Follett, Ken - On Wings of Eagles.txt

by On Wings of Eagles [lit]

  It was the technique of the Big Lie, and it had worked.

  "I'm the deputy leader," said Rashid's escort as they left the room. They

  went into another room where five or six people were drinking tea. Rashid

  talked to the deputy leader, loud enough for the others to hear. "These

  Americans just want to get home and see their families. We're happy to get

  rid of them, and

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 337

  we want to treat them right so they won't have anything against the new

  regime."

  "Why do you have Americans with you now?" the deputy asked.

  "For a trial run. This way, you know, we find out what the problems are .

  . . -

  "But you don't have to let them cross the border."

  "Oh, yes. They are good men who have never done any harm to our country,

  and they have wives and children at home---one of them has a little child

  dying in hospital. So the Revolutionary Committee in Tehran has instructed

  me to see them across the border . . . -

  He kept talking. From time to time the deputy would interrupt him with a

  question: Whom did the Americans work for? What did they have with them?

  How did Rashid know they were not SAVAK agents spying for the

  counterrevolutionaries in Tabriz? For every question Rashid had an answer,

  and a long one. While he was talking, he could be persuasive; whereas if he

  were silent, the others would have time to think of objections. People came

  in and went out continually. The deputy left three or four times.

  Eventually he came in and said: "I have to clear this with Tehran. -

  Rashid's heart sank. Of course nobody in Tehran would verify his story. But

  it would take forever to get a call through. I 'Everything has been

  verified in Tehran, and there is no need to reverify," he said. "But if you

  insist, I'll take these Americans to a hotel to wait. - He added: "You had

  better send some guards with us. - The deputy would have sent the guards

  anyway: asking for them was a way of allaying suspicion.

  "I don't know," said the deputy.

  "This is not a good place to keep them," Rashid said. "It could cause

  trouble. They might be harmed. - He held his breath. Here they were

  trapped. In a hotel they would at least have the chance to make a break for

  the border . . .

  "Okay," said the deputy.

  Rashid concealed his relief.

  Paul was deeply grateful to see Rashid coming down the steps of the

  schoolhouse. It had been a long wait. Nobody had actually pointed guns at

  them, but they had got an awful lot of hostile looks.

  338 Ken Follett

  "We can go to the hotel," said Rashid.

  The Kurds from Mahabad shook hands with them and left in their ambulance.

  A few moments later the Americans left in the two Range Rovers, followed by

  four or five armed guards in another car. They drove to the hotel. This

  time they all went in. There was an argument between the hotel keeper and

  the guards, but the guards won, and the Americans were assigned four rooms

  on the third floor at the back, and told to keep the curtains drawn and

  stay away from windows in case local snipers thought Americans inviting

  targets.

  They gathered in one of the rooms. They could hear distant gunfire. Rashid

  organized lunch and ate with them: barbecued chicken, rice, bread, and

  Coke. Then he left for the school.

  The guards wandered in and out of the room, carrying their rifles. One of

  them struck Coburn as being evil. He was young, short, and muscular, with

  black hair and eyes like a snake. As the afternoon wore on, he seemed to

  get bored. -

  One time he walked in and said: "Carter no good."

  He looked around for a reaction.

  "CIA no good," he said. "America no good."

  Nobody replied. He went out.

  "That guy is trouble," Simons said calmly. "Don't anybody take the bait."

  The guard tried again a little later. "I am very strong," he said.

  "Wrestling. Wrestle champion. I went to Russia."

  Nobody spoke.

  He sat down and fiddled with his gun, as if he did not know how to load it.

  He appealed to Coburn. "You know guns?"

  Coburn shook his head.

  The guard looked at the others. "You know guns?"

  The gun was an Ml, a weapon they were all familiar with, but nobody said

  anything.

  "You want to trade?" the guard said. "This gun for a backpack?"

  Coburn said: "We don't have a backpack and we don't want a gun. 11

  The guard gave up and went out into the corridor again.

  Simons said: "Where the hell is Rashid?"

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 339

  2

  The car hit a pothole, jolting Ralph Boulware awake. He felt tired and

  groggy after his short, restless sleep. He looked through the windows. It

  was early morning. He saw the shore of a vast lake, so big he could not see

  the far side.

  "Where are we?" he said.

  "That's Lake Van," said Charlie Brown, the interpreter.

  There were houses and villages and civilian cars: they had come out of the

  wild mountain country and returned to what passed for civilization in this

  part of the world. Boulware looked at a map. He figured they were about a

  hundred miles from the border.

  "Hey, this is good!" he said.

  He saw a filling station. They really were back in civilization. "Let's get

  gas," he said.

  At the filling station they got bread and coffee. The coffee was almost as

  good as a shower: Boulware felt raring to go. He said to Charlie: "Tell the

  old man I want to drive."

  The cabby had been doing thirty or forty miles per hour, but Boulware

  pushed the ancient Chevrolet up to seventy. It looked as though he had a

  real chance of getting to the border in time to meet Simons.

  Bowling along the lakeside road, Boulware heard a muffled bang, followed by

  a tearing sound; then the car began to buck and bump, and there was a

  screech of metal on stone: he had blown a tire.

  He braked hard, cursing.

  They all got out and looked at the wheel: Boulware, the elderly cabby,

  Charlie Brown, and fat Ilsman. The tire was completely shredded and the

  wheel deformed. And they had used the spare wheel during the night, after

  the last blowout.

  Boulware looked more closely. The wheel nuts had been stripped: even if

  they could get another spare, they would not be able to remove the damaged

  wheel.

  Boulware looked around. There was a house a way up the hill. "Let's go

  there," Boulware said. "We can phone."

  Charlie Brown shook his head. "No phones around here."

  340 Ken Follett

  Boulware was not about to give up, after all he had gone through: he was

  too close. "Okay," he said to Charlie. "Hitch a ride back to the last town

  and get us another cab. "

  Charlie started walking. Two cars passed him without stopping, then a truck

  pulled up. It had hay and a bunch of children in the back. Charlie jumped

  in, and the truck drove out of sight.

  Boulware, Ilsman, and the cabby stood looking at the lake, eating oranges.

  An hour later a small European station wagon came tearing along the road

  and screeched to
a halt. Charlie jumped out.

  Boulware gave the driver from Adana five hundred dollars, then got into the

  new taxi with Usman and Charlie and drove off, leaving the Chevrolet beside

  the lake, looking like a beached whale.

  The new driver went like the wind, and by midday they were in Van, on the

  eastern shore of the take. Van was a small town, with brick buildings in

  the center and mud-hut suburbs. Ilsman directed the driver to the home of

  a cousin of Mr. Fish.

  They paid their driver and went in. Ilsman got into a long discussion with

  Nft. Fish's cousin. Boulware sat in the living room, listening but not

  understanding, impatient to get moving. After an hour he said to Charlie:

  "Listen, let's just get another cab, we don't need the cousin."

  "It's a very bad place between here and the border," Charlie said. "We're

  foreigners, we need protection."

  Boulware forced himself to be patient.

  At last Ilsman shook hands with Mr. Fish's cousin and Charlie said: "His

  sons will take us to the border."

  There were two sons and two cars.

  They drove up into the mountains. Boulware saw no sign of the dangerous

  bandits against whom he was being protected: just snow-covered fields,

  scrawny goats, and a few ragged people living in hovels.

  They were stopped by the police in the village of Yuksekova, a few miles

  from the border, and ordered into the little whitewashed police station.

  llsman showed his credentials and they were quickly released. Boulware was

  impressed: maybe llsman really was with the Turkish equivalent of the CIA.

  They reached the border at four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, having been

  on the road for twenty-four hours.

  The border station was in the middle of nowhere. The guard post consisted

  of two wooden buildings. There was also a post

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 341

  office. Boulware wondered who the hell used it. Truck drivers, perhaps. Two

  hundred yards away, on the Iranian side, was a bigger cluster of buildings.

  There was no sign of the Dirty Team.

  Boulware felt angry. He had broken his neck to get here more or less on

  time: where the hell was Simons?

  A guard came out of one of the huts and approached him, saying: "Are you

  looking for the Americans?"

  Boulware was surprised. The whole thing was supposed to be top secret. It

  looked like security had gone all to hell. "Yes," he said. "I'm looking for

  the Americans."

  I 'There's a phone call for you."

  Boulware was even more surprised. "No kidding!" The timing was phenomenal.

  Who the hell knew he was here?

  He followed the guard into the hut and picked up the phone.

  Yes?"

  "This is the American Consulate," said the voice. "What's your name?"

  "Uh, what is this about?" Boulware said warily.

  "Look, would you just tell me what you're doing there?"

  "I don't know who you are and I'm not going to tell you what I'm doing."

  "Okay, listen, I know who you are and I know what you're doing. If you have

  any problems, call me. Got a pencil?"

  Boulware took down the number, thanked the man, and hung up, mystified. An

  hour ago I didn't know I was going to be here, he thought, so how could

  anyone else? Least of all the American Consulate. He thought again about

  Ilsman. Maybe Ilsman was in touch with his bosses, the Turkish MIT, who

  were in touch with the CIA, who were in touch with the Consulate. 11sman

  could have asked somebody to make a call for him in Van, or even at the

  police station in Yuksekova.

  He wondered whether it was good or bad that the Consulate knew what was

  happening. He recalled the "help" Paul and Bill had got from the U.S.

  Embassy in Tehran: with friends in the State Department a man had no need

  of enemies.

  He pushed the Consulate to the back of his mind. The main problem now was,

  where was the Dirty Team?

  'He went back outside and looked across no-man's-land. He decided to stroll

  across and talk to the Iranians. He called to Ilsman and Charlie Brown to

  come with him.

  As he approached the Iranian side he could see that the

  342 Ken Folku

  frontier guards were not in uniform. Presumably they were revolutionaries

  who had taken over when the government fell.

  He said to Charlie: "Ask them if they've heard anything about some American

  businessmen coming out in two jeeps."

  Charlie did not need to translate the reply: the Iranians shook their heads

  vigorously.

  An inquisitive tribesman, with a ragged headband and an ancient rifle, came

  up on the Iranian side. There was an exchange of some length, then Charlie

  said: "This man says he knows where the Americans are and he will take you

  to them if you pay."

  Boulware wanted to know how much, but Ilsman did not want him to accept the

  offer at any price. Usman spoke forcefully to Charlie, and Charlie

  translated. "You're wearing a leather coat and leather gloves and a fine

  wristwatch."

  Boulware, who was into watches, was wearing one Mary had given him when

  they got married. "So?"

  "With clothes like that they think you're SAVAK. They hate SAVAK over

  there."

  "I'll change my clothes. I have another coat in the car."

  "No," Charlie said. "You have to understand, they just want to get you over

  there and blow your head off."

  "AD right," Boulware said.

  They walked back to the Turkish side. Since there was a post office so

  conveniently nearby, he decided to call Istanbul and check in with Ross

  Perot. He went into the post office. He had to sign his name. The call

  would take some time to place, the clerk told him.

  Boulware went back outside. The Turkish border guards were now getting

  edgy, Charlie told him. Some of the Iranians had wandered back with them,

  and the guards did not like people milling around in no-man's-land: it was

  disorderly.

  Boulware thought: Well, I'm doing no good here.

  He said: "Would these guys call us, if the team comes across while we're

  back in Yuksekova?"

  Charlie asked them. The guards agreed. There was a hotel in the village,

  they said; they would call there.

  Boulware, Usman, Charlie, and the two sons of Mr. Fish's cousin got into

  the two cars and drove back to Yuksekova.

  There they checked into the worst hotel in the whole world. It had dirt

  floors. The bathroom was a hole in the ground under the

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 343

  stain. All the beds were in one room. Charlie Brown ordered food, and it

  came wrapped in newspaper.

  Boulware was not sure he had made the right decision in leaving the border

  station. So many things could go wrong: the guards might not phone as they

  had promised. He decided to accept the offer of help from the American

  Consulate, and ask them to seek permission for him to stay at the border

  station. He called the number he had been given on the hotel's single

  ancient wind-up telephone. He got through, but the line was bad, and both

  parties had trouble making themselves understood. Eventually the man at the

  other end said something ab
out calling back, and hung up.

  Boulware stood by the fire, fretting. After a while he lost patience, and

  decided to return to the border without permission.

  On the way they had a flat tire.

  They all stood in the road while the sons changed the wheel. llsman

  appeared nervous. Charlie explained: "He says this is a very dangerous

  place, the people are all murderers and bandits."

  Boulware was skeptical. lisman had agreed to do all this for a flat fee of

  eight thousand dollars, and Boulware now suspected the fat man was getting

  ready to up his price. "Ask him how many people were killed on this road

  last month," Boulware told Charlie.

  He watched Ilsman's face as he replied. Charlie translated: "Thirty-nine.

  ' I

  Ilsman looked serious. Boulware thought: Shit, this guy9s telling the

  goddam truth. He looked around. Mountains, snow . . . He shivered.

  3

  In Rezaiyeh, Rashid took one of the Range Rovers and drove from the hotel

  back to the school that had been turned into revolutionary headquarters.

  He wondered whether the deputy leader had called Tehran. Coburn had been

  unable to get a line the-previous night: would the revolutionary leadership

  have the same problem? Rashid thought they probably would. Now, if the

  deputy could not get through, what would he want to do? He had only two

  options:

  344 Ken Folleu

  hold the Americans, or let them go without checking. The man might feel

  foolish about letting them go without checking: he might not want Rashid to

  know that things were so loosely organized here. Rashid decided to act as if

  he assumed the call had been made and verification completed.

  He went into the courtyard. The deputy leader was there, leaning against a

  Mercedes. Rashid started talking to him about the problem of bringing six

  thousand Americans through the town on the way to the border. How many

  people could be accommodated overnight in Rezaiyeh? What facilities were

  there at the Sero border station for processing them? He emphasized that

  the Ayatollah Khomeini had given instructions for Americans to be well

  treated as they left Iran, for the new government did not want to quarrel

  with the U.S.A. He got onto the subject of documentation: perhaps the

  Rezaiyeh committee should issue passes to the Americans authorizing them to