On Wings of Eagles Page 7

  That weekend and later, Perot got to know Simons better, and saw other sides of his personality. Simons could be very charming, when he chose to be. He enchanted Perot's wife, Margot, and the children thought he was wonderful. With his men he spoke soldiers' language, using a great deal of profanity, but he was surprisingly articulate when talking at a banquet or press conference. His college major had been journalism. Some of his tastes were simple--he read westerns by the boxful, and enjoyed what his sons called "supermarket music"--but he also read a lot of nonfiction, and had a lively curiosity about all sorts of things. He could talk about antiques or history as easily as battles and weaponry.

  Perot and Simons, two willful, dominating personalities, got along by giving one another plenty of room. They did not become close friends. Perot never called Simons by his first name, Art (although Margot did). Like most people, Perot never knew what Simons was thinking unless Simons chose to tell him. Perot recalled their first meeting in Fort Bragg. Before getting up to make his speech, Perot had asked Simons's wife, Lucille: "What is Colonel Simons really like?" She had replied: "Oh, he's just a great big teddy bear." Perot repeated this in his speech. The Son Tay Raiders fell apart. Simons never cracked a smile.

  Perot did not know whether this impenetrable man would care to rescue two EDS executives from a Persian jail. Was Simons grateful for the San Francisco party? Perhaps. After that party Perot had financed Simons on a trip to Laos to search for MIAs--American soldiers missing in action--who had not come back with the prisoners of war. On his return from Laos, Simons had remarked to a group of EDS executives: "Perot is a hard man to say no to."

  As he pulled into Denver Airport. Perot wondered whether, six years later, Simons would still find him a hard man to say no to.

  But that contingency was a long way down the line. Perot was going to try everything else first.

  He went into the terminal, bought a seat on the next flight to Dallas, and found a phone. He called EDS and spoke to T. J. Marquez, one of his most senior executives, who was known as T. J. rather than Tom because there were so many Toms around EDS. "I want you to go find my passport," he told T. J., "and get me a visa for Iran."

  T. J. said: "Ross, I think that's the world's worst idea."

  T. J. would argue until nightfall if you let him. "I'm not going to debate with you," Perot said curtly. "I talked Paul and Bill into going over there, and I'm going to get them out."

  He hung up the phone and headed for the departure gate. All in all, it had been a rotten Christmas.

  T. J. was a little wounded. An old friend of Perot's as well as a vice-president of EDS, he was not used to being talked to like the office boy. This was a persistent failing of Perot's: when he was in high gear, he trod on people's toes and never knew he had hurt them. He was a remarkable man, but he was not a saint.

  2_______

  Ruthie Chiapparone also had a rotten Christmas.

  She was staying at her parents' home, an eighty-five-year-old two-story house on the southwest side of Chicago. In the rush of the evacuation from Iran she had left behind most of the Christmas presents she had bought for her daughters, Karen, eleven, and Ann Marie, five; but soon after arriving in Chicago she had gone shopping with her brother Bill and bought some more. Her family did their best to make Christmas Day happy. Her sister and three brothers visited, and there were lots more toys for Karen and Ann Marie; but everyone asked about Paul.

  Ruthie needed Paul. A soft, dependent woman, five years younger than her husband--she was thirty-four--she loved him partly because she could lean on his broad shoulders and feel safe. She had always been looked after. As a child, even when her mother was out at work--supplementing the wages of Ruthie's father, a truck driver--Ruthie had two older brothers and an older sister to take care of her.

  When she first met Paul he had ignored her.

  She was secretary to a colonel; Paul was working on data processing for the army in the same building. Ruthie used to go down to the cafeteria to get coffee for the colonel, some of her friends knew some of the young officers, she sat down to talk with a group of them, and Paul was there and he ignored her. So she ignored him for a while; then all of a sudden he asked her for a date. They dated for a year and a half and then got married.

  Ruthie had not wanted to go to Iran. Unlike most of the EDS wives, who had found the prospect of moving to a new country exciting, Ruthie had been highly anxious. She had never been outside the United States--Hawaii was the farthest she had ever traveled--and the Middle East seemed a weird and frightening place. Paul took her to Iran for a week in June of 1977, hoping she would like it, but she was not reassured. Finally she agreed to go, but only because the job was so important to him.

  However, she ended up liking it. The Iranians were nice to her, the American community there was close-knit and sociable, and Ruthie's serene nature enabled her to deal calmly with the daily frustrations of living in a primitive country, like the lack of supermarkets and the difficulty of getting a washing machine repaired in less than about six weeks.

  Leaving had been strange. The airport had been crammed, just an unbelievable number of people in there. She had recognized many of the Americans, but most of the people were fleeing Iranians. She had thought: I don't want to leave like this--why are you pushing us out? What are you doing? She had traveled with Bill Gaylord's wife, Emily. They went via Copenhagen, where they spent a freezing cold night in a hotel where the windows would not close: the children had to sleep in their clothes. When she got back to the States, Ross Perot had called her and talked about the passport problem, but Ruthie had not really understood what was happening.

  During that depressing Christmas Day--so unnatural to have Christmas with the children and no Daddy--Paul had called from Tehran. "I've got a present for you," he had said.

  "Your airline ticket?" she said hopefully.

  "No. I bought you a rug."

  "That's nice."

  He had spent the day with Pat and Mary Sculley, he told her. Someone else's wife had cooked his Christmas dinner, and he had watched someone else's children open their presents.

  Two days later she heard that Paul and Bill had an appointment, the following day, to see the man who was making them stay in Iran. After the meeting they would be let go.

  The meeting was today, December 28. By midday Ruthie was wondering why nobody from Dallas had called her yet. Tehran was eight and a half hours ahead of Chicago: surely the meeting was over? By now Paul should be packing his suitcase to come home.

  She called Dallas and spoke to Jim Nyfeler, an EDS man who had left Tehran last June. "How did the meeting work out?" she asked him.

  "It didn't go too well, Ruthie..."

  "What do you mean, it didn't go too well?"

  "They were arrested."

  "They were arrested? You're kidding!"

  "Ruthie, Bill Gayden wants to talk to you."

  Ruthie held the line. Paul arrested? Why? For what? By whom?

  Gayden, the president of EDS World and Paul's boss, came on the line. "Hello, Ruthie."

  "Bill, what is all this?"

  "We don't understand it," Gayden said. "The Embassy over there set up this meeting, and it was supposed to be routine, they weren't accused of any crime... Then, around six-thirty their time, Paul called Lloyd Briggs and told him they were going to jail."

  "Paul's in jail?"

  "Ruthie, try not to worry too much. We got a bunch of lawyers working on it, we're getting the State Department on the case, and Ross is already on his way back from Colorado. We're sure we can straighten this out in a couple of days. It's just a matter of days, really."

  "All right," said Ruthie. She was dazed. It didn't make sense. How could her husband be in jail? She said goodbye to Gayden and hung up.

  What was going on out there?

  The last time Emily Gaylord had seen her husband Bill, she had thrown a plate at him.

  Sitting in her sister Dorothy's home in Washington, talking to Do
rothy and her husband Tim about how they might help to get Bill out of jail, she could not forget that flying plate.

  It had happened in their house in Tehran. One evening in early December Bill came home and said that Emily and the children were to return to the States the very next day. Bill and Emily had four children: Vicki, fifteen; Jackie, twelve; Jenny, nine; and Chris, six. Emily agreed that they should be sent back, but she wanted to stay. She might not be able to do anything to help Bill, but at least he would have someone to talk to.

  It was out of the question, said Bill. She was leaving tomorrow. Ruthie Chiapparone would be on the same plane. All the other EDS wives and children would be evacuated a day or two later.

  Emily did not want to hear about the other wives. She was going to stay with her husband.

  They argued. Emily got madder and madder until finally she could no longer express her frustration in words, so she picked up a plate and hurled it at him.

  He would never forget it, she was sure: it was the only time in eighteen years of marriage that she had exploded like that. She was highly strung, spirited, excitable--but not violent.

  Mild, gentle Bill, it was the last thing he deserved ...

  When she first met him she was twelve, he was fourteen, and she hated him. He was in love with her best friend, Cookie, a strikingly attractive girl, and all he ever talked about was whom Cookie was dating and whether Cookie might like to go out and was Cookie allowed to do this or that... Emily's sisters and brother really liked Bill. She could not get away from him, for their families belonged to the same country club and her brother played golf with Bill. It was her brother who finally talked Bill into asking Emily for a date, long after he had forgotten Cookie; and, after years of mutual indifference, they fell madly in love.

  By then Bill was in college, studying aeronautical engineering 240 miles away in Blacksburg, Virginia, and coming home for vacations and occasional weekends. They could not bear to be so far apart, so, although Emily was only eighteen, they decided to get married.

  It was a good match. They came from similar backgrounds, affluent Washington Catholic families, and Bill's personality--sensitive, calm, logical--complemented Emily's nervous vivacity. They went through a lot together over the next eighteen years. They lost a child with brain damage, and Emily had major surgery three times. Their troubles brought them closer together.

  And here was a new crisis: Bill was in jail.

  Emily had not yet told her mother. Mother's brother, Emily's uncle Gus, had died that day, and Mother was already terribly upset. Emily could not talk to her about Bill yet. But she could talk to Dorothy and Tim.

  Her brother-in-law Tim Reardon was a U.S. Attorney in the Justice Department and had very good connections. Tim's father had been an administrative assistant to President John F. Kennedy, and Tim had worked for Ted Kennedy. Tim also knew personally the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, and Maryland Senator Charles Mathias. He was familiar with the passport problem, for Emily had told him about it as soon as she got back to Washington from Tehran, and he had discussed it with Ross Perot.

  "I could write a letter to President Carter, and ask Ted Kennedy to deliver it personally," Tim was saying.

  Emily nodded. It was hard for her to concentrate. She wondered what Bill was doing right now.

  Paul and Bill stood just inside Cell Number 9, cold, numb, and desperate to know what would happen next.

  Paul felt very vulnerable: a white American in a business suit, unable to speak more than a few words of Farsi, faced by a crowd of what looked like thugs and murderers. He suddenly remembered reading that men were frequently raped in jail, and he wondered grimly how he would cope with something like that.

  Paul looked at Bill. His face was white with tension.

  One of the inmates spoke to them in Farsi. Paul said: "Does anyone here speak English?"

  From another cell across the corridor a voice called: "I speak English."

  There was a shouted conversation in rapid Farsi; then the interpreter called: "What is your crime?"

  "We haven't done anything," Paul said.

  "What are you accused of?"

  "Nothing. We're just ordinary American businessmen with wives and children, and we don't know why we're in jail."

  This was translated. There was more rapid Farsi; then the interpreter said: "This one who is talking to me, he is the boss of your cell, because he is there the longest."

  "We understand," Paul said.

  "He will tell you where to sleep."

  The tension eased as they talked. Paul took in his surroundings. The concrete walls were painted what might once have been orange but now just looked dirty. There was some kind of thin carpet or matting covering most of the concrete floor. Around the cell were six sets of bunks, stacked three high: the lowest bunk was no more than a thin mattress on the floor. The room was lit by a single dim bulb and ventilated by a grille in the wall that let in the bitterly cold night air. The cell was very crowded.

  After a while a guard came down, opened the door of Cell Number 9, and motioned Paul and Bill to come out.

  This is it, Paul thought; we'll be released now. Thank God I don't have to spend a night in that awful cell.

  They followed the guard upstairs and into a little room. He pointed at their shoes.

  They understood they were to take their shoes off.

  The guard handed them each a pair of plastic slippers.

  Paul realized with bitter disappointment that they were not about to be released; he did have to spend a night in the cell. He thought with anger of the Embassy staff: they had arranged the meeting with Dadgar, they had advised Paul against taking lawyers, they had said Dadgar was "favorably disposed" ... Ross Perot would say: "Some people can't organize a two-car funeral." That applied to the U.S. Embassy staff. They were simply incompetent. Surely, Paul thought, after all the mistakes they have made, they ought to come here tonight and try to get us out?

  They put on the plastic slippers and followed the guard back downstairs.

  The other prisoners were getting ready for sleep, lying on the bunks and wrapping themselves in thin wool blankets. The cell boss, using sign language, showed Paul and Bill where to lie down: Bill was on the middle bunk of a stack, Paul below him with just a thin mattress between his body and the floor.

  They lay down. The light stayed on, but it was so dim it hardly mattered. After a while Paul no longer noticed the smell, but he did not get used to the cold. With the concrete floor, the open vent, and no heating, it was almost like sleeping out of doors. What a terrible life criminals lead, Paul thought, having to endure conditions such as these; I'm glad I'm not a criminal. One night of this will be more than enough.

  3____

  Ross Perot took a taxi from the Dallas/Fort Worth regional airport to EDS corporate headquarters at 7171 Forest Lane. At the EDS gate he rolled down the window to let the security guards see his face, then sat back again as the car wound along the quarter-mile driveway through the park. The site had once been a country club, and these grounds a golf course. EDS headquarters loomed ahead, a seven-story office building, and next to it a tornado-proof blockhouse containing the vast computers with their thousands of miles of magnetic tape.

  Perot paid the driver, walked into the office building, and took the elevator to the fifth floor, where he went to Gayden's corner office.

  Gayden was at his desk. Gayden always managed to look untidy, despite the EDS dress code. He had taken his jacket off. His tie was loosened, the collar of his button-down shirt was open, his hair was mussed, and a cigarette dangled from the comer of his mouth. He stood up when Perot walked in.

  "Ross, how's your mother?"

  "She's in good spirits, thank you."

  "That's good."

  Perot sat down. "Now, where are we on Paul and Bill?"

  Gayden picked up the phone, saying: "Lemme get T. J. in here." He punched T. J. Marquez's number and said: "Ross is here ... Y
eah. My office." He hung up and said: "He'll be right down. Uh ... I called the State Department. The head of the Iran Desk is a man called Henry Precht. At first he wouldn't return my call. In the end I told his secretary, I said: 'If he doesn't call me within twenty minutes, I'm going to call CBS and ABC and NBC, and in one hour's time Ross Perot is going to give a press conference to say that we have two Americans in trouble in Iran and our country won't help them.' He called back five minutes later."

  "What did he say?"

  Gayden sighed. "Ross, their basic attitude up there is that if Paul and Bill are in jail they must have done something wrong."

  "But what are they going to do?"

  "Contact the Embassy, look into it, blah blah blah."

  "Well, we're going to have to put a firecracker under Precht's tail," Perot said angrily. "Now, Tom Luce is the man to do that." Luce, an aggressive young lawyer, was the founder of the Dallas firm of Hughes & Hill, which handled most of EDS's legal business. Perot had retained him as EDS's counsel years ago, mainly because Perot could relate to a young man who, like himself, had left a big company to start his own business and was struggling to pay the bills. Hughes & Hill, like EDS, had grown rapidly. Perot had never regretted hiring Luce.

  Gayden said: "Luce is right here in the office somewhere."

  "How about Tom Walter?"

  "He's here, too."

  Walter, a tall Alabaman with a voice like molasses, was EDS's chief financial officer and probably the smartest man, in terms of sheer brains, in the company. Perot said: "I want Walter to go to work on the bail. I don't want to pay it, but I will if we have to. Walter should figure out how we go about paying it. You can bet they won't take American Express."

  "Okay," Gayden said.

  A voice from behind said: "Hi, Ross!"

  Perot looked around and saw T. J. Marquez. "Hi, Tom." T. J. was a tall, slim man of forty with Spanish good looks: olive skin, short, curly black hair, and a big smile that showed lots of white teeth. The first employee Perot ever hired, he was living evidence that Perot had an uncanny knack of picking good men. T. J. was now a vice-president of EDS, and his personal shareholding in the company was worth millions of dollars. "The Lord has been good to us," T. J. would say. Perot knew that T. J.'s parents had really struggled to send him to college. Their sacrifices had been well rewarded. One of the best things about the meteoric success of EDS, for Perot, had been sharing the triumph with people like T. J.