Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt
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President. He decided to
246 Ken FoUeft
resign, but his wife talked him out of it: he had a responsibility to the
thousands of Americans still in Iran, she pointed out, and he could hardly
walk out on them now.
General Gharabaghi also contemplated resigning. He was in an impossible
position. He had sworn his oath of loyalty, not to the parliament or the
government of Iran, but to the Shah personally; and the Shah was gone. For
the time being Gharabaghi took the view that the military owed loyalty to
the Constitution of 1906, but that meant little in practice. Theoretically
the military ought to support the Bakhtiar government. Gharabaghi had been
wondering for some weeks whether he could rely on his soldiers to follow
orders and fight for Bakhtiar against the revolutionary forces. Ile revolt
of the hornafars showed that he could not. He reWized-as Brzezinski did
not-that an army was not a machine to be switched on and off at will, but
a collection of people, sharing the aspirations, the anger, and the
revivalist religion of the rest of the country. The soldiers wanted a
revolution as much as the civilians. Gharabaghi concluded that he could no
longer control his troops, and he decided to resign.
On the day that he announced his intention to his fellow generals,
Ambassador William Sullivan was summoned to Prime Minister Bakhtiar's
office at six o'clock in the evening. Sullivan had heard, from U.S. General
"Dutch" Huyser, of Gharabaghi's intended resignation, and he assumed that
this was what Bakhtiar wanted to talk about.
Bakhtiar waved Sullivan to a seat, Saying with an enigmatic smile. "Nous
serons trois." There will be three of us. Bakhtiar always spoke French with
Sullivan.
A few minutes later General Gharabaghi walked in. Bakhttar spoke of the
difficulties that would be created if the general were to resign.
Gharabaghi began to reply in Farsi, but Bakhtiar made him speak French. As
the general talked, he toyed with what seemed to be an envelope in his
pocket: Sullivan guessed it was his letter of resignation.
As the two Iranians argued in French, Bakhtiar kept turning to the American
Ambassador for support. Sullivan secretly thought Gbarabaghi was absolutely
right to resign, but his orders from the White House were to encourage the
military to support Bakhtiar, so he doggedly argued, against his own
convictions, that Gharabaghi should not resign. After a discussion of half
an hour, the general left without delivering his letter of resignation.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 247
Bakhtiar thanked Sullivan profusely for his help. Sullivan knew it would do
no good.
On January 24 Bakhtiar closed Tehran's airport to stop Khomeini from
entering Iran. It was like opening an umbrella against a tidal wave. On
January 26 soldiers killed fifteen pro-Khomeini protestors in street
fighting in Tehran. Two days later Bakhtiar offered to go to Paris for
talks with the Ayatollah. For a ruling Prime Minister to offer to visit an
exiled rebel was a fantastic admission of weakness, and Khomeini saw it
that way: he refused to talk unless Bakhtiar first resigned. On January 29,
thirty-five people died in the fighting in Tehran and another fifty in the
rest of the country. Gharabaghi, bypassing his Prime Minister, began talks
with the rebels in Tehran, and gave his consent to the return of the
Ayatollah. On January 30 Sullivan ordered the evacuation of all
nonessential Embassy personnel and all dependents. On February I Khomeini
came home.
Ifis Air France jumbo jet landed at 9:15 A.m. Two million hinians turned
out to greet him. At the airport the Ayatollah made his first public
statement. "I beg God to cut off the hands of all evil foreigners and all
their helpers."
Simons saw it all on TV, then he said to Coburn: "That's it. The people are
going to do it for us. The mob will take that jail. "
NINE
At midday on February 5 John Howell was on the point of getting Paul and
Bill out of jail.
Dadgar had said that he would accept bail in one of three forms: cash, a
bank guarantee, or a lien on property. Cash was out of the question. First,
anyone who flew into the lawless city of Tehran with $12,750,000 in a
suitcase might never reach Dadgar's office alive. Second, Dadgar might take
the money and still keep Paul and Bill, either by raising the bail or by
rean-estmg them on some new pretext. (Tom Walter suggested using
counterfeit money, but nobody knew where to get it.) There had to be a
document that gave Dadgar the money and at the same time gave Paul and Bill
their freedom. In Dallas Tom Walter had at last found a bank willing to
issue a letter of credit for the bail, but Howell and Taylor were having
trouble finding an Iranian bank to accept it and issue the guarantee Dadgar
required. Meanwhile, Howell's boss Tom Luce thought about the third option,
a lien on property, and came up with a wild and whacky idea that just might
work: pledging the U.S. Embassy in Tehran as bail for Paul and Bill.
The State Department was by now loosening up, but was not =rely tog pledge
its Tehran embassy as bail. However, it to ive the guarantee of the United
States government. Mat in itself was unique: the U.S.A. standing bad for
two jailed menl
First, Torn Walter in Dallas got a bank to issue a letter of credit in
favor of the State Department for $12,750,000. Because this transaction
took place entirely within the U.S., it was accomplished in hours rather
than days. Once the State Department in Washington had the letter, Minister
Counselor Charles Naas--
248
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 249
Ambassador Sullivan's deputy-would deliver a diplomatic note saying that
Paul and Bill, once released, would make themselves available to Dadgar for
questioning; otherwise, the bail would be paid by the Embassy.
Right now Dadgar was in a meeting with Lou Goelz, Consul General at the
Embassy. Howell had not been invited to attend, but Abolhasan was there for
EDS.
Howell had had a preliminary meeting with Goelz yesterday. Together they
had gone over the terms of the guarantee, with Goelz reading the phrases in
his quiet, precise voice. Goelz was changing. Two months ago Howell had
found him maddemngly correct: it was Goelz who had refused to give back
Paul and Bill's passports without telling the Iranians. Now Goelz seemed
ready to try the unconventional. Perhaps living in the middle of a
revolution had made the old boy unbend a little.
Goeiz had told Howell that the decision to release Paul and Bill would be
made by Prime Minister Bakhtiar, but it must first be cleared with Dadgar.
Howell was hoping Dadgar would not make trouble, for Goelz was not the type
of man to bang the table and force Dadgar to back down.
lime was a tap at the door and Abolhasan walked in.
Howell could tell from his face that he brought bad news.
"What happened?"
"He turned us down," Abolhasan said.
"Why?"
"He won't accept the guarantee of the United States gove
mment. 9 0
"Did he give a reason?"
"There's nothing in the law that says he can accept that as bail. He has to
have cash, a bank guarantee-"
"or a lien on property, I know." Howell felt numb. 'Mere had been so many
disappointments, so many dead ends, he was no longer capable of resentment
or anger. "Did you say anything about the Prime Minister?"
"Yes. Goelz told hirn we would take this proposal to Bakhtiar.
"What did Dadgar say to that?"
"He said it was typical of the Americans. They try to resolve things by
bringing influence to bear at high levels, with no concern for what is
happening at lower levels. He also said that if his superiors did not like
the way he was handling this case, they could take him off it, and he would
be very happy, because he was weary Of it.,,
250 Ken FoUett
Howell frowned. What did all this mean? He had recently concluded that what
the Iranians really wanted was the money. Now they had flatly turned it
down. Was this genuinely because of the technical problem that the law did
not specify a government guarantee as an acceptable form of bail--or was
that an excuse? Perhaps it was genuine. The EDS case had always been
politically sensitive, and now that the Ayatollah had returned, Dadgar
might well be terrified of doing anything that could be construed as
pro-American. Bending the rules to accept an unconventional form of bad
might get him into trouble. What would happen if Howell succeeded in
putting up bail in the legally required form? Would Dadgar then feel he had
covered his rear, and release Paul and Bill? Or would he invent another
excuse?
There was only one way to find out.
The week the Ayatollah returned to Iran, Paul and Bill asked for a priest.
Paul's cold seemed to have turned to bronchitis. He had asked for the
prison doctor. The doctor did not speak English, but Paul had no trouble
explaining his problem: he coughed, and the doctor nodded.
Paul was given some pills that he assumed were penicillin, and a bottle of
cough medicine. The taste of the medicine was strikingly familiar, and he
had a sudden, vivid flashback: he saw himself as a little boy, and his
mother pouring the glutinous syrup from an old-fashioned bottle onto a
spoon and dosing him with it. This was exactly the same stuff. It eased his
cough, but he had aheady done some damage to the muscles in his chest, and
he suffered a sharp pain every time he breathed deeply.
He had a letter from Ruthie that he read and reread. It was an ordinary,
newsy kind of letter. Karen was in a new school, and having some trouble
adjusting. This was normal: every time she changed schools, Karen would be
sick to her stomach for the first couple of days. Ann Marie, Paul's younger
daughter, was much more happy-go-lucky. Ruthie was still telling her mother
that Paul would be home in a couple of weeks, but the story was becoming
implausible, for that two-week deadline had now been stretched for two
months. She was buying a house, and Tom Walter was helping her with the
legal processes. Whatever emotions Ruthie was going through, she did not
put them in the letter.
Keane Taylor was the most frequent visitor to the jail. Each
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 251
time he came, he would hand Paul a pack of cigarettes with fifty or a
hundred dollars folded inside. Paul and Bin could use the money in jail to
buy special privileges, such as a bath. During one visit the guard left the
room for a moment, and Taylor handed over four thousand dollars.
On another visit Taylor brought Father Williams.
Williams was pastor of the Catholic Mission where, in happier times, Paul
and Bill had met with the EDS Tehran Roman Catholic Sunday Brunch Poker
School. Williams was eighty years old, and his superiors had given him
permission to leave Tehran, because of the danger. He had preferred to stay
at his post. This kind of thing was not new to hun, he told Paul and Bill:
he had been a missionary in China during World War H, when the Japanese had
invaded, and later, during the revolution that brought Mao Tse-tung to
power. He himself had been imprisoned, so he understood what Paul and Bin
were going through-
Father Williams boosted their morale almost as much as Ross Perot had.
Bill, who was more devout than Paul, felt deeply strengthened by the visit.
It gave him the courage to face the unknown future. Father Williams granted
them absolution for their sins before he left. Bill still did not know
whether he would get out of the jail alive, but now he felt prepared to
face death.
Iran exploded into revolution on Friday, February 9, 1979.
in just over a week Khomeini had destroyed what was left of legitimate
government. He had called on the military to mutiny and the members of
Parliament to resign. He had appointed a "Provisional govemment" despite
the fact that Bakhtiar was still officially Prime Minister. His supporters,
organized into revolutionary commiam, had taken over responsibility for law
and order and garbage collection, and had opened more than a hundred
Islamic cooperative stores in Tehran. On February 8 a million people or
more marched through the city in support of the Ayatollah. Street fighting
went on continually between stray units of loyalist soldiers and gangs of
Khomeini men.
On February 9, at two Tehran air bases--Doshen Toppeh and
Farahabad-formations of hoinafars and cadets gave a salute to Khomeini.
This infuriated the Javadan Brigade, which had been the Shah's personal
bodyguard, and they attacked both air bases. The homafars barricaded
themselves in and repelled the loyalist
252 Ken Follen
troops, helped by crowds of armed revolutionaries mining around inside and
outside the bases.
Units of both the Marxist Fedayeen and the Muslim MuJahedeen guerrillas
rushed to Doshen Toppeb. The armory was broken open and weapons were
distributed indiscriminately to soldiers, guerrillas, revolutionaries,
demonstrators, and passersby.
That night at eleven o'clock the Javadan Brigade returned in force.
Khomeini supporters within the nulitary warned the Doshen Toppeh rebels
that the Brigade was on its way, and the rebels counterattacked before the
Brigade reached the base. Several senior officers among the loyalists were
killed early in the battle. The fighting continued all night, and spread to
a large area around the base.
By noon on the following day, the battlefield had widened to include most
of the city.
That day John Howell and Keane Taylor went downtown for a meeting.
Howell was convinced they would get Paul and Bin released within hours.
They were all set to pay the bail.
Tom Walter had a Texas bank ready to issue a letter of credit for
$12,750,000 to the New York branch of Bank Melli. The plan was that the
Tehran branch of Bank Melli would then issue a bank guarantee to the
Ministry of Justice, and Paul and Bill would be bailed out. It had not
worked quite that way. The deputy managing director of Bank Melli,
Sadr-Hashemi,
had recognized-as had all the other banker"at Paul and Bill
were commercial hostages, and that once they were out of jail EDS could
argue in an American court that the money had been extorted and should not
be paid. If that happened, Bank Mefli in New York would not be able to
collect on the letter of creditbut Bank Melli in Tehran would still have to
pay the money to the Iranian Ministry of Justice. Sadr-Hashemi said he
would change his mind only if his New York lawyers told him there was no
way EDS could block payment on the letter of credit. Howell knew perfectly
well that no decent American attorney would issue such an opinion.
Then Keane Taylor thought of Bank Orman. EDS had a contract to install an
on-line computerized accounting system for Bank Omran, and Taylor's job in
Tehran had been to supervise this contract, so he knew the bank's
officials. He met with Farhad Bakhtiar, who was one of the top men there as
well as
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 253
being a relative of Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar. It was clear that the
Prime Minister was going to fall from power any day, and Farhad was planning
to leave the country. Perhaps that was why he was less concerned than
Sadr-Hasherrii about the possibility that the $12,750,000 would never be
paid. Anyway, for whatever reason, he had agreed to help.
Bank Omran did not have a U.S. branch. How, then, could EDS pay the money?
It was agreed that the Dallas bank would lodge its letter of credit with
the Dubai branch of Bank Omran by a system called Tested Telex. Dubai would
then call Tehran on the phone to confirm that the letter of credit had been
received, and the Tehran branch of Bank 0mran would issue the guarantee to
the Ministry of Justice.
There were delays. Everything had to be approved by the board of directors
of Bank Omran, and by the bank's lawyers. Everyone who looked at the deal
suggested small changes in the language. The changes, in English and Farsi,
had to be communicated to Dubai and to Dallas, then a new telex had to be
sent from Dallas to Dubai, tested, and approved by phone with Tehran.
Because the Iranian weekend was Thursday and Friday, there were only three
days in the week when both banks were open; and because Tehran was nine and