On Wings of Eagles (42 page)

modem skyscrapers rose out of the low-rise villas and slums, great palls of

smoke billowed up into the murky air, while helicopter gunships buzzed

around the fires like wasps at a barbecue. One of EDS's Iranian drivers

brought a transistor radio up to the roof and tuned it to a station that had

been taken over by the revolutionaries. With the help of the radio and the

driver's translation, they tried to identify the burning buildings.

    Keane Taylor, who had abandoned his elegant vested suits for jeans and

    cowboy boots, went downstairs to take a phone call. It was the Cycle Man.

    "You need to get out of there," the Cycle Man told Taylor. "Get out of the

    country as quickly as you can."

    "You lmow we can't do that," Taylor said. "We can't leave without Paul and

    Bill."

"It's going to be very dangerous for you."

    Taylor could hear, at the other end of the line, the noise of a terrific

    battle. "Where the hell are you, anyway?"

    "Near the bazaar," said the Cycle Man. "I'm making Molotov cocktails. They

    brought in helicopters this morning and we just figured out how to shoot

    them down. We burned four tanks-"

The line went dead.

    Incredible, Taylor thought as he cradled the phone. In the middle of a

    battle, he suddenly thinks of his American friends, and calls to warn us.

    Iranians will never cease to surprise me.

He went back up on the roof.

    "Look at this," Bill Gayden said to him. Gayden, the jovial president of

    EDS World, had also switched to off-duty clothes: nobody was even

    pretending to do business anymore. He pointed to a column of smoke in the

    east. "If that isn't the Gasr Prison burning, it's damn close."

Taylor peered into the distance. It was hard to tell.

    "Call Dadgar's office at the Ministry of Health," Gayden told Taylor.

    "Howell should be there now. Get him to ask Dadgar to release Paul and Bill

    to the custody of the Embassy, for their own safety. If we don't get them

    out, they're going to burn to death.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 257

John Howell had hardly expected Dadgar to turn up. The city was a

battlefield, and an investigation into corruption under the Shah now seemed

an academic exercise. But Dadgar was there in his office, waiting for

Howell. Howell wondered what the hell was driving the man. Dedication?

Hatred of Americans? Fear of the incoming revolutionary government? He would

probably never know.

    Dadgar had asked Howell about EDS's relationship with Abolfath Mahvi, and

    Howell had promised a complete dossier. It seemed the information was

    important to Dadgar's mysterious purposes, for a few days later he had

    pressed Howell for the dossier, saying: "I can interrogate the people here

    and get the information I need," which Howell took as a threat to arrest

    more EDS executives.

    Howell had prepared a twelve-page dossier in English, with a covering

    letter in Farsi. Dadgar read the covering letter, then spoke. Abolhasan

    translated: "Your company's helpfulness is laying the groundwork for a

    change in my attitude toward Chiapparone and Gaylord. Our legal code

    provides for such leniency toward those who supply information. "

    It was farcical. They could all be killed in the next few hours, and here

    was Dadgar still talking about applicable provisions of the legal code.

    Abolhasan began to translate the dossier aloud into Farsi. Howell knew that

    choosing Mahvi as an Iranian partner had not been the smartest move EDS

    ever made: Mahvi had got the company its first, small contract in Iran, but

    subsequently he had been blacklisted by the Shah and had caused trouble

    over the Ministry of Health contract. However, EDS had nothing to hide.

    Indeed, Howell's boss Tom Luce, in his eagerness to place EDS above

    suspicion, had filed details of the EDS-Mahvi relationship with the

    American Securities Exchange Commission, so that much of what was in the

    dossier was already public knowledge.

The phone interrupted Abolhasan's translation. Dadgar picked it up, then

handed it to Abolhasan, who listened for a moment, then said: "It's Keane

Taylor."

    A minute later he hung up and said to Howell: "Keane has been up on the

    roof at Bucharest. He says there are fires down by Gasr Prison. If the mob

    attacks the prison, Paul and Bill could get hurt. He suggested we ask

    Dadgar to turn them over to the American Embassy."

258 Ken Follen

"Okay' " Howell said. "Ask him."

He waited while Abolhasan and Dadgar conversed in Farsi.

    Finally Abolhasan said: "According to our laws, they have to be kept in an

    lranian prison. He can't consider the U.S. Embassy to be an hanian prison."

    Crazier and crazier. 7tbe whole country was falling apart, and Dadgir was

    still consulting his book of rules. Howell said- "Ask him how he proposes

    to guarantee the safety of two American citizens who have not been charged

    with any crime."

    Dadgar's reply was: "Don't be concerned. The worst that could happen is

    that the prison might be overnin."

"And what if the mob decides to attack Americans.

' 'Chiapparone Will probably be Safe-.he could pass for h7anian.

"Terrific," said Howell. "And what about Gaylord?"

Dadgar just shrugged.

Rashid left his house early that morning.

    His parents, his brother, and his sister planned to stay indoors all day,

    and they had urged him to do the same, but he would not listen. He knew it

    would be dangerous on the streets, but he could not hide at home while his

    countrymen were making history. Besides, he had not forgotten his

    conversation with Simons.

    He was living by impulse. On Friday he had found himself at Farahabad Air

    Base during the clash between the hornafars and the loyalist Javadan

    Brigade. For no particular reason, he had gone into the armory and started

    passing out rifles. After half an hour of that he got bored and left.

    That same day he had seen a dead man for the first time. He had been at the

    mosque when a bus driver who had been shot by soldiers had been brought in.

    On impulse Rashid had uncovered the face of the corpse. A whole section of

    the head was destroyed, a mixture of blood and brains: it had been

    sickening. The incident seemed like a warning, but Rashid was in no mood to

    heed warnings. The streets were where things were happening, and he had to

    be there.

    This morning the atmosphere was electric. Crowds were everywhere. Hundreds

    of men and boys were toting automatic rifles. Rashid, wearing a flat

    English cap and an open-neck shirt, mingled with them, feeling the

    excitement. Anything could happen today.

He was vaguely heading for Bucharest. He still had duties: he

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 259

was negotiating with two shipping companies to transport the belongings of

the EDS evacuees back to the States, and he had to feed the abandoned dogs

and cats. The scenes on the streets changed his mind. Rumor said that the

Evin Prison had been stormed last night; today it might be the turn of the

Gasr Prison, where Paul and Bill were.

Rashid wished he had an automatic rifle like the others.

    He passed an army building that appeared to have been invaded by the mob.

    It was a six-story block containing an armory and a draft registration

    office. Rashid had a friend who worked there, Malek. It occurred to him

    that Malek might be in trouble. If he had come to work this nionfing, he

    would be wearing his army umform-and that alone might be enough to get him

    killed today. I could lend Malek my shirt, Rashid thought; and impulsively

    he went into the building.

    He pushed his way through the crowd on the ground floor and found the

    staircase. The rest of the building seemed empty. As he climbed, he

    wondered whether soldiers were hiding out on the upper floors: if so, they

    might shoot anyone who came along. He went on regardless. He climbed to the

    top floor. Malek was not there. Nobody was there. The army had abandoned

    the place to the mob.

    Rashid returned to the ground floor. The crowd had gathered around the

    entrance to the basement armory, but no one was going in. Rashid pushed his

    way to the front and said: "Is this door locked?"

"It might be booby-trapped," someone said.

    Rashid looked at the door. All thoughts of going to Bucharest had now left

    him. He wanted to go to the Gasr Prison, and he wanted to carry a gun.

    "I don't think this armory is booby-trapped," he said, and he opened the

    door.

He went down the staircase.

    The basement consisted of two rooms divided by an archway. The place was

    dimly lit by narrow strip windows high in the walls, just above street

    level. The floor was of black mosaic tiles. In the first room were open

    boxes of loaded magazines. In the second were G3 machine guns.

    After a minute some of the crowd upstairs followed him down.

    He grabbed three machine guns and a sack of magazines and left. As soon as

    he got outside the building, people jumped all

260 Ken Folka

over him, asking for weapons: he gave away two of the guns and some of the

ammunition.

Then he walked away, heading for Gasr Square.

Some of the mob went with him.

    On the way they had to pass a military garrison. A skirmish was going on

    there. A steel door in the high brick wall around the garrison had been

    smashed down, as if a tank had rolled through it, and the brickwork on

    either side of the entrance had crumbled. A burning car stood across the

    way in.

Rashid went around the car and through the entrance.

    He found himself in a large compound. From where he stood, a bunch of

    people were shooting haphazardly at a building a couple of hundred yards

    away. Rashid took cover behind a wall. The people who had followed him

    joined in the shooting, but he held his fire. Nobody was really aiming.

    They were just tying to scare the soldiers in the building. It was a funny

    kind of battle. Rashid had never imagined the revolution would be like

    this: just a disorganized crowd with guns they hardly knew how to use,

    wandering around on a Sunday morning, firing at walls, encountering

    halfhearted resistance from invisible troops.

Suddenly a man near him fell dead.

    It happened so quickly: Rashid did not even see him fall. At one moment the

    man was standing four feet away fi-orn Rashid, firing his rifle; the next

    moment he lay on the ground with his forehead blown away.

    They carried the corpse out of the compound. Someone found a jeep. They put

    the body in the jeep and drove off. Rashid reiuried to the skirmish.

    Ten minutes later, for no apparent reason, a piece of wood with a white

    undershirt tied to its end was waved out of one of the windows in the

    building they had been shooting at. The soldiers had surrendered.

Just like that.

There was a sense of anticlimax.

This is my chance, Rashid thought.

    It was easy to manipulate people if you understood the psychology of the

    human being. You just had to study the people, comprehend their situation,

    and figure out their needs. These people, Rashid decided, want excitement

    and adventure. For the first time in their lives they have guns in their

    hands: They need a target, and anything that symbolizes the regime of the

    Shah will do.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 261

    Right now they were standing around wondering where to go next.

"Listen!" Rashid shouted.

They all tistened-4hey had nothing better to do.

"I'm going to the Gasr Prison!"

Someone cheered.

    "The people in there are prisoners of the regime-4 we are against the

    regime we should let them out!"

Several people shouted their agreement.

He started walking.

They followed him.

    It's the mood they're in, he thought; they'll follow anyone who seems to

    know where to go.

    He started with a band of twelve or fifteen men and boys, but as he walked

    the group grew: everyone with nowhere to go automatically joined in.

Rashid had become a revolutionary leader.

Nothing was impossible.

    He stopped just before Gasr Square and addressed his army. "The jails must

    be taken over by the people, just like the police stations and the

    garrisons; this is our responsibility. There are people in Gasr Prison who

    are guilty of nothing. They are just like us--our brothers, our cousins.

    Like us, they only want their freedom. But they were braver than we, for

    they demanded their freedom while the Shah was here, and they were thrown

    in lia-il for it. Now we shall let them out!"

They all cheered.