On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

by Ken Follett

  "That's right," said Simons. "They'll be able to steal them--if they let us go."

  Taylor and Gayden went into the guardhouse.

  "This is it," said Simons. "Coburn, get Paul and Bill and just walk across there."

  "Let's go, you guys," said Coburn.

  Paul and Bill stepped over the chain and started walking. Coburn stayed close behind them. "Just keep walking, regardless of anything else that might happen," Coburn said. "If you hear yelling, or gunfire, you run, but under no circumstances do we stop or go back."

  Simons came up behind them. "Walk faster," he said. "I don't want you two getting shot out here in the bloody middle of nowhere."

  They could hear some kind of argument beginning back on the Iranian side.

  Coburn said: "Y'all don't turn round, just go."

  Back on the Iranian side, Taylor was holding out a fistful of money to two guards who were glancing first at the four men walking across the border and then at the two Range Rovers, worth at least twenty thousand dollars each...

  Rashid was saying: "We don't know when we'll be able to come back for these cars--it could be a long time--"

  One of the guards said: "You were all to stay here until the morning--"

  "The cars are really very valuable, and they must be looked after--"

  The guards looked from the cars to the people walking across to Turkey, and back to the cars again, and they hesitated too long.

  Paul and Bill reached the Turkish side and walked into the guard hut.

  Bill looked at his wristwatch. It was eleven forty-five P.M. on Thursday, February 15, the day after Valentine's Day. On February 15, 1960, he had slipped an engagement ring on Emily's finger. The same day six years later Jackie had been born--today was her thirteenth birthday. Bill thought: Here's your present, Jackie--you still have a father.

  Coburn followed them into the hut.

  Paul put his arm around Coburn and said: "Jay, you just hit a home run."

  Back on the Iranian side, the guards saw that half the Americans were already in Turkey, and they decided to quit while they were ahead and take the money and the cars.

  Rashid, Gayden, and Taylor walked up to the chain.

  At the chain Gayden stopped. "Go ahead," he said. "I want to be the last guy out of here."

  And he was.

  2_____

  At the hotel in Yuksekova, they sat around a smoky pot-bellied stove: Ralph Boulware; Ilsman, the fat secret agent; Charlie Brown, the interpreter; and the two sons of Mr. Fish's cousin. They were waiting for a call from the border station. Dinner was served: some kind of meat, maybe lamb, wrapped in newspapers.

  Ilsman said he had seen someone taking photographs of Rashid and Boulware at the border. With Charlie Brown translating, Ilsman said: "If you ever have a problem about those photographs, I can solve it."

  Boulware wondered what he meant.

  Charlie said: "He believes you are an honest man, and what you are doing is noble."

  It was kind of a sinister offer, Boulware felt; like a Mafioso telling you that you are his friend.

  By midnight there was still no word either from the Dirty Team or from Pat Sculley and Mr. Fish, who were supposed to be on their way here with a bus. Boulware decided to go to bed. He always drank water at bedtime. There was a pitcher of water on a table. Hell, he thought, I haven't died yet. He took a drink, and found himself swallowing something solid. Oh, God, he thought; what was that? He made himself forget about it.

  He was just getting into bed when a boy called him to the phone.

  It was Rashid.

  "Hey, Ralph?"

  "Yes."

  "We're at the border!"

  "I'll be right there."

  He rounded up the others and paid the hotel bill. With the sons of Mr. Fish's cousin driving, they headed down the road where--as Ilsman kept saying--thirty-nine people had been killed by bandits the previous month. On the way they had yet another flat tire. The sons had to change the wheel in the dark, because the batteries in their flashlight had gone dead. Boulware did not know whether to be frightened, standing there in the road, waiting. Ilsman could still be a liar, a confidence trickster. On the other hand, his credentials had protected them all. If the Turkish secret service was like Turkish hotels, hell, Ilsman could be their answer to James Bond.

  The wheel was changed and the cars moved off again.

  They drove through the night. It's going to be all right, Boulware thought. Paul and Bill are at the border, Sculley and Mr. Fish are on their way here with a bus, Perot is in Istanbul alone. We're going to make it.

  He reached the border. Lights were on in the guard huts. He jumped out of the car and ran inside.

  A great cheer went up.

  There they all were: Paul and Bill, Coburn, Simons, Taylor, Gayden, and Rashid.

  Boulware shook hands warmly with Paul and Bill.

  They all started picking up their coats and bags. "Hey, hey, wait a minute," Boulware said. "Mr. Fish is on the way with a bus." He took from his pocket a bottle of Chivas Regal he had been saving for this moment. "But we can all have a drink!"

  They all had a celebratory drink except Rashid, who did not take alcohol. Simons got Boulware in a corner. "All right, what's happening?"

  "I talked to Ross this afternoon," Boulware told him. "Mr. Fish is on his way here, with Sculley, Schwebach, and Davis. They're in a bus. Now, we could all leave right now--the twelve of us could get into the two cars, just about--but I think we should wait for the bus. For one thing, we'll all be together, so nobody can get lost anymore. For another, the road out of here is supposed to be Blood Alley, you know--bandits and like that. I don't know whether that's been exaggerated, but they keep saying it, and I'm beginning to believe it. If it's a dangerous road, we'll be safer all together. And, number three, if we go to Yuksekova and wait for Mr. Fish there, we can't do anything but check into the worst hotel in the world, and attract questions and hassles from a new set of officials."

  "Okay," Simons said reluctantly. "We'll wait awhile."

  He looked tired, Boulware thought: an old man who just wanted to rest. Coburn looked the same: drained, exhausted, almost broken. Boulware wondered just what they had been through to get here.

  Boulware himself felt terrific, even though he had had little sleep for forty-eight hours. He thought of his endless discussions with Mr. Fish about how to get to the border; of the screwup in Adana when the bus failed to come; of the taxi ride through a blizzard in the mountains... And here he was, after all.

  The little guardhouse was bitterly cold, and the wood-burning stove did nothing but fill the room with smoke. Everyone was tired, and the scotch made them drowsy. One by one they began to fall asleep on the wooden benches and the floor.

  Simons did not sleep. Rashid watched him, pacing up and down like a caged tiger, chain-smoking his plastic-tipped cigars. As dawn broke, he started looking out of the window, across no-man's-land to Iran.

  "There are a hundred people with rifles across there," he said to Rashid and Boulware. "What do you think they would do if they should happen to find out exactly who it was who slipped across the border last night?"

  Boulware, too, was beginning to wonder whether he had been right to propose waiting for Mr. Fish.

  Rashid looked out the window. Seeing the Range Rovers on the other side, he remembered something. "The fuel can," he said. "I left the can with the money. We might need the money."

  Simons just looked at him.

  On impulse Rashid walked out of the guardhouse and started across the border.

  It seemed a long way.

  He thought about the psychology of the guards on the Iranian side. They have written us off, he decided. If they have any doubts about whether they did right last night, then they must have spent the last few hours making up excuses, justifying their action. By now they have convinced themselves that they did the right thing. It will take them a while to change their minds.

  He reached the other
side and stepped over the chain.

  He went to the first Range Rover and opened the tailgate.

  Two guards came running out of their hut.

  Rashid lifted the can out of the car and closed the tailgate. "We forgot the oil," he said as he started walking back toward the chain.

  "What do you need it for?" asked one of the guards suspiciously. "You don't have the cars anymore."

  "For the bus," said Rashid as he stepped over the chain. "The bus that's taking us to Van."

  He walked away, feeling their eyes on his back.

  He did not look around until he was back inside the Turkish guardhouse.

  A few minutes later they all heard the sound of a motor. They looked out of the windows. A bus was coming down the road.

  They cheered all over again.

  Pat Sculley, Jim Schwebach, Ron Davis, and Mr. Fish stepped off the bus and came into the guardhouse.

  They all shook hands.

  The latest arrivals had brought another bottle of scotch, so everyone had another celebratory drink.

  Mr. Fish went into a huddle with Ilsman and the border guards.

  Gayden put his arm around Pat Sculley and said: "Have you noticed who's with us?" He pointed.

  Sculley saw Rashid, asleep in a corner. He smiled. In Tehran he had been Rashid's manager, and then, during that first meeting with Simons in the EDS boardroom--was it only six weeks ago?--he had strongly argued that Rashid should be in on the rescue. Now it seemed Simons had come round to the same point of view.

  Mr. Fish said: "Pat Sculley and I have to go to Yuksekova and speak with the chief of police there. The rest of you wait here for us, please."

  "Now hold it," Simons said. "We waited for Boulware. Then we waited for you. Now what are we waiting for?"

  Mr. Fish said: "If we don't get clearance in advance, there will be trouble, because Paul and Bill have no passports."

  Simons turned to Boulware. "Your guy Ilsman is supposed to have dealt with that problem," he said angrily.

  "I thought he did!" said Boulware. "I thought he bribed them."

  "So what's happening?"

  Mr. Fish said: "It's better this way."

  Simons growled: "Make it goddam fast."

  Sculley and Mr. Fish went off.

  The others started a poker game. They all had thousands of dollars hidden in their shoes, and they were a little crazy. One hand Paul got a full house, with three aces in the hole, and the pot went over a thousand dollars. Keane Taylor kept raising him. Taylor had a pair of kings showing, and Paul guessed he had another king in the hole, making a full house with kings. Paul was right. He won fourteen hundred dollars.

  A new shift of border guards arrived, including an officer who was mad as hell to find his guardhouse littered with cigarette butts, hundred-dollar bills, and poker-playing Americans, two of whom had entered the country without passports.

  The morning wore on, and they all began to feel bad--too much liquor and not enough sleep. As the sun climbed in the sky, poker did not seem fun anymore. Simons got jittery. Gayden started giving Boulware a hard time. Boulware wondered where Sculley and Mr. Fish had got to.

  Boulware was now sure he had made a mistake. They should all have left for Yuksekova as soon as he had arrived. He had made another mistake in letting Mr. Fish take charge. Somehow he had lost the initiative.

  At ten A.M., having been away four hours, Sculley and Mr. Fish came back.

  Mr. Fish told the officer that they had permission to leave.

  The officer said something sharp, and--as if accidentally--let his jacket fall open to reveal his pistol.

  The other guards backed away from the Americans.

  Mr. Fish said: "He says we leave when he gives permission."

  "Enough," said Simons. He got to his feet and said something in Turkish. All the Turks looked at him in surprise: they had not realized he spoke their language.

  Simons took the officer into the next room.

  They came out a few minutes later. "We can go," said Simons.

  They all went outside.

  Coburn said: "Did you bribe him, Colonel--or frighten him to death?"

  Simons gave the ghost of a smile and said nothing.

  Pat Sculley said: "Want to come to Dallas, Rashid?"

  For the last couple of days, Rashid reflected, they had been talking as if he would go all the way with them; but this was the first time anyone had asked him directly whether he wanted to. Now he had to make the most important decision of his life.

  Want to come to Dallas, Rashid? It was a dream come true. He thought of what he was leaving behind. He had no children, no wife, not even a girlfriend--he had never been in love. But he thought of his parents, his sister, and his brothers. They might need him: life was sure to be rough in Tehran for some time. Yet what help could he give them? He would be employed for a few more days, or weeks, shipping the Americans' possessions back to the States, taking care of the dogs and cats--then nothing. EDS was finished in Iran. Probably computers were finished, too, for many years. Unemployed, he would be a burden to his family, just another mouth to feed in hard times.

  But in America--

  In America he could continue his education. He could put his talents to work, become a success in business--especially with the help of people like Pat Sculley and Jay Coburn.

  Want to come to Dallas, Rashid?

  "Yes," he said to Sculley. "I want to go to Dallas."

  "What are you waiting for? Get on the bus!"

  They all got on the bus.

  Paul settled into his seat with relief. The bus pulled away, and Iran disappeared into the distance: he would probably never see the country again. There were strangers on the bus: some scruffy Turks in improvised uniforms, and two Americans who--someone mumbled--were pilots. Paul was too exhausted to inquire further. One of the Turkish guards from the border station had joined the party: presumably he was just hitching a ride.

  They stopped in Yuksekova. Mr. Fish told Paul and Bill: "We have to talk to the chief of police. He has been here twenty-five years and this is the most important thing that has ever happened. But don't worry. It's all routine."

  Paul, Bill, and Mr. Fish got off the bus and went into the little police station. Somehow Paul was not worried. He was out of Iran, and although Turkey was not exactly a Western country, at least, he felt, it was not in the throes of a revolution. Or perhaps he was just too tired to be frightened.

  He and Bill were interrogated for two hours, then released.

  Six more people joined the bus at Yuksekova: a woman and a child who seemed to belong to the border guard, and four very dirty men--"Bodyguards," said Mr. Fish--who sat behind a curtain at the back of the bus.

  They drove off, heading for Van, where a charter plane was waiting. Paul looked out at the scenery. It was prettier than Switzerland, he thought, but incredibly poor. Huge boulders littered the road. In the fields ragged people were treading down the snow so that their goats could get at the frozen grass beneath. There were caves with wood fences across their mouths, and it seemed that was where the people lived. They passed the ruins of a stone fortress that might have dated back to the Crusades.

  The bus driver seemed to think he was in a race. He drove aggressively on the winding road, apparently confident that nothing could possibly be coming at him the other way. A group of soldiers waved him down, and he drove right past them. Mr. Fish yelled at him to stop, but he yelled back and kept going.

  A few miles farther on, the army was waiting for them in force, probably having heard that the bus had run the last checkpoint. The soldiers stood in the road with their rifles raised, and the driver was forced to stop.

  A sergeant jumped on the bus and dragged the driver off with a pistol at his head.

  Now we're in trouble, Paul thought.

  The scene was almost funny. The driver was not a bit cowed: he was yelling at the soldiers as loudly and as angrily as they were yelling at him.

  Mr. Fish, Il
sman, and some of the mystery passengers got off the bus and started talking, and eventually they satisfied the military. The driver was literally thrown back onto the bus, but even that did not quench his spirit, and as he drove away he was still yelling out of the window and shaking his fist at the soldiers.

  They reached Van late in the afternoon.

  They went to the town hall, where they were handed over to the local police; and the scruffy bodyguards disappeared like melting snow. The police filled in forms, then escorted them to the airstrip.

  As they were boarding the plane, Ilsman was stopped by a policeman: he had a .45 pistol strapped under his arm, and it seemed that even in Turkey passengers were not allowed to take firearms on board aircraft. However, Ilsman flashed his credentials yet again, and the problem went away.

  Rashid was also stopped. He was carrying the fuel can with the money in it, and of course inflammable liquids were not allowed on an aircraft. He told the police the can contained suntan oil for the Americans' wives, and they believed him.

  They all boarded the plane. Simons and Coburn, coming down from the effects of the stay-awake pills, both stretched out and were asleep within seconds.

  As the plane taxied and took off, Paul felt as elated as if it were his first plane trip. He recalled how, in jail in Tehran, he had longed to do that most ordinary thing, get on a plane and fly away. Soaring up into the clouds now gave him a feeling he had not experienced for a long time: the feeling of freedom.

  3_______

  According to the peculiar rules of Turkish air travel, the charter plane could not go where a scheduled flight was available; so they could not fly directly to Istanbul where Perot was waiting, but had to change planes in Ankara.

  While they were waiting for their connection, they solved a couple of problems.

  Simons, Sculley, Paul, and Bill got into a taxi and asked for the American Embassy.

  It was a long drive through the city. The air was brownish and had a strong smell. "The air's bad here," said Bill.

  "High-sulfur coal," said Simons, who had lived in Turkey in the fifties. "They've never heard of pollution controls."