On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

He knew he was close to losing his mind, and only the iron self-discipline that had been part of his character for so long enabled him to retain his sanity. When he first thought of burning the place down, he knew his judgment was unbalanced, and he promised himself he would wait a year, and see how he felt then.

His brother Stanley was worried about him, he knew. Stan had tried to get him to pull himself together: had suggested he give some lectures, had even tried to get him to join the Israeli Army. Simons was Jewish by ancestry, but thought of himself as American: he did not want to go to Israel. He could not pull himself together. It was as much as he could do to live from day to day.

He did not need someone to take care of him--he had never needed that. On the contrary, he needed someone to take care of. That was what he had done all his life. He had taken care of Lucille, he had taken care of the men under his command. Nobody could rescue him from his depression, for his role in life was to rescue others. That was why he had been reconciled with Harry but not with Bruce: Harry had come to him asking to be rescued from his heroin habit, but Bruce had come offering to rescue Art Simons by bringing him to the Lord. In military operations Simons's aim had always been to bring all his men back alive. The Son Tay Raid would have been the perfect climax to his career, if only there had been prisoners in the camp to rescue.

Paradoxically, the only way to rescue Simons was to ask him to rescue someone else.

It happened at two o'clock in the morning on January 2, 1979.

The phone woke him.

"Bull Simons?" The voice was vaguely familiar.

"Yeah."

"This is T. J. Marquez from EDS in Dallas."

Simons remembered: EDS, Ross Perot, the POW campaign, the San Francisco party ... "Hello, Tom."

"Bull, I'm sorry to wake you."

"It's okay. What can I do for you?"

"We have two people in jail in Iran, and it looks like we may not be able to get them out by any conventional means. Would you be willing to help us?"

Would he be willing? "Hell, yes," Simons said. "When do we start?"

Four

1____

Ross Perot drove out of EDS and turned left on Forest Lane, then right on Central Expressway. He was heading for the Hilton Inn on Central and Mockingbird. He was about to ask seven men to risk their lives.

Sculley and Coburn had made their list. Their own names were at the top, followed by five more.

How many American corporate chiefs in the twentieth century had asked seven employees to perpetrate a jailbreak? Probably none.

During the night Coburn and Sculley had called the other five, who were scattered all over the United States, staying with friends and relations after their hasty departure from Tehran. Each had been told only that Perot wanted to see him in Dallas today. They were used to midnight phone calls and sudden summonses--that was Perot's style--and they had all agreed to come.

As they arrived in Dallas they had been steered away from EDS headquarters and sent to check in at the Hilton Inn. Most of them should be there by now, waiting for Perot.

He wondered what they would say when he told them he wanted them to go back to Tehran and bust Paul and Bill out of jail.

They were good men, and loyal to him, but loyalty to an employer did not normally extend to risking your life. Some of them might feel that the whole idea of a rescue by violence was foolhardy. Others would think of their wives and children, and for their sakes refuse--quite reasonably.

I have no right to ask these men to do this, he thought. I must take care not to put any pressure on them. No salesmanship today, Perot: just straight talk. They must understand that they're free to say: no, thanks, boss; count me out.

How many of them would volunteer?

One in five, Perot guessed.

If that were the case it would take several days to get a team together, and he might end up with people who did not know Tehran.

What if none volunteered?

He pulled into the parking lot of the Hilton Inn and switched off the engine.

Jay Coburn looked around. There were four other men in the room: Pat Sculley, Glenn Jackson, Ralph Boulware, and Joe Poche. Two more were on their way: Jim Schwebach was coming from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Ron Davis from Columbus, Ohio.

The Dirty Dozen they were not.

In their business suits, white shirts, and sober ties, with their short haircuts and clean-shaven faces and well-fed bodies, they looked like what they were: ordinary American business executives. It was hard to see them as a squad of mercenaries.

Coburn and Sculley had made separate lists, but these five men had been on both. Each had worked in Tehran--most had been on Coburn's evacuation team. Each had either military experience or some relevant skill. Each was a man Coburn trusted completely.

While Sculley was calling them in the early hours of this morning, Coburn had gone to the personnel files and put together a folder on each man, detailing his age, height, weight, marital status, and knowledge of Tehran. As they arrived in Dallas, each of them completed another sheet recounting his military experience, military schools attended, weapons training, and other special skills. The folders were for Colonel Simons, who was on his way from Red Bay. But before Simons arrived, Perot had to ask these men whether they were willing to volunteer.

For Perot's meeting with them, Coburn had taken three adjoining rooms. Only the middle room would be used: the rooms on either side had been rented as a precaution against eavesdroppers.

It was all rather melodramatic.

Coburn studied the others, wondering what they were thinking. They still had not been told what this was all about, but they had probably guessed.

He could not tell what Joe Poche was thinking: nobody ever could. A short, quiet man of thirty-two, Poche kept his emotions locked away. His voice was always low and even, his face generally blank. He had spent six years in the army, and had seen action as commander of a howitzer battery in Vietnam. He had fired just about every weapon the army possessed up to some level of proficiency, and had killed time, in Vietnam, practicing with a .45. He had spent two years with EDS in Tehran, first designing the enrollment system--the computer program that listed the names of people eligible for health-care benefits--and later as the programmer responsible for loading the files that made up the database for the whole system. Coburn knew him to be a deliberate, logical thinker, a man who would not give his assent to any idea or plan until he had questioned it from all angles and thought out all its consequences slowly and carefully. Humor and intuition were not among his strengths: brains and patience were.

Ralph Boulware was a full five inches taller than Poche. One of the two black men on the list, he had a chubby face and small, darting eyes, and he talked very fast. He had spent nine years in the air force as a technician, working on the complex inboard computer and radar systems of bombers. In Tehran for only nine months, he had started as data-preparation manager and had swiftly been promoted to data-center manager. Coburn knew him well and liked him a lot. In Tehran they had got drunk together. Their children had played together and their wives had become friends. Boulware loved his family, loved his friends, loved his job, loved his life. He enjoyed living more than anyone else Coburn could think of, with the possible exception of Ross Perot. Boulware was also a highly independent-minded son of a gun. He never had any trouble speaking out. Like many successful black men, he was a shade oversensitive, and liked to make it clear he was not to be pushed around. In Tehran over Ashura, when he had been in the high-stakes poker game with Coburn and Paul, everyone else had slept in the house for safety, as previously agreed; but Boulware had not. There had been no discussion, no announcement: Boulware just went home. A few days later he had decided that the work he was doing in Tehran did not justify the risk to his safety, so he returned to the States. He was not a man to run with the pack just because it was a pack: if he thought the pack was running the wrong way, he would leave it. He was the most skeptical of the group assembling at the Hilton Inn: if anyone was going to pour scorn on the idea of a jailbreak, Boulware would.

Glenn Jackson looked less like a mercenary than any of them. A mild man with spectacles, he had no military experience, but he was an enthusiastic hunter and an expert shot. He knew Tehran well, having worked there for Bell Helicopter as well as for EDS. He was such a straight, forthright, honest guy, Coburn thought, that it was hard to imagine him getting involved in the deception and violence that a jailbreak would entail. Jackson was also a Baptist--the others were Catholic, except for Poche, who did not say what he was--and Baptists were famous for punching Bibles, not faces. Coburn wondered how Jackson would make out.

He had a similar concern about Pat Sculley. Sculley had a good military record--he had been five years in the army, ending up as a Ranger instructor with the rank of captain--but he had no combat experience. Aggressive and outgoing in business, he was one of EDS's brightest up-and-coming young executives. Like Coburn, Sculley was an irrepressible optimist, but whereas Coburn's attitudes had been tempered by war, Sculley was youthfully naive. If this thing gets violent, Coburn wondered, will Sculley be hard enough to handle it?

Of the two men who had not yet arrived, one was the most qualified to take part in a jailbreak, and the other perhaps the least.

Jim Schwebach knew more about combat than he did about computers. Eleven years in the army, he had served with the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam, doing the kind of commando work Bull Simons specialized in, clandestine operations behind enemy lines; and he had even more medals than Coburn. Because he had spent so many years in the military, he was still a low-level executive, despite his age, which was thirty-five. He had been a trainee systems engineer when he went to Tehran, but he was mature and dependable, and Coburn had made him a team leader during the evacuation. Only five feet six inches, Schwebach had the erect, chin-up posture of many short men, and the indomitable fighting spirit that is the only defense of the smallest boy in the class. No matter what the score--it could be 12--0, ninth inning and two outs--Schwebach would be up on the edge of the dugout, clawing away and trying to figure out how to get an extra hit. Coburn admired him for volunteering--out of high-principled patriotism--for extra tours in Vietnam. In battle, Coburn thought, Schwebach would be the last guy you would want to take prisoner--if you had your druthers, you would make sure you killed the little son of a bitch before you captured him, he would make so much trouble.

However, Schwebach's feistiness was not immediately apparent. He was a very ordinary-looking fellow. In fact, you hardly noticed him. In Tehran he had lived farther south than anyone else, in a district where there were no other Americans, yet he had often walked around the streets, wearing a beat-up old field jacket, blue jeans, and a knit cap, and had never been bothered. He could lose himself in a crowd of two--a talent that might be useful in a jailbreak.

The other missing man was Ron Davis. At thirty he was the youngest on the list. The son of a poor black insurance salesman, Davis had risen fast in the white world of corporate America. Few people who started, as he had, in operations ever made it to management on the customer side of the business. Perot was especially proud of Davis: "Ron's career achievement is like a moonshot," he would say. Davis had acquired a good knowledge of Farsi in a year and a half in Tehran, working under Keane Taylor, not on the Ministry contract but on a smaller, separate project to computerize Bank Omran, the Shah's bank. Davis was cheerful, flippant, full of jokes, a juvenile version of Richard Pryor, but without the profanity. Coburn thought he was the most sincere of the men on the list. Davis found it easy to open up and talk about his feelings and his personal life. For that reason Coburn thought of him as vulnerable. On the other hand, perhaps the ability to talk honestly about yourself to others was a sign of great inner confidence and strength.

Whatever the truth about Davis's emotional toughness, physically he was as hard as a nail. He had no military experience, but he was a karate black belt. One time in Tehran three men had attacked him and attempted to rob him: he had beaten them all up in a few seconds. Like Schwebach's ability to be inconspicuous, Davis's karate was a talent that might become useful.

Like Coburn, all six men were in their thirties.

They were all married.

And they all had children.

The door opened and Perot walked in.

He shook hands, saying "How are you?" and "Good to see you!" as if he really meant it, remembering the names of their wives and children. He's good with people, Coburn thought.

"Schwebach and Davis didn't get here yet," Coburn told him.

"All right," Perot said, sitting down. "I'll have to see them later. Send them to my office as soon as they arrive." He paused. "I'll tell them exactly what I'm going to tell y'all."

He paused again, as if gathering his thoughts. Then he frowned and looked hard at them. "I'm asking for volunteers for a project that might involve loss of life. At this stage I can't tell you what it's about, although you can probably guess. I want you to take five or ten minutes, or more, to think about it, then come back and talk to me one at a time. Think hard. If you choose, for any reason, not to get involved, you can just say so, and no one outside this room will ever know about it. If you decide to volunteer, I'll tell you more. Now go away and think."

They all stood up and, one by one, they left the room.

I could get killed on Central Expressway, thought Joe Poche.

He knew perfectly well what the dangerous project was: they were going to get Paul and Bill out of jail.

He had suspected as much since two-thirty A.M., when he had been woken up, at his mother-in-law's house in San Antonio, by a phone call from Pat Sculley. Sculley, the world's worst liar, had said: "Ross asked me to call you. He wants you to come to Dallas in the morning to begin work on a study in Europe."

Poche had said: "Pat, why in hell are you calling me at two-thirty in the morning to tell me that Ross wants me to work on a study in Europe?"

"It is kind of important. We need to know when you can be here."

Okay, Poche thought resignedly, it's something he can't talk about on the phone. "My first flight is probably around six or seven o'clock in the morning."

"Fine."

Poche had made a plane reservation, then gone back to bed. As he set his alarm clock for five A.M. he said to his wife: "I don't know what this is all about, but I wish somebody would be straight, just for once."

In fact, he had a pretty good idea what it was all about, and his suspicions had been confirmed, later in the day, when Ralph Boulware had met him at the Coit Road bus station and, instead of taking him to EDS, had driven him to this hotel and refused to talk about what was going on.

Poche liked to think everything through, and he had had plenty of time to consider the idea of busting Paul and Bill out of jail. It made him glad, glad as hell. It reminded him of the old days, when there were only three thousand people in the whole of EDS, and they had talked about the Faith. It was their word for a whole bunch of attitudes and beliefs about how a company ought to deal with its employees. What it boiled down to was: EDS took care of its people. As long as you were giving your maximum effort to the company, it would stand by you through thick and thin: when you were sick, when you had personal or family problems, when you got yourself into any kind of trouble ... It was a bit like a family. Poche felt good about that, although he did not talk about the feeling--he did not talk much about any of his feelings.

EDS had changed since those days. With ten thousand people instead of three thousand, the family atmosphere could not be so intense. Nobody talked about the Faith anymore. But it was still there: this meeting proved it. And although his face was as expressionless as ever, Joe Poche was glad. Of course they would go in there and bust their friends out of jail. Poche was just happy to get the chance to be on the team.

Contrary to Coburn's expectation, Ralph Boulware did not pour scorn on the idea of a rescue. The skeptical, independent-minded Boulware was as hot for the idea as anyone.

He, too, had guessed what was going on, helped--like Poche--by Sculley's inability to lie convincingly.

Boulware and his family were staying with friends in Dallas. On New Year's Day Boulware had been doing nothing much, and his wife had asked him why he did not go to the office. He said there was nothing for him to do there. She did not buy that. Mary Boulware was the only person in the world who could bully Ralph, and in the end he went to the office. There he ran into Sculley.

"What's happening?" Boulware had asked.

"Oh, nothing," Sculley said.

"What are you doing?"

"Making plane reservations, mostly."

Sculley's mood seemed strange. Boulware knew him well--in Tehran they had ridden to work together in the mornings--and his instinct told him Sculley was not telling the truth.

"Something's wrong," Boulware said. "What's going on?"

"There's nothing going on, Ralph!"

"What are they doing about Paul and Bill?"

"They're going through all the channels to try and get them out. The bail is thirteen million dollars, and we have to get the money into the country--"

"Bullshit. The whole government system, the whole judicial system, has broken down over there. There ain't no channels left. What are y'all going to do?"

"Look, don't worry about it."

"You guys ain't going to try to go in and get them out, are you?"

Sculley said nothing.

"Hey, count me in," Boulware said.

"What do you mean, count you in?"

"It's obvious you're going to try to do something."

"What do you mean?"

"Let's don't play games anymore. Count me in."

"Okay."

For him it was a simple decision. Paul and Bill were his friends, and it could as easily have been Boulware in jail, in which case he would have wanted his friends to come and get him out.

There was another factor. Boulware was enormously fond of Pat Sculley. Hell, he loved Sculley. He also felt very protective toward him. In Boulware's opinion, Sculley really did not understand that the world was full of corruption and crime and sin: he saw what he wanted to see, a chicken in every pot, a Chevrolet on every driveway, a world of Mom and apple pie. If Sculley was going to be involved in a jailbreak, he would need Boulware to take care of him. It was an odd feeling to have about another man more or less your own age, but there it was.

That was what Boulware had thought on New Year's Day, and he felt the same today. So he went back into the hotel room and said to Perot what he had said to Sculley: "Count me in."

Glenn Jackson was not afraid to die.

He knew what was going to happen after death, and he had no fears. When the Lord wanted to call him home, why, he was ready to go.

However, he was concerned about his family. They had just been evacuated from Iran, and were now staying at his mother's house in East Texas. He had not yet had time even to start looking for a place for them all to live. If he got involved in this, he was not going to have time to go off and take care of family matters: it would be left to Carolyn. All on her own, she would have to rebuild the life of the family here in the States. She would have to find a house, get Cheryl, Cindy, and Glenn Junior into schools, buy or rent some furniture ...

Carolyn was kind of a dependent person. She would not find it easy.

Plus, she was already mad at him. She had come to Dallas with him that morning, but Sculley had told him to send her home. She was not permitted to check into the Hilton Inn with her husband. That had made her angry.

But Paul and Bill had wives and families, too. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." It was in the Bible twice: Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18; and Matthew's Gospel, chapter 19, verse 19. Jackson thought: If I were stuck in jail in Tehran, I'd sure love for somebody to do something for me.

So he volunteered.

Sculley had made his choice days ago.

Before Perot started talking about a rescue, Sculley had been discussing the idea. It had first come up the day after Paul and Bill were arrested, the day Sculley flew out of Tehran with Joe Poche and Jim Schwebach. Sculley had been upset at leaving Paul and Bill behind, all the more so because Tehran had become dramatically more violent in the last few days. At Christmas two Afghanis caught stealing in the bazaar had been summarily hanged by a mob; and a taxi driver who tried to jump the queue at a gas station had been shot in the head by a soldier. What would they do to Americans, once they got started? It hardly bore thinking about.

On the plane Sculley had sat next to Jim Schwebach. They had agreed that Paul's and Bill's lives were in danger. Schwebach, who had experience of clandestine commando-type operations, had agreed with Sculley that it should be possible for a few determined Americans to rescue two men from an Iranian jail.

So Sculley had been surprised and delighted when, three days later, Perot had said: "I've been thinking the same thing."

Sculley had put his own name on the list.

He did not need time to think about it.

He volunteered.

Sculley had also put Coburn's name on the list--without telling Coburn.

Until this moment, happy-go-lucky Coburn, who lived from day to day, had not even thought about being on the team himself.

But Sculley had been right: Coburn wanted to go.

He thought: Liz won't like it.

He sighed. There were many things his wife did not like, these days.

She was clinging, he thought. She had not liked his being in the military, she did not like his having hobbies that took him away from her, and she did not like his working for a boss who felt free to call on him at all hours of the day or night for special tasks.

He had never lived the way she wanted, and it was probably too late to start now. If he went to Tehran to rescue Paul and Bill, Liz might hate him for it. But if he did not go, he would probably hate her for making him stay behind.

Sorry, Liz, he thought; here we go again.

Jim Schwebach arrived later in the afternoon but heard the same speech from Perot.

Schwebach had a highly developed sense of duty. (He had once wanted to be a priest, but two years in a Catholic seminary had soured him on organized religion.) He had spent eleven years in the army, and had volunteered for repeated tours in Vietnam, out of that same sense of duty. In Asia he had seen a lot of people doing their jobs badly, and he knew he did his well. He had thought: if I walk away from this, someone else will do what I'm doing, but he will do it badly, and in consequence a man will lose his arm, his leg, or his life. I've been trained to do this, and I'm good at it, and I owe it to them to carry on doing it.

He felt much the same about the rescue of Paul and Bill. He was the only member of the proposed team who had actually done this sort of thing before. They needed him.

Anyway, he liked it. He was a fighter by disposition. Perhaps this was because he was five and a half feet tall. Fighting was his thing, it was where he lived. He did not hesitate to volunteer.

He couldn't wait to get started.

Ron Davis, the second black man on the list and the youngest of them all, did hesitate.

He arrived in Dallas early that evening and was taken straight to EDS headquarters on Forest Lane. He had never met Perot, but had talked to him on the phone from Tehran during the evacuation. For a few days, during that period, they had kept a phone line open between Dallas and Tehran all day and all night. Someone had to sleep with the phone to his ear at the Tehran end, and frequently the job had fallen to Davis. One time Perot himself had come on the line.

"Ron, I know it's bad over there, and we sure appreciate your staying. Now, is there anything I can do for you?"

Davis was surprised. He was only doing what his friends were doing, and he did not expect a special thank-you. But he did have a special worry. "My wife has conceived, and I haven't seen her for a while," he told Perot. "If you could have someone call her and tell her I'm okay and I'll be home as soon as possible, I'd appreciate it."

Davis had been surprised to learn from Marva, later, that Perot had not had someone call her--he had called himself.

Now, meeting Perot for the first time, Davis was once again impressed. Perot shook his hand warmly and said: "Hi, Ron, how are you?" just as if they had been friends for years.

However, listening to Perot's speech about "loss of life," Davis had doubts. He wanted to know more about the rescue. He would be glad to help Paul and Bill, but he needed to be assured that the whole project would be well organized and professional.

Perot told him about Bull Simons, and that settled it.

Perot was just so proud of them.

Every single one had volunteered.

He sat in his office. It was dark outside. He was waiting for Simons.

Smiling Jay Coburn; boyish Pat Sculley; Joe Poche, the man of iron; Ralph Boulware, tall, black, and skeptical; mild-mannered Glenn Jackson; Jim Schwebach the scrap-per; Ron Davis the comedian.

Every single one!

He was grateful as well as proud, for the burden they had shouldered was more his than theirs.

One way and another it had been quite a day. Simons had agreed instantly to come and help. Paul Walker, an EDS security man who had (coincidentally) served with Simons in Laos, had jumped on a plane in the middle of the night and flown to Red Bay to take care of Simons's pigs and dogs. And seven young executives had dropped everything at a moment's notice and agreed to take off for Iran to organize a jailbreak.

They were now down the hall, in the EDS boardroom, waiting for Simons, who had checked into the Hilton Inn and gone to dinner with T. J. Marquez and Merv Stauffer.

Perot thought about Stauffer. Stocky, bespectacled, forty years old, an economics graduate, Stauffer was Perot's right-hand man. He could remember vividly their first meeting, when he had interviewed Stauffer. A graduate of some college in Kansas, Merv had looked right off the farm, in his cheap coat and slacks. He had been wearing white socks.

During the interview, Perot had explained, as gently as he knew how, that white socks were not appropriate clothing for a business meeting.

But the socks were the only mistake Stauffer had made. He impressed Perot as being smart, tough, organized, and used to hard work.

As the years went by, Perot had learned that Stauffer had yet more useful talents. He had a wonderful mind for detail--something Perot lacked. He was completely unflappable. And he was a great diplomat. When EDS landed a contract, it often meant taking over an existing data-processing department, with its staff. This could be difficult: the staff were naturally wary, touchy, and sometimes resentful. Merv Stauffer--calm, smiling, helpful, soft-spoken, gently determined--could smooth their feathers like no one else.

Since the late sixties he had been working directly with Perot. His specialty was taking a hazy, crazy idea from Perot's restless imagination, thinking it through, putting the pieces together, and making it work. Occasionally he would conclude that the idea was impracticable--and when Stauffer said that, Perot began to think that maybe it was impracticable.

His appetite for work was enormous. Even among the workaholics on the seventh floor, Stauffer was exceptional. As well as doing whatever Perot had dreamed up in bed the previous night, he supervised Perot's real-estate company and his oil company, managed Perot's investments, and planned Perot's estate.

The best way to help Simons, Perot decided, would be to give him Merv Stauffer.

He wondered whether Simons had changed. It had been years since they last met. The occasion had been a banquet. Simons had told him a story.

During the Son Tay Raid, Simons's helicopter had landed in the wrong place. It was a compound very like the prison camp, but some four hundred yards distant; and it contained a barracks full of sleeping enemy soldiers. Awakened by the noise and the flares, the soldiers had begun to stumble out of the barracks, sleepy, half-dressed, carrying their weapons. Simons had stood outside the door, with a lighted cigar in his mouth. Beside him was a burly sergeant. As each man came through the door, he would see the glow of Simons's cigar, and hesitate. Simons would shoot him. The sergeant would heave the corpse aside; then they would wait for the next one.

Perot had been unable to resist the question: "How many men did you kill?"

"Must have been seventy or eighty," Simons had said in a matter-of-fact voice.

Simons had been a great soldier, but now he was a pig farmer. Was he still fit? He was sixty years old, and he had suffered a stroke even before Son Tay. Did he still have a sharp mind? Was he still a great leader of men?

He would want total control of the rescue, Perot was certain. The colonel would do it his way or not at all. That suited Perot just fine: it was his way to hire the best man for the job, then let him get on with it. But was Simons still the greatest rescuer in the world?

He heard voices in the outer office. They had arrived. He stood up, and Simons walked in with T. J. Marquez and Merv Stauffer.

"Colonel Simons, how are you?" said Perot. He never called Simons "Bull"--he thought it was corny.

"Hello, Ross," said Simons, shaking hands.

The handshake was firm. Simons was dressed casually, in khaki pants. His shirt collar was open, showing the muscles of his massive neck. He looked older: more lines in that aggressive face, more gray in the crewcut hair, which was also longer than Perot had ever seen it. But he seemed fit and hard. He still had the same deep, tobacco-roughened voice, with a faint but clear trace of a New York accent. He was carrying the folders Coburn had put together on the volunteers.

"Sit down," said Perot. "Did y'all have dinner?"

"We went to Dusty's," said Stauffer.

Simons said: "When was the last time this room was swept for bugs?"

Perot smiled. Simons was still sharp, as well as fit. Good. He replied: "It's never been swept, Colonel."

"From now on I want every room we use to be swept every day."

Stauffer said: "I'll see to that."

Perot said: "Whatever you need, Colonel, just tell Merv. Now, let's talk business for a minute. We sure appreciate you coming here to help us, and we'd like to offer you some compensation--"

"Don't even think about it," Simons said gruffly.

"Well--"

"I don't want payment for rescuing Americans in trouble," Simons said. "I never got a bonus for it yet, and I don't want to start now."

Simons was offended. The force of his displeasure filled the room. Perot backed off quickly: Simons was one of the very few people of whom he was wary.

The old warrior hasn't changed a bit, Perot thought.

Good.

"The team is waiting for you in the boardroom. I see you have the folders, but I know you'll want to make your own assessment of the men. They all know Tehran, and they all have either military experience or some skill that may be useful--but in the end the choice of the team is up to you. If for any reason you don't like these men, we'll get some more. You're in charge here." Perot hoped Simons would not reject anyone, but he had to have the option.

Simons stood up. "Let's go to work."

T. J. hung back after Simons and Stauffer left. He said in a low voice: "His wife died."

"Lucille?" Perot had not heard. "I'm sorry."

"Cancer."

"How did he take it, did you get an idea?"

T. J. nodded. "Bad."

As T. J. went out, Perot's twenty-year-old son, Ross Junior, walked in. It was common for Perot's children to drop by the office, but this time, when a secret meeting was in session in the boardroom, Perot wished his son had chosen another moment. Ross Junior must have seen Simons in the hall. The boy had met Simons before and knew who he was. By now, Perot thought, he's figured out that the only reason for Simons to be here is to organize a rescue.

Ross sat down and said: "Hi, Dad. I've been by to see Grandmother."

"Good," Perot said. He looked fondly at his only son. Ross Junior was tall, broad-shouldered, slim, and a good deal better-looking than his father. Girls clustered around him like flies: the fact that he was heir to a fortune was only one of the attractions. He handled it the way he handled everything: with immaculate good manners and a maturity beyond his years.

Perot said: "You and I need to have a clear understanding about something. I expect to live to be a hundred, but if anything should happen to me, I want you to leave college and come home and take care of your mother and your sisters."

"I would," Ross said. "Don't worry."

"And if anything should happen to your mother, I want you to live at home and raise your sisters. I know it would be hard on you, but I wouldn't want you to hire people to do it. They would need you, a member of the family. I'm counting on you to live at home with them and see they're properly raised--"

"Dad, that's what I would have done if you'd never brought it up."

"Good."

The boy got up to go. Perot walked to the door with him.

Suddenly Ross put his arm around his father and said: "Love you, Pop."

Perot hugged him back.

He was surprised to see tears in his son's eyes.

Ross went out.

Perot sat down. He should not have been surprised by those tears: the Perots were a close family, and Ross was a warmhearted boy.

Perot had no specific plans to go to Tehran, but he knew that if his men were going there to risk their lives, he would not be far behind. Ross Junior had known the same thing.

The whole family would support him, Perot knew. Margot might be entitled to say, "While you're risking your life for your employees, what about us?" but she would never say it. All through the prisoners-of-war campaign, when he had gone to Vietnam and Laos, when he had tried to fly into Hanoi, when the family had been forced to live with bodyguards, they had never complained, never said, "What about us?" On the contrary, they had encouraged him to do whatever he saw to be his duty.

While he sat thinking, Nancy, his eldest daughter, walked in.

"Poops!" she said. It was her pet name for her father.

"Little Nan! Come in!"

She came around the desk and sat on his lap.

Perot adored Nancy. Eighteen years old, blond, tiny but strong, she reminded him of his mother. She was determined and hardheaded, like Perot, and she probably had as much potential to be a business executive as her brother.

"I came to say goodbye--I'm going back to Vanderbilt."

"Did you drop by Grandmother's house?"

"I sure did."

"Good girl."

She was in high spirits, excited about going back to school, oblivious of the tension and the talk of death here on the seventh floor.

"How about some extra funds?" she said.

Perot smiled indulgently and took out his wallet. As usual, he was helpless to resist her.

She pocketed the money, hugged him, kissed his cheek, jumped off his lap, and bounced out of the room without a care in the world.

This time there were tears in Perot's eyes.

It was like a reunion, Jay Coburn thought: the old Tehran hands in the boardroom waiting for Simons, chatting about Iran and the evacuation. There was Ralph Boulware talking at ninety miles an hour; Joe Poche sitting and thinking, looking about as animated as a robot in a sulk; Glenn Jackson saying something about rifles; Jim Schwebach smiling his lopsided smile, the smile that made you think he knew something you didn't; and Pat Sculley talking about the Son Tay Raid. They all knew, now, that they were about to meet the legendary Bull Simons. Sculley, when he had been a Ranger instructor, had taught Simons's famous raid, and he knew all about the meticulous planning, the endless rehearsals, and the fact that Simons had brought back all his fifty-nine men alive.

The door opened and a voice said: "All stand."

They pushed back their chairs and stood up.

Coburn looked around.

Ron Davis walked in grinning all over his black face.

"Goddam you, Davis!" said Coburn, and they all laughed as they realized they had been fooled. Davis walked around the room slapping hands and saying hello.

That was Davis: always the clown.

Coburn looked at all of them and wondered how they would change when faced with physical danger. Combat was a funny thing, you could never predict how people would cope with it. The man you thought the bravest would crumble, and the one you expected to run scared would be solid as a rock.

Coburn would never forget what combat had done to him.

The crisis had come a couple of months after he arrived in Vietnam. He was flying support aircraft, called "slicks" because they had no weapons systems. Six times that day he had come out of the battle zone with a full load of troops. It had been a good day: not a shot had been fired at his helicopter.

The seventh time was different.

A burst of 12.75 fire hit the aircraft and severed the tail-rotor driveshaft.

When the main rotor of a helicopter turns, the body of the aircraft has a natural tendency to turn in the same direction. The function of the tail rotor is to counteract this tendency. If the tail rotor stops, the helicopter starts spinning.

Immediately after takeoff, when the aircraft is only a few feet off the ground, the pilot can deal with tail-rotor loss by landing again before the spinning becomes too fast. Later, when the aircraft is at cruising height and normal flying speed, the flow of wind across the fuselage is strong enough to prevent the helicopter turning. But Coburn was at a height of 150 feet, the worst possible position, too high to land quickly but not yet traveling fast enough for the wind flow to stabilize the fuselage.

The standard procedure was a simulated engine stall. Coburn had learned and rehearsed the routine at flying school, and he went into it instinctively, but it did not work: the aircraft was already spinning too fast.

Within seconds he was so dizzy he had no idea where he was. He was unable to do anything to cushion the crash landing. The helicopter came down on its right skid (he learned afterward) and one of the rotor blades flexed down under the impact, slicing through the fuselage and into the head of his copilot, who died instantly.

Coburn smelled fuel and unstrapped himself. That was when he realized he was upside down, for he fell on his head. But he got out of the aircraft, his only injury a few compressed neck vertebrae. His crew chief also survived.

The crew had been belted in, but the seven troops in the back had not. The helicopter had no doors, and the centrifugal force of the spin had thrown them out at a height of more than a hundred feet. They were all dead.

Coburn was twenty years old at the time.

A few weeks later he took a bullet in the calf, the most vulnerable part of a helicopter pilot, who sits in an armored seat but leaves his lower legs exposed.

He had been angry before, but now he just had the ass. Pissed off with being shot at, he went in to his commanding officer and demanded to be assigned to gunships so that he could kill some of those bastards down there who were trying to kill him.

His request was granted.

That was the point at which smiling Jay Coburn had turned into a coolheaded, coldhearted professional soldier. He made no close friends in the army. If someone in the unit was wounded, Coburn would shrug and say: "Well, that's what he gets combat pay for." He suspected his comrades thought he was a little sick. He did not care. He was happy flying gunships. Every time he strapped himself in, he knew he was going out there to kill or be killed. Clearing out areas in advance of ground troops, knowing that women and children and innocent civilians were getting hurt, Coburn just closed his mind and opened fire.

Eleven years later, looking back, he could think: I was an animal.

Schwebach and Poche, the two quietest men in the room, would understand: they had been there, they knew how it had been. The others did not: Sculley, Boulware, Jackson, and Davis. If this rescue turns nasty, Coburn wondered again, how will they make out?

The door opened, and Simons came in.

2____

The room fell silent as Simons walked to the head of the conference table.

He's a big son of a bitch, Coburn thought.

T. J. Marquez and Merv Stauffer came in after Simons and sat near the door.

Simons threw a black plastic suitcase into a corner, dropped into a chair, and lit a small cigar.

He was casually dressed in a shirt and pants--no tie--and his hair was long for a colonel. He looked more like a farmer than a soldier, Coburn thought.

He said: "I'm Colonel Simons."

Coburn expected him to say, I'm in charge, listen to me and do what I say, this is my plan.

Instead, he started asking questions.

He wanted to know all about Tehran: the weather, the traffic, what the buildings were made of, the people in the streets, the numbers of policemen and how they were armed.

He was interested in every detail. They told him that all the police were armed except the traffic cops. How could you distinguish them? By their white hats. They told him there were blue cabs and orange cabs. What was the difference? The blue cabs had fixed routes and fixed fares. Orange cabs would go anywhere, in theory, but usually when they pulled up there was already a passenger inside, and the driver would ask which way you were headed. If you were going his way you could get in, and note the amount already on the meter; then when you got out you paid the increase: the system was an endless source of arguments with cabbies.

Simons asked where, exactly, the jail was located. Merv Stauffer went to find street maps of Tehran. What did the building look like? Joe Poche and Ron Davis both remembered driving past it. Poche sketched it on an easel pad.

Coburn sat back and watched Simons work. Picking the men's brains was only half of what he was up to, Coburn realized. Coburn had been an EDS recruiter for years, and he knew a good interviewing technique when he saw it. Simons was sizing up each man, watching reactions, testing for common sense. Like a recruiter, he asked a lot of openended questions, often following with "Why?," giving people an opportunity to reveal themselves, to brag or bullshit or show signs of anxiety.

Coburn wondered whether Simons would flank any of them.

At one point he said: "Who is prepared to die doing this?"

Nobody said a word.

"Good," said Simons. "I wouldn't take anyone who was planning on dying."

The discussion went on for hours. Simons broke it up soon after midnight. It was clear by then that they did not know enough about the jail to begin planning the rescue. Coburn was deputized to find out more overnight: he would make some phone calls to Tehran.

Simons said: "Can you ask people about the jail without letting them know why you want the information?"

"I'll be discreet," Coburn said.

Simons turned to Merv Stauffer. "We'll need a secure place for us all to meet. Somewhere that isn't connected with EDS."

"What about the hotel?"

"The walls are thin."

Stauffer considered for a moment. "Ross has a little house at Lake Grapevine, out toward DFW Airport. There won't be anyone out there swimming or fishing in this weather, that's for sure."

Simons looked dubious.

Stauffer said: "Why don't I drive you out there in the morning so you can look it over?"

"Okay." Simons stood up. "We've done all we can at this point in the game."

They began to drift out.

As they were leaving, Simons asked Davis for a word in private.

"You ain't so goddam tough, Davis."

Ron Davis stared at Simons in surprise.

"What makes you think you're a tough guy?" Simons said.

Davis was floored. All evening Simons had been polite, reasonable, quiet-spoken. Now he was making like he wanted to fight. What was happening?

Davis thought of his martial arts expertise, and of the three muggers he had disposed of in Tehran, but he said: "I don't consider myself a tough guy."

Simons acted as if he had not heard. "Against a pistol your karate is no bloody good whatsoever."

"I guess not--"

"This team does not need any ba-ad black bastards spoiling for a fight."

Davis began to see what this was all about. Keep cool, he told himself. "I did not volunteer for this because I want to fight people, Colonel, I--"

"Then why did you volunteer?"

"Because I know Paul and Bill and their wives and children and I want to help."

Simons nodded dismissively. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Davis wondered whether that meant he had passed the test.

In the afternoon on the next day, January 3, 1979, they all met at Perot's weekend house on the shore of Lake Grapevine.

The two or three other houses nearby appeared empty, as Merv Stauffer had predicted. Perot's house was screened by several acres of rough woodland, and had lawns running down to the water's edge. It was a compact woodframe building, quite small--the garage for Perot's speedboats was bigger than the house.

The door was locked and nobody had thought to bring the keys. Schwebach picked a window lock and let them in.

There was a living room, a couple of bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The place was cheerfully decorated in blue and white, with inexpensive furniture.

The men sat around the living room with their maps and easel pads and magic markers and cigarettes. Coburn reported. Overnight he had spoken to Majid and two or three other people in Tehran. It had been difficult, trying to get detailed information about the jail while pretending to be only mildly curious, but he thought he had succeeded.

The jail was part of the Ministry of Justice complex, which occupied a whole city block, he had learned. The jail entrance was at the rear of the block. Next to the entrance was a courtyard, separated from the street only by a twelve-foot-high fence of iron pilings. This courtyard was the prisoners' exercise area. Clearly it was also the prison's weak point.

Simons agreed.

All they had to do, then, was wait for an exercise period, get over the fence, grab Paul and Bill, bring them back over the fence, and get out of Iran.

They got down to details.

How would they get over the fence? Would they use ladders, or climb on each other's shoulders?

They would arrive in a van, they decided, and use its roof as a step. Traveling in a van rather than a car had another advantage: nobody would be able to see inside while they were driving to--and, more importantly, away from--the jail.

Joe Poche was nominated driver because he knew the streets of Tehran best.

How would they deal with the prison guards? They did not want to kill anyone. They had no quarrel with the Iranian man in the street, or with the guards: it was not the fault of those people that Paul and Bill were unjustly imprisoned. Furthermore, if there was any killing, the subsequent hue and cry would be worse, making escape from Iran more hazardous.

But the prison guards would not hesitate to shoot them.

The best defense, Simons said, was a combination of surprise, shock, and speed.

They would have the advantage of surprise. For a few seconds the prison guards would not understand what was happening.

Then the rescuers would have to do something to make the guards take cover. Shotgun fire would be best. A shotgun would make a big flash and a lot of noise, especially in a city street: the shock would cause the guards to react defensively instead of attacking the rescuers. That would give them a few more seconds.

With speed, those seconds might be enough.

And then they might not.

The room filled with tobacco smoke as the plan took shape. Simons sat there, chain-smoking his little cigars, listening, asking questions, guiding the discussion. This was a very democratic army, Coburn thought. As they got involved in the plan, his friends were forgetting about their wives and children, their mortgages, their lawn mowers and station wagons; forgetting, too, how outrageous was the very idea of their snatching prisoners out of a jail. Davis stopped clowning; Sculley no longer seemed boyish but became very cold and calculating; Poche wanted to talk everything to death, as usual; Boulware was skeptical, as usual.

Afternoon wore into evening. They decided the van would pull onto the sidewalk beside the iron railings. This sort of parking would not be in the least remarkable in Tehran, they told Simons. Simons would be sitting in the front seat, beside Poche, with a shotgun beneath his coat. He would jump out and stand in front of the van. The back door of the van would open and Ralph Boulware would get out, also with a shotgun under his coat.

So far, nothing out of the ordinary would appear to have happened.

With Simons and Boulware ready to give covering fire, Ron Davis would get out of the van, climb on the roof, step from the roof to the top of the fence, then jump down into the courtyard. Davis was chosen for this role because he was the youngest and fittest, and the jump--a twelve-foot drop--would be hard to take.

Coburn would follow Davis over the fence. He was not in good shape, but his face was more familiar than any other to Paul and Bill, so they would know as soon as they saw him that they were being rescued.

Next, Boulware would lower a ladder into the courtyard.

Surprise might take them this far, if they were quick; but at this point the guards were sure to react. Simons and Boulware would now fire their shotguns into the air.

The prison guards would hit the dirt, the Iranian prisoners would run around in terrified confusion, and the rescuers would have gained a few more seconds.

What if there were interference from outside the jail, Simons asked--from police or soldiers in the street, revolutionary rioters or just public-spirited passersby?

There would be two flanking guards, they decided: one at either end of the street. They would arrive in a car a few seconds before the van. They would be armed with handguns. Their job was simply to stop anyone who came to interfere with the rescue. Jim Schwebach and Pat Sculley were nominated. Coburn was sure Schwebach would not hesitate to shoot people if necessary; and Sculley, although he had never in his life shot anyone, had become so surprisingly ice-cool during the discussion that Coburn supposed he would be equally ruthless.

Glenn Jackson would drive the car: the question of Glenn the Baptist shooting people would not arise.

Meanwhile, in the confusion in the courtyard, Ron Davis would provide close cover, dealing with any nearby guards, while Coburn cut Paul and Bill out of the herd and urged them up the ladder. They would jump from the top of the fence to the roof of the van, then from there to the ground, and finally inside the van. Coburn would follow, then Davis.

"Hey, I'm taking the biggest risk of all," said Davis. "Hell, I'm first in and last out--maximum exposure."

"No shit," said Boulware. "Next question."

Simons would get into the front of the van, Boulware would jump in the back and close the door, and Poche would drive them away at top speed.

Jackson, in the car, would pick up the flanking guards, Schwebach and Sculley, and follow the van.

During the getaway, Boulware would be able to shoot through the back window of the van, and Simons would cover the road ahead. Any really serious pursuit would be taken care of by Sculley and Schwebach in the car.

At a prearranged spot they would dump the van and split up in several cars, then head for the air base at Doshen Toppeh, on the outskirts of the city. A U.S. Air Force jet would fly them out of Iran: it would be Perot's job to arrange that somehow.

At the end of the evening they had the skeleton of a workable plan.

Before they left, Simons told them not to talk about the rescue--not to their wives, not even to each other--outside the lake house. They should each think up a cover story to explain why they would be going out of the U.S. in a week or so. And, he added, looking at their full ashtrays and their ample waistlines, each man should devise his own exercise program for getting in shape.

The rescue was no longer a zany idea in Ross Perot's mind: it was real.

Jay Coburn was the only one who made a serious effort to deceive his wife.

He went back to the Hilton Inn and called Liz. "Hi, honey."

"Hi, Jay! Where are you?"

"I'm in Paris ..."

Joe Poche also called his wife from the Hilton.

"Where are you?" she asked him.

"I'm in Dallas."

"What are you doing?"

"Working at EDS, of course."

"Joe, EDS in Dallas has been calling me to ask where you are!"

Poche realized that someone who was not in on the secret of the rescue team had been trying to locate him. "I'm not working with those guys. I'm working directly with Ross. Somebody forgot to tell someone else, that's all."

"What are you working on?"

"It has to do with some things that have to be done for Paul and Bill."

"Oh ..."

When Boulware got back to the home of the friends with whom his family was staying, his daughters, Stacy Elaine and Kecia Nicole, were asleep. His wife said: "How was your day?"

I've been planning a jailbreak, Boulware thought. He said: "Oh, okay."

She looked at him strangely. "Well, what did you do?"

"Nothing much."

"For someone who was doing nothing much, you've been pretty busy. I called two or three times--they said they couldn't find you."

"I was around. Hey, I think I'd like a beer."

Mary Boulware was a warm, open woman to whom deceit was foreign. She was also intelligent. But she knew that Ralph had some firm ideas about the roles of husband and wife. The ideas might be old-fashioned, but they worked in this marriage. If there was an area of his business life that he didn't want to tell her about, well, she wasn't about to fight him over it.

"One beer, coming up ..."

Jim Schwebach did not try to fool his wife, Rachel. She had already outguessed him. When Schwebach had got the original call from Pat Sculley, Rachel had asked: "Who was that?"

"That was Pat Sculley in Dallas. They want me to go down there and work on a study in Europe."

Rachel had known Jim for almost twenty years--they had started dating when he was sixteen, she eighteen--and she could read his mind. She said: "They're going back over there to get those guys out of jail."

Schwebach said feebly: "Rachel, you don't understand, I'm out of that line of business. I don't do that anymore."

"That's what you're going to do ..."

Pat Sculley could not lie successfully even to his colleagues, and with his wife he did not try. He told Mary everything.

Ross Perot told Margot everything.

And even Simons, who had no wife to pester him, broke security by telling his brother Stanley in New Jersey ...

It proved equally impossible to keep the rescue plan from other senior executives at EDS. The first to figure it all out was Keane Taylor, the tall, irritable, well-dressed ex-marine whom Perot had turned around in Frankfurt and sent back to Tehran.

Since that New Year's Day, when Perot had said: "I'm sending you back to do something very important," Taylor had been sure that a secret operation was being planned; and it did not take him long to figure out who was doing it.

One day, on the phone from Tehran to Dallas, he had asked for Ralph Boulware.

"Boulware's not here," he was told.

"When will he be back?"

"We're not sure."

Taylor, never a man to suffer fools gladly, had raised his voice. "So, where has he gone?"

"We're not sure."

"What do you mean, you're not sure?"

"He's on vacation."

Taylor had known Boulware for years. It had been Taylor who gave Boulware his first management opportunity. They were drinking partners. Many times Taylor, drinking himself sober with Ralph in the early hours of the morning, had looked around and realized his was the only white face in an all-black bar. Those nights they would stagger back to whichever of their homes was nearest, and the unlucky wife who welcomed them would call the other and say: "It's okay, they're here."

Yes, Taylor knew Boulware; and he found it hard to believe that Ralph would go on vacation while Paul and Bill were still in jail.

The next day he asked for Pat Sculley, and got the same runaround.

Boulware and Sculley on vacation while Paul and Bill were in jail?

Bullshit.

The next day he asked for Coburn.

Same story.

It was beginning to make sense: Coburn had been with Perot when Perot sent Taylor back to Tehran. Coburn, Director of Personnel, evacuation mastermind, would be the right choice to organize a secret operation.

Taylor and Rich Gallagher, the other EDS man still in Tehran, started making a list.

Boulware, Sculley, Coburn, Ron Davis, Jim Schwebach, and Joe Poche were all "on vacation."

That group had a few things in common.

When Paul Chiapparone had first come to Tehran he found that EDS's operation there was not organized to his liking: it had been too loose, too casual, too Persian. The Ministry contract had not been running to time. Paul had brought in a number of tough, down-to-earth EDS troubleshooters, and together they had knocked the business back into shape. Taylor himself had been one of Paul's tough guys. So had Bill Gaylord. And Coburn, and Sculley, and Boulware, and all the guys who were now "on vacation."

The other thing they had in common was that they were all members of the EDS Tehran Roman Catholic Sunday Brunch Poker School. Like Paul and Bill, like Taylor himself, they were Catholics, with the exception of Joe Poche (and of Glenn Jackson, the only rescue-team member Taylor failed to spot). Each Sunday they had met at the Catholic Mission in Tehran. After the service they would all go to the house of one of them for brunch. And while the wives were cooking and the children playing, the men would get into a poker game.

There was nothing like poker for revealing a man's true character.

If, as Taylor and Gallagher now suspected, Perot had asked Coburn to put together a team of completely trustworthy men, then Coburn was sure to have picked them from the poker school.

"Vacation my ass," Taylor said to Gallagher. "This is a rescue team."

The rescue team returned to the lake house on the morning of January 4 and went over the whole plan again.

Simons had endless patience for detail, and he was determined to prepare for every possible snag that anyone could dream up. He was much helped by Joe Poche, whose tireless questioning--wearying though it was, to Coburn at least--was in fact highly creative, and led to numerous improvements of the rescue scenario.

First, Simons was dissatisfied with the arrangements for protecting the rescue team's flanks. The idea of Schwebach and Sculley, short but deadly, just plain shooting anyone who tried to interfere was crude. It would be better to have some kind of diversion, to distract any police or military types who might be nearby. Schwebach suggested setting fire to a car down the street from the jail. Simons was not sure that would be enough--he wanted to blow up a whole building. Anyway, Schwebach was given the job of designing a time bomb.

They thought of a small precaution that would shave a second or two off the time for which they would be exposed. Simons would get out of the van some distance from the jail and walk up to the fence. If all was clear he would give a hand signal for the van to approach.

Another weak element of the plan was the business of getting out of the van and climbing on its roof. All that jumping out and scrambling up would use precious seconds. And would Paul and Bill, after weeks in prison, be fit enough to climb a ladder and jump off the roof of a van?

All sorts of solutions were canvassed--an extra ladder, a mattress on the ground, grab handles on the roof--but in the end the team came up with a simple solution: they would cut a hole in the roof of the van and get in and out through that. Another little refinement, for those who had to jump back down through the hole, was a mattress on the floor of the van to soften their landing.

The getaway journey would give them time to alter their appearances. In Tehran they planned to wear jeans and casual jackets, and they were all beginning to grow beards and mustaches to look less conspicuous there; but in the van they would carry business suits and electric shavers, and before switching to the cars they would all shave and change their clothes.

Ralph Boulware, independent as ever, did not want to wear jeans and a casual jacket beforehand. In a business suit with a white shirt and a tie he felt comfortable and able to assert himself, especially in Tehran, where good Western clothing labeled a man as a member of the dominant class in society. Simons calmly gave his assent: the most important thing, he said, was for everyone to feel comfortable and confident during the operation.

At the Doshen Toppeh Air Base, from which they planned to leave in an air force jet, there were both American and Iranian planes and personnel. The Americans would, of course, be expecting them, but what if the Iranian sentries at the entrance gave them a hard time? They would all carry forged military identity cards, they decided. Some wives of EDS executives had worked for the military in Tehran and still had their ID cards: Merv Stauffer would get hold of one and use it as a model for the forgeries.

Throughout all this, Simons was still very low key, Coburn observed. Chain-smoking his cigars (Boulware told him: "Don't worry about getting shot, you're going to die of cancer!"), he did little more than ask questions. The plans were made in a round-table discussion, with everyone contributing, and decisions were arrived at by mutual agreement. Yet Coburn found himself coming to respect Simons more and more. The man was knowledgeable, intelligent, painstaking, and imaginative. He also had a sense of humor.

Coburn could see that the others were also beginning to get the measure of Simons. If anyone asked a dumb question, Simons would give a sharp answer. In consequence, they would hesitate before asking a question, and wonder what his reaction might be. In this way he was getting them to think like him.

Once on that second day at the lake house they felt the full force of his displeasure. It was, not surprisingly, young Ron Davis who angered him.

They were a humorous bunch, and Davis was the funniest. Coburn approved of that: laughter helped to ease the tension in an operation such as this. He suspected Simons felt the same. But one time Davis went too far.

Simons had a pack of cigars on the floor beside his chair, and five more packs out in the kitchen. Davis, getting to like Simons and characteristically making no secret of it, said with genuine concern: "Colonel, you smoke too many cigars--it's bad for your health."

By way of reply he got The Simons Look, but he ignored the warning.

A few minutes later, he went into the kitchen and hid the five packs of cigars in the dishwasher.

When Simons finished the first pack he went looking for the rest and could not find them. He could not operate without tobacco. He was about to get in a car and go to a store when Davis opened the dishwasher and said: "I have your cigars here."

"You keep those, goddammit," Simons growled, and he went out.

When he came back with another five packs he said to Davis: "These are mine. Keep your goddam hands off them."

Davis felt like a child who has been put in the corner. It was the first and last prank he played on Colonel Simons.

While the discussion went on, Jim Schwebach sat on the floor, trying to make a bomb.

To smuggle a bomb, or even just its component parts, through Iranian customs would have been dangerous--"That's a risk we don't have to take," Simons said--so Schwebach had to design a device that could be assembled from ingredients readily available in Tehran.

The idea of blowing up a building was dropped: it was too ambitious and would probably kill innocent people. They would make do with a blazing car as a diversion. Schwebach knew how to make "instant napalm" from gasoline, soap flakes, and a little oil. The timer and the fuse were his two problems. In the States he would have used an electrical timer connected with a toy rocket motor; but in Tehran he would be restricted to more primitive mechanisms.

Schwebach enjoyed the challenge. He liked fooling around with anything mechanical: his hobby was an ugly-looking stripped-down '73 Oldsmobile Cutlass that went like a bullet out of a gun.

At first he experimented with an old-fashioned clockwork stove-top timer that used a striker to hit a bell. He attached a phosphorus match to the striker and substituted a piece of sandpaper for the bell, to ignite the match. The match in turn would light a mechanical fuse.

The system was unreliable, and caused great hilarity among the rest of the team, who jeered and laughed every time the match failed to ignite.

In the end Schwebach settled on the oldest timing device of all: a candle.

He test-burned a candle to see how long it took to burn down one inch; then he cut another candle off at the right length for fifteen minutes.

Next he scraped the heads off several old-fashioned phosphorous matches and ground up the inflammable material into a powder. This he packed tightly into a piece of aluminum kitchen foil. Then he stuck the foil into the base of the candle. When the candle burned all the way down, it heated the aluminum foil and the ground-up match heads exploded. The foil was thinner at the bottom so that the explosion would travel downward.

The candle, with this primitive but reliable fuse in its base, was set into the neck of a plastic jar, about the size of a hip flask, full of jellied gasoline.

"You light the candle and walk away from it," Schwebach told them when his design was complete. "Fifteen minutes later you've got a nice little fire going."

And any police, soldiers, revolutionaries, or passersby--plus, quite possibly, some of the prison guards--would have their attention fixed on a blazing automobile three hundred yards up the street while Ron Davis and Jay Coburn were jumping over the fence into the prison courtyard.

That day they moved out of the Hilton Inn. Coburn slept at the lake house, and the others checked into the Airport Marina--which was closer to Lake Grapevine--all except Ralph Boulware, who insisted on going home to his family.

They spent the next four days training, buying equipment, practicing their shooting, rehearsing the jailbreak, and further refining the plan.

Shotguns could be bought in Tehran, but the only kind of ammunition allowed by the Shah was birdshot. However, Simons was expert at reloading ammunition, so they decided to smuggle their own shot into Iran.

The trouble with putting buckshot into birdshot slugs would be that they would get relatively few shot into the smaller slugs: the ammunition would have great penetration but little spread. They decided to use Number 2 shot, which would spread wide enough to knock down more than one man at a time, but had enough penetration to smash the windshield of a pursuing car.

In case things turned really nasty, each member of the team would also carry a Walther PPK in a holster. Merv Stauffer got Bob Snyder, head of security at EDS and a man who knew when not to ask questions, to buy the PPKs at Ray's Sporting Goods in Dallas. Schwebach had the job of figuring out how to smuggle the guns into Iran.

Stauffer inquired which U.S. airports did not fluoroscope outgoing baggage: one was Kennedy.

Schwebach bought two Vuitton trunks, deeper than ordinary suitcases, with reinforced comers and hard sides. With Coburn, Davis, and Jackson, he went to the woodwork shop at Perot's Dallas home and experimented with ways of constructing false bottoms in the cases.

Schwebach was perfectly happy about carrying guns through Iranian customs in a false-bottomed case. "If you know how customs people work, you don't get stopped," he said. His confidence was not shared by the rest of the team. In case he did get stopped and the guns were found, there was a fallback plan. He would say the case was not his. He would return to the baggage claim area, and there, sure enough, would be another Vuitton trunk just like the first, but full of personal belongings and containing no guns.

Once the team was in Tehran they would have to communicate with Dallas by phone. Coburn was quite sure the Iranians bugged the phone lines, so the team developed a simple code.

GR meant A, GS meant B, GT meant C, and so on through GZ which meant I; then HA meant J, HB meant K, through HR which meant Z. Numbers one through nine were IA through II; zero was IJ.

They would use the military alphabet, in which A is called Alpha, B is Bravo, C is Charlie and so on.

For speed, only key words would be coded. The sentence "He is with EDS" would therefore become "He is with Golf Victor Golf Uniform Hotel Kilo."

Only three copies of the key to the code were made. Simons gave one to Merv Stauffer, who would be the team's contact here in Dallas. He gave the other two to Jay Coburn and Pat Sculley, who--though nothing was said formally--were emerging as his lieutenants.

The code would prevent an accidental leak through a casual phone tap, but--as computer men knew better than anyone--such a simple letter cipher could be broken by an expert in a few minutes. As a further precaution, therefore, certain common words had special code groups: Paul was AG, Bill was AH, the American Embassy was GC, and Tehran was AU. Perot was always referred to as The Chairman, guns were tapes, the prison was The Data Center, Kuwait was Oil Town, Istanbul was Resort, and the attack on the prison was Plan A. Everyone had to memorize these special code words.

If anyone were questioned about the code, he was to say that it was used to abbreviate teletype messages.

The code name for the whole rescue was Operation Hotfoot. It was an acronym, dreamed up by Ron Davis: Help Our Two Friends Out of Tehran. Simons was tickled by that. "Hotfoot has been used so many times for operations," he said. "And this is the first time it's ever been appropriate."

They rehearsed the attack on the prison at least a hundred times.

In the grounds of the lake house Schwebach and Davis nailed up a plank between two trees at a height of twelve feet, to represent the courtyard fence. Merv Stauffer brought them a van borrowed from EDS security.

Time and time again Simons walked up to the "fence" and gave a hand signal; Poche drove the van up and stopped it at the fence; Boulware jumped out of the back; Davis got on the roof and jumped over the fence; Coburn followed; Boulware climbed on the roof and lowered the ladder into the "courtyard"; "Paul" and "Bill"--played by Schwebach and Sculley, who did not need to rehearse their roles as flanking guards--came up the ladder and over the fence, followed by Coburn and then Davis; everyone scrambled into the van; and Poche drove off at top speed.

Sometimes they switched roles so that each man learned how to do everyone else's job. They prioritized tasks so that, if one of them dropped out, wounded or for any other reason, they knew automatically who would take his place. Schwebach and Sculley, playing the parts of Paul and Bill, sometimes acted sick and had to be carried up the ladder and over the fence.

The advantage of physical fitness became apparent during the rehearsals. Davis could come back over the fence in a second and a half, touching the ladder twice: nobody else could do it anywhere near that fast.

One time Davis went over too fast and landed awkwardly on the frozen ground, straining his shoulder. The injury was not serious, but it gave Simons an idea. Davis would travel to Tehran with his arm in a sling, carrying a beanbag for exercise. The bag would be weighted with Number 2 shot.

Simons timed the rescue, from the moment the van stopped at the fence to the moment it pulled away with everyone inside. In the end, according to his stopwatch, they could do it in under thirty seconds.

They practiced with the Walther PPKs at the Garland Public Shooting Range. They told the range operator that they were security men from all over the country on a course in Dallas, and they had to get their target practice in before they could go home. He did not believe them, especially after T. J. Marquez turned up looking just like a Mafia chieftain in a movie, with his black coat and black hat, and took ten Walther PPKs and five thousand rounds of ammunition out of the trunk of his black Lincoln.

After a little practice they could all shoot reasonably well except Davis. Simons suggested he try shooting lying down, since that was the position he would be in when he was in the courtyard; and he found he could do much better that way.

It was bitterly cold out in the open, and they all huddled in a little shack, trying to get warm, while they were not shooting--all except Simons, who stayed outside all day long, as if he were made of stone.

He was not made of stone--when he got into Merv Stauffer's car at the end of the day he said: "Jesus Christ it's cold."

He had begun to needle them about how soft they were. They were always talking about where they would go to eat and what they would order, he said. When he was hungry he would open a can. He would laugh at someone for nursing a drink: when he was thirsty he would fill a tumbler with water and drink it all straight down, saying: "I didn't pour it to look at it." He showed them how he could shoot, one time: every bullet in the center of the target. Once Coburn saw him with his shirt off: his physique would have been impressive on a man twenty years younger.

It was a tough-guy act, the whole performance. What was peculiar was that none of them ever laughed at it. With Simons, it was the real thing.

One evening at the lake house he showed them the best way to kill a man quickly and silently.

He had ordered--and Merv Stauffer had purchased--Gerber knives for each of them, short stabbing weapons with a narrow two-edged blade.

"It's kind of small," said Davis, looking at his. "Is it long enough?"

"It is unless you want to sharpen it when it comes out the other side," Simons said.

He showed them the exact spot in the small of Glenn Jackson's back where the kidney was located. "A single stab, right there, is lethal," he said.

"Wouldn't he scream?" Davis asked.

"It hurts so bad he can't make a sound."

While Simons was demonstrating, Merv Stauffer had come in, and now he stood in the doorway, openmouthed, with a McDonald's paper bag in either arm. Simons saw him and said: "Look at this guy--he can't make a sound and nobody's stuck him yet."

Merv laughed and started handing round the food. "You know what the McDonald's girl said to me, in a completely empty restaurant, when I asked for thirty hamburgers and thirty orders of fries?"

"What?"

"What they always say--'Is this to eat here or to go?' "

Simons just loved working for private enterprise.

One of his biggest headaches in the army had always been supplies. Even planning the Son Tay Raid, an operation in which the President himself was personally interested, it had seemed as if he had to fill in six requisition forms and get approval from twelve generals every time he needed a new pencil. Then, when all the paperwork was done, he would find that the items were out of stock, or there was a four-month wait for delivery, or--worst of all--when the stuff came it did not work. Twenty-two percent of the blasting caps he ordered misfired. He had tried to get night sights for his Raiders. He learned that the army had spent seventeen years trying to develop a night sight, but by 1970 all they had were six hand-built prototypes. Then he discovered a perfectly good British-made night sight available from the Armalite Corporation for $49.50, and that was what the Son Tay Raiders took to Vietnam.

At EDS there were no forms to be filled out and no permissions to be sought, at least not for Simons: he told Merv Stauffer what he needed and Stauffer got it, usually the same day. He asked for, and got, ten Walther PPKs and ten thousand rounds of ammunition; a selection of holsters, both left-handed and right-handed, in different styles so the men could pick the kind they felt most comfortable with; shotgun-ammunition reloading kits in twelve-gauge, sixteen-gauge and twenty-gauge; and cold-weather clothes for the team including coats, mittens, shirts, socks, and woolen stocking caps. One day he asked for a hundred thousand dollars in cash: two hours later T. J. Marquez arrived at the lake house with the money in an envelope.

It was different from the army in other ways. His men were not soldiers who could be bullied into submission: they were some of the brightest young corporate executives in the United States. He had realized from the start that he could not assume command. He had to earn their loyalty.

These men would obey an order if they agreed with it. If not, they would discuss it. That was fine in the boardroom, but useless on the battlefield.

They were squeamish, too. The first time they talked about setting fire to a car as a diversion, someone had objected on the grounds that innocent passersby might get hurt. Simons needled them about their Boy Scout morality, saying they were afraid of losing their merit badges, and calling them "you Jack Armstrongs" after the too-good-to-be-true radio character who went around solving crimes and helping old ladies cross the road.

They also had a tendency to forget the seriousness of what they were doing. There was a lot of joking and a certain amount of horseplay, particularly from young Ron Davis. A measure of humor was useful in a team on a dangerous mission, but sometimes Simons had to put a stop to it and bring them back to reality with a sharp remark.

He gave them all the opportunity to back out at any time. He got Ron Davis on his own again and said: "You're going to be the first one over that fence--don't you have some reservations about that?"

"Yeah."

"Good thing you do, otherwise I wouldn't take you. Suppose Paul and Bill don't come right away? Suppose they figure that if they head for the fence they'll get shot? You'll be stuck there and the guards will see you. You'll be in bad trouble."

"Yeah."

"Me, I'm sixty years old. I've lived my life. Hell, I don't have a thing to lose. But you're a young man--and Marva's pregnant, isn't she?"

"Yeah."

"Are you really sure you want to do this?"

"Yeah."

He worked on them all. There was no point in his telling them that his military judgment was better than theirs: they had to come to that conclusion themselves. Similarly, his tough-guy act was intended to let them know that from now on such things as keeping warm, eating, drinking, and worrying about innocent bystanders would not occupy much of their time or attention. The shooting practice and the knife lesson also had a hidden purpose: the last thing Simons wanted was any killing on this operation, but learning how to kill reminded the men that the rescue could be a life-and-death affair.

The biggest element in his psychological campaign was the endless practicing of the assault on the jail. Simons was quite sure that the jail would not be exactly as Coburn had described it, and that the plan would have to be modified. A raid never went precisely according to the scenario--as he knew better than most.

The rehearsals for the Son Tay Raid had gone on for weeks. A complete replica of the prison camp had been built, out of two-by-four timbers and target cloth, at Eglin Air Base in Florida. The bloody thing had to be dismantled every morning before dawn and put up again at night, because the Russian reconnaissance satellite Cosmos 355 passed over Florida twice every twenty-four hours. But it had been a beautiful thing: every goddam tree and ditch in the Son Tay prison camp had been reproduced in the mock-up. And then, after all those rehearsals, when they did it for real, one of the helicopters--the one Simons was in--had landed in the wrong place.

Simons would never forget the moment he realized the mistake. His helicopter was taking off again, having discharged the Raiders. A startled Vietnamese guard emerged from a foxhole and Simons shot him in the chest. Shooting broke out, a flare went up, and Simons saw that the buildings surrounding him were not the buildings of the Son Tay camp. "Get that fucking chopper back in here!" he yelled to his radio operator. He told a sergeant to turn on a strobe light to mark the landing zone.

He knew where they were: four hundred yards from Son Tay, in a compound marked on intelligence maps as a school. This was no school. There were enemy troops everywhere. It was a barracks, and Simons realized that his helicopter pilot's mistake had been a lucky one, for now he was able to launch a preemptive attack and wipe out a concentration of enemy troops who might otherwise have jeopardized the whole operation.

That was the night he stood outside a barracks and shot eighty men in their underwear.

No, an operation never went exactly according to plan. But becoming proficient at executing the scenario was only half the purpose of rehearsals anyway. The other half--and, in the case of the EDS men, the important half--was learning to work together as a team. Oh, they were already terrific as an intellectual team--give them each an office and a secretary and a telephone, and together they would computerize the world--but working together with their hands and their bodies was different. When they had started, on January 3, they would have had trouble launching a row-boat as a team. Five days later they were a machine.

And that was all that could be done here in Texas.

Now they had to take a look at the real-life jail.

It was time to go to Tehran.

Simons told Stauffer he wanted to meet with Perot again.

3____

While the rescue team was in training, President Carter got his last chance of preventing a bloody revolution in Iran.

And he blew it.

This is how it happened ...

Ambassador William Sullivan went to bed content on the night of January 4 in his private apartment within the large, cool residence in the Embassy compound at the comer of Roosevelt and Takht-e-Jamshid avenues in Tehran.

Sullivan's boss, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, had been busy with the Camp David negotiations all through November and December, but now he was back in Washington and concentrating on Iran--and boy, did it show. Vagueness and vacillation had ended. The cables containing Sullivan's instructions had become crisp and decisive. Most importantly, the United States at last had a strategy for dealing with the crisis: they were going to talk to the Ayatollah Khomeini.

It was Sullivan's own idea. He was now sure that the Shah would soon leave Iran and Khomeini would return in triumph. His job, he believed, was to preserve America's relationship with Iran through the change of government, so that when it was all over, Iran would still be a stronghold of American influence in the Middle East. The way to do that was to help the Iranian armed forces to stay intact and to continue American military aid to any new regime.

Sullivan had called Vance on the secure telephone line and told him just that. The U.S. should send an emissary to Paris to see the Ayatollah, Sullivan had urged. Khomeini should be told that the main concern of the U.S. was to preserve the territorial integrity of Iran and deflect Soviet influence; that the Americans did not want to see a pitched battle in Iran between the army and the Islamic revolutionaries; and that once the Ayatollah was in power, the U.S. would offer him the same military assistance and arms sales it had given the Shah.

It was a bold plan. There would be those who would accuse the U.S. of abandoning a friend. But Sullivan was sure it was time for the Americans to cut their losses with the Shah and look to the future.

To his intense satisfaction, Vance had agreed.

So had the Shah. Weary, apathetic, and no longer willing to shed blood in order to stay in power, the Shah had not even put up a show of reluctance.

Vance had nominated, as his emissary to the Ayatollah, Theodore H. Eliot, a senior diplomat who had served as economic counselor in Tehran and spoke Farsi fluently. Sullivan was delighted with the choice.

Ted Eliot was scheduled to arrive in Paris in two days' time, on January 6.

In one of the guest bedrooms at the ambassadorial residence, Air Force General Robert "Dutch" Huyser was also going to bed. Sullivan was not as enthusiastic about the Huyser Mission as he was about the Eliot Mission. Dutch Huyser, the deputy commander (under Haig) of U.S. forces in Europe, had arrived yesterday to persuade Iranian generals to support the new Bakhtiar government in Tehran. Sullivan knew Huyser. He was a fine soldier, but no diplomat. He spoke no Farsi and he did not know Iran. But even if he had been ideally qualified, his task would have been hopeless. The Bakhtiar government had failed to gain the support even of the moderates, and Shahpour Bakhtiar himself had been expelled from the centrist National Front party merely for accepting the Shah's invitation to form a government. Meanwhile, the army, which Huyser was trying futilely to swing to Bakhtiar, continued to weaken as thousands of soldiers deserted and joined the revolutionary mobs in the streets. The best Huyser could hope for was to hold the army together a little longer, while Eliot in Paris arranged for the peaceful return of the Ayatollah.

If it worked it would be a great achievement for Sullivan, something any diplomat could be proud of for the rest of his life: his plan would have strengthened his country and saved lives.

As he went to sleep, there was just one worry nagging at the back of his mind. The Eliot Mission, for which he had such high hopes, was a State Department scheme, identified in Washington with Secretary of State Vance. The Huyser Mission was the idea of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor. The enmity between Vance and Brzezinski was notorious. And at this moment Brzezinski, after the summit meeting in Guadeloupe, was deep-sea fishing in the Caribbean with President Carter. As they sailed over the clear blue sea, what was Brzezinski whispering in the President's ear?

The phone woke Sullivan in the early hours of the morning.

It was the duty officer, calling from the communications vault in the Embassy Building just a few yards away. An urgent cable had arrived from Washington. The Ambassador might want to read it immediately.

Sullivan got out of bed and walked across the lawns to the Embassy, full of foreboding.

The cable said that the Eliot Mission was canceled.

The decision had been taken by the President. Sullivan's comments on the change of plan were not invited. He was instructed to tell the Shah that the United States government no longer intended to hold talks with the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Sullivan was heartbroken.

This was the end of America's influence in Iran. It also meant that Sullivan personally had lost his chance of distinguishing himself as Ambassador by preventing a bloody civil war.

He sent an angry message back to Vance, saying the President had made a gross mistake and should reconsider.

He went back to bed, but he could not sleep.

In the morning another cable informed him that the President's decision would stand.

Wearily, Sullivan made his way up the hill to the palace to tell the Shah.

The Shah appeared drawn and tense that morning. He and Sullivan sat down and drank the inevitable cup of tea. Then Sullivan told him that President Carter had canceled the Eliot Mission.

The Shah was upset. "But why have they canceled it?" he said agitatedly.

"I don't know," Sullivan replied.

"But how do they expect to influence those people if they won't even talk to them?"

"I don't know."

"Then what does Washington intend to do now?" asked the Shah, throwing up his hands in despair.

"I don't know," said Sullivan.

4___

"Ross, this is idiotic," Tom Luce said loudly. "You're going to destroy the company and you're going to destroy yourself."

Perot looked at his lawyer. They were sitting in Perot's office. The door was closed.

Luce was not the first to say this. During the week, as the news had spread through the seventh floor, several of Perot's top executives had come in to tell him that a rescue team was a foolhardy and dangerous notion, and he should drop the idea. "Stop worrying," Perot had told them. "Just concentrate on what you have to do."

Tom Luce was characteristically vociferous. Wearing an aggressive scowl and a courtroom manner, he argued his case as if a jury were listening.

"I can only advise you on the legal situation, but I'm here to tell you that this rescue can cause more problems, and worse problems, than you've got now. Hell, Ross, I can't make a list of the laws you're going to break!"

"Try," said Perot.

"You'll have a mercenary army--which is illegal here, in Iran, and in every country the team would pass through. Anywhere they go they'd be liable to criminal penalties and you could have ten men in jail instead of two.

"But it's worse than that. Your men would be in a position much worse than soldiers in battle--international laws and the Geneva Convention, which protect soldiers in uniform, would not protect the rescue team.

"If they get captured in Iran ... Ross, they'll be shot. If they get captured in any country that has an extradition treaty with Iran, they'll be sent back and shot. Instead of two innocent employees in jail, you could have eight guilty employees dead.

"And if that happens, the families of the dead men may turn on you--understandably, because this whole thing will look stupid. The widows will have huge claims against EDS in the American courts. They could bankrupt the company. Think of the ten thousand people who would be out of a job if that happened. Think of yourself--Ross, there might even be criminal charges against you that could put you in jail!"

Perot said calmly: "I appreciate your advice, Tom."

Luce stared at him. "I'm not getting through to you, am I?"

Perot smiled. "Sure you are. But if you go through life worrying about all the bad things that can happen, you soon convince yourself that it's best to do nothing at all."

The truth was that Perot knew something Luce did not.

Ross Perot was lucky.

All his life he had been lucky.

As a twelve-year-old boy he had had a paper route in the poor black district of Texarkana. The Texarkana Gazette cost twenty-five cents a week in those days, and on Sundays, when he collected the money, he would end up with forty or fifty dollars in quarters in his pocket. And every Sunday, somewhere along the route, some poor man who had spent his week's wages in a bar the previous night would try to take the money from little Ross. This was why no other boy would deliver papers in that district. But Ross was never scared. He was on a horse; the attempts were never very determined; and he was lucky. He never lost his money.

He had been lucky again in getting admitted to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Applicants had to be sponsored by a senator or a congressman, and of course the Perot family did not have the right contacts. Anyway, young Ross had never even seen the sea--the farthest he had ever traveled was to Dallas, 180 miles away. But there was a young man in Texarkana called Josh Morriss, Jr., who had been to Annapolis and told Ross all about it, and Ross had fallen in love with the navy without ever seeing a ship. So he just kept writing to senators begging for sponsorship. He succeeded--as he would many times during later life--because he was too dumb to know it was impossible.

It was not until many years later that he found out how it had happened. One day back in 1949 Senator W. Lee O'Daniel was clearing out his desk: it was the end of his term and he was not going to run again. An aide said: "Senator, we have an unfilled appointment to the Naval Academy."

"Does anyone want it?" the senator said.

"Well, we've got this boy from Texarkana who's been trying for years ..."

"Give it to him," said the senator.

The way Perot heard the story, his name was never actually mentioned during the conversation.

He had been lucky once again in setting up EDS when he did. As a computer salesman for IBM, he realized that his customers did not always make the best use of the machines he sold them. Data processing was a new and specialized skill. The banks were good at banking, the insurance companies were good at insurance, the manufacturers were good at manufacturing--and the computer men were good at data processing. The customer did not want the machine, he wanted the fast, cheap information it could provide. Yet, too often, the customer spent so much time creating his new data-processing department and learning how to use the machine that his computer caused him trouble and expense instead of saving them. Perot's idea was to sell a total package--a complete data-processing department with machinery, software, and staff. The customer had only to say, in simple language, what information he needed, and EDS would give it to him. Then he could get on with what he was good at--banking, insurance, or manufacturing.

IBM turned down Perot's idea. It was a good concept but the pickings would be small. Out of every dollar spent on data processing, eighty cents went into hardware--the machinery--and only twenty cents into software, which was what Perot wanted to sell. IBM did not want to chase pennies under the table.

So Perot drew a thousand dollars out of his savings and started up on his own. Over the next decade the proportions changed until software was taking seventy cents of every data-processing dollar, and Perot became one of the richest self-made men in the world.

The chairman of IBM, Tom Watson, met Perot in a restaurant one day and said: "I just want to know one thing, Ross. Did you foresee that the ratio would change?"

"No," said Perot. "The twenty cents looked good enough to me."

Yes, he was lucky; but he had to give his luck room to operate. It was no good sitting in a corner being careful. You never got the chance to be lucky unless you took risks. All his life Perot had taken risks.

This one just happened to be the biggest.

Merv Stauffer walked into the office. "Ready to go?" he said.

"Yes."

Perot got up and the two men left the office. They went down in the elevator and got into Stauffer's car, a brand-new four-door Lincoln Versailles. Perot read the nameplate on the dashboard: "Merv and Helen Stauffer." The interior of the car stank of Simons's cigars.

"He's waiting for you," Stauffer said.

"Good."

Perot's oil company, Petrus, had offices in the next building along Forest Lane. Merv had already taken Simons there, then come for Perot. Afterward he would take Perot back to EDS, then return for Simons. The object of the exercise was secrecy: as few people as possible were to see Simons and Perot together.

In the last six days, while Simons and the rescue team had been doing their thing out at Lake Grapevine, the prospects of a legal solution to the problem of Paul and Bill had receded. Kissinger, having failed with Ardeshir Zahedi, was unable to do anything else to help. Lawyer Tom Luce had been busy calling every single one of the twenty-four Texas congressmen, both Texas senators, and anyone else in Washington who would take his calls; but what they all did was to call the State Department to find out what was going on, and all the calls ended up on the desk of Henry Precht.

EDS's chief financial officer, Tom Walter, still had not found a bank willing to post a letter of credit for $12,750,000. The difficulty, Walter had explained to Perot, was this: under American law, an individual or a corporation could renege on a letter of credit if there was proof that the letter had been signed under illegal pressure--for example, blackmail or kidnapping. The banks saw the imprisonment of Paul and Bill as a straightforward piece of extortion, and they knew EDS would be able to argue, in an American court, that the letter was invalid and the money should not be paid. In theory that would not matter, for by then Paul and Bill would be home, and the American bank would simply--and quite legally--refuse to honor the letter of credit when it was presented for payment by the Iranian government. However, most American banks had large loans outstanding with Iran, and their fear was that the Iranians would retaliate by deducting $12,750,000 from what they owed. Walter was still searching for a large bank that did no business with Iran.

So, unfortunately, Operation Hotfoot was still Perot's best bet.

Perot left Stauffer in the car park and went into the oil company building.

He found Simons in the little office reserved for Perot. Simons was eating peanuts and listening to a portable radio. Perot guessed that the peanuts were his lunch and the radio was to swamp any eavesdropping devices that might be hidden in the room.

They shook hands. Perot noticed that Simons was growing a beard. "How are things?" he said.

"They're good," Simons answered. "The men are beginning to pull together as a team."

"Now," said Perot, "you realize you can reject any member of the team you find unsatisfactory." A couple of days earlier Perot had proposed an addition to the team, a man who knew Tehran and had an outstanding military record, but Simons had turned him down after a short interview, saying: "That guy believes his own bullshit." Now Perot wondered whether Simons had found fault, during the training period, with any of the others. He went on: "You're in charge of the rescue, and--"

"There's no need," Simons said. "I don't want to reject anyone." He laughed softly. "They're easily the most intelligent squad I've ever worked with, and that does create a problem, because they think orders are to be discussed, not obeyed. But they're learning to turn off their thinking switches when necessary. I've made it very clear to them that at some point in the game discussion ends and blind obedience is called for."

Perot smiled. "Then you've achieved more in six days than I have in sixteen years."

"There's no more we can do here in Dallas," Simons said. "Our next step is to go to Tehran."

Perot nodded. This might be his last chance to call off Operation Hotfoot. Once the team left Dallas, they might be out of touch and they would be out of his control. The die would be cast.

Ross, this is idiotic. You're going to destroy the company and you're going to destroy yourself.

Hell, Ross, I can't make a list of the laws you're going to break!

Instead of two innocent employees in jail, you could have eight guilty employees dead.

Well, we've got this boy from Texarkana who's been trying for years ...

"When do you want to leave?" Perot asked Simons.

"Tomorrow."

"Good luck," said Perot.

Five

1____

While Simons was talking to Perot in Dallas, Pat Sculley--the world's worst liar--was in Istanbul, trying and failing to pull the wool over the eyes of a wily Turk.

Mr. Fish was a travel agent who had been "discovered" during the December evacuation by Merv Stauffer and T. J. Marquez. They had hired him to make arrangements for the evacuees' stopover in Istanbul, and he had worked miracles. He had booked them all into the Sheraton and organized buses to take them from the airport to the hotel. When they arrived there had been a meal waiting for them. They left him to collect their baggage and clear it through customs, and it appeared outside their hotel rooms as if by magic. The next day there had been video movies for the children and sight-seeing tours for the adults to keep everyone occupied while they waited for their flights to New York. Mr. Fish achieved all this while most of the hotel staff were on strike--T. J. found out later that Mrs. Fish had made the beds in the hotel rooms. Once onward flights had been reserved, Merv Stauffer had wanted to duplicate a handout sheet with instructions for everyone, but the hotel's photocopier was broken: Mr. Fish got an electrician to mend it at five o'clock on a Sunday morning. Mr. Fish could make it happen.

Simons was still worried about smuggling the Walther PPKs into Tehran, and when he heard how Mr. Fish had cleared the evacuees' baggage through Turkish customs he proposed that the same man be asked to solve the problem of the guns. Sculley had left for Istanbul on January 8.

The following day he met Mr. Fish at the coffee shop in the Sheraton. Mr. Fish was a big, fat man in his late forties, dressed in drab clothes. But he was shrewd: Sculley was no match for him.

Sculley told him that EDS needed help with two problems. "One, we need an aircraft that can fly into and out of Tehran. Two, we want to get some baggage through customs without its being inspected. Naturally, we'll pay you anything reasonable for help with these problems."

Mr. Fish looked dubious. "Why do you want to do these things?"

"Well, we've got some magnetic tapes for computer systems in Tehran," Sculley said. "We've got to get them in there and we can't take any chances. We don't want anyone to X-ray those tapes or do anything that could damage them, and we can't risk having them confiscated by some petty customs official."

"And for this, you need to hire a plane and get your bags through customs unopened?"

"Yes, that's right." Sculley could see that Mr. Fish did not believe a word of it.

Mr. Fish shook his head. "No, Mr. Sculley. I have been happy to help your friends before, but I am a travel agent, not a smuggler. I will not do this."

"What about the plane--can you get us a plane?"

Mr. Fish shook his head again. "You will have to go to Amman, Jordan. Arab Wings run charter flights from there to Tehran. That is the best suggestion I can make."

Sculley shrugged. "Okay."

A few minutes later he left Mr. Fish and went up to his room to call Dallas.

His first assignment as a member of the rescue team had not gone well.

When Simons got the news he decided to leave the Walther PPKs in Dallas.

He explained his thinking to Coburn. "Let's not jeopardize the whole mission, right at the start, when we're not even sure we're going to need the handguns: that's a risk we don't have to take, not yet anyway. Let's get in the country and see what we're up against. If and when we need the guns, Schwebach will go back to Dallas and get 'em."

The guns were put in the EDS vault, together with a tool Simons had ordered for filing off the serial numbers. (Since that was against the law it would not be done until the last possible moment.)

However, they would take the false-bottomed suitcase and do a dry run. They would also take the Number 2 shot--Davis would carry it in his beanbag--and the equipment Simons needed for reloading the shot into birdshot cartridges--Simons would carry that himself.

There was now no point in going via Istanbul, so Simons sent Sculley to Paris to book hotel rooms there and try to get reservations for the team on a flight into Tehran.

The rest of the team took off from the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport at 11:05 A.M. on January 10 aboard Braniff flight 341 to Miami, where they transferred to National 4 to Paris.

They met up with Sculley at Orly Airport, in the picture gallery between the restaurant and the coffee shop, the following morning.

Cobum noticed that Sculley was jumpy. Everyone was becoming infected with Simons's security-consciousness, he realized. Coming over from the States, although they had all been on the same plane, they had traveled separately, sitting apart and not acknowledging one another. In Paris Sculley had got nervous about the staff at the Orly Hilton and suspected that someone was listening to his phone calls, so Simons--who was always uneasy in hotels anyway--had decided they would talk in the picture gallery.

Sculley had failed in his second assignment, to get onward reservations from Paris to Tehran for the team. "Half the airlines have just stopped flying to Iran, because of the political unrest and the strike at the airport," he said. "What flights there are are overbooked with Iranians trying to get home. All I have is a rumor that Swissair is flying in from Zurich."

They split into two groups. Simons, Coburn, Poche, and Boulware would go to Zurich and try for the Swissair flight. Sculley, Schwebach, Davis, and Jackson would stay in Paris.

Simons's group flew Swissair first class to Zurich. Coburn sat next to Simons. They spent the whole of the flight eating a splendid lunch of shrimp and steak. Simons raved about how good the food was. Coburn was amused, remembering how Simons had said: "When you're hungry, you open a can."

At Zurich Airport the reservations desk for the Tehran flight was mobbed by Iranians. The team could get only one seat on the plane. Which of them should go? Coburn, they decided. He would be the logistics man: as Director of Personnel and as evacuation mastermind he had the most complete knowledge of EDS resources in Tehran: 150 empty houses and apartments, 60 abandoned cars and jeeps, 200 Iranian employees--those who could be trusted and those who could not--and the food, drink, and tools left behind by the evacuees. Going in first, Coburn could arrange transport, supplies, and a hideout for the rest of the team.

So Coburn said goodbye to his friends and got on the plane, heading for chaos, violence, and revolution.

That same day, unknown to Simons and the rescue team, Ross Perot took British Airways flight 172 from New York to London. He, too, was on his way to Tehran.

The flight from Zurich to Tehran was all too short.

Coburn spent the time anxiously running over in his mind the things he had to do. He could not make a list: Simons would not allow anything to be written down.

His first job was to get through customs with the false-bottomed case. There were no guns in it: if the case was inspected and the secret compartment discovered, Coburn was to say that it was for carrying delicate photographic equipment.

Next he had to select some abandoned houses and apartments for Simons to consider as hideouts. Then he had to find cars and make sure there was a supply of gasoline for them.

His cover story, for the benefit of Keane Taylor, Rich Gallagher, and EDS's Iranian employees, was that he was arranging shipment of evacuees' personal belongings back to the States. Coburn had told Simons that Taylor ought to be let in on the secret: he would be a valuable asset to the rescue team. Simons had said he would make that decision himself, after meeting Taylor.

Coburn wondered how to hoodwink Taylor.

He was still wondering when the plane landed.

Inside the terminal all the airport staff were in army uniforms. That was how the airport had been kept open despite the strike, Coburn realized: the military was running it.

He picked up the suitcase with the false bottom and walked through customs. No one stopped him.

The arrivals hall was a zoo. The waiting crowds were more unruly than ever. The army was not running the airport on military lines.

He fought his way through the crowd to the cabstand. He skirted two men who appeared to be fighting over a taxi, and took the next in line.

Riding into town, he noticed a good deal of military hardware on the road, especially near the airport. There were many more tanks about than there had been when he left. Was that a sign that the Shah was still in control? In the press the Shah was still talking as if he were in control, but then so was Bakhtiar. So, for that matter, was the Ayatollah, who had just announced the formation of a Council of the Islamic Revolution to take over the government, just as if he were already in power in Tehran instead of sitting in a villa outside Paris at the end of a telephone line. In truth, nobody was in charge; and while that hindered the negotiations for the release of Paul and Bill, it would probably help the rescue team.

The cab took him to the office they called Bucharest, where he found Keane Taylor. Taylor was in charge now, for Lloyd Briggs had gone to New York to brief EDS's lawyers in person. Taylor was sitting at Paul Chiapparone's desk, in an immaculate vested suit, just as if he were a million miles away from the nearest revolution instead of in the middle of it. He was astonished to see Coburn.

"Jay! When the hell did you get here?"

"Just arrived," Coburn said.

"What's with the beard--you trying to get yourself fired?"

"I thought it might make me look less American here."

"Did you ever see an Iranian with a ginger beard?"

"No," Coburn laughed.

"So, what are you here for?"

"Well, we're obviously not going to bring our people back in here in the foreseeable future, so I've come to police up everyone's personal belongings to get them shipped back to the States."

Taylor shot him a funny look but did not comment. "Where are you going to stay? We've all moved into the Hyatt Crown Regency, it's safer."

"How about I use your old house?"

"Whatever you say."

"Now, about these belongings. Do you have those envelopes everyone left, with their house keys and car keys and instructions for disposal of their household goods?"

"I sure do--I've been referring to them. Everything people don't want shipped I've been selling--washers and dryers, refrigerators. I'm running a permanent garage sale here."

"Can I have the envelopes?"

"Sure."

"How's the car situation?"

"We've rounded up most of them. I've got them parked at a school, with some Iranians watching them, if they're not selling them."

"What about gas?"

"Rich got four fifty-five-gallon drums from the air force and we've got them full down in the basement."

"I thought I smelled gas when I came in."

"Don't strike a match down there in the dark--we'll all be blown to hell."

"What do you do about topping up the drums?"

"We use a couple of cars as tankers--a Buick and a Chevy, with big U.S. gas tanks. Two of our drivers spend all day waiting in gas lines. When they get filled up, they come back here and we siphon the gas into the drums, then send the cars back to the filling station. Sometimes you can buy gas from the front of the line. Grab someone who's just got filled up and offer him ten times the pump price for the gas in his car. There's a whole economy grown up around the gas lines."

"What about fuel oil for the houses, for heating?"

"I've got a source, but he charges me ten times the old price. I'm spending money like a drunken sailor here."

"I'm going to need twelve cars."

"Twelve cars, huh, Jay?"

"That's what I said."

"You'll have room to stash them, at my house--it's got a big walled courtyard. Would you ... for any reason ... like to be able to get the cars refueled without any of the Iranian employees seeing you?"

"I sure would."

"Just bring an empty car to the Hyatt and I'll swap it for a full one."

"How many Iranians do we still have?"

"Ten of the best, plus four drivers."

"I'd like a list of their names."

"Did you know Ross is on his way in?"

"Shit, no!" Coburn was astonished.

"I just got word. He's bringing Bob Young, from Kuwait, to take over this administrative stuff from me, and John Howell to work on the legal side. They want me to work with John, on the negotiations and bail."

"Is that a fact?" Coburn wondered what was on Perot's mind. "Okay, I'm taking off for your place."

"Jay, why don't you tell me what's up?"

"There's nothing I can tell you."

"Screw you, Coburn. I want to know what's going down."

"You got all I'm going to tell you."

"Screw you again. Wait till you see what cars you get--you'll be lucky if they have steering wheels."

"Sorry."

"Jay ..."

"Yeah?"

"That's the funniest looking suitcase I've ever seen."

"So it is, so it is."

"I know what you're up to, Coburn."

Coburn sighed. "Let's go for a walk."

They went out into the street, and Coburn told Taylor about the rescue team.

The next day Coburn and Taylor went to work on hideouts.

Taylor's house, Number 2 Aftab Street, was ideal. Conveniently close to the Hyatt for switching cars, it was also in the Armenian section of the city, which might be less hostile to Americans if the rioting got worse. It had a working phone and a supply of heating oil. The walled courtyard was big enough to park six cars, and there was a back entrance that could be used as an escape route if a squad of police came to the front door. And the landlord did not live on the premises.

Using the street map of Tehran on the wall of Coburn's office--which had, since the evacuation, been marked with the location of every EDS home in the city--they picked three more empty houses as alternative hideouts.

During the day, as Taylor got the cars gassed up, Coburn drove them one by one from Bucharest to the houses, parking three cars at each of the four locations.

Looking again at his wall map, he tried to recall which of the wives had worked for the American military, for the families with commissary privileges always had the best food. He listed eight likely prospects. Tomorrow he would visit them and pick up canned and dried food and bottled drinks for the hideouts.

He selected a fifth apartment, but did not visit it. It was to be a safe house, a hideout for a serious emergency: no one would go there until it had to be used.

That evening, alone in Taylor's apartment, he called Dallas and asked for Merv Stauffer.

Stauffer was cheerful, as always. "Hi, Jay! How are you?"

"Fine."

"I'm glad you called, because I have a message for you. Got a pencil?"

"Sure do."

"Okay. Honky Keith Goofball Zero Honky Dummy--"

"Merv," Coburn interrupted.

"Yeah?"

"What the hell are you talking about, Merv?"

"It's the code, Jay."

"What is Honky Keith Goofball?"

"H for Honky, K for Keith--"

"Merv, H is Hotel, K is Kilo ..."

"Oh!" said Stauffer. "Oh, I didn't realize you were supposed to use certain particular words ..."

Coburn started to laugh. "Listen," he said. "Get someone to give you the military alphabet before next time."

Stauffer was laughing at himself. "I sure will," he said. "I guess we'll have to make do with my own version this time, though."

"Okay, off you go."

Coburn took down the coded message, then--still using the code--he gave Stauffer his location and phone number. After hanging up, he decoded the message Stauffer had given him.

It was good news. Simons and Joe Poche were arriving in Tehran the next day.

2____

By January 11--the day Coburn arrived in Tehran and Perot flew to London--Paul and Bill had been in jail exactly two weeks.

In that time they had showered once. When the guards learned that there was hot water, they gave each cell five minutes in the showers. Modesty was forgotten as the men crowded into the cubicles for the luxury of being warm and clean for a while. They washed not only themselves but all their clothes as well.

After a week the jail had run out of bottled gas for cooking, so the food, as well as being starchy and short on vegetables, was now cold. Fortunately they were allowed to supplement the diet with oranges, apples, and nuts brought in by visitors.

Most evenings the electricity was off for an hour or two, and then the prisoners would light candles or flashlights. The jail was full of deputy ministers, government contractors, and Tehran businessmen. Two members of the Empress's court were in Cell Number 5 with Paul and Bill. The latest arrival in their cell was Dr. Siazi, who had worked at the Ministry of Health under Dr. Sheik as manager of a department called Rehabilitation. Siazi was a psychiatrist, and he used his knowledge of the human mind to boost morale among his fellow prisoners. He was forever dreaming up games and diversions to enliven the dreary routine: he instituted a suppertime ritual whereby everyone in the cell had to tell a joke before they could eat. When he learned the amount of Paul's and Bill's bail he assured them they would have a visit from Farrah Fawcett Majors, whose husband was a mere Six Million Dollar Man.

Paul developed a curiously strong relationship with the "father" of the cell, the longest resident, who by tradition was cell boss. A small man in late middle age, he did what little he could to help the Americans, encouraging them to eat and bribing the guards for little extras for them. He knew only a dozen or so words of English, and Paul spoke little Farsi, but they managed halting conversations. Paul learned that he had been a prominent businessman, owning a construction company and a London hotel. Paul showed him the photographs that Taylor had brought in of Karen and Ann Marie, and the old man learned their names. For all Paul knew, he might have been as guilty as hell of whatever he was accused of; but the concern and warmth he displayed toward the foreigners was enormously heartening.

Paul was also touched by the bravery of his EDS colleagues in Tehran. Lloyd Briggs, who had now gone to New York; Rich Gallagher, who had never left; and Keane Taylor, who had come back; all risked their lives every time they drove through the riots to visit the jail. Each of them also faced the danger that Dadgar might take it into his head to seize them as additional hostages. Paul was particularly grateful when he heard that Bob Young was on his way in, for Bob's wife had a new baby, and this was an especially bad time for him to put himself in danger.

Paul had at first imagined he was going to be released any minute. Now he was telling himself he would get out any day.

One of their cellmates had been let out. He was Lucio Randone, an Italian builder employed by the construction company Condotti d'Acqua. Randone came back to visit, bringing two very large bars of Italian chocolate, and told Paul and Bill that he had talked to the Italian Ambassador in Tehran about them. The Ambassador had promised to see his American counterpart and reveal the secret of getting people out of jail.

But the biggest source of Paul's optimism was Dr. Ahmad Houman, the attorney Briggs had retained to replace the Iranian lawyers who had given bad advice on the bail. Houman had visited them during their first week in jail. They had sat in the jail's reception area--not, for some reason, in the visiting room in the low building across the courtyard--and Paul had feared that this would inhibit a frank lawyer-client discussion; but Houman was not intimidated by the presence of prison guards. "Dadgar is trying to make a name for himself," he had announced.

Could that be it? An overenthusiastic prosecutor trying to impress his superiors--or perhaps the revolutionaries--with his anti-American diligence?

"Dadgar's office is very powerful," Houman went on. "But in this case he is out on a limb. He did not have cause to arrest you, and the bail is exorbitant."

Paul began to feel good about Houman. He seemed knowledgeable and confident. "So what are you going to do?"

"My strategy will be to get the bail reduced."

"How?"

"First I will talk to Dadgar. I hope I will be able to make him see how outrageous the bail is. But if he remains intransigent, I will go to his superiors in the Ministry of Justice and persuade them to order him to reduce the bail."

"And how long do you expect that to take?"

"Perhaps a week."

It was taking more than a week, but Houman had made progress. He had come back to the jail to report that Dadgar's superiors at the Ministry of Justice had agreed to force Dadgar to back down and reduce the bail to a sum EDS could pay easily and swiftly out of funds currently in Iran. Exuding contempt for Dadgar and confidence in himself, he announced triumphantly that everything would be finalized at a second meeting between Paul and Bill and Dadgar on January 11.

Sure enough, that day Dadgar came to the jail in the afternoon. He wanted to see Paul alone first, as he had before. Paul was in fine spirits as the guard walked him across the courtyard. Dadgar was just an overenthusiastic prosecutor, he thought, and now he had been slapped down by his superiors and would have to eat humble pie.

Dadgar was waiting, with the same woman translator beside him. He nodded curtly, and Paul sat down, thinking: he doesn't look very humble.

Dadgar spoke in Farsi, and Mrs. Nourbash translated: "We are here to discuss the amount of your bail."

"Good," said Paul.

"Mr. Dadgar has received a letter on this subject from officials at the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare."

She began to translate the letter.

The Ministry officials were demanding that bail for the two Americans should be increased to twenty-three million dollars--almost double--to compensate for the Ministry's losses since EDS had switched off the computers.

It dawned on Paul that he was not going to be released today.

The letter was a put-up job. Dadgar had neatly outmaneuvered Dr. Houman. This meeting was nothing but a charade.

It made him mad.

To hell with being polite to this bastard, he thought.

When the letter had been read he said: "Now I have something to say, and I want you to translate every word. Is that clear?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Nourbash.

Paul spoke slowly and clearly. "You have now held me in jail for fourteen days. I have not been taken before a court. No charges have been brought against me. You have yet to produce a single piece of evidence implicating me in any crime whatsoever. You have not even specified what crime I might be accused of. Are you proud of Iranian justice?"

To Paul's surprise, the appeal seemed to melt Dadgar's icy gaze a little. "I am sorry," Dadgar said, "that you have to be the one to pay for the things your company has done wrong."

"No, no, no," Paul said. "I am the company. I am the person responsible. If the company had done wrong, I should be the one to suffer. But we have done nothing wrong. In fact, we have done far in excess of what we were committed to do. EDS got this contract because we are the only company in the world capable of doing this job--creating a fully automated welfare system in an underdeveloped country of thirty million subsistence farmers. And we have succeeded. Our data-processing system issues social-security cards. It keeps a register of deposits at the bank in the Ministry's account. Every morning it produces a summary of the welfare claims made the previous day. It prints the payroll for the entire Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. It produces weekly and monthly financial status reports for the Ministry. Why don't you go to the Ministry and look at the printouts? No, wait a minute," he said as Dadgar began to speak, "I haven't finished."

Dadgar shrugged.

Paul went on: "There is readily available proof that EDS has fulfilled its contract. It is equally easy to establish that the Ministry has not kept its side of the deal, that is to say, it has not paid us for six months and currently owes us something in excess of ten million dollars. Now, think about the Ministry for a moment. Why hasn't it paid EDS? Because it hasn't got the money. Why not? You and I know it spent its entire budget during the first seven months of the current year and the government hasn't got the funds to top it up. There might well be a degree of incompetence in some departments. What about those people who overspent their budgets? Maybe they're looking for an excuse--someone to blame for what's gone wrong--a scapegoat. And isn't it convenient that they have EDS--a capitalist company, an American company--right in there working with them? In the current political atmosphere people are eager to hear about the wickedness of the Americans, quick to believe that we are cheating Iran. But you, Mr. Dadgar, are supposed to be an officer of the law. You are not supposed to believe that the Americans are to blame unless there is evidence. You are supposed to discover the truth, if I have a correct understanding of the role of an examining magistrate. Isn't it time you asked yourself why anyone should make false accusations against me and my company? Isn't it time you started to investigate the goddam Ministry?"

The woman translated the last sentence. Paul studied Dadgar: His expression had frozen again. He said something in Farsi.

Mrs. Nourbash translated. "He will see the other one now."

Paul stared at her.

He had wasted his breath, he realized. He might just as well have recited nursery rhymes. Dadgar was immovable.

Paul was deeply depressed. He lay on his mattress, looking at the pictures of Karen and Ann Marie that he had stuck on the underside of the bunk above him. He missed the girls badly. Being unable to see them made him realize that in the past he had taken them for granted. Ruthie, too. He looked at his watch: it was the middle of the night in the States now. Ruthie would be asleep, alone in a big bed. How good it would be to climb in beside her and hold her in his arms. He put the thought out of his mind: he was just making himself miserable with self-pity. He had no need to worry about them. They were out of Iran, out of danger, and he knew that whatever might happen, Perot would take care of them. That was the good thing about Perot. He asked a lot of you--boy, he was just about the most demanding employer you could have--but when you needed to rely on him, he was like a rock.

Paul lit a cigarette. He had a cold. He could never get warm in the jail. He felt too down to do anything. He did not want to go to the Chattanooga Room and drink tea; he did not want to watch the news in gibberish on TV; he did not want to play chess with Bill. He did not want to go to the library for a new book. He had been reading The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. He had found it a very emotional book. It was about several generations of families, and it made him think of his own family. The central character was a priest, and as a Catholic, Paul had been able to identify with that. He had read the book three times. He had also read Hawaii by James Michener, Airport by Arthur Hailey, and the Guinness Book of World Records. He never wanted to read another book for the rest of his life.

Sometimes he thought about what he would do when he got out, and let his mind wander on his favorite pastimes, boating and fishing. But that could be depressing.

He could not remember a time in his adult life when he had been at a loss for something to do. He was always busy. At the office he would typically have three days' work backed up. Never, never, did he lie down smoking and wondering how on earth he could keep himself amused.

But the worst thing of all was the helplessness. Although he had always been an employee, going where his boss sent him and doing what he was ordered to do, nevertheless he had always known that he could at any time get on a plane and go home, or quit his job, or say no to his boss. Ultimately the decisions had been his. Now he could not make any decisions about his own life. He could not even do anything about his plight. With every other problem he had ever had, he had been able to work on it, try things, attack the problem. Now he just had to sit and suffer.

He realized that he had never known the meaning of freedom until he lost it.

3___

The demonstration was relatively peaceful. There were several blazing cars but otherwise no violence: the demonstrators were marching up and down carrying pictures of Khomeini and putting flowers in the turrets of tanks. The soldiers looked on passively.

The traffic was at a standstill.

It was January 14, the day after Simons and Poche flew in. Boulware had gone back to Paris, and now he and the other four were waiting there for a flight to Tehran. Meanwhile Simons, Coburn, and Poche were heading downtown, to reconnoiter the jail.

After a few minutes Joe Poche turned off the car engine and sat there, silent, showing as much emotion as he always did, which was none.

By contrast Simons, sitting next to him, was animated. "This is history being made in front of our eyes!" he said. "Very few people get to observe firsthand a revolution in progress."

He was a history buff, Coburn had gathered, and revolutions were his specialty. Coming through the airport, on being asked what was his occupation and the purpose of his visit, he said he was a retired farmer and this was the only chance he was ever likely to get of seeing a revolution. He had been telling the truth.

Coburn was not thrilled to be in the middle of it. He did not enjoy sitting in a little car--they had a Renault 4--surrounded by excitable Muslim fanatics. Despite his new-grown beard he did not look Iranian. Nor did Poche. Simons did, however: his hair was longer now, he had olive skin and a big nose, and he had grown a white beard. Give him some worry beads and stand him on a comer and nobody would suspect for a minute that he was American.

But the crowd was not interested in Americans, and eventually Coburn became confident enough to get out of the car and go into a baker's shop. He bought barbari bread, long, flat loaves with a delicate crust that were baked fresh every day and cost seven rials--ten cents. Like French bread, it was delicious when new but went stale very quickly. It was usually eaten with butter or cheese. Iran was run on barbari bread and tea.

They sat watching the demonstration and chewing on the bread until, at last, the traffic began to move again. Poche followed the route he had mapped out the previous evening. Coburn wondered what they would find when they reached the jail. On Simons's orders he had kept away from downtown until now. It was too much to hope that the jail would be exactly as he had described it eleven days ago at Lake Grapevine: the team had based a very precise attack plan on quite imprecise intelligence. Just how imprecise, they would soon find out.

They reached the Ministry of Justice and drove around to Khayyam Street, the side of the block on which the jail entrance was located.

Poche drove slowly, but not too slowly, past the jail.

Simons said, "Oh, shit."

Coburn's heart sank.

The jail was radically different from the mental picture he had built up.

The entrance consisted of two steel doors fourteen feet high. On one side was a single-story building with barbed wire along its roof. On the other side was a taller building of gray stone, five stories high.

There were no iron railings. There was no courtyard.

Simons said: "So where's the fucking exercise yard?"

Poche drove on, made a few turns, and came back along Khayyam Street in the opposite direction.

This time Coburn did see a little courtyard with grass and trees, separated from the street by a fence of iron railings twelve feet high; but it plainly had nothing to do with the jail, which was farther up the street. Somehow, in that telephone conversation with Majid, the exercise yard of the jail had got mixed up with this little garden.

Poche made one more pass around the block.

Simons was thinking ahead. "We can get in there," he said. "But we have to know what we'll be up against once we're over the wall. Someone will have to go in and reconnoiter."

"Who?" said Coburn.

"You," said Simons.

Coburn walked up to the jail entrance with Rich Gallagher and Majid. Majid pressed the bell and they waited.

Coburn had become the "outside man" of the rescue team. He had already been seen at Bucharest by Iranian employees, so his presence in Tehran could not be kept secret. Simons and Poche would stay indoors as much as possible and keep away from EDS premises: nobody need know they were here. It would be Coburn who would go to the Hyatt to see Taylor and switch cars. And it was Coburn who went inside the jail.

As he waited he ran over in his mind all the points Simons had told him to watch out for--security, numbers of guards, weaponry, layout of the place, cover, high ground ... It was a long list, and Simons had a way of making you anxious to remember every detail of his instructions.

A peephole in the door opened. Majid said something in Farsi.

The door was opened and the three of them went in.

Straight ahead of him Coburn saw a courtyard with a grassed traffic circle and cars parked on the far side. Beyond the cars a building rose five stories high over the courtyard. To his left was the one-story building he had seen from the street, with the barbed wire on its roof. To his right was another steel door.

Coburn was wearing a long, bulky down coat--Taylor had dubbed it the Michelin Man coat--under which he could easily have concealed a shotgun, but he was not searched by the guard at the gate. I could have had eight weapons on me, he thought. That was encouraging: security was slack.

He noted that the gate guard was armed with a small pistol.

The three visitors were led into the low building on the left. The colonel in charge of the jail was in the visiting room, along with another Iranian. The second man, Gallagher had warned Coburn, was always present during visits, and spoke perfect English: presumably he was there to eavesdrop. Coburn had told Majid he did not want to be overheard while talking to Paul, and Majid agreed to engage the eavesdropper in conversation.

Coburn was introduced to the colonel. In broken English the man said he was sorry for Paul and Bill, and he hoped they would be released soon. He seemed sincere. Coburn noted that neither the colonel nor the eavesdropper was armed.

The door opened, and Paul and Bill walked in.

They both stared at Coburn in surprise--neither of them had been forewarned that he was in town, and the beard was an additional shock.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Bill said, and smiled broadly.

Coburn shook hands warmly with both of them. Paul said: "Boy, I can't believe you're here."

"How's my wife?" Bill said.

"Emily's fine, so is Ruthie," Coburn told them.

Majid started talking loudly in Farsi to the colonel and the eavesdropper. He seemed to be telling them a complicated story with many gestures. Rich Gallagher began to speak to Bill, and Coburn sat Paul down.

Simons had decided that Coburn should question Paul about routines at the jail, and level with him about the rescue plan. Paul was picked rather than Bill because, in Coburn's opinion, Paul was likely to be the leader of the two.

"If you haven't guessed it already," Coburn began, "we're going to get y'all out of here by force if necessary."

"I guessed it already," Paul said. "I'm not sure it's a good idea."

"What?"

"People might get hurt."

"Listen, Ross has retained just about the best man in the whole world for this kind of operation, and we have carte blanche--"

"I'm not sure I want it."

"You ain't being asked for your permission, Paul."

Paul smiled. "Okay."

"Now I need some information. Where do you exercise?"

"Right there in the courtyard."

"When?"

"Thursdays."

Today was Monday. The next exercise period would be January 18. "How long do you spend out there?"

"About an hour."

"What time of day?"

"It varies."

"Shit." Coburn made an effort to look relaxed, to avoid lowering his voice conspicuously or glancing over his shoulder to see whether anyone might be listening: This had to look like a normal friendly visit. "How many guards are there in this jail?"

"Around twenty."

"All uniformed, all armed?"

"All uniformed, some armed with handguns."

"No rifles?"

"Well ... none of the regular guards have rifles, but ... See, our cell is just across the courtyard and has a window. Well, in the morning there's a group of about twenty different guards, like an elite corps, you might say. They have rifles and wear kind of shiny helmets. They have reveille right here; then I never see them for the rest of the day--I don't know where they go."

"Try and find out."

"I'll try."

"Which is your cell?"

"When you go out of here, the window is more or less opposite you. If you start in the right-hand comer of the courtyard and count toward the left, it's the third window. But they close the shutters when there are visitors--so we can't see women coming in, they say."

Coburn nodded, trying to memorize it all. "You need to do two things," he said. "One: a survey of the inside of the jail, with measurements as accurate as possible. I'll come back and get the details from you so we can draw a plan. Two: get in shape. Exercise daily. You'll need to be fit."

"Okay."

"Now, tell me your daily routine."

"They wake us up at six o'clock," Paul began.

Coburn concentrated, knowing he would have to repeat all this to Simons. Nevertheless, at the back of his mind one thought nagged: if we don't know what time of day they exercise, how the hell do we know when to go over the wall?

"Visiting time is the answer," Simons said.

"How so?" Coburn asked.

"It's the one situation when we can predict they will be out of the actual jail and vulnerable to a snatch, at a definite moment in time."

Coburn nodded. The three of them were sitting in the living room of Keane Taylor's house. It was a big room with a Persian carpet. They had drawn three chairs into the middle, around a coffee table. Beside Simons's chair, a small mountain of cigar ash was growing on the carpet. Taylor would be furious.

Coburn felt drained. Being debriefed by Simons was even more harrowing than he had anticipated. When he was sure he had told everything, Simons thought of more questions. When Coburn could not quite remember something, Simons made him think hard until he did remember. Simons drew from him information he had not consciously registered, just by asking the right questions.

"The van and the ladder--that scenario is out," Simons said. "Their weak point now is their loose routine. We can get two men in there as visitors, with shotguns or Walthers under their coats. Paul and Bill would be brought to that visiting area. Our two men should be able to overpower the colonel and the eavesdropper without any trouble--and without making enough noise to alarm anyone else in the vicinity. Then ..."

"Then what?"

"That's the problem. The four men would have to come out of the building, cross the courtyard, reach the gate, either open it or climb it, reach the street, and get in a car ..."

"It sounds possible," Coburn said. "There's just one guard at the gate..."

"A number of things about this scenario bother me," Simons said. "One: the windows in the high building that overlook the courtyard. While our men are in the courtyard, anyone looking out of any one of those windows will see them. Two: the elite guard with shiny helmets and rifles. Whatever happens, our people have to slow down at the gate. If there's just one guard with a rifle looking out of one of those high windows, he could pick off the four of them like shooting fish in a barrel."

"We don't know the guards are in the high building."

"We don't know they're not."

"It seems like a small risk--"

"We're not going to take any risks we don't have to. Three: the traffic in this goddam city is a bastard. You just can't talk about jumping in a car and getting away. We could run into a demonstration fifty yards down the street. No. This snatch has got to be quiet. We must have time. What is that colonel like, the one in charge of the place?"

"He was quite friendly," Coburn said. "He seemed genuinely sorry for Paul and Bill."

"I wonder whether we can get to him. Do we know anything at all about him?"

"No."

"Let's find out."

"I'll put Majid on it."

"The colonel would have to make sure there were no guards around at visiting time. We could make it look good by tying him up, or even knocking him out.... If he can be bribed, we can still bring this thing off."

"I'll get on it right away," said Coburn.

4___

On January 13 Ross Perot took off from Amman, Jordan, in a Lear jet of Arab Wings, the charter operation of Royal Jordanian Airlines. The plane headed for Tehran. In the baggage hold was a net bag containing half a dozen professional-sized videotapes, the kind used by television crews: this was Perot's "cover."

As the little jet flew east, the British pilot pointed out the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. A few minutes later the plane developed hydraulic trouble and had to turn back.

It had been that kind of journey.

In London he had caught up with lawyer John Howell and EDS manager Bob Young, both of whom had been trying for days to get a flight into Tehran. Eventually Young discovered that Arab Wings was flying in, and the three men had gone to Amman. Arriving there in the middle of the night had been an experience all on its own: it looked to Perot as if all the bad guys of Jordan were sleeping at the airport. They found a taxicab to take them to a hotel. John Howell's room had no bathroom: the facilities were right there beside the bed. In Perot's room the toilet was so close to the bath that he had to put his feet in the tub when he sat on the john. And like that ...

Bob Young had thought of the videotapes "cover." Arab Wings regularly flew tapes into and out of Tehran for NBC-TV News. Sometimes NBC would have its own man carry the tapes; other times the pilot would take them. Today, although NBC did not know it, Perot would be their bagman. He was wearing a sports jacket, a little plaid hat, and no tie. Anyone watching for Ross Perot might not look twice at the regular NBC messenger with his regular net bag.

Arab Wings had agreed to this ruse. They had also confirmed that they could take Perot out again on this NBC tape run.

Back in Amman, Perot, Howell, and Young and the pilot boarded a replacement jet and took off again. As they climbed high over the desert Perot wondered whether he was the craziest man in the world or the sanest.

There were powerful reasons why he should not go to Tehran. For one thing, the mobs might consider him the ultimate symbol of bloodsucking American capitalism and string him up on the spot. More likely, Dadgar might get to know that he was in town and try to arrest him. Perot was not sure he understood Dadgar's motives in jailing Paul and Bill, but the man's mysterious purposes would surely be even better served by having Perot behind bars. Why, Dadgar could set bail at a hundred million dollars and feel confident of getting it, if the money was what he was after.

But negotiations for the release of Paul and Bill were stalled, and Perot wanted to go to Tehran to kick ass in one last attempt at a legitimate solution before Simons and the team risked their lives in an assault on the prison.

There had been times, in business, when EDS had been ready to admit defeat but had gone on to victory because Perot himself had insisted on going one more mile: this was what leadership was all about.

That was what he told himself, and it was all true, but there was another reason for his trip. He simply could not sit in Dallas, comfortable and safe, while other people risked their lives on his instructions.

He knew only too well that if he were jailed in Iran, he, and his colleagues, and his company, would be in much worse trouble than they were now. Should he do the prudent thing, and stay, he had wondered--or should he follow his deepest instincts, and go? It was a moral dilemma. He had discussed it with his mother.

She knew she was dying. And she knew that, even if Perot should come back alive and well after a few days, she might no longer be there. Cancer was rapidly destroying her body, but there was nothing wrong with her mind, and her sense of right and wrong was as clear as ever. "You don't have a choice, Ross," she had said. "They're your men. You sent them over there. They didn't do anything wrong. Our government won't help them. You are responsible for them. It's up to you to get them out. You have to go."

So here he was, feeling that he was doing the right thing, if not the smart thing.

The Lear jet left the desert behind and climbed over the mountains of western Iran. Unlike Simons and Coburn and Poche, Perot was a stranger to physical danger. He had been too young for World War II and too old for Vietnam, and the Korean War had finished while Ensign Perot was on his way there aboard the destroyer USS Sigourney. He had been shot at just once, during the prisoners-of-war campaign, landing in a jungle in Laos aboard an ancient DC3: he had heard pinging noises but had not realized the aircraft had been hit until after it landed. His most frightening experience, since the days of the Texarkana paper-route thieves, had been in another plane over Laos, when a door right next to his seat fell off. He had been asleep. When he woke up he looked for a light for a second, before realizing he was leaning out of the aircraft. Fortunately he had been strapped in.

He was not sitting next to a door today.

He looked through the window and saw, in a bowl-shaped depression in the mountains, the city of Tehran, a mud-colored sprawl dotted with white skyscrapers. The plane began to lose height.

Okay, he thought, now we're coming down. It's time to start thinking and using your head, Perot.

As the plane landed he felt tense, wired, alert: he was pumping adrenaline.

The plane taxied to a halt. Several soldiers with machine guns slung over their shoulders ambled casually across the tarmac.

Perot got out. The pilot opened the baggage hold and handed him the net bag of tapes.

Perot and the pilot walked across the tarmac. Howell and Young followed, carrying their suitcases.

Perot felt grateful for his inconspicuous appearance. He thought of a Norwegian friend, a tall, blond Adonis who complained of looking too impressive. "You're lucky, Ross," he would say. "When you walk into a room no one notices you. When people see me, they expect too much--I can't live up to their expectations." No one would ever take him for a messenger boy. But Perot, with his short stature and homely face and off-the-rack clothes, could be convincing in the part.

They entered the terminal. Perot told himself that the military, which was running the airport, and the Ministry of Justice, for which Dadgar worked, were two separate government bureaucracies; and if one of them knew what the other was doing, or whom it was seeking, why, this would have to be the most efficient operation in the history of government.

He walked up to the desk and showed his passport.

It was stamped and handed back to him.

He walked on.

He was not stopped by customs.

The pilot showed him where to leave the bag of television tapes. Perot put them down, then said goodbye to the pilot.

He turned around and saw another tall, distinguished-looking friend: Keane Taylor. Perot liked Taylor.

"Hi, Ross, how did it go?" Taylor said.

"Great," Perot said with a smile. "They weren't looking for the ugly American."

They walked out of the airport. Perot said: "Are you satisfied that I didn't send you back here for any administrative b.s.?"

"I sure am," Taylor said.

They got into Taylor's car. Howell and Young got in the back.

As they pulled away, Taylor said: "I'm going to take an indirect route, to avoid the worst of the riots."

Perot did not find this reassuring.

The road was lined with tall, half-finished concrete buildings with cranes on top. Work seemed to have stopped. Looking closely, Perot saw that people were living in the shells. It seemed an apt symbol of the way the Shah had tried to modernize Iran too quickly.

Taylor was talking about cars. He had stashed all EDS's cars in a school playground and hired some Iranians to guard them, but he had discovered that the Iranians were busy running a used car lot, selling the damn things.

There were long lines at every gas station, Perot noticed. He found that ironic in a country rich in oil. As well as cars, there were people in the queues, holding cans. "What are they doing?" Perot asked. "If they don't have cars, why do they need gas?"

"They sell it to the highest bidder," Taylor explained. "Or you can rent an Iranian to stand in line for you."

They were stopped briefly at a roadblock. Driving on, they passed several burning cars. A lot of civilians were standing around with machine guns. The scene was peaceful for a mile or two; then Perot saw more burning cars, more machine guns, another roadblock. Such sights ought to have been frightening, but somehow they were not. It seemed to Perot that the people were just enjoying letting loose for a change, now that the Shah's iron grip was at last being relaxed. Certainly the military was doing nothing to maintain order, as far as he could see.

There was always something weird about seeing violence as a tourist. He recalled flying over Laos in a light plane and watching people fighting on the ground: he had felt tranquil, detached. He supposed that battle was like that: it might be fierce if you were in the middle of it, but five minutes away nothing was happening.

They drove into a huge circle with a monument in its center that looked like a spaceship of the far future, towering over the traffic on four gigantic splayed legs. "What is that?" said Perot.

"The Shahyad Monument," Taylor said. "There's a museum in the top."

A few minutes later they pulled into the forecourt of the Hyatt Crown Regency. "This is a new hotel," Taylor said. "They just opened it, poor bastards. It's good for us, though--wonderful food, wine, music in the restaurant in the evenings ... We're living like kings in a city that's falling apart."

They went into the lobby and took the elevator. "You don't have to check in," Taylor told Perot. "Your suite is in my name. No sense in having your name written down anywhere."

"Right."

They got out at the eleventh floor. "We've all got rooms along this hall," Taylor said. He unlocked a door at the far end of the corridor.

Perot walked in, glanced around, and smiled. "Would you look at this?" The sitting room was vast. Next to it was a large bedroom. He looked into the bathroom: it was big enough for a cocktail party.

"Is it all right?" Taylor said with a grin.

"If you'd seen the room I had last night in Amman, you wouldn't bother to ask."

Taylor left him to settle in.

Perot went to the window and looked out. His suite was at the front of the hotel, so he could look down and see the forecourt. I might hope to have warning, he thought, if a squad of soldiers or a revolutionary mob comes for me.

But what would I do?

He decided to map an emergency escape route. He left his suite and walked up and down the corridor. There were several empty rooms with unlocked doors. At either end was an exit to a staircase. He went down the stairs to the floor below. There were more empty rooms, some without furniture or decoration: the hotel was unfinished, like so many buildings in this town.

I could take this staircase down, he thought, and if I heard them coming up I could duck back into one of the corridors and hide in an empty room. That way I could get to ground level.

He walked all the way down the stairs and explored the ground floor.

He wandered through several banqueting rooms that he supposed were unused most, if not all, of the time. There was a labyrinth of kitchens with a thousand hiding places: he particularly noted some empty food containers big enough for a small man to climb into. From the banqueting area he could reach the health club at the back of the hotel. It was pretty fancy, with a sauna and a pool. He opened a door at the rear and found himself outside, in the hotel parking lot. Here he could take an EDS car and disappear into the city, or walk to the next hotel, the Evin, or just run into the forest of unfinished skyscrapers that began on the far side of the parking lot.

He reentered the hotel and took the elevator. As he rode up, he resolved always to dress casually in Tehran. He had brought with him khaki pants and some checkered flannel shirts, and he also had a jogging outfit. He could not help looking American, with his pale, clean-shaven face and blue eyes and ultra-short crewcut; but, if he should find himself on the run, he could at least make sure he did not look like an important American, much less the multimillionaire owner of Electronic Data Systems Corporation.

He went to find Taylor's room and get a briefing. He wanted to go to the American Embassy and talk to Ambassador Sullivan; he wanted to go to the headquarters of MAAG, the U.S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group, and see General Huyser and General Gast; he wanted to get Taylor and John Howell hyped up to put a bomb under Dadgar's tail; he wanted to move, to go, to get this problem solved, to get Paul and Bill out, and fast.

He banged on Taylor's door and walked in. "Okay, Keane," he said. "Bring me up to speed."

Six

1___

John Howell was born in the ninth minute of the ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month of 1946, his mother often said.

He was a short, small man with a bouncy walk. His fine light brown hair was receding early, he had a slight squint, and his voice was faintly hoarse, as if he had a permanent cold. He spoke very slowly and blinked a lot.

Thirty-two years old, he was an associate in Tom Luce's Dallas law firm. Like so many of the people around Ross Perot, Howell had achieved a responsible position at a young age. His greatest asset as a lawyer was stamina--"John wins by outworking the opposition," Luce would say. Most weekends Howell would spend either Saturday or Sunday at the office, tidying up loose ends, finishing tasks that had been interrupted by the phone, and preparing for the week ahead. He would get frustrated when family activities deprived him of that sixth working day. In addition, he often worked late into the evening and missed dinner at home, which sometimes made his wife, Angela, unhappy.

Like Perot, Howell was born in Texarkana. Like Perot, he was short in stature and long on guts. Nevertheless, at midday on January 14 he was scared. He was about to meet Dadgar.

The previous afternoon, immediately after arriving in Tehran, Howell had met with Ahmad Houman, EDS's new local attorney. Dr. Houman had advised him not to meet Dadgar, at least not yet: it was perfectly possible that Dadgar intended to arrest all the EDS Americans he could find, and that might include lawyers.

Howell had found Houman impressive. A big, rotund man in his sixties, well dressed by Iranian standards, he was a former president of the Iran Bar Association. Although his English was not good--French was his second language--he seemed confident and knowledgeable.

Houman's advice jelled with Howell's instinct. He always liked to prepare very thoroughly for any kind of confrontation. He believed in the old maxim of trial lawyers: never ask a question unless you already know the answer.

Houman's advice was reinforced by Bunny Fleischaker. An American girl with Iranian friends in the Ministry of Justice, Bunny had warned Jay Coburn, back in December, that Paul and Bill were going to be arrested, but at the time no one had believed her. Events had given her retrospective credibility, and she was taken seriously when, early in January, she called Rich Gallagher's home at eleven o'clock one evening.

The conversation had reminded Gallagher of the phone calls in the movie All the President's Men, in which nervous informants talked to the newspaper reporters in improvised code. Bunny began by saying: "D'you know who this is?"

"I think so," Gallagher said.

"You've been told about me."

"Yes."

EDS's phones were bugged and the conversations were being taped, she explained. The reason she had called was to say that there was a strong chance Dadgar would arrest more EDS executives. She recommended they either leave the country or move into a hotel where there were lots of newspaper reporters. Lloyd Briggs, who as Paul's deputy seemed the likeliest target for Dadgar, had left the country--he needed to return to the States to brief EDS's lawyers anyway. The others, Gallagher and Keane Taylor, had moved into the Hyatt.

Dadgar had not arrested any more EDS people--yet.

Howell needed no more convincing. He was going to stay out of Dadgar's way until he was sure of the ground rules.

Then, at eight-thirty this morning, Dadgar had raided Bucharest.

He had turned up with half a dozen investigators and demanded to see EDS's files. Howell, hiding in an office on another floor, had called Houman. After a quick discussion he had advised all EDS personnel to cooperate with Dadgar.

Dadgar had wanted to see Paul Chiapparone's files. The filing cabinet in Paul's secretary's office was locked and nobody could find the key. Of course that made Dadgar all the more keen to see the files. Keane Taylor had solved the problem in characteristically direct fashion: he had got a crowbar and broken the cabinet open.

Meanwhile, Howell snuck out of the building, met Dr. Houman, and went to the Ministry of Justice.

That, too, had been scary, for he had been obliged to fight his way through an unruly crowd that was demonstrating, outside the Ministry, against the holding of political prisoners.

Howell and Houman had an appointment with Dr. Kian, Dadgar's superior.

Howell told Kian that EDS was a reputable company that had done nothing wrong, and it was eager to cooperate in any investigation in order to clear its name, but it wanted to get its employees out of jail.

Kian said he had asked one of his assistants to ask Dadgar to review the case.

That sounded to Howell like nothing at all.

He told Kian he wanted to talk about a reduction in the bail.

The conversation took place in Farsi, with Houman translating. Houman said that Kian was not inflexibly opposed to a reduction in the bail. In Houman's opinion they might expect it to be halved.

Kian gave Howell a note authorizing him to visit Paul and Bill in jail.

The meeting had been just about fruitless, Howell thought afterward, but at least Kian had not arrested him.

When he returned to Bucharest he found that Dadgar had not arrested anyone either.

His lawyer's instinct still told him not to see Dadgar; but now that instinct struggled with another side of his personality: impatience. There were times when Howell wearied of research, preparation, foresight, planning--times when he wanted to move on a problem instead of thinking about it. He liked to take the initiative, to have the opposition reacting to him rather than the other way around. This inclination was reinforced by the presence in Tehran of Ross Perot, always up first in the morning, asking people what they had achieved yesterday and what tasks they intended to accomplish today, always on everyone's back. So impatience got the better of caution, and Howell decided to confront Dadgar.

This was why he was scared.

If he was unhappy, his wife was more so.

Angela Howell had not seen much of her husband in the last two months. He had spent most of November and December in Tehran, trying to persuade the Ministry to pay EDS's bill. Since getting back to the States he had been staying at EDS headquarters until all hours of the night, working on the Paul and Bill problem, when he was not dashing off to New York for meetings with Iranian lawyers there. On December 31 Howell had arrived home at breakfast time, after working all night at EDS, to find Angela and baby Michael, nine months old, huddled in front of a wood fire in a cold, dark house: the ice storm had caused a power failure. He had moved them into his sister's apartment and gone off to New York again.

Angela had had about as much as she could take, and when he announced he was going to Tehran again she had been upset. "You know what's going on over there," she had said. "Why do you have to go back?"

The trouble was, he did not have a simple answer to that question. It was not clear just what he was going to do in Tehran. He was going to work on the problem, but he did not know how. If he had been able to say, "Look, this is what has to be done, and it's my responsibility, and I'm the only one who can do it," she might have understood.

"John, we're a family. I need your help to take care of all this," she had said, meaning the ice storm, the blackouts, and the baby.

"I'm sorry. Just do the best you can. I'll try to stay in touch," Howell had said.

They were not the kind of married couple to express their feelings by yelling at each other. On the frequent occasions when he upset her by working late, leaving her to sit alone and eat the dinner she had fixed for him, a certain coolness was the closest they came to fighting. But this was worse than missing supper: he was abandoning her and the baby just when they needed him.

They had a long talk that evening. At the end of it Angela was no happier, but she was at least resigned.

He had called her several times since, from London and from Tehran. She was watching the riots on the TV news and worrying about him. She would have been even more worried if she had known what he was about to do now.

He pushed domestic concerns to the back of his mind and went to find Abolhasan.

Abolhasan was EDS's senior Iranian employee. When Lloyd Briggs had left for New York, Abolhasan had been in charge of EDS in Iran. (Rich Gallagher, the only American still there, was not a manager.) Then Keane Taylor had returned and assumed overall charge, and Abolhasan had been offended. Taylor was no diplomat. (Bill Gayden, the genial president of EDS World, had coined the sarcastic phrase "Keane's Marine Corps sensitivity training.") There had been friction. But Howell got on fine with Abolhasan, who could translate not just the Farsi language but also Persian customs and methods for his American employers.

Dadgar knew Abolhasan's father, a distinguished lawyer, and had met Abolhasan himself at the interrogation of Paul and Bill; so this morning Abolhasan had been appointed liaison man with Dadgar's investigators, and had been instructed to make sure they had everything they asked for.

Howell said to Abolhasan: "I've decided I should meet with Dadgar. What do you think?"

"Sure," Abolhasan said. He had an American wife and spoke English with an American accent. "I don't think that'll be a problem."

"Okay. Let's go."

Abolhasan led Howell to Paul Chiapparone's conference room. Dadgar and his assistants were sitting around the big table, going through EDS's financial records. Abolhasan asked Dadgar to step into the adjoining room, Paul's office; then he introduced Howell.

Dadgar gave a businesslike handshake.

They sat around the table in the corner of the office. Dadgar did not look to Howell like a monster: just a rather weary middle-aged man who was losing his hair.

Howell began by repeating to Dadgar what he had said to Dr. Kian: "EDS is a reputable company that has done nothing wrong, and we are willing to cooperate with your investigation. However, we cannot tolerate having two senior executives in jail."

Dadgar's answer--translated by Abolhasan--surprised him. "If you have done nothing wrong, why have you not paid the bail?"

"There's no connection between the two," Howell said. "Bail is a guarantee that someone will appear for trial, not a sum to be forfeited if he is guilty. Bail is repaid as soon as the accused man appears in court, regardless of the verdict." While Abolhasan translated. Howell wondered whether "bail" was the correct English translation of whatever Farsi word Dadgar was using to describe the $12,750,000 he was demanding. And now Howell recalled something else that might be significant. On the day Paul and Bill were arrested, he had talked on the phone with Abolhasan, who reported that the $12,750,000 was, according to Dadgar, the total amount EDS had been paid to date by the Ministry of Health; and Dadgar's argument had been that if the contract had been corruptly awarded, then EDS was not entitled to that money. (Abolhasan had not translated this remark to Paul and Bill at the time.)

In fact, EDS had been paid a good deal more than thirteen million dollars, so the remark had not made much sense, and Howell had discounted it. Perhaps that had been a mistake: it might just be that Dadgar's arithmetic was wrong.

Abolhasan was translating Dadgar's reply. "If the men are innocent, there is no reason why they should not appear for trial, so you would risk nothing by paying the bail."

"An American corporation can't do that," Howell said. He was not lying, but he was being deliberately deceitful. "EDS is a publicly traded company, and under American securities laws it can only use its money for the benefit of its shareholders. Paul and Bill are free individuals: the company cannot guarantee that they will show up for trial. Consequently we cannot spend the company's money this way."

This was the initial negotiating position Howell had previously formulated; but, as Abolhasan translated, he could see it was making little impression on Dadgar.

"Their families have to put up the bail," he went on. "Right now they are raising money in the States, but thirteen million dollars is out of the question. Now, if the bail were lowered to a more reasonable figure, they might be able to pay it." This was all lies, of course: Ross Perot was going to pay the bail, if he had to, and if Tom Walter could find a way to get the money into Iran.

It was Dadgar's turn to be surprised. "Is it true that you could not force your men to appear for trial?"

"Sure it's true," Howell said. "What are we going to do, lock them in chains? We're not a police force. You see, you're holding individuals in jail for alleged crimes of a corporation."

Dadgar's reply was: "No, they are in jail for what they have done personally."

"Which is?"

"They obtained money from the Ministry of Health by means of false progress reports."

"This obviously cannot apply to Bill Gaylord, because the Ministry has paid none of the bills presented since he arrived in Tehran--so what is he accused of?"

"He falsified reports, and I will not be cross-examined by you, Mr. Howell."

Howell suddenly remembered that Dadgar could put him in jail.

Dadgar went on: "I am conducting an investigation. When it is complete, I will either release your clients or prosecute them."

Howell said: "We're willing to cooperate with your investigation. In the meantime, what can we do to get Paul and Bill released?"

"Pay the bail."

"And if they are released on bail, will they be permitted to leave Iran?"

"No."

2___

Jay Coburn walked through the double sliding glass doors into the lobby of the Sheraton. On his right was the long registration desk. To his left were the hotel shops. In the center of the lobby was a couch.

In accordance with his instructions, he bought a copy of Newsweek magazine at the newsstand. He sat on the couch, facing the doors so that he could see everyone who came in, and pretended to read the magazine.

He felt like a character in a spy movie.

The rescue plan was in a holding pattern while Majid researched the colonel in charge of the jail. Meanwhile, Coburn was doing a job for Perot.

He had an assignation with a man nicknamed Deep Throat (after the secretive character who gave "deep background" to reporter Bob Woodward in All the President's Men). This Deep Throat was an American management consultant who gave seminars to foreign corporate executives on how to do business with the Iranians. Before Paul and Bill were arrested, Lloyd Briggs had engaged Deep Throat to help EDS get the Ministry to pay its bills. He had advised Briggs that EDS was in bad trouble, but for a payment of two and a half million dollars they could get the slate wiped clean. At the time EDS had scorned this advice: the government owed money to EDS, not vice versa; it was the Iranians who needed to get the slate wiped clean.

The arrest had given credibility to Deep Throat (as it had to Bunny Fleischaker) and Briggs had contacted him again. "Well, they're mad at you now," he had said. "It's going to be harder than ever, but I'll see what I can do."

He had called back yesterday. He could solve the problem, he said. He demanded a face-to-face meeting with Ross Perot.

Taylor, Howell, Young, and Gallagher all agreed there was no way Perot was going to expose himself to such a meeting--they were horrified that Deep Throat even knew Perot was in town. So Perot asked Simons if he could send Coburn instead, and Simons consented.

Coburn had called Deep Throat and said he would be representing Perot.

"No, no," said Deep Throat, "it has to be Perot himself."

"Then all deals are off," Coburn had replied.

"Okay, okay." Deep Throat had backed down and given Coburn instructions.

Coburn had to go to a certain phone booth in the Vanak area, not far from Keane Taylor's house, at eight P.M.

At exactly eight o'clock the phone in the booth rang. Deep Throat told Coburn to go to the Sheraton, which was nearby, and sit in the lobby reading Newsweek. They would meet there and identify one another by a code. Deep Throat would say: "Do you know where Pahlavi Avenue is?" It was a block away, but Coburn was to reply: "No, I don't. I'm new in town."

That was why he felt like a spy in a movie.

On Simons's advice he was wearing his long, bulky down coat, the one Taylor called his Michelin Man coat. The object was to find out whether Deep Throat would frisk him. If not, he would be able, at any future meetings, to wear a recording device under the coat and tape the conversation.

He flicked through the pages of Newsweek.

"Do you know where Pahlavi Avenue is?"

Coburn looked up to see a man of about his own height and weight, in his early forties, with dark, slicked-down hair and glasses. "No, I don't. I'm new in town."

Deep Throat looked around nervously. "Let's go," he said. "Over there."

Coburn got up and followed him to the back of the hotel. They stopped in a dark passage. "I'll have to frisk you," said Deep Throat.

Coburn raised his arms. "What are you afraid of?"

Deep Throat gave a scornful laugh. "You can't trust anyone. There are no rules anymore in this town." He finished his search.

"Do we go back in the lobby now?"

"No. I could be under surveillance-I can't risk being seen with you."

"Okay. What are you offering?"

Deep Throat gave the same scornful laugh. "You guys are in trouble," he said. "You've already messed up once, by refusing to listen to people who know this country."

"How did we mess up?"

"You think this is Texas. It's not."

"But how did we mess up?"

"You could have got out of this for two and a half million dollars. Now it'll cost you six."

"What's the deal?"

"Just a minute. You let me down last time. This is going to be your last chance. This time, there's no backing out at the last minute."

Coburn was beginning to dislike Deep Throat. The man was a wise guy. His whole manner said: You're such fools, and I know so much more than you; it's hard for me to descend to your level.

"Whom do we pay the money to?" Coburn asked.

"A numbered account in Switzerland."

"And how do we know we'll get what we're paying for?"

Deep Throat laughed. "Listen, the way things work in this country, you don't let go of your money until the goods are delivered. That's the way to get things done here."

"Okay, so what's the arrangement?"

"Lloyd Briggs meets me in Switzerland and we open an escrow account and sign a letter of agreement that is lodged with the bank. The money is released from the account when Chiapparone and Gaylord get out--which will be immediately, if you'll just let me handle this."

"Who gets the money?"

Deep Throat just shook his head contemptuously.

Coburn said: "Well, how do we know you really have a deal wired?"

"Look, I'm just passing on information from people close to the person who's causing you a problem."

"You mean Dadgar?"

"You'll never learn, will you?"

As well as finding out what Deep Throat's proposal was, Coburn had to make a personal evaluation of the man. Well, he had made it now: Deep Throat was full of shit.

"Okay," Coburn said. "We'll be in touch."

Keane Taylor poured a little rum into a big glass, added ice, and filled the glass with Coke. This was his regular drink.

Taylor was a big man, six foot two, 210 pounds, with a chest like a barrel. He had played football in the marines. He took care with his clothes, favoring suits with deep-plunging vests and shirts with button-down collars. He wore large gold-rimmed glasses. He was thirty-nine, and losing his hair.

The young Taylor had been a hell-raiser--a dropout from college, busted down from sergeant in the marines for disciplinary offenses--and he still disliked close supervision. He preferred working in the World subsidiary of EDS because the head office was so far away.

He was under close supervision now. After four days in Tehran, Ross Perot was savage.

Taylor dreaded the evening debriefing sessions with his boss. After he and Howell had spent the day dashing around the city, fighting the traffic, the demonstrations, and the intransigence of Iranian officialdom, they would then have to explain to Perot why they had achieved precisely nothing.

To make matters worse, Perot was confined to the hotel most of the time. He had gone out only twice: once to the U.S. Embassy and once to U.S. Military Headquarters. Taylor had made sure no one offered him the keys to a car or any local currency, to discourage any impulse Perot might have had to take a walk. But the result was that Perot was like a caged bear, and being debriefed by him was like getting into the cage with the bear.

At least Taylor no longer had to pretend that he did not know about the rescue team. Coburn had taken him to meet Simons, and they had talked for three hours--or rather, Taylor had talked: Simons just asked questions. They had sat in the living room of Taylor's house, with Simons dropping cigar ash on Taylor's carpet, and Taylor had told him that Iran was like an animal with its head cut off: the head--the ministers and officials--were still trying to give orders, but the body--the Iranian people--were off doing their own thing. Consequently, political pressure would not free Paul and Bill: they would have to be bailed out or rescued. For three hours Simons had never changed the tone of his voice, never offered an opinion, never even moved from his chair.

But the Simons ice was easier to deal with than the Perot fire. Each morning Perot would knock on the door while Taylor was shaving. Taylor got up a little earlier each day, in order to be ready when Perot came, but Perot got up earlier each day, too, until Taylor began to fantasize that Perot listened outside the door all night, waiting to catch him shaving. Perot would be full of ideas that had come to him during the night: new arguments for Paul and Bill's innocence, new schemes for persuading the Iranians to release them. Taylor and John Howell--the tall and the short, like Batman and Robin--would head off in the Batmobile to the Ministry of Justice or the Ministry of Health, where officials would demolish Perot's ideas in seconds. Perot was still using a legalistic, rational, American approach, and, in Taylor's opinion, had yet to realize that the Iranians were not playing according to those rules.

This was not all Taylor had on his mind. His wife, Mary, and the children, Mike and Dawn, were staying with his parents in Pittsburgh. Taylor's mother and father were both over eighty, both in failing health. His mother had a heart condition. Mary was having to deal with that on her own. She had not complained, but he could tell, when he talked to her on the phone, that she was not happy.

Taylor sighed. He could not cope with all the world's problems at one time. He topped up his drink, then, carrying the glass, left his room and went to Perot's suite for the evening bloodbath.

Perot paced up and down the sitting room of his suite, waiting for the negotiating team to gather. He was doing no good here in Tehran and he knew it.

He had suffered a chilly reception at the U.S. Embassy. He had been shown into the office of Charles Naas, the Ambassador's deputy. Naas had been gracious, but had given Perot the same old story about how EDS should work through the legal system for the release of Paul and Bill. Perot had insisted on seeing the Ambassador. He had come halfway around the world to see Sullivan, and he was not going to leave before speaking to him. Eventually Sullivan came in, shook Perot's hand, and told him he was most unwise to come to Iran. It was clear that Perot was a problem and Sullivan did not want any more problems. He talked for a while, but did not sit down, and he left as soon as he could. Perot was not used to such treatment. He was, after all, an important American, and in normal circumstances a diplomat such as Sullivan would be at least courteous, if not deferential.

Perot also met Lou Goelz, who seemed sincerely concerned about Paul and Bill but offered no concrete help.

Outside Naas's office he ran into a group of military attaches who recognized him. Since the prisoners-of-war campaign Perot had always been able to count on a warm reception from the American military. He sat down with the attaches and told them his problem. They said candidly that they could not help. "Look, forget what you read in the paper, forget what the State Department is saying publicly," one of them told him. "We don't have any power here, we don't have any control--you're wasting your time in the U.S. Embassy."

Perot had also wasted his time at U.S. Military Headquarters. Cathy Gallagher's boss, Colonel Keith Barlow, Chief of the U.S. Support Activity Command in Iran, had sent a bulletproof car to the Hyatt. Perot had got in with Rich Gallagher. The driver had been Iranian: Perot wondered which side he was on.

They met with Air Force General Phillip Gast, chief of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Iran, and General "Dutch" Huyser. Perot knew Huyser slightly, and remembered him as a strong, dynamic man; but now he looked drained. Perot knew from the newspapers that Huyser was President Carter's emissary, here to persuade the Iranian military to back the doomed Bakhtiar government; and Perot guessed that Huyser had no stomach for the job.

Huyser candidly said he would like to help Paul and Bill but at the moment he had no leverage with the Iranians: he had nothing to trade. Even if they got out of jail, Huyser said, they would be in danger here. Perot told them he had that taken care of: Bull Simons was here to look after Paul and Bill once they got out. Huyser burst out laughing, and a moment later Gast saw the joke. They knew who Simons was, and they knew he would be planning more than a baby-sitting job.

Gast offered to supply fuel to Simons, but that was all. Warm words from the military, cold words from the Embassy; little or no real help from either. And nothing but excuses from Howell and Taylor.

Sitting in a hotel room all day was driving Perot crazy. Today Cathy Gallagher had asked him to take care of her poodle, Buffy. She made it sound like an honor--a measure of her high esteem for Perot--and he had been so surprised that he had agreed. Sitting looking at the animal, he had realized that this was a funny occupation for the leader of a major international business, and he wondered how the hell he had let himself be talked into it. He got no sympathy from Keane Taylor, who thought it was funny as hell. After a few hours Cathy had come back from the hairdresser's or wherever she had been, and had taken the dog back; but Perot's mood remained black.

There was a knock at Perot's door, and Taylor came in, carrying his usual drink. He was followed by John Howell, Rich Gallagher, and Bob Young. They all sat down.

"Now," said Perot, "did you tell them that we'd guarantee to produce Paul and Bill for questioning anywhere in the U.S. or Europe, on thirty days' notice, at any time in the next two years?"

"They're not interested in that idea," said Howell.

"What do you mean, they're not interested?"

"I'm just telling you what they said--"

"But if this is an investigation, rather than a blackmail attempt, all they need is to be sure that Paul and Bill will be available for questioning."

"They're sure already. I guess they see no reason to make changes."

It was maddening. There seemed no way to reason with the Iranians, no way to reach them. "Did you suggest they release Paul and Bill into the custody of the U.S. Embassy?"

"They turned that down, too."

"Why?"

"They didn't say."

"Did you ask them?"

"Ross, they don't have to give reasons. They're in charge here, and they know it."

"But they're responsible for the safety of their prisoners."

"It's a responsibility that doesn't seem to weigh too heavily on them."

Taylor said: "Ross, they're not playing by our rules. Putting two men in jail is not a big deal to them. Paul's and Bill's safety is not a big deal--"

"So what rules are they playing by? Can you tell me that?"

There was a knock at the door and Coburn walked in, wearing his Michelin Man coat and his black knit hat. Perot brightened: perhaps he would have good news. "Did you meet with Deep Throat?"

"Sure did," said Coburn, taking off his coat.

"All right, let's have it."

"He says he can get Paul and Bill released for six million dollars. The money would be paid into an escrow account in Switzerland and released when Paul and Bill leave Iran."

"Hell, that ain't bad," said Perot. "We get out with fifty cents on the dollar. Under U.S. law it would even be legal--it's a ransom. What kind of guy is Deep Throat?"

"I don't trust the bastard," said Coburn.

"Why?"

Coburn shrugged. "I don't know, Ross ... He's shifty, flaky ... A bullshitter ... I wouldn't give him sixty cents to go to the store and get me a pack of cigarettes. That's my gut feeling."

"But, listen, what do you expect?" Perot said. "This is bribery--pillars of the community don't get involved in this kind of thing."

Howell said: "You said it. This is bribery." His deliberate, throaty voice was unusually passionate. "I don't like this one bit."

"I don't like it," Perot said. "But you've all been telling me that the Iranians aren't playing by our rules."

"Yes, but listen," Howell said fervently. "The straw I've been clinging to all through this is that we've done nothing wrong--and someday, somehow, somewhere, somebody is going to recognize that, and then all this will evaporate ... I'd hate to give up that straw."

"It hasn't got us far."

"Ross, I believe that with time and patience we will succeed. But if we get involved in bribery we no longer have a case!"

Perot turned to Coburn. "How do we know Deep Throat has a deal wired with Dadgar?"

"We don't know," Coburn said. "His argument is, we don't pay until we get results, so what do we have to lose?"

"Everything," Howell said. "Never mind what is legal in the United States. This could seal our fate in Iran."

Taylor said: "It stinks. The whole thing stinks."

Perot was surprised by their reactions. He, too, hated the idea of bribery, but he was prepared to compromise his principles to get Paul and Bill out of jail. The good name of EDS was precious to him, and he was loath to let it be associated with corruption, just as John Howell was; but Perot knew something Howell did not know: that Colonel Simons and the rescue team faced risks more grave than this.

Perot said: "Our good name hasn't done Paul and Bill any good so far."

"It's not just our good name," Howell persisted. "Dadgar must be pretty sure by now that we aren't guilty of corruption--but if he could catch us in a bribe situation he could still save face."

That was a point, Perot thought. "Could this be a trap?"

"Yes!"

It made sense. Unable to get any evidence against Paul and Bill, Dadgar pretends to Deep Throat that he can be bribed, then--when Perot falls for it--announces to the world that EDS is, after all, corrupt. Then they would all be put in jail with Paul and Bill. And, being guilty, they would stay there.

"All right," said Perot reluctantly. "Call Deep Throat and tell him no, thanks."

Coburn stood up. "Okay."

It had been another fruitless day, Perot thought. The Iranians had him all ways. Political pressure they ignored. Bribery could make matters worse. If EDS paid the bail, Paul and Bill would still be kept in Iran.

Simons's team still looked like the best bet.

But he was not going to tell the negotiating team that.

"All right," he said. "We'll just try again tomorrow."

3___

Tall Keane Taylor and short John Howell, like Batman and Robin, tried again on January 17. They drove to the Ministry of Health building on Eisenhower Avenue, taking Abolhasan as interpreter, and met Dadgar at ten A.M. With Dadgar were officials of the Social Security Organization, the department of the Ministry that was run by EDS's computers.

Howell had decided to abandon his initial negotiating position, that EDS could not pay the bail because of American securities law. It was equally useless to demand to know the charges against Paul and Bill and what evidence there was: Dadgar could stonewall that approach by saying he was still investigating. But Howell did not have a new strategy to replace the old. He was playing poker with no cards in his hand. Perhaps Dadgar would deal him some today.

Dadgar began by explaining that the staff of the Social Security Organization wanted EDS to turn over to them what was known as the 125 Data Center.

This small computer, Howell recalled, ran the payroll and pensions for the Social Security Organization staff. What these people wanted was to get their own wages, even while Iranians generally were not getting their social-security benefits.

Keane Taylor said: "It's not that simple. Such a turnover would be a very complex operation needing many skilled staff. Of course they are all back in the States."

Dadgar replied: "Then you should bring them back in."

"I'm not that stupid," Taylor said.

Taylor's Marine Corps sensitivity training was operating, Howell thought.

Dadgar said: "If he speaks like this, he will go to jail."

"Just as my staff would if I brought them back to Iran," said Taylor.

Howell broke in: "Would you be able to give a legal guarantee that any returning staff would not be arrested or harassed in any way?"

"I could not give a formal guarantee," Dadgar replied. "However, I would give my personal word of honor."

Howell darted an anxious glance at Taylor. Taylor did not speak, but his expression said he would not give two cents for Dadgar's word of honor. "We could certainly investigate ways of arranging the turnover," Howell said. Dadgar had at last given him something to bargain with, even though it was not much. "There would have to be safeguards, of course. For example, you would have to certify that the machinery was handed over to you in good condition--but perhaps we could employ independent experts to do that ..." Howell was shadowboxing. If the data center was handed over, there would be a price: the release of Paul and Bill.

Dadgar demolished that idea with his next sentence. "Every day new complaints are being made about your company to my investigators, complaints that would justify increases in the bail. However, if you cooperate in the turnover of the 125 Data Center, I can in return ignore the new complaints and refrain from increasing the bail."

Taylor said: "Goddammit, this is nothing but blackmail!"

Howell realized that the 125 Data Center was a side-show. Dadgar had raised the question, no doubt at the urging of these officials, but he did not care about it enough to offer serious concessions. So what did he care about?