On Wings of Eagles Page 5

  Abolhasan said: "You are allowed one phone call each."

  Just like the cop shows on TV--one phone call, then into the slammer.

  Paul picked up the phone and dialed. "Lloyd Briggs, please. This is Paul Chiapparone ... Lloyd? I can't make dinner tonight. I'm going to jail."

  Bill thought: Paul doesn't really believe it yet.

  Paul listened for a moment, then said: "How about calling Gayden, for a start?" Bill Gayden, whose name was so similar to Bill Gaylord's, was president of EDS World and Paul's immediate boss. As soon as this news reaches Dallas, Bill thought, these Iranian jokers will see what happens when EDS really gets into gear.

  Paul hung up and Bill took his turn on the phone. He dialed the U.S. Embassy and asked for the Consul General.

  "Goelz? This is Bill Gaylord. We've just been arrested, and bail has been set at thirteen million dollars."

  "How did that happen?"

  Bill was infuriated by Goelz's calm, measured voice. "You arranged this meeting and you told us we could leave afterward!"

  "I'm sure, if you've done nothing wrong--"

  "What do you mean if?" Bill shouted.

  "I'll have someone down at the jail as soon as possible," Goelz said.

  Bill hung up.

  The two Iranians who had been hanging about in the corridor all day came in. Bill noticed they were big and burly, and realized they must be plainclothes policemen.

  Abolhasan said: "Dadgar said it would not be necessary to handcuff you."

  Paul said: "Gee, thanks."

  Bill suddenly recalled the stories he had heard about the torturing of prisoners in the Shah's jails. He tried not to think about it.

  Abolhasan said: "Do you want to give me your briefcases and wallets?"

  They handed them over. Paul kept back a hundred dollars.

  "Do you know where the jail is?" Paul asked Abolhasan.

  "You're going to a Temporary Detention Facility at the Ministry of Justice on Khayyam Street."

  "Get back to Bucharest fast and give Lloyd Briggs all the details."

  "Sure."

  One of the plainclothes policemen held the door open. Bill looked at Paul. Paul shrugged.

  They went out.

  The policemen escorted them downstairs and into a little car. "I guess we'll have to stay in jail for a couple of hours," Paul said. "It'll take that long for the Embassy and EDS to get people down there to bail us out."

  "They might be there already," Bill said optimistically.

  The bigger of the two policemen got behind the wheel. His colleague sat beside him in the front. They pulled out of the courtyard and onto Eisenhower Avenue, driving fast. Suddenly they turned into a narrow one-way street, heading the wrong way at top speed. Bill clutched the seat in front of him. They swerved in and out, dodging the cars and buses coming the other way, other drivers honking and shaking their fists.

  They headed south and slightly east. Bill thought ahead to their arrival at the jail. Would people from EDS or the Embassy be there to negotiate a reduction in the bail so that they could go home instead of to a cell? Surely the Embassy staff would be outraged at what Dadgar had done. Ambassador Sullivan would intervene to get them released at once. After all, it was iniquitous to put two Americans in an Iranian jail when no crime had been committed and then set bail at thirteen million dollars. The whole situation was ridiculous.

  Except that here he was, sitting in the back of this car, silently looking out of the windows and wondering what would happen next.

  As they went farther south, what he saw through the window frightened him even more.

  In the north of the city, where the Americans lived and worked, riots and fighting were still an occasional phenomenon, but here--Bill now realized--they must be continuous. The black hulks of burned buses smoldered in the streets. Hundreds of demonstrators were running riot, yelling and chanting, setting fires and building barricades. Young teenagers threw Molotov cocktails--bottles of gasoline with blazing rag fuses--at cars. Their targets seemed random. We might be next, Bill thought. He heard shooting, but it was dark and he could not see who was firing at whom. The driver never went at less than top speed. Every other street was blocked by a mob, a barricade, or a blazing car: the driver turned around, blind to all traffic signals, and raced through side streets and back alleys at breakneck speed to circumvent the obstacles. We're not going to get there alive, Bill thought. He touched the rosary in his pocket.

  It seemed to go on forever--then, suddenly, the little car swung into a circular courtyard and pulled up. Without speaking, the burly driver got out of the car and went into the building.

  The Ministry of Justice was a big place, occupying a whole city block. In darkness--the streetlights were all off-Bill could make out what seemed to be a five-story building. The driver was inside for ten or fifteen minutes. When he came out he climbed behind the wheel and drove around the block. Bill assumed he had registered his prisoners at the front desk.

  At the rear of the building the car mounted the curb and stopped on the sidewalk by a pair of steel gates set into a long, high brick wall. Somewhere over to the right, where the wall ended, there was the vague outline of a small park or garden. The driver got out. A peephole opened in one of the steel doors, and there was a short conversation in Farsi. Then the doors opened. The driver motioned Paul and Bill to get out of the car.

  They walked through the doors.

  Bill looked around. They were in a small courtyard. He saw ten or fifteen guards armed with automatic weapons scattered around the courtyard. In front of him was a circular driveway with parked cars and trucks. To his left, up against the brick wall, was a single-story building. On his right was another steel door.

  The driver went up to the second steel door and knocked. There was another exchange in Farsi through another peephole. Then the door was opened, and Paul and Bill were ushered inside.

  They were in a small reception area with a desk and a few chairs. Bill looked around. There were no lawyers, no Embassy staff, no EDS executives here to spring him from jail. We're on our own, he thought, and this is going to be dangerous.

  A guard stood behind the desk with a ballpoint pen and a pile of forms. He asked a question in Farsi. Guessing, Paul said: "Paul Chiapparone," and spelled it.

  Filling out the forms took close to an hour. An English-speaking prisoner was brought from the jail to help translate. Paul and Bill gave their Tehran addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, and listed their possessions. Their money was taken away and they were each given two thousand rials, about thirty dollars.

  They were taken into an adjoining room and told to remove their clothes. They both stripped to their undershorts. Their clothing and their bodies were searched. Paul was told to get dressed again, but not Bill. It was very cold: the heat was off here, too. Naked and shivering, Bill wondered what would happen now. Obviously they were the only Americans in the jail. Everything he had ever read or heard about being in prison was awful. What would the guards do to him and Paul? What would the other prisoners do? Surely any minute now someone would come to get him released.

  "Can I put on my coat?" he asked the guard.

  The guard did not understand.

  "Coat," Bill said, and mimed putting on a coat.

  The guard handed him his coat.

  A little later another guard came in and told Bill to get dressed.

  They were led back into the reception area. Once again, Bill looked around expectantly for lawyers or friends; once again, he was disappointed.

  They were taken through the reception area. Another door was opened. They went down a flight of stairs into the basement.

  It was cold, dim, and dirty. There were several cells, all crammed with prisoners, all of them Iranian. The stink of urine made Bill close his mouth and breathe shallowly through his nose. The guard opened the door to Cell Number 9. Paul and Bill walked in.

  Sixteen unshaven faces stared at them, alive with curiosity. Paul an
d Bill stared back, horrified.

  The cell door clanged shut behind them.

  Two

  1_______

  Until this moment life had been extremely good to Ross Perot.

  On the morning of December 28, 1978, he sat at the breakfast table in his mountain cabin at Vail, Colorado, and was served breakfast by Holly, the cook.

  Perched on the mountainside and half-hidden in the aspen forest, the "log cabin" had six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a thirty-foot living room, and an apres-ski "recuperation room" with a Jacuzzi pool in front of the fireplace. It was just a holiday home.

  Ross Perot was rich.

  He had started EDS with a thousand dollars, and now the shares in the company--more than half of which he still owned personally--were worth several hundred million dollars. He was the sole owner of the Petrus Oil and Gas Company, which had reserves worth hundreds of millions. He also had an awful lot of Dallas real estate. It was difficult to figure out exactly how much money he had--a lot depended on just how you counted it--but it was certainly more than five hundred million dollars and probably less than a billion.

  In novels, fantastically rich people were portrayed as greedy, power-mad, neurotic, hated, and unhappy--always unhappy. Perot did not read many novels. He was happy.

  He did not think it was the money that made him happy. He believed in moneymaking, in business and profits, because that was what made America tick; and he enjoyed a few of the toys money could buy--the cabin cruiser, the speedboats, the helicopter; but rolling around in hundred-dollar bills had never been one of his daydreams. He had dreamed of building a successful business that would employ thousands of people; but his greatest dream-come-true was right here in front of his eyes. Running around in thermal underwear, getting ready to go skiing, was his family. Here was Ross Junior, twenty years old, and if there was a finer young man in the state of Texas, Perot had yet to meet him. Here were four--count 'em, four--daughters: Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine. They were all healthy, smart, and lovable. Perot had sometimes told interviewers that he would measure his success in life by how his children turned out. If they grew into good citizens with a deep concern for other people, he would consider his life worthwhile. (The interviewers would say: "Hell, I believe you, but if I put stuff like that in the article the readers will think I've been bought off!" And Perot would just say: "I don't care. I'll tell you the truth--you write whatever you like.") And the children had turned out just exactly how he had wished, so far. Being brought up in circumstances of great wealth and privilege had not spoiled them at all. It was almost miraculous.

  Running around after the children with ski-lift tickets, wool socks, and sunscreen lotion was the person responsible for this miracle, Margot Perot. She was beautiful, loving, intelligent, classy, and a perfect mother. She could, if she had wanted to, have married a John Kennedy, a Paul Newman, a Prince Rainier, or a Rockefeller. Instead, she had fallen in love with Ross Perot from Texarkana, Texas: five feet seven with a broken nose and nothing in his pocket but hopes. All his life Perot had believed he was lucky. Now, at the age of forty-eight, he could look back and see that the luckiest thing that ever happened to him was Margot.

  He was a happy man with a happy family, but a shadow had fallen over them this Christmas. Perot's mother was dying. She had bone cancer. On Christmas Eve she had fallen at home: it was not a heavy fall, but because the cancer had weakened her bones, she had broken her hip and had to be rushed to Baylor Hospital in downtown Dallas.

  Perot's sister, Bette, spent that night with their mother; then, on Christmas Day, Perot and Margot and the five children loaded the presents into the station wagon and drove to the hospital. Grandmother was in such good spirits that they all thoroughly enjoyed their day. However, she did not want to see them the following day: she knew they had planned to go skiing, and she insisted they go, despite her illness. Margot and the children left for Vail on December 26, but Perot stayed behind.

  There followed a battle of wills such as Perot had fought with his mother in childhood. Lulu May Perot was only an inch or two over five feet, and slight, but she was no more frail than a sergeant in the marines. She told him he worked hard and he needed the holiday. He replied that he did not want to leave her. Eventually the doctors intervened, and told him he was doing her no good by staying against her will. The next day he joined his family in Vail. She had won, as she always had when he was a boy.

  One of their battles had been fought over a Boy Scout trip. There had been flooding in Texarkana, and the Scouts were planning to camp near the disaster area for three days and help with relief work. Young Perot was determined to go, but his mother knew that he was too young--he would only be a burden to the scoutmaster. Young Ross kept on and on at her, and she just smiled sweetly and said no.

  That time he won a concession from her: he was allowed to go and help pitch tents the first day, but he had to come home in the evening. It wasn't much of a compromise. But he was quite incapable of defying her. He just had to imagine the scene when he would come home, and think of the words he would use to tell her that he had disobeyed her--and he knew he could not do it.

  He was never spanked. He could not remember even being yelled at. She did not rule him by fear. With her fair hair, blue eyes, and sweet nature, she bound him--and his sister, Bette--in chains of love. She would just look you in the eye and tell you what to do, and you simply could not bring yourself to make her unhappy.

  Even at the age of twenty-three, when Ross had been around the world and come home again, she would say: "Who have you got a date with tonight? Where are you going? What time will you be back?" And when he came home he would always have to kiss her good night. But by this time their battles were few and far between, for her principles were so deeply embedded in him that they had become his own. She now ruled the family like a constitutional monarch, wearing the trappings of power and legitimizing the real decision-makers.

  He had inherited more than her principles. He also had her iron will. He, too, had a way of looking people in the eye. He had married a woman who resembled his mother. Blond and blue-eyed, Margot also had the kind of sweet nature that Lulu May had. But Margot did not dominate Perot.

  Everybody's mother has to die, and Lulu May was now eighty-two, but Perot could not be stoical about it. She was still a big part of his life. She no longer gave him orders, but she did give him encouragement. She had encouraged him to start EDS, and she had been the company's book-keeper during the early years as well as a founding director. He could talk over problems with her. He had consulted her in December 1969, at the height of his campaign to publicize the plight of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam. He had been planning to fly to Hanoi, and his colleagues at EDS had pointed out that if he put his life in danger the price of EDS stock might fall. He was faced with a moral dilemma: Did he have the right to make shareholders suffer, even for the best of causes? He had put the question to his mother. Her answer had been unhesitating. "Let them sell their shares." The prisoners were dying, and that was far more important than the price of EDS stock.

  It was the conclusion Perot would have come to on his own. He did not really need her to tell him what to do. Without her, he would be the same man and do the same things. He was going to miss her, that was all. He was going to miss her very badly indeed.

  But he was not a man to brood. He could do nothing for her today. Two years ago, when she had a stroke, he had turned Dallas upside down on a Sunday afternoon to find the best neurosurgeon in town and bring him to the hospital. He responded to a crisis with action. But if there was nothing to be done he was able to shut the problem out of his mind, forgetting the bad news and going on to the next task. He would not now spoil his family's holiday by walking around with a mournful face. He would enter into the fun and games, and enjoy the company of his wife and children.

  The phone rang, interrupting his thoughts, and he stepped into the kitchen to pick it up.

  "Ross Perot," he s
aid.

  "Ross, this is Bill Gayden."

  "Hi, Bill." Gayden was an EDS old-timer, having joined the company in 1967. In some ways he was the typical salesman. He was a jovial man, everyone's buddy. He liked a joke, a drink, a smoke, and a hand of poker. He was also a wizard financier, very good around acquisitions, mergers, and deals, which was why Perot had made him president of EDS World. Gayden's sense of humor was irrepressible--he would find something funny to say in the most serious situations--but now he sounded somber.

  "Ross, we got a problem."

  It was an EDS catchphrase: We got a problem.It meant bad news.

  Gayden went on: "It's Paul and Bill."

  Perot knew instantly what he was talking about. The way in which his two senior men in Iran had been prevented from leaving the country was highly sinister, and it had never been far from his mind, even while his mother lay dying. "But they're supposed to be allowed out today."

  "They've been arrested."

  The anger began as a small, hard knot in the pit of Perot's stomach. "Now, Bill, I was assured that they would be allowed to leave Iran as soon as this interview was over. Now I want to know how this happened."

  "They just slung them in jail."

  "On what charges?"

  "They didn't specify charges."

  "Under what law did they jail them?"

  "They didn't say."

  "What are we doing to get them out?"

  "Ross, they set bail at ninety million tomans. That's twelve million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

  "Twelve million?"

  "That's right."

  "Now how the devil has this happened?"

  "Ross, I've been on the phone with Lloyd Briggs for half an hour, trying to understand it, and the fact is that Lloyd doesn't understand it either."

  Perot paused. EDS executives were supposed to give him answers, not questions. Gayden knew better than to call without briefing himself as thoroughly as possible. Perot was not going to get any more out of him right now; Gayden just didn't have the information.