distracted by another car, which tried to

    escape, and the EDS men drove off while he was shooting the other way.

    The Istanbul flight left just after midnight. The Frankfurt flight took off

    the next day, thirty-one hours late.

    Coburn and most of the team spent the night at Bucharest. They had no one

    to go home to.

While Coburn was running the evacuation, Paul had been trying to find out

who wanted to confiscate his passport and why.

    His administrative assistant, Rich Gallagher, was a young American who was

    good at dealing with the Iranian bureaucracy. Gallagher was one of those

    who had volunteered to stay in

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 27

Tehran. His wife, Cathy, had also stayed behind. She had a good job with the

U.S. military in Tehran. The Gallaghers did not want to leave. Furthermore,

they had no children to worry about-just a poodle called Buffy.

    The day Fara was asked to take the passports-December 5 --Gallagher visited

    the U.S. Embassy with one of the people whose passports had been demanded:

    Paul Bucha, who no longer worked in Iran but happened to be in town on a

    visit.

    They met with Consul General Lou Goelz. Goelz, an experienced consul in his

    fifties, was a portly, balding man with a fringe of white hair: he would

    have made a good Santa Claus. With Goelz was an Iranian member of the

    consular staff, Ali Jordan.

    Goelz advised Bucha to catch his plane. Fara had told the police-4n all

    innocence-4hat Bucha was not in Iran, and they had appeared to believe her.

    There was every chance that Bucha could sneak out.

    Goelz also offered to hold the passports and residence permits of Paul and

    Bill for safekeeping. That way, if the police made a formal demand for the

    documents, EDS would be able to refer them to the Embassy.

    Meanwhile, Ali Jordan would contact the police and try to find out what the

    hell was going on.

    Later that day the passports and papers were delivered to the Embassy.

    The next morning Bucha caught Ins plane and got out. Gallagher called the

    Embassy. Ali Jordan had talked to General Biglari of the Tehran Police

    Department. Biglari had said that Paul and Bill were being detained in the

    country and would be arrested if they tried to leave.

Gallagher asked why.

    They were being held as "material witnesses in an investigation," Jordan

    understood.

"What investigation?"

Jordan did not know.

    Paul was puzzled, as well as anxious, when Gallagher reported all this. He

    had not been involved in a road accident, had not witnessed a crime, had no

    connections with the CIA ... Who or what was being investigated? EDS? Or

    was the investigation just an excuse for keeping Paul and Bill in Iran so

    that they would continue to run the social-security system's computers?

The police had made one concession. Ali Jordan had argued

28 Ken Follett

that the police were entitled to confiscate the residence permits, which

were the property of the Iranian government, but not the passports, which

were U.S. government property. General Biglari had conceded this.

    The next day Gallagher and Ali Jordan went to the police station to hand

    the documents over to Biglari. On the way Gallagher asked Jordan whether he

    thought there was a chance Paul and Bill would be accused of wrongdoing.

"I doubt that very much," said Jordan.

    At the police station the general warned Jordan that the Embassy would be

    held responsible if Paul and Bill left the country by any mean&-such as a

    U.S. military aircraft.

    The following day-December 8, the day of the evacuationLou Goetz called

    EDS. He had found out, through a "source" at the Iranian Ministry of

    Justice, that the investigation in which Paul and Bill were supposed to be

    material witnesses was an investigation into corruption charges against the

    jailed Minister of Health, Dr. Sheikholeslamizadeh-

    It was something of a relief to Paul to know, at last, what the whole thing

    was about. He could happily tell the investigators the truth: EDS had paid

    no bribes. He doubted whether anyone had bribed the Minister. Iranian

    bureaucrats were notoriously corrupt, but Dr. Sheik-as Paul called him for

    short--seemed to come from a different mold. An orthopedic surgeon by

    training, he had a perceptive mind and an impressive ability to master

    detail. In the Ministry of Health he had surrounded himself with a group of

    progressive young technocrats who found ways to cut through red tape and

    get things done. The EDS project was only part of his ambitious plan to

    bring Iranian health and welfare services up to American standards. Paul

    did not think Dr. Sheik was lining his own pockets at the same time.

    Paul had nothing to fear-if Goetz's "source" was telling the truth. But was

    he? Dr. Sheik had been arrested three months Ago. Was it a coincidence that

    the Iranians had suddenly realized that Paul and Bill were material

    witnesses when Paul told them that EDS would leave Iran unless the Ministry

    paid its bills?

    After the evacuation the remaining EDS men moved into two houses and stayed

    there, playing poker, during December 10 and 11, the holy days of Ashura.

    There was a high-stakes house and a low-stakes house. Both Paul and Coburn

    were at the high-stakes house. For protection they invited Coburn's

    "spooks"--his two contacts in military intelligence.---who carried guns. No

    weapons

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 29

were allowed at the poker table, so the spooks had to leave their firearms

in the hall.

    Contrary to expectations, Ashura passed relatively peacefully: millions of

    Iranians attended anti-Shah demonstrations all over the country, but there

    was little violence.

    After Ashura, Paul and Bill again considered skipping the country, but they

    were in for a shock. As a preliminary they asked Lou Goelz at the Embassy

    to give them back their passports. Goelz said that if he did that he would

    be obliged to inform General Biglari. That would amount to a warning to the

    police that Paul and Bill were trying to sneak out.

    Goelz insisted that he had told EDS, when he took the passports, that this

    was his deal with the police; but he must have said it rather quietly,

    because no one could remember it.

    Paul was furious. Why had Goelz had to make any kind of deal with the

    police? He was under no obligation to tell them what he did with an

    American passport. It was not his job to help the police detain Paul and

    Bill in Iran, for God's sake! The Embassy was there to help Americans,

    wasn't it?

    Couldn't Goelz renege on his stupid agreement, and return the passports

    quietly, perhaps informing the police a couple of days later, when Paul and

    Bill were safely home? Absolutely not, said Goelz. If he quarreled with the

    police they would make trouble for everyone else, and Goelz had to worry

    about the other twelve thousand Americans still in Iran. Besides, the names

    of Paul and Bill were now on the "stop list" held by the airport police:

    even with all their documents in order they would never get through

    passport control.

    When the news that Paul and Bill were well and truly stuck in Iran reached

    Dallas, EDS and its lawyers went into high gear. Their Washington contacts

    were not as good as they would have been under a Republican administration,

    but they still had some friends. They talked to Bob Strauss, a high-powered

    White House troubleshooter who happened to be a Texan; Admiral Tom Moorer,

    a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who knew many of the

    generals now running Iran's military government; and Richard Helms, past

    Director of the CIA and a former U.S. Ambassador to Iran. As a result of

    the pressure they put on the State Department, the U.S. Ambassador in

    Tehran, William Sullivan, raised the case of Paul and Bill in a meeting

    with the Iranian Prime Minister, General Azhari.

None of this brought any results.

30 Ken Follett

    The thirty days that Paul had given the Iranians to pay their bill ran out,

    and on December 16 he wrote to Dr. Emrani formally terminating the

    contract. But he had not given up. He asked a handful of evacuated

    executives to come back to Tehran, as a sign of EDS's willingness to try to

    resolve its problems with the Ministry. Some of the returning executives,

    encouraged by the peaceful Ashura, even brought their families back.

    Neither the Embassy nor EDS's lawyers in Tehran had been able to find out

    who had ordered Paul and Bill detained. It was Majid, Fara's father, who

    eventually got the information out of General Biglari. The investigator was

    Examining Magistrate Hosain Dadgar, a midlevel functionary within the

    office of the public prosecutor, in a department that dealt with crimes by

    civil servants and had very broad powers. Dadgar was conducting the inquiry

    into Dr. Sheik, the jailed former Minister of Health.

    Since the Embassy could not persuade the Iranians to let Paul and Bill

    leave the country, and would not give back their passports quietly, could

    they at least arrange for this Dadgar to question Paul and Bill as soon as

    possible so that they could go home for Christmas? Christmas did not mean

    much to the Iranians, said Goelz, but New Year did, so he would try to fix

    a meeting before then.

    During the second half of December the rioting started again (and the first

    thing the returning executives did was plan for a second evacuation). The

    general strike continued, and petroleum exports-the government's most

    important source of income-ground to a halt, reducing to zero EDS's chances

    of getting paid. So few Iranians turned up for work at the Ministry that

    there was nothing for the EDS men to do, and Paul sent half of them home to

    the States for Christmas.

    Paul packed his bags, closed up his house, and moved into the Hilton, ready

    to go home at the first opportunity.

    The city was thick with rumors. Jay Coburn fished up most of them in his

    net and brought the interesting ones to Paul. One more disquieting than

    most came from Bunny Fleischaker, an American girl with friends at the

    Ministry of Justice. Bunny had worked for EDS in the States, and she kept

    in touch here in Tehran although she was no longer with the company. She

    called Coburn to say that the Ministry of Justice planned to arrest Paul

    and Bill.

    Paul discussed this with Coburn. It contradicted what they were hearing

    from the U.S. Embassy. The Embassy's advice

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 31

was surely better than Bunny Fleischaker's, they agreed. They decided to

take no action.

    Paul spent Christmas Day quietly, with a few colleagues, at the home of Pat

    Sculley, a young EDS manager who had volunteered to return to Tehran.

    Sculley's wife, Mary, had also come back, and she cooked Christmas dinner.

    Paul missed Ruthie and the children.

    Two days after Christmas the Embassy called. They had succeeded in setting

    up a meeting for Paul and Bill with Examining Magistrate Hosain Dadgar. The

    meeting was to take place the following morning, December 28, at the

    Ministry of Health building on Eisenhower Avenue.

Bill Gaylord came into Paul's office a little after nine, carrying a cup of

coffee, dressed in the EDS uniform: business suit, white shirt, quiet tie,

black brogue shoes.

    Like Paul, Bill was thirty-nine, of middle height, and stocky; but there

    the resemblance ended. Paul had dark coloring, heavy eyebrows, deepset

    eyes, and a big nose: in casual clothes he was often mistaken for an

    Iranian until he opened his mouth and spoke English with a New York accent.