Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt
Page 19
trouble and expense instead of saving them. Perot's idea was to sell a
total package-4 complete data-processing department with machinery,
software, and staff. The customer had only to say, in simple language, what
information he needed, and EDS would give it to him. Then he could get on
with what he was good at---banking, insurance, or manufacturing.
IBM turned down Perot's idea. It was a good concept but the pickings would
be small. Out of every dollar spent on data processing, eighty cents went
into hardware-the machineryand only twenty cents into software, which was
what Perot wanted to sell. IBM did not want to chase pennies under the
table.
So Perot drew a thousand dollars out of his savings and started up on his
own. Over the next decade the proportions changed until software was taking
seventy cents of every data-processing dollar, and Perot became one of the
richest self-made men in the world.
The chairman of IBM, Tom Watson, met Perot in a restaurant one day and
said: "I just want to know one thing, Ross. Did you foresee that the ratio
would change?"
"No," said Perot. "The twenty cents looked good enough to me. Is
Yes, he was lucky; but he had to give his luck room to operate. It was no
good sitting in a comer being careful. You never got the chance to be lucky
unless you took risks. All his life Perot had taken risks.
This one just happened to be the biggest.
Merv Stauffer walked into the office. "Ready to go?" he said.
.'Yes. f9
144 Ken Follett
Perot got up and the two men left the office. They went down in the
elevator and got into Stauffer's car, a brand-new four-door Lincoln
Versailles. Perot read the nameplate on the dashboard: "Merv and Helen
Stauffer. " The interior of the car stank of Simons's cigars.
"He's waiting for you," Stauffer said.
-C
3ood.
Perot's oil company, Petrus, had offices in the next building along Forest
Lane. Merv had already taken Simons there, then come for Perot. Afterward
he would take Perot back to EDS, then return for Simons. The object of the
exercise was secrecy: as few people as possible were to see Simons and
Perot together.
In the last six days, while Simons and the rescue team had been doing their
thing out at Lake Grapevine, the prospects of a legal solution to the
problem of Paul and Bill had receded. Kissinger, having failed with
Ardeshir Zahedi, was unable to do anything else to help. Lawyer Tom Luce
had been busy calling every single one of the twenty-four Texas
congressmen, both Texas senators, and anyone else in Washington who would
take his calls; but what they all did was to call the State Department to
find out what was going on, and all the calls ended up on the desk of Henry
Precht.
EDS's chief financial officer, Tom Walter, still had not found a bank
willing to post a letter of credit for $12,750,000. The difficulty, Walter
had explained to Perot, was this: under American law, an individual or a
corporation could renege on a letter of credit if there was proof that the
letter had been signed under illegal pressure; for example, blackmail or
kidnapping. The banks saw the imprisonment of Paul and Bill as a
straightforward piece of extortion, and they knew EDS would be able to
argue, in an American court, that the letter was invalid and the money
should not be paid. In theory that would not matter, for by then Paul and
Bill would be home, and-the American bank would simplyand quite
legally-.refuse to honor the letter of credit when it was presented for
payment by the Iranian government. However, most American banks had large
loans outstanding with Iran, and their fear was that the Iranians would
retaliate by deducting $12,750,000 from what they owed. Walter was still
searching for a large bank that did no business with Iran.
So, unfortunately, Operation Hotfoot was still Perot's best bet.
Perot left Stauffer in the car park and went into the oil company building.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 145
He found Simons in the little office reserved for Perot. Simons was eating
peanuts and listening to a portable radio. Perot guessed that the peanuts
were his lunch and the radio was to swamp any eavesdropping devices that
might be hidden in the room.
They shook hands. Perot noticed that Simons was growing a beard. "How are
things?" he said.
"They're good," Simons answered. "The men are beginning to pull together as
a team. "
"Now," said Perot, "you realize you can reject any member of the team you
find unsatisfactory." A couple of days earlier Perot bad proposed an
addition to the team, a man who knew Tehran and had an outstanding military
record, but Simons had turned him down after a short interview, saying:
"That guy believes his own bullshit." Now Perot wondered whether Simons had
found fault, during the training period, with any of the others. He went
on: "You're in charge of the rescue, and--
"There's no need," Simons said. "I don't want to reject anyone." He laughed
softly. "They're easily the most intelligent squad I've ever worked with,
and that does create a problem, because they think orders are to be
discussed, not obeyed. But they're teaming to turn off their thinking
switches when necessary. I've made it very clear to them that at some point
in the game discussion ends and blind obedience is called for."
Perot smiled. "Then you've achieved more in six days than I have in sixteen
years."
"There's no more we can do here in Dallas," Simons said. "Our next step is
to go to Tehran."
Perot nodded. This might be his last chance to call off Operation Hotfoot.
Once the team left Dallas, they might be out of touch and they would be out
of his control. The die would be cast.
Ross, this is idiotic. You're going to destroy the company and you're going
to destroy yourself.
Hell, Ross, I can't make a list of the laws you're going to break.1
Instead of two innocent employees in jail, you could have eight guilty
employees dead.
Well, we've got this boyfrom Texarkana who's been tryingfor years ...
"When do you want to leave?" Perot asked Simons.
. 'Tomorrow. 19
"Good luck," said Perot.
While Simons was talking to Perot in Dallas, Pat Sculley-the world's worst
liar-was in Istanbul, trying and failing to pull the wool over the eyes of
a wily Turk.
Mr. Fish was a travel agent who had been "discovered" during the December
evacuation by Merv Stauffer and T. J. Marquez. They had hired him to make
arrangements for the evacuees' stopover in Istanbul, and he had worked
miracles. He had booked them all into the Sheraton and organized buses to
take them from the anport to the hotel. When they arrived there had been a
meal waiting for diem. They left him to collect their baggage and clear it
through customs, and it appeared outside their hotel rooms as if by magic.
The next day there had been video movies for the children and sightseeing
tours for the adults to keep everyone occupied while they wai
ted for their
flights to Now York. Mr. Fish achieved all this while most of the hotel
staff were on strike-T.J. found out later that Mrs. Fish had made the beds
in the hotel rooms. Once onward flights had been reserved, Merv Stauffer
had wanted to duplicate a handout sheet with instructions for everyone, but
the hotel's photocopier was broken: Mr. Fish got an electrician to mend it
at five o'clock on a Sunday morning. Mr. Fish could make it happen.
Simons was still worried about smuggling the Walther PPKs into Tehran, and
when he heard how Mr. Fish had cleared the evacuees' baggage through
Turkish customs he proposed that the same man be asked to solve the problem
of the guns. Sculley had left for Istanbul on January 8.
The following day he met Mr. Fish at the coffee shop in the Sheraton. Mr.
Fish was a big, fat man in his late forties, dressed
146
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 147
in drab clothes. But he was shrewd: Sculley was no, match for him.
Sculley told him that EDS needed help with two problems. "One, we need an
aircraft that can fly into and out of Tehran. Two, we want to get some
baggage through customs without its being inspected. Naturally, we'll pay
you anything reasonable for help with these problems. "
Mr. Fish looked dubious. "Why do you want to do these things?"
"Well, we've got some magnetic tapes for computer systems in Tehran,"
Sculley said. "We've got to get them in there and we can't take any
chances. We don't want anyone to X-ray those tapes or do anything that
could damage them, and we can't risk having them confiscated by some petty
customs official."
"And for this, you need to hire a plane and get your bags through customs
unopened?"
"Yes, that's right." Sculley could see that Mr. Fish did not believe a word
of it.
Mr. Fish shook his head. "No, Mr. Sculley. I have been happy to help your
friends before, but I am a travel agent, not a smuggler. I will not do
this."
"What about the plane-can you get us a plane?"
Mr. Fish shook his head again. "You will have to go to Amman, Jordan. Arab
Wings run charter flights from there to Tehran. That is the best suggestion
I can make."
Sculley shrugged. "Okay."
A few minutes later he left Mr. Fish and went up to his room to call
Dallas.
His first assignment as a member of the rescue team had not gone well.
When Simons got the news he decided to leave the Walther PPKs in Dallas.
He explained his thinking to Coburn. "Let's not jeopardize the whole
mission, right at the start, when we're not even sure we're going to need
the handguns: that's a risk we don't have to take, not yet anyway. Let's
get in the country and see what we're up against. If and when we need the
guns, Schwebach will go back to Dallas and get 'em. "
The guns were put in the EDS vault, together with a too] Simons had ordered
for filing off the serial numbers. (Since that was against the law it would
not be done until the last possible moment.)
148 Ken Follen
However, they would take the false-bottomed suitcase and do a dry run. They
would also take the Number 2 shot-Davis would carry it in his beanbag---and
the equipment Simons needed for reloading the shot into birdshot
cartridges-Simons would carry that himself.
There was now no point in going via Istanbul, so Simons sent Sculley to
Paris to book hotel rooms there and try to get reservations for the team on
a flight into Tehran.
The rest of the team took off from the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport
at 11:05 A.M. on January 10 aboard Braniff flight 341 to Miami, where they
transferred to National 4 to Paris.
They met up with Sculley at Orly Airport, in the picture gallery between
the restaurant and the coffee shop, the following morning.
Coburn noticed that Sculley was jumpy. Everyone was becoming infected with
Simons's security-consciousness, he realized. Coming over from the States,
although they had all been on the same plane, they had traveled separately,
sitting apart and not acknowledging one another. In Paris Sculley had got
nervous about the staff at the Orly Hilton and suspected that someone was
listening to his phone calls, so Simons-who was always uneasy in hotels
anyway-had decided they would talk in the picture gallery.
Sculley had failed in his second assignment, to get onward reservations
from Pans to Tehran for the team. "Half the airlines have just stopped
flying to Iran, because of the political unrest and the strike at the
airport," he said. "What flights there are are overbooked with Iranians
trying to get home. All I have is a rumor that Swissair is flying in from
Zurich."
They split into two groups. Simons, Coburn, Poch6, and Boulware would go to
Zurich and try for the Swissair flight. Sculley, Schwebach, Davis, and
Jackson would stay in Paris.
Simons's group flew Swissair first class to Zurich. Coburn sat next to
Simons. They spent the whole of the flight eating a splendid lunch of
shrimp and steak. Simons raved about how good the food was. Coburn was
amused, remembering how Simons had said: "When you're hungry, you open a
can."
At Zurich Airport the reservations desk for the Tehran flight was mobbed by
Iranians. The team could get only one seat on the plane. Which of them
should go? Coburn, they decided. He would be the logistics man: as Director
of Personnel and as
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 149
evacuation mastermind he had the most complete knowledge of EDS resources in
Tehran: 150 empty houses and apartments, 60 abandoned cars and jeeps, 200
Iranian employees-4hose who could be trusted and those who could not---and
the food, drink, and tools left behind by the evacuees. Going in first,
Coburn could arrange transport, supplies, and a hideout for the rest of the
team.
So Coburn said good-bye to his friends and got on the plane, heading for
chaos, violence, and revolution.
That same day, unknown to Simons and the rescue team, Ross Perot took
British Airways flight 172 from New York to London. He, too, was on his way
to Tehran.
The flight from Zurich to Tehran was all too short.
Coburn spent the time anxiously running over in his mind the things he had
to do. He could not make a list: Simons would not allow anything to be
written down.
His first job was to get through customs with the falsebottomed case. There
were no guns in it: if the case was inspected and the secret compartment
discovered, Coburn was to say that it was for carrying delicate
photographic equipment.
Next he had to select some abandoned houses and apartments for Simons to
consider as hideouts. Then he had to find cars and make sure there was a
supply of gasoline for them.
His cover story, for the benefit of Keane Taylor, Rich Gallagher, and EDS's
Iranian employees, was that he was arranging Shipment of evacuees' personal
belongings back to the States. Coburn had told Simons that Taylor ought to
be let in on the secret: he would be a valuable asset to the
rescue team.
Simons had said he would make that decision himself, after meeting Taylor.
Coburn wondered how to hoodwink Taylor.
He was still wondering when the plane landed.
Inside the terminal all the airport staff were in army uniforms. That was
how the airport had been kept open despite the strike, Coburn realized: the
military was running it.
He picked up the suitcase with the false bottom and walked through customs.
No one stopped him.
The arrivals hall was a zoo. The waiting crowds were more unruly than ever.
The army was not running the airport on military lines.
He fought his way through the crowd to the cabstand. He
150 Ken FolkU
skirted two men who appeared to be fighting over a taxi, and took the next
in fine.
Riding into town, he noticed a good deal of military hardware on the road,
especially near the airport. There were many more tanks about than there
had been when he left. Was that a sign that the Shah was still in control?
In the press the Shah was still talking as if he were in control, but then
so was Bakhtiar. So, for that matter, was the Ayatollah, who had just
announced the formation of a Council of the Islamic Revolution to take over
the government, just as if he were already in power in Tehran instead of
sitting in a villa outside Paris at the end of a telephone line. In truth,
nobody was in charge; and while that hindered the negotiations for the
release of Paul and Bill, it would probably help the rescue team.
The cab took him to the office they called Bucharest, where he found Keane
Taylor. Taylor was in charge now, for Lloyd Briggs had gone to New York to
brief EDS's lawyers in person. Taylor was sitting at Paul Chiapparone's
desk, in an immaculate vested suit, just as if he were a million miles away
from the nearest revolution instead of in the middle of it. He was aston-
ished to see Coburn.
"Jay! When the hell did you get here?"
'Just arrived," Coburn said.
"What's with the beard-you trying to get yourself fired?"
"I thought it might make me look less American here."
"Did you ever see an Iranian with a ginger beard?"
"No," Coburn laughed.
"So, what are you hem for?"