On Wings of Eagles (44 page)

    as if he were enjoying the whole thing hugely. There was a kind of

    hysterical elation in the air, and Bill began to catch it. Somehow, he

    thought, we're going to get out of this mess alive.

    He looked around. To the right of the gates the buildings were burning. To

    the left, some distance away, he saw an h-dWan prisoner waving as if to

    say: This way! There had been some construction work on that section of the

    wall-a building seemed to be going up on the far side-and there was a steel

    door in the wan to allow access to the site. Looking more closely, Bill

    could see that the waving Iranian had got the steel door open.

"Hey-look over there!" said Bill.

"Let's go," said Paul.

    They ran over. Several other prisoners followed. They went through the

    door-and found themselves trapped in a kind of cell without doors or

    windows. There was a smell of new cement.

268 Ken Follett

Builders' tools lay around. Someone grabbed a pickaxe and swung it at the

wall. The fresh concrete crumbled quickly. Two or three others joined in,

hacking away with anything that came to hand. Soon the hole was big enough:

they dropped their tools and crawled through.

    They were now between the two prison walls. The inner wall, behind them,

    was the high one-twenty-five or thirty feet. The outer wall, which stood

    between them and freedom, was only ten or twelve feet high.

    An athletic prisoner managed to get up onto the top of the wall. Another

    man stood at its foot and beckoned. A third prisoner went forward. The man

    on the ground pushed him up, the one on top pulled, and the prisoner went

    over the wall.

It happened very quickly then.

Paul took a run at the wall.

Bill was right behind him.

    Bill's mind was a blank. He ran. He felt a push, helping him up; then a

    pull; then he was at the top, and he jumped.

He landed on the pavement.

He got to his feet.

Paul was right beside him.

We're free! thought Bill. We're free!

He felt like dancing.

Coburn put down the phone and said: "That was Majid. The mob has overrun the

prison."

    "Good," said Simons. He had told Coburn, earlier that morning, to send

    Majid down to Gasr Square.

    Simons was very cool, Coburn thought. This was it-this was the big day! Now

    they could get out of the apartment, get on the move, activate their plans

    for "getting out of Dodge. - Yet Simons showed no signs of excitement.

"What do we do now?" said Coburn.

    "Nothing. Majid is there, Rashid is there. If those two can't take care of

    Paul and Bill, we sure as hell won't be able to. If Paul and Bill don't

    turn up by nightfall, we'll do what we discussed: you and Majid will go out

    on a motorcycle and search. 11

"And meanwhile?"

"We stick to the plan. We sit tight. We wait."

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 269

'Mere was a crisis it the U - S . Embassy .

    Ambassador William Sullivan had got an emergency call for help from General

    Gast, head of the Military Assistance Advisory Group. MAAG Headquarters was

    surrounded by a mob. Tanks were drawn up outside the budding and shots were

    being exchanged. Gast and his officers, together with most of the kanian

    general staff, were in a bunker underneath the budding.

    Sullivan had every able-bodied man in the Embassy making phone calls,

    trying to find revolutionary leaders who might have the authority to call

    off the mob. The phone on Sullivan's desk was ringing constantly. In the

    middle of the crisis he got a call from Undersecretary Newsom in

    Washington.

    Newsom was calling from the Situation Room in the White House, where

    Zbigniew Brzezinski was chairing a meeting on Iran. He asked for Sullivan's

    assessment of the current position in Tehran. Sullivan gave it to him in a

    few short phrases, and told him that right at that moment he was

    preoccupied with saving the life of the senior American military officer in

    Iran.

    A few minutes later Sullivan got a call from an Embassy official who had

    succeeded in reaching lbralum Yazdi, a Khornemi sidekick. The official was

    telling Sullivan that Yazdi might help when the call was overridden and

    Newsom came on the line again.

    Newsom said: "The National Security Advisor has asked for your view of the

    possibility of a coup d'6tat by the Iranian military to take over from the

    Bakhtiar goverrunent, winch is clearly faltering."

    The question was so ridiculous that Sullivan blew his cool. "Tell

    Brzezinski to fuck off," he said.

-That,s m a very helpful comment," said Newsom.

    -You want it translated into Polish?" Sullivan said, and he hung up the

    phone.

On the roof of Bucharest, the negotiating team could see the fires spreading

uptown. The noise of shooting was also coming closer to where they stood.

    John Howell and Abolhasan returned from their meeting with Dadgar. "Well?"

    Gayden said to Howell. "What did that bastard say?"

"He won't let them go."

"Bastard."

A few minutes later they all heard a noise that sounded

270 Ken Folleff

distinctly like a bullet whistling by. A moment later the noise came again.

They decided to get off the roof.

    They went down to the offices and watched from the windows. They began to

    see, in the street below, boys and young men with rifies. It seemed the mob

    had broken into a nearby armory. This was too close for comfort: it was

    time to abandon Bucharest and go to the Hyatt, which was farther uptown.

    They went out and jumped into two cars, then headed up the Shahanshahi

    Expressway at top speed. The streets were packed, and there was a carnival

    atmosphere. People were leaning out of their windows yelling "Allahar

    Akbar!" God is great! Most of the traffic was headed downtown, toward the

    fighting. Taylor drove straight through three roadblocks, but nobody mmded:

    they were all dancing.

    They reached the Hyatt and assembled in the sitting room of the

    eleventh-floor comer suite that Gayden had taken over from Perot. They were

    joined by Rich Gallagher's wife, Cathy, and her white poodle, Buffy.

    Gayden had stocked the suite with booze from the abandoned homes of EDS

    evacuees, and he now had the best bar in Tehran; but no one felt much

    likedrinking.

"What do we do next?" Gayden asked.

Nobody had any ideas.

    Gayden got on the phone to Dallas, where it was now six A.M. He reached Tom

    Walter and told him about the fires, the fighting, and the kids on the

    streets with their automatic rifles.

"That's all I got to report," he finished.

    In his slow Alabama drawl, Walter said: "Other than that a quiet day, hub?"

    They discussed what they would do if the phone lines went down. Gayden said

    he would try to get messages through via the U.S. military: Cathy Gallagher

    worked for the army and she thought she could swing it.

    Keane Taylor went into the bedroom and lay down. He thought about his wife,

    Mary. She was in Pittsburgh, staying with his parents. Taylor's mother and

    father were both past eighty and in failing health. Mary had called to tell

    him his mother had been rushed to the hospital: it was her heart. Mary

    wanted Taylor to come home. He had spoken to his father, who had said

    ambiguously: "You know what you have to do." It was true: Taylor knew he

    had to stay here. But it was not easy, not for him or for Mary.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 271

    He was dozing on Gayden's bed when the phone rang. He reached out to the

    bedside table and picked it up. "Hello?" he said sleepily.

A breathless Iranian voice said: "Are Paul and Bill there?"

"What?" said Taylor. "Rashid-is that you?"

"Are Paul and Bill there?" Rashid repeated.

"No. What do you mean?"

"Okay, I'm coming, I'm coming."

Rashid hung up.

    Taylor got off the bed and went into the sitting room. "Rashid just

    called," he told the others. "He asked me if Paul and Bill were here. "

    "What did he mean?" said Gayden. "Where was he calling from? I I

    "I couldn't get anything else out of him. He was all excited, and you know

    how bad his English is when he gets wound up.

"Didn't he say any more?"

"He said: 'I'm coming,' then he hung up.

    "Shit." Gayden turned to Howell. "Give me the phone." Howell was sitting

    with the phone to his ear, saying nothing: they were keeping the line to

    Dallas open. At the other end an EDS switchboard operator was listening,

    waiting for someone to speak. Gayden said: "Let me talk to Tom Walter

    again, please."

    As Gayden told Walter about Rashid's call, Taylor wondered what it meant.

    Why would Rashid imagine Paul and Bill might be at the Hyatt? They were in

    jail-weren't they? , ty, smell-

A few minutes later Rashid burst into the room du

ing of gunsmoke, with clips of G3 ammunition falling out of his pockets,

talking a mile a minute so that nobody could understand a word. Taylor

calmed him down. Eventually he said: "We hit the prison. Paul and Bill were

gone."

Paul and Bill stood at the foot of the prison wall and looked around.

    The scene in the street reminded Paul of a New York parade. in the

    apartment buildings across from the jail everyone was at the windows,

    cheering and applauding as they watched the prisoners escape. At the

    streetcorner a vendor was selling fruit from a stall. There was gunfire not

    far away, but in the immediate vicinity nobody was shooting. Then, as if

    ti) remind Paul and Bill that they were not yet out of danger, a car full

    of revolutionaries raced by with guns sticking out of every window.

272 Ken Follett

"Let's get out of here," said Paul.

"Where do we go? The U.S. Embassy? The French Embassy?" 'Me Hyatt. -

    Paul started walking, heading north. Bill walked a little behind him, with

    his coat collar turned up and his head bent to hide his pale American face.

    They came to an intersection. It was deserted: no cars, no people. They

    started across. A shot rang out.

Both of them ducked and ran back the way they had come.

It was not going to be easy.

"How are you doing?" said Paul.

I'Still alive.It

    They walked back past the prison. The scene was the same: at least the

    authorities had not yet got organized enough to start rounding up the

    escapers.

    Paul headed south and east through the streets, hoping to circle around

    until he could go north again. Everywhere there were boys, some only

    thirteen or fourteen, with automatic rifles. On every comer was a

    sandbagged bunker, as if the streets were divided up into tribal

    territories. Farther on they had to push their way through a crowd of

    yelling, chanting, almost hysterical people: Paul carefully avoided meeting

    people's eyes, for he did not want them to notice him, let alone speak to

    hini-if they were to learn there were two Americans in their midst they

    might turn ugly.

    The rioting was patchy. It was like New York, where you had only to walk a

    few steps and turn a comer to find the character of the district completely

    changed. Paul and Bill went through a quiet area for half a mile, then ran

    into a battle. There was a barricade of overturned cars across the road and

    a bunch of youngsters with rifles shooting across the barricade toward what

    looked like a military installation. Paul turned away quickly, fearful of

    being hit by a stray bullet.

    Each time he tried to turn north he ran into some obstruction. They were

    now farther from the Hyatt than they had been when they started. They were

    moving south, and the fighting was always worse in the south.

    They stopped outside an unfinished building. "We could duck in them and

    hide until nightfall," Paul said. "After dark nobody will notice that

    you're American."

"We might get shot for being out after curfew."

"You think there's still a curfew?"

Bill shrugged.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 273

    "We're doing all right so far," Paul said. "Let's go on a little longer. "

They went on.

    It was two hours-4wo hours of crowds and street battles and stray sniper

    fire-before at last they could turn north. Then the scene changed. The

    gunfire receded, and they found themselves in a relatively affluent area of

    pleasant villas. They saw a child on a bicycle, wearing a T-shirt that said

    something about southern California.

    Paul was tired. He had been in jail for forty-five days, and during most of

    that time he had been sick: he was no longer strong enough to walk for

    hours. "What do you say we hitchhike?" he asked Bill.