On Wings of Eagles Page 8

  T. J. sat down and talked fast. "I called Claude."

  Perot nodded: Claude Chappelear was the company's in-house lawyer.

  "Claude's friendly with Matthew Nimetz, counselor to Secretary of State Vance. I thought Claude might get Nimetz to talk to Vance himself. Nimetz called personally a little later: he wants to help us. He's going to send a cable under Vance's name to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, telling them to get off their butts; and he's going to write a personal note to Vance about Paul and Bill."

  "Good."

  "We also called Admiral Moorer. He's up to speed on this whole thing because we consulted him about the passport problem. Moorer's going to talk to Ardeshir Zahedi. Now, Zahedi is not just the Iranian Ambassador in Washington but also the Shah's brother-in-law, and he's now back in Iran--running the country, some say. Moorer will ask Zahedi to vouch for Paul and Bill. Right now we're drafting a cable for Zahedi to send to the Ministry of Justice."

  "Who's drafting it?"

  "Tom Luce."

  "Good." Perot summed up: "We've got the Secretary of State, the head of the Iran Desk, the Embassy, and the Iranian Ambassador all working on the case. That's good. Now let's talk about what else we can do."

  T. J. said: "Tom Luce and Tom Walter have an appointment with Admiral Moorer in Washington tomorrow. Moorer also suggested we call Richard Helms--he used to be Ambassador to Iran after he quit the CIA."

  "I'll call Helms," Perot said. "And I'll call Al Haig and Henry Kissinger. I want you two to concentrate on getting all our people out of Iran."

  Gayden said: "Ross, I'm not sure that's necessary--"

  "I don't want a discussion, Bill," said Perot. "Let's get it done. Now, Lloyd Briggs has to stay there and deal with the problem--he's the boss, with Paul and Bill in jail. Everyone else comes home."

  "You can't make them come home if they don't want to," Gayden said.

  "Who'll want to stay?"

  "Rich Gallagher. His wife--"

  "I know. Okay, Briggs and Gallagher stay. Nobody else." Perot stood up. "I'll get started on those calls."

  He took the elevator to the seventh floor and walked through his secretary's office. Sally Walther was at her desk. She had been with him for years, and had been involved in the prisoners-of-war campaign and the San Francisco party. (She had come back from that weekend with a Son Tay Raider in tow, and Captain Udo Walther was now her husband.) Perot said to her: "Call Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and Richard Helms."

  He went through to his own office and sat at his desk. The office, with its paneled walls, costly carpet, and shelves of antiquarian books, looked more like a Victorian library in an English country house. He was surrounded by souvenirs and his favorite art. For the house Margot bought Impressionist paintings, but in his office Perot preferred American art: Norman Rockwell originals and the Wild West bronzes of Frederic Remington. Through the window he could see the slopes of the old golf course.

  Perot did not know where Henry Kissinger might be spending the holidays: it could take Sally a while to find him. There was time to think about what to say. Kissinger was not a close friend. It would need all his salesmanship to grab Kissinger's attention and, in the space of a short phone call, win his sympathy.

  The phone on his desk buzzed, and Sally called: "Henry Kissinger for you."

  Perot picked it up. "Ross Perot."

  "I have Henry Kissinger for you."

  Perot waited.

  Kissinger had once been called the most powerful man in the world. He knew the Shah personally. But how well would he remember Ross Perot? The prisoners-of-war campaign had been big, but Kissinger's projects had been bigger : peace in the Middle East, rapprochement between the U.S. and China, the ending of the Vietnam War ...

  "Kissinger here." It was the familiar deep voice, its accent a curious mixture of American vowels and German consonants.

  "Dr. Kissinger, this is Ross Perot. I'm a businessman in Dallas, Texas, and--"

  "Hell, Ross, I know who you are," said Kissinger.

  Perot's heart leaped. Kissinger's voice was warm, friendly, and informal. This was great! Perot began to tell him about Paul and Bill: how they had gone voluntarily to see Dadgar, how the State Department had let them down. He assured Kissinger they were innocent, and pointed out that they had not been charged with any crime, nor had the Iranians produced an atom of evidence against them. "These are my men, I sent them there, and I have to get them back," he finished.

  "I'll see what I can do," Kissinger said.

  Perot was exultant. "I sure appreciate it!"

  "Send me a short briefing paper with all the details."

  "We'll get it to you today."

  "I'll get back to you, Ross."

  "Thank you, sir."

  The line went dead.

  Perot felt terrific. Kissinger had remembered him, had been friendly and willing to help. He wanted a briefing paper: EDS could send it today--

  Perot was struck by a thought. He had no idea where Kissinger had been speaking from--it might have been London, Monte Carlo, Mexico ...

  "Sally?"

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Did you find out where Kissinger is?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Kissinger was in New York, in his duplex at the exclusive River House apartment complex on East Fifty-second Street. From the window he could see the East River.

  Kissinger remembered Ross Perot clearly. Perot was a rough diamond. He helped causes with which Kissinger was sympathetic, usually causes having to do with prisoners. In the Vietnam War Perot's campaign had been courageous, even though he had sometimes harassed Kissinger beyond the point of what was doable. Now some of Perot's own people were prisoners.

  Kissinger could readily believe that they were innocent. Iran was on the brink of civil war: justice and due process meant little over there now. He wondered whether he could help. He wanted to: it was a good cause. He was no longer in office, but he still had friends. He would call Ardeshir Zahedi, he decided, as soon as the briefing paper arrived from Dallas.

  Perot felt good about the conversation with Kissinger. Hell, Ross, I know who you are. That was worth more than money. The only advantage of being famous was that it sometimes helped get important things done.

  T. J. came in. "I have your passport," he said. "It already has a visa for Iran, but, Ross, I don't think you should go. All of us here can work on the problem, but you're the key man. The last thing we need is for you to be out of contact--in Tehran or just up in a plane somewhere--at a moment when we have to make a crucial decision."

  Perot had forgotten all about going to Tehran. Everything he had heard in the last hour encouraged him to think it would not be necessary. "You might be right," he said to T. J. "We have so many things going in the area of negotiation--only one of them has to work. I won't go to Tehran. Yet."

  4____

  Henry Precht was probably the most harassed man in Washington.

  A long-serving State Department official with a bent for art and philosophy and a wacky sense of humor, he had been making American policy on Iran more or less by himself for much of 1978, while his superiors--right up to President Carter--focused on the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel.

  Since early November, when things had really started to warm up in Iran, Precht had been working seven days a week from eight in the morning until nine at night. And those damn Texans seemed to think he had nothing else to do but talk to them on the phone.

  The trouble was, the crisis in Iran was not the only power struggle Precht had to worry about. There was another fight going on, in Washington, between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance--Precht's boss--and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the President's National Security Advisor.

  Vance believed, like President Carter, that American foreign policy should reflect American morality. The American people believed in freedom, justice, and democracy, and they did not want to support tyrants. The Shah of Iran was a tyrant. Amnesty International had called Iran's human-rights record
the worst in the world, and the many reports of the Shah's systematic use of torture had been confirmed by the International Commission of Jurists. Since the CIA had put the Shah in power and the U.S.A. had kept him there, a President who talked a lot about human rights had to do something.

  In January 1977 Carter had hinted that tyrants might be denied American aid. Carter was indecisive--later that year he visited Iran and lavished praise on the Shah--but Vance believed in the human-rights approach.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski did not. The National Security Advisor believed in power. The Shah was an ally of the United States, and should be supported. Sure, he should be encouraged to stop torturing people--but not yet. His regime was under attack: this was no time to liberalize it.

  When would be the time? asked the Vance faction. The Shah had been strong for most of his twenty-five years of rule, but had never shown much inclination toward moderate government. Brzezinski replied: "Name one single moderate government in that region of the world."

  There were those in the Carter administration who thought that if America did not stand for freedom and democracy there was no point in having a foreign policy at all; but that was a somewhat extreme view, so they fell back on a pragmatic argument: the Iranian people had had enough of the Shah, and they were going to get rid of him regardless of what Washington thought.

  Rubbish, said Brzezinski. Read history. Revolutions succeed when rulers make concessions, and fail when those in power crush the rebels with an iron fist. The Iranian Army, four hundred thousand strong, can easily put down any revolt.

  The Vance faction--including Henry Precht--did not agree with the Brzezinski Theory of Revolutions: threatened tyrants make concessions because the rebels are strong, not the other way around, they said. More importantly, they did not believe that the Iranian Army was four hundred thousand strong. Figures were hard to get, but soldiers were deserting at a rate that fluctuated around 8 percent per month, and there were whole units that would go over to the revolutionaries intact in the event of all-out civil war.

  The two Washington factions were getting their information from different sources. Brzezinski was listening to Ardeshir Zahedi, the Shah's brother-in-law and the most powerful pro-Shah figure in Iran. Vance was listening to Ambassador Sullivan. Sullivan's cables were not as consistent as Washington could have wished--perhaps because the situation in Iran was sometimes confusing--but, since September, the general trend of his reports had been to say that the Shah was doomed.

  Brzezinski said Sullivan was running around with his head cut off and could not be trusted. Vance's supporters said that Brzezinski dealt with bad news by shooting the messenger.

  The upshot was that the United States did nothing. One time the State Department drafted a cable to Ambassador Sullivan, instructing him to urge the Shah to form a broad-based civilian coalition government: Brzezinski killed the cable. Another time Brzezinski phoned the Shah and assured him that he had the support of President Carter; the Shah asked for a confirming cable; the State Department did not send the cable. In their frustration both sides leaked information to the newspapers, so that the whole world knew that Washington's policy on Iran was paralyzed by infighting.

  With all that going on, the last thing Precht needed was a gang of Texans on his tail thinking they were the only people in the world with a problem.

  Besides, he knew, he thought, exactly why EDS was in trouble. On asking whether EDS was represented by an agent in Iran, he was told: Yes--Mr. Abolfath Mahvi. That explained everything. Mahvi was a well-known Tehran middleman, nicknamed "the king of the five percenters" for his dealings in military contracts. Despite his high-level contacts the Shah had put him on a blacklist of people banned from doing business in Iran. This was why EDS was suspected of corruption.

  Precht would do what he could. He would get the Embassy in Tehran to look into the case, and perhaps Ambassador Sullivan might be able to put pressure on the Iranians to release Chiapparone and Gaylord. But there was no way the United States government was going to put all other Iranian questions on the back burner. They were attempting to support the existing regime, and this was no time to unbalance that regime further by threatening a break in diplomatic relations over two jailed businessmen, especially when there were another twelve thousand U.S. citizens in Iran, all of whom the State Department was supposed to look after. It was unfortunate, but Chiapparone and Gaylord would just have to sweat it out.

  Henry Precht meant well. However, early in his involvement with Paul and Bill, he--like Lou Goelz--made a mistake that at first wrongly colored his attitude to the problem and later made him defensive in all his dealings with EDS. Precht acted as if the investigation in which Paul and Bill were supposed to be witnesses were a legitimate judicial inquiry into allegations of corruption, rather than a barefaced act of blackmail. Goelz, on this assumption, decided to cooperate with General Biglari. Precht, making the same mistake, refused to treat Paul and Bill as criminally kidnapped Americans.

  Whether Abolfath Mahvi was corrupt or not, the fact was that he had not made a penny out of EDS's contract with the Ministry. Indeed, EDS had got into trouble in its early days for refusing to give Mahvi a piece of the action.

  It happened like this. Mahvi helped EDS get its first, small contract in Iran, creating a document-control system for the Iranian Navy. EDS, advised that by law they had to have a local partner, promised Mahvi a third of the profit. When the contract was completed, two years later, EDS duly paid Mahvi four hundred thousand dollars.

  But while the Ministry contract was being negotiated, Mahvi was on the blacklist. Nevertheless, when the deal was about to be signed, Mahvi--who by this time was off the blacklist again--demanded that the contract be given to a joint company owned by him and EDS.

  EDS refused. While Mahvi had earned his share of the navy contract, he had done nothing for the Ministry deal.

  Mahvi claimed that EDS's association with him had smoothed the way for the Ministry contract through the twenty-four different government bodies that had to approve it. Furthermore, he said, he had helped obtain a tax ruling favorable to EDS that was written into the contract: EDS only got the ruling because Mahvi had spent time with the Minister of Finance in Monte Carlo.

  EDS had not asked for his help, and did not believe that he had given it. Furthermore, Ross Perot did not like the kind of "help" that takes place in Monte Carlo.

  EDS's Iranian attorney complained to the Prime Minister, and Mahvi was carpeted for demanding bribes. Nevertheless, his influence was so great that the Ministry of Health would not sign the contract unless EDS made him happy.

  EDS had a series of stormy negotiations with Mahvi. EDS still refused point-blank to share profits with him. In the end there was a face-saving compromise: a joint company, acting as subcontractor to EDS, would recruit and employ all EDS's Iranian staff. In fact, the joint company never made money, but that was later: at the time Mahvi accepted the compromise and the Ministry contract was signed.

  So EDS had not paid bribes, and the Iranian government knew it; but Henry Precht did not, nor did Lou Goelz. Consequently their attitude to Paul and Bill was equivocal. Both men spent many hours on the case, but neither gave it top priority. When EDS's combative lawyer Tom Luce talked to them as if they were idle or stupid or both, they became indignant and said they might do better if he would get off their backs.

  Precht in Washington and Goelz in Tehran were the crucial, ground-level operatives dealing with the case. Neither of them was idle. Neither was incompetent. But they both made mistakes, they both became somewhat hostile to EDS, and in those vital first few days they both failed to help Paul and Bill.

  Three

  1_____

  A guard opened the cell door, looked around, pointed at Paul and Bill, and beckoned them.

  Bill's hopes soared. Now they would be released.

  They got up and followed the guard upstairs. It was good to see daylight through the windows. They went out the door and across the court
yard to the little one-story building beside the entrance gate. The fresh air tasted heavenly.

  It had been a terrible night. Bill had lain on the thin mattress, dozing fitfully, startled by the slightest movement from the other prisoners, looking around anxiously in the dim light from the all-night bulb. He had known it was morning when a guard came with glasses of tea and rough hunks of bread for breakfast. He had not felt hungry. He had said a rosary.

  Now it seemed his prayers were being answered.

  Inside the one-story building was a visiting room furnished with simple tables and chairs. Two people were waiting. Bill recognized one of them: it was Ali Jordan, the Iranian who worked with Lou Goelz at the Embassy. He shook hands and introduced his colleague, Bob Sorenson.

  "We brought you some stuff," Jordan said. "A battery shaver--you'll have to share it--and some dungarees."

  Bill looked at Paul. Paul was staring at the two Embassy men, looking as if he were about to explode. "Aren't you going to get us out of here?" Paul said.

  "I'm afraid we can't do that."

  "Goddammit, you got us in here!"

  Bill sat down slowly, too depressed to be angry.

  "We're very sorry this has happened," said Jordan. "It came as a complete surprise to us. We were told that Dadgar was favorably disposed toward you ... The Embassy is filing a very serious protest."

  "But what are you doing to get us out?"

  "You must work through the Iranian legal system. Your attorneys--"

  "Jesus Christ," Paul said disgustedly.

  Jordan said: "We have asked them to move you to a better part of the jail."

  "Gee, thanks."

  Sorenson asked: "Uh, is there anything else you need?"

  "There's nothing I need," Paul said. "I'm not planning to be here very long."

  Bill said: "I'd like to get some eye drops."

  "I'll see that you do," Sorenson promised.

  Jordan said: "I think that's all for now ..." He looked at the guard.