On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

It was two hours--two hours of crowds and street battles and stray sniper fire--before at last they could turn north. Then the scene changed. The gunfire receded, and they found themselves in a relatively affluent area of pleasant villas. They saw a child on a bicycle, wearing a T-shirt that said something about southern California.

Paul was tired. He had been in jail for forty-five days, and during most of that time he had been sick: he was no longer strong enough to walk for hours. "What do you say we hitchhike?" he asked Bill.

"Let's give it a try."

Paul stood at the roadside and waved at the next car that came along. (He remembered not to stick out his thumb the American way--this was an obscene gesture in Iran.) The car stopped. There were two Iranian men in it. Paul and Bill got in the back.

Paul decided not to mention the name of the hotel. "We're going to Tajrish," he said. That was a bazaar area to the north of the city.

"We can take you part of the way," said the driver.

"Thanks." Paul offered them cigarettes, then sat back gratefully and lit one for himself.

The Iranians dropped them off at Kurosh-e-Kabir, several miles south of Tajrish, not far from where Paul had lived. They were in a main street, with plenty of traffic and a lot more people around. Paul decided not to make himself conspicuous by hitchhiking here.

"We could take refuge in the Catholic Mission," Bill suggested.

Paul considered. The authorities presumably knew that Father Williams had visited them in Gasr Prison just two days ago. "The Mission might be the first place Dadgar looks for us."

"Maybe."

"We should go to the Hyatt."

"The guys may not be there any longer."

"But there'll be phones, some way to get plane tickets..."

"And hot showers."

"Right."

They walked on.

Suddenly a voice called: "Mr. Paul! Mr. Bill!"

Paul's heart stopped. He looked around. He saw a car full of people moving slowly along the road beside him. He recognized one of the passengers: it was a guard from the Gasr Prison.

The guard had changed into civilian clothes, and looked as if he had joined the revolution. His big smile seemed to say: don't tell who I am, and I won't tell who you are.

He waved; then the car gathered speed and passed on.

Paul and Bill laughed with a mixture of amusement and relief.

They turned into a quiet street, and Paul started to hitchhike again. He stood in the road waving while Bill stayed on the sidewalk, so that motorists might think there was only one man, an Iranian.

A young couple stopped. Paul got into the car and Bill jumped in after him.

"We're headed north," Paul said.

The woman looked at her man.

The man said: "We could take you to Niavron Palace."

"Thank you."

The car pulled away.

The scene in the streets changed again. They could hear much more gunfire, and the traffic became heavier and more frantic, with all the cars honking continually. They saw press cameramen and television crews standing on car roofs taking pictures. The mob was burning the police stations near where Bill had lived. The Iranian couple looked nervous as the car inched through the crowd: having two Americans in their car could get them into trouble in this atmosphere.

It began to get dark.

Bill leaned forward. "Boy, it's getting a bit late," he said. "It sure would be nice if y'all could take us to the Hyatt Hotel. We'd be happy to, you know, thank you and give you something for taking us there."

"Okay," said the driver.

He did not ask how much.

They passed the Niavron Palace, the Shah's winter residence. There were tanks outside, as always, but now they had white flags attached to their antennae: they had surrendered to the revolution.

The car went on, past wrecked and burning buildings, turned back every now and again by street barricades.

At last they saw the Hyatt.

"Oh, boy," Paul said feelingly. "An American hotel."

They drove into the forecourt.

Paul was so grateful that he gave the Iranian couple two hundred dollars.

The car drove off. Paul and Bill waved, then walked into the hotel.

Suddenly Paul wished he were wearing his EDS uniform of business suit and white shirt, instead of prison dungarees and a dirty raincoat.

The magnificent lobby was deserted.

They walked to the reception desk. After a moment someone came out from an office.

Paul asked for Bill Gayden's room number.

The clerk checked, then told him there was no one of that name registered.

"How about Bob Young?"

"No."

"Rich Gallagher?"

"No."

"Jay Coburn?"

"No."

I've got the wrong hotel, Paul thought. How could I have made a mistake like that?

"What about John Howell?" he said, remembering the lawyer.

"Yes," the clerk said at last, and he gave them a room number on the eleventh floor.

They went up in the elevator.

They found Howell's room and knocked. There was no answer.

"What do you think we ought to do?" Bill said.

"I'm going to check in," said Paul. "I'm tired. Why don't we check in, have a meal. We'll call the States, tell them we're out of jail, everything will be fine."

"Okay."

They walked back to the elevator.

Bit by bit, Keane Taylor got the story out of Rashid.

He had stood just inside the prison gates for about an hour. The scene was a shambles; eleven thousand people were trying to get out through a small doorway, and in the panic women and old men were getting trampled. Rashid had waited, thinking of what he would say to Paul and Bill when he saw them. After an hour the flood of people slowed to a trickle, and he concluded that most people were out. He started asking: "Have you seen any Americans?" Someone told him that all the foreigners had been kept in Building Number 8. He went there and found it empty. He searched every building in the compound. He then returned to the Hyatt by the route Paul and Bill were most likely to take. Walking and hitching rides, he had looked for them all the way. At the Hyatt he had been refused admission because he was still carrying his rifle. He gave the gun away to the nearest youngster and came in.

While he was telling his story Coburn arrived, all set to go looking for Paul and Bill on Majid's motorcycle. He had a crash helmet with a visor that would hide his white face.

Rashid offered to take an EDS car and drive the route between the hotel and the prison, making one more sweep there and back before Coburn risked his neck in the mobs. Taylor gave him the keys to a car. Gayden got on the phone to tell Dallas the latest news. Rashid and Taylor left the suite and walked down the corridor.

Suddenly Rashid yelled: "I thought you were dead!" and broke into a run.

Then Taylor saw Paul and Bill.

Rashid was hugging them both, screaming: "I couldn't find you! I couldn't find you!"

Taylor ran up and embraced Paul and Bill. "Thank God!" he said.

Rashid ran back into Gayden's suite, yelling: "Paul and Bill are here! Paul and Bill are here!"

An instant later Paul and Bill walked in, and all hell broke loose.

Ten

1___

It was an unforgettable moment.

Everyone was yelling, no one was listening, and they all wanted to hug Paul and Bill at the same time.

Gayden was bellowing into the phone: "We got the guys! We got the guys! Fantastic! They just walked in the door! Fantastic!"

Somebody yelled: "We beat them! We beat those sonsabitches!"

"We did it!"

"In your ear, Dadgar!"

Buffy barked like a mad thing.

Paul looked around at his friends, and realized that they had stayed here in the middle of a revolution to help him, and he found he had difficulty speaking.

Gayden dropped the phone and came over to shake hands. Paul, with tears in his eyes, said: "Gayden, I just saved you twelve and a half million dollars--I think you ought to buy me a drink."

Gayden fixed him a stiff scotch.

Paul tasted his first alcoholic drink for six weeks.

Gayden said into the phone: "I have somebody who would like to speak to you." He handed the phone to Paul.

Paul said: "Hello."

He heard the syrupy voice of Tom Walter. "Hi, there, buddy!"

"God almighty," said Paul, out of general exhaustion and relief.

"We were wondering where you guys were!"

"So was I, for the last three hours."

"How'd you get to the hotel, Paul?"

Paul did not have the energy to tell Walter the whole story. "Fortunately Keane left me a lot of money one day."

"Fantastic. Golly, Paul! Is Bill okay?"

"Yeah, he's a little shook up but he's all right."

"We're all a little shook up. Oh, boy. Boy, it's good to hear you."

Another voice came on the line. "Paul? This is Mitch." Mitch Hart was a former president of EDS. "I figured that Italian street fighter would get out of there."

"How's Ruthie?" said Paul.

Tom Walter answered. They must be using the telephone conference circuit, Paul guessed. "Paul, she's great. I just talked to her a little while ago. Jean's calling her right now, she's on the other phone."

"Kids doing all right?"

"Yeah, fine. Boy, she'll be glad to hear!"

"Okay, I'll let you talk to my other half." Paul handed the phone to Bill.

While he had been speaking, an Iranian employee, Gholam, had arrived. He had heard about the jailbreak and had gone looking for Paul and Bill in the streets around the prison.

Jay Coburn was worried by the arrival of Gholam. For a few minutes there, Coburn had been too full of tearful joy to think of anything else, but now he reverted to his role as Simons's lieutenant. He quietly left the suite, found another open door, went into the room, and called the Dvoranchik apartment.

Simons answered the phone.

"It's Jay. They got here."

"Good."

"The security is all shot to hell here. They're using the names over the phone, everybody's wandering around, we have Iranian employees walking in..."

"Get a couple of rooms away from the others. We'll be right there."

"Okay." Coburn hung up.

He went down to the reception desk and asked for a two-bedroom suite on the twelfth floor. There was no problem: the hotel had hundreds of empty rooms. He gave a false name. He was not asked for his passport.

He returned to Gayden's suite.

A few minutes later Simons walked in and said: "Hang up the goddam phone."

Bob Young, who was holding the line open to Dallas, put down the phone.

Joe Poche walked in behind Simons and started closing the curtains.

It was incredible. Suddenly Simons was in charge. Gayden, the president of EDS World, was the senior man there; and an hour ago he had told Tom Walter that "The Sunshine Boys"--Simons, Coburn, and Poche--seemed useless and ineffectual; yet now he deferred to Simons without even thinking about it.

"Take a look around, Joe," Simons said to Poche. Coburn knew what this meant. The team had scouted the hotel and its grounds during their weeks of waiting, and Poche would now see whether there had been any changes.

The phone rang. John Howell answered it. "It's Abolhasan," he said to the others. He listened for a couple of minutes, then said: "Hold on." He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and spoke to Simons. "This is an Iranian employee who translates for me at meetings with Dadgar. His father is a friend of Dadgar's. He's at his father's house, and just got a call from Dadgar."

The room went very quiet.

"Dadgar said: 'Did you know the Americans are out of jail?' Abolhasan said: 'It's news to me.' Dadgar said: 'Get hold of EDS and tell them that if they find Chiapparone and Gaylord they are to turn them in, that I'm now willing to renegotiate the bail and it ought to be much more reasonable.' "

Gayden said: "Fuck him."

"All right," Simons said. "Tell Abolhasan to give Dadgar a message. Say we are searching for Paul and Bill, but meanwhile we hold Dadgar personally responsible for their safety."

Howell smiled and nodded, and began speaking to Abolhasan.

Simons turned to Gayden. "Call the American Embassy. Yell at them a little. They got Paul and Bill thrown in jail. Now the jail has been stormed and we don't know where Paul and Bill are, but we hold the Embassy responsible for their safety. Make it convincing. There must be Iranian spies at the Embassy--you can bet your ass Dadgar will have the text of the message in minutes."

Gayden went to find a phone.

Simons, Coburn, and Poche, with Paul and Bill, moved to the new suite Coburn had taken on the floor above.

Coburn ordered two steak dinners for Paul and Bill. He told room service to send them to Gayden's suite: there was to be no unnecessary traffic in and out of the new rooms.

Paul took a hot bath. He had been longing for it. He had not had a bath for six weeks. He reveled in the clean white bathroom, the piping hot water, the fresh cake of soap ... He would never take such things for granted again. He washed the Gasr Prison out of his hair. There were clean clothes waiting for him: someone had retrieved his suitcase from the Hilton, where he had been staying until he was arrested.

Bill took a shower. His euphoria had gone. He had imagined that the nightmare was over when he walked into Gayden's suite, but gradually it had dawned on him that he was still in danger; there was no U.S. Air Force jet waiting to fly him home at twice the speed of sound. Dadgar's message via Abolhasan, the appearance of Simons, and the new security precautions--this suite, Poche closing the curtains, the shuttling of the food--all made him realize that the escape had only just begun.

All the same, he enjoyed his steak dinner.

Simons was still uneasy. The Hyatt was near the Evin Hotel where the U.S. military stayed, the Evin Prison, and an armory: all these were natural targets for the revolutionaries. Dadgar's phone call was also worrying. Plenty of Iranians knew that the EDS people were staying at the Hyatt: Dadgar could easily find out, and send men to search for Paul and Bill.

While Simons, Coburn, and Bill were discussing this in the sitting room of the suite, the phone rang.

Simons stared at it.

It rang again.

"Who the fuck knows we're here?" Simons said.

Coburn shrugged.

Simons picked up the phone and said: "Hello?"

There was a pause.

"Hello?"

He hung up. "Nobody there."

At that moment Paul walked in in his pajamas. Simons said: "Change your clothes, we're going to leave."

"Why?" Paul protested.

Simons repeated: "Change your clothes, we're going to leave."

Paul shrugged and went back into the bedroom.

Bill found it hard to believe. On the run again already! Somehow Dadgar was staying in authority through all the violence and chaos of the revolution. But who was working for him? The guards had fled the jails, the police stations had been burned, the army had surrendered--who was left to carry out Dadgar's orders?

The devil and all his hordes, Bill thought.

Simons went down to Gayden's suite while Paul was dressing. He got Gayden and Taylor in a corner. "Get all these turkeys out of here," he said in a low voice. "The story is, Paul and Bill are in bed for the night. You'll all come to our place tomorrow morning. Leave at seven o'clock, just as if you were going to the office. Don't pack any bags, don't check out, don't pay your hotel bill. Joe Poche will be waiting for you outside, and he'll have figured out a safe route to the house. I'm taking Paul and Bill there now--but don't tell the others that until the morning."

"Okay," said Gayden.

Simons went back upstairs. Paul and Bill were ready. Coburn and Poche were waiting. The five of them walked to the elevator.

As they were going down, Simons said: "Now, let's just walk out of here like it was the normal thing to do."

They reached the ground floor. They walked across the vast lobby and out into the forecourt. The two Range Rovers were parked there.

As they crossed the forecourt a big dark car drew up, and four or five ragged men with machine guns jumped out.

Coburn muttered: "Oh, shit."

The five Americans kept walking.

The revolutionaries ran over to the doorman.

Poche threw open the doors of the first Range Rover. Paul and Bill jumped in. Poche started the engine and pulled away fast. Simons and Coburn got into the second car and followed.

The revolutionaries went into the hotel.

Poche headed down the Vanak Highway, which passed both the Hyatt and the Hilton. They could hear constant machine-gun fire over the sound of the car engines. A mile up the road, at the intersection with Pahlavi Avenue near to the Hilton, they ran into a roadblock.

Poche pulled up. Bill looked around. He and Paul had come through this intersection a few hours earlier, with the Iranian couple who had brought them to the Hyatt; but then there had been no roadblock, just one burned-out car. Now there were several burning cars, a barricade, and a crowd of revolutionaries armed with an assortment of military firearms.

One of them approached the Range Rover, and Joe Poche rolled down the window.

"Where are you going?" the revolutionary said in perfect English.

"I'm going to my mother-in-law's house in Abbas Abad," Poche said.

Bill thought: My God, what an idiotic story to tell.

Paul was looking away, hiding his face.

Another revolutionary came up and spoke in Farsi. The first man said: "Do you have any cigarettes?"

"No, I don't smoke," said Poche.

"Okay, go ahead."

Poche drove on down the Shahanshahi Expressway.

Coburn pulled the second car forward to where the revolutionaries stood.

"Are you with them?" he was asked.

"Yes."

"Do you have any cigarettes?"

"Yes." Coburn took a pack out of his pocket and tried to shake out a cigarette. His hands were unsteady and he could not get one out.

Simons said: "Jay."

"Yes."

"Give him the fucking pack."

Coburn gave the revolutionary the whole pack, and he waved them on.

2___

Ruthie Chiapparone was in bed, but awake, at the Nyfelers' house in Dallas when the phone rang.

She heard footsteps in the hall. The ringing stopped, and Jim Nyfeler's voice said: "Hello? ... Well, she's sleeping."

"I'm awake," Ruthie called. She got out of bed, slipped on a robe, and went into the hall.

"It's Tom Walter's wife, Jean," said Jim, handing her the phone.

Ruthie said: "Hi, Jean."

"Ruth, I have good news for you. The guys are free. They got out of jail."

"Oh, thank God!" said Ruthie.

She had not yet begun to wonder how Paul would get out of Iran.

When Emily Gaylord got back from church, her mother said: "Tom Walter called from Dallas. I said you'd call back."

Emily snatched up the phone, dialed EDS's number, and asked for Walter.

"Hi, Em'ly," Walter drawled. "Paul and Bill got out of jail."

"Tom, that's wonderful!"

"There was a jailbreak. They're safe, and they're in good hands."

"When are they coming home?"

"We're not sure yet, but we'll keep you posted."

"Thank you, Tom," said Emily. "Thank you!"

Ross Perot was in bed with Margot. The phone woke them both. Perot reached out and picked it up. "Yes."

"Ross, this is Tom Walter. Paul and Bill got out of jail."

Suddenly Perot was wide awake. He sat up. "That's great!"

Margot said sleepily: "They're out?"

"Yes."

She smiled. "Oh, good!"

Tom Walter was saying: "The jail was overrun by the revolutionaries, and Paul and Bill walked out."

Perot's mind was clicking into gear. "Where are they now?"

"At the hotel."

"That's dangerous, Tom. Is Simons there?"

"Uh, when I was talking to them, he was not there."

"Tell them to call him. Taylor knows the number. And get them out of that hotel!"

"Yes, sir."

"Call everyone into the office right away. I'll be there in a few minutes."

"Yes, sir."

Perot hung up. He got out of bed, threw on some clothes, kissed Margot, and ran down the stairs. He went through the kitchen and out the back door. A security man, surprised to see him up so early, said: "Good morning, Mr. Perot."

"Morning." Perot decided to take Margo's Jaguar. He jumped in and raced down the driveway to the gate.

For six weeks he had felt as if he were living inside a popcorn popper. He had been trying everything, and nothing had worked; bad news had hit him from every direction--he had made no progress. Now, at last, things were moving.

He tore along Forest Lane, running red lights and breaking the speed limit. Getting them out of jail was the easy part, he reflected; now we have to get them out of Iran. The hard part hasn't even started.

In the next few minutes the whole team gathered at EDS headquarters on Forest Lane: Tom Walter, T. J. Marquez, Merv Stauffer, Perot's secretary Sally Walther, lawyer Tom Luce, and Mitch Hart, who--though he no longer worked at EDS--had been trying to use his connections in the Democratic party to help Paul and Bill.

Until now, communications with the negotiating team in Tehran had been organized from Bill Gayden's office on the fifth floor, while on the seventh floor Merv Stauffer was quietly handling support and communications with the illegal rescue team, talking on the phone in code. Now they all realized that Simons was the key figure in Tehran, and that whatever happened next would probably be illegal; so they moved up to Stauffer's office, which was also more private.

"I'm going to go to Washington right away," Perot told them. "Our best hope is still an air force jet out of Tehran."

Stauffer said: "I don't know about flights to Washington from DFW on Sundays--"

"Charter a jet," Perot said.

Stauffer picked up the phone.

"We're going to need secretaries here twenty-four hours a day for the next few days," Perot went on.

"I'll see to that," said T. J.

"Now, the military has promised to help us, but we can't rely on them--they may have bigger fish to fry. The likeliest alternative is for the team to drive out via Turkey. In that event, the plan is for us to meet them at the border or if necessary fly into the northwest of Iran to pull them out. We need to assemble the Turkish Rescue Team. Boulware is already in Istanbul. Schwebach, Sculley, and Davis are in the States--somebody call them and have the three of them meet me in Washington. We may also need a helicopter pilot and another pilot for small fixed-wing aircraft, in case we want to sneak into Iran. Sally, call Margot and ask her to pack me a case--I'll need casual clothes, a flashlight, all-weather boots, thermal underwear, a sleeping bag, and a tent."

"Yes, sir." Sally left the room.

"Ross, I don't think that's a good idea," T. J. said. "Margot might get scared."

Perot suppressed a sigh: it was just like T. J. to argue. But he was right. "Okay, I'll go home and do it myself. Come with me so we can talk while I'm packing."

"Sure."

Stauffer put down the phone and said: "There's a Lear jet waiting for you at Love Field."

"Good."

Perot and T. J. went downstairs and got in their cars. They left EDS and turned right on Forest Lane. A few seconds later T. J. looked at his speedometer and saw that he was doing eighty--and Perot, in Margot's Jaguar, was losing him.

At Page Terminal in Washington, Perot ran into two old friends: Bill Clements, Governor of Texas and former Deputy Secretary of Defense; and Clements's wife, Rita.

Clements said: "Hi, Ross! What the hell are you doing in Washington on a Sunday afternoon?"

"I'm up here on business," said Perot.

"No, what are you doing really?" said Clements with a grin.

"Have you got a minute?"

Clements had a minute. The three of them sat down, and Perot told the story of Paul and Bill.

When he had finished, Clements said: "There's a guy you need to talk to. I'll write down his name."

"How am I going to get him on a Sunday afternoon?"

"Hell, I'll get him."

The two men walked over to a pay phone. Clements put in a coin, called the Pentagon switchboard, and identified himself. He asked to be put through to the home of one of the most senior military officers in the country. Then he said: "I've got Ross Perot from Texas with me. He's a friend of mine and a good friend to the military, and I want you to help him." Then he handed the phone to Perot and walked away.

Half an hour later Perot was in an operations room in the Pentagon basement, surrounded by computer terminals, talking to half a dozen generals.

He had never met any of them before, but he felt he was among friends: they all knew of his campaign for the American prisoners of war in North Vietnam.

"I want to get two men out of Tehran," Perot told them. "Can you fly them out?"

"No," said one of the generals. "We're grounded in Tehran. Our air base, Doshen Toppeh, is in the hands of the revolutionaries. General Gast is in the bunker beneath MAAG headquarters, surrounded by a mob. And we have no communications because the phone lines have been cut."

"Okay," said Perot. He had half-expected that answer. "I'm going to have to do it myself."

"It's on the other side of the world, and there's a revolution going on," said a general. "It won't be easy."

Perot smiled. "I have Bull Simons over there."

They broke up. "Dammit, Perot!" said one of them. "You aren't giving the Iranians an even chance!"

"Right." Perot grinned. "I may have to fly in myself. Now, can you give me a list of all the airfields between Tehran and the Turkish border?"

"Sure."

"Could you find out whether any of those airfields are obstructed?"

"We can just look at the satellite photographs."

"Now, what about radar? Is there a way to fly in there without appearing on the Iranians' radar screens?"

"Sure. We'll get you a radar map at five hundred feet."

"Good!"

"Anything else?"

Hell, Perot thought, this is just like going into McDonald's! "That'll do for now," he said.

The generals started pushing buttons.

T. J. Marquez picked up the phone. It was Perot.

"I got your pilots," T. J. told him. "I called Larry Joseph, who used to be head of Continental Air Services in Vientiane, Laos--he's in Washington now. He found the guys--Dick Douglas and Julian Kanauch. They'll be in Washington tomorrow."

"That's great," said Perot. "Now, I've been to the Pentagon and they can't fly the guys out--they're grounded in Tehran. But I have all kinds of maps and stuff so we can fly in ourselves. Now, this is what I need: a jet plane, capable of crossing the Atlantic, complete with a crew and equipped with a single-sideband radio, like we used to have in Laos, so we can make phone calls from the plane."

"I'll get right on it," said T. J.

"I'm at the Madison Hotel."

"Got it."

T. J. started calling. He contacted two Texas charter companies: neither of them had a transatlantic jet. The second, Jet Fleet, gave him the name of Executive Aircraft out of Columbus, Ohio. They could not help, and they did not know of anyone who could.

T. J. thought of Europe. He called Carl Nilsson, an EDS executive who had been working on a proposal for Martinair. Nilsson called back and said Martinair would not fly into Iran, but had given him the name of a Swiss outfit who would. T. J. called Switzerland: that company had stopped flying into Iran as of today.

T. J. dialed the number of Harry McKillop, a Braniff vice-president who lived in Paris. McKillop was out.

T. J. called Perot and confessed failure.

Perot had an idea. He seemed to remember that Sol Rogers, the president of Texas State Optical Company down in Beaumont, had either a BAC 111 or a Boeing 727, he was not sure which. Nor did he have the phone number.

T. J. called information. The number was unlisted. He called Margot. She had the number. He called Rogers. He had sold his plane.

Rogers knew of an outfit called Omni International, in Washington, which leased planes. He gave T. J. the home phone numbers of the president and vice-president.

T. J. called the president. He was out.

He called the vice-president. He was in.

"Do you have a transatlantic jet?" T. J. asked.

"Sure. We have two."

T. J. breathed a sigh of relief.

"We have a 707 and a 727," the man went on.

"Where?"

"The 707 is at Meachem Field in Forth Worth--"

"Why, that's right here!" said T. J. "Now tell me, does it have a single-sideband radio?"

"Sure does."

T. J. could hardly believe his luck.

"This plane is rather luxuriously fitted out," the vice-president said. "It was done for a Kuwaiti prince who backed out."

T. J. was not interested in the decor. He asked about the price. The vice-president said the president would have to make the final decision. He was out for the evening, but T. J. could call him first thing in the morning.

T. J. had the plane checked out by Jeff Heller, an EDS vice-president and former Vietnam pilot, and two of Heller's friends, one an American Airlines pilot and the other a flight engineer. Heller reported that the plane seemed to be in good shape, as far as they could tell without flying it. The decor was kind of overripe, he said with a smile.

At seven-thirty the following morning T. J. called the president of Omni and got him out of the shower. The president had talked to his vice-president and he was sure they could do business.

"Good," said T. J. "Now what about crew, ground facilities, insurance--"

"We don't charter planes," said the president. "We lease them."

"What's the difference?"

"It's like the difference between taking a cab and renting a car. Our planes are for rent."

"Look, we're in the computer business, we know nothing about airlines," said T. J. "Even though you normally don't do it, will you make a deal with us where you supply all the extras, crew and so on? We'll pay you for it."

"It'll be complicated. The insurance alone..."

"But you'll do it?"

"Yes, we'll do it."

It was complicated, T. J. learned during the course of the day. The unusual nature of the deal did not appeal to the insurance companies, who also hated to be hurried. It was hard to figure out which regulations EDS needed to comply with, since they were not an airline. Omni required a deposit of sixty thousand dollars in an offshore branch of a U.S. bank. The problems were solved by EDS executive Gary Fernandes in Washington and EDS house lawyer Claude Chappelear in Dallas: the contract, which was executed at the end of the day, was a sales demonstration lease. Omni found a crew in California and sent them to Dallas to pick up the plane and fly it on to Washington.

By midnight on Monday the plane, the crew, the extra pilots, and the remnants of the rescue team were all in Washington with Ross Perot.

T. J. had worked a miracle.

That was why it took so long.

3____

The negotiating team--Keane Taylor, Bill Gayden, John Howell, Bob Young, and Rich Gallagher, augmented now by Rashid, Cathy Gallagher, and the dog, Buffy--spent the night of Sunday, February 11, at the Hyatt. They got little sleep. Close by, the mob was attacking an armory. It seemed part of the army had now joined the revolution, for tanks were used in the attack. Toward morning they blew a hole in the wall and got in. From dawn on, a stream of orange cabs ferried weapons from the armory downtown to where the fighting was still heavy.

The team kept the line to Dallas open all night: John Howell lay on the couch in Gayden's sitting room with the phone to his ear.

In the morning Rashid left early. He was not told where the others were going--no Iranians were to know the location of the hideout.

The others packed their suitcases and left them in their rooms, just in case they should get a chance to pick them up later. This was not part of Simons's instructions, and he would certainly have disapproved, for the packed bags showed that the EDS people were no longer living here--but by morning they all felt Simons was overdoing his security precautions. They gathered in Gayden's sitting room a few minutes after the seven o'clock deadline. The Gallaghers had several bags, and did not really look as if they were going to the office.

In the foyer they met the hotel manager. "Where are you going?" he asked incredulously.

"To the office," Gayden told him.

"Don't you know there's a civil war going on out there? All night long we've been feeding the revolutionaries out of our kitchens. They asked if there were any Americans here--I told them there was nobody here. You must go back upstairs and stay out of sight."

"Life must go on," said Gayden, and they all walked out.

Joe Poche was waiting in a Range Rover, silently fuming because they were fifteen minutes late and he had instructions from Simons to be back at seven forty-five, with or without them.

As they walked to the cars, Keane Taylor saw a hotel clerk drive in and park. He went over to speak to the man. "How are the streets?"

"Roadblocks all over the place," said the clerk. "There's one right here, at the end of the hotel driveway. You shouldn't go out."

"Thank you," said Taylor.

They all got into the cars and followed Poche's Range Rover. The guards at the gate were preoccupied, trying to jam a banana clip into a machine pistol that did not take that kind of ammunition, and they paid no attention to the three cars.

The scene outside was scary. Many of the weapons from the armory had found their way into the hands of teenage boys who had probably never handled firearms before, and the kids were running down the hill, yelling and waving their guns, and jumping into cars to tear off along the highway, shooting into the air.

Poche headed north on Shahanshahi, following a roundabout route to avoid roadblocks. At the intersection with Pahlavi there were the remains of a barricade--burned cars and tree trunks across the road--but the people manning the roadblock were celebrating, chanting and firing into the air, and the three cars drove straight through.

As they approached the hideout they entered a relatively quiet area. They turned into a narrow street; then, half a block down, they drove through gates into a walled garden with an empty swimming pool. The Dvoranchik place was the bottom half of a duplex, with the landlady living upstairs. They all went in.

During Monday, Dadgar continued to search for Paul and Bill.

Bill Gayden called Bucharest, where a skeleton staff of loyal Iranians continued to man the phones. Gayden learned that Dadgar's men had called twice, speaking to two different secretaries, and asked where they could find Mr. Chiapparone and Mr. Gaylord. The first secretary had said she did not know the names of any of the Americans, which was a brave lie--she had been working for EDS for four years and knew everyone. The second secretary had said: "You will have to speak to Mr. Lloyd Briggs, who is in charge of the office."

"Where is he?"

"Out of the country."

"Well, who is in charge of the office in his absence?"

"Mr. Keane Taylor."

"Let me speak to him."

"He's not here right now."

The girls, bless them, had given Dadgar's men the runaround.

Rich Gallagher was keeping in touch with his friends in the military (Cathy had a job as secretary to a colonel). He called the Evin Hotel, where most of the military were staying, and learned that "revolutionaries" had gone to both the Evin and the Hyatt showing photographs of two Americans for whom they were looking.

Dadgar's tenacity was almost incredible.

Simons decided they could not stay at the Dvoranchik house more than forty-eight hours.

The escape plan had been devised for five men. Now there were ten men, a woman, and a dog.

They had only two Range Rovers. An ordinary car would never take those mountain roads, especially in snow. They needed another Range Rover. Coburn called Majid and asked him to try to get one.

The dog worried Simons. Rich Gallagher was planning to carry Buffy in a knapsack. If they had to walk or ride horseback through the mountains to cross the border, a single yap could get them all kitted--and Buffy barked at everything. Simons said to Coburn and Taylor: "I want you two to lose that fucking dog."

"Okay," Coburn said. "Maybe I'll offer to walk it, then just let it go."

"No," said Simons. "When I say lose it, I mean permanently."

Cathy was the biggest problem. That evening she felt ill--"Feminine problems," Rich said. He was hoping that a day in bed would leave her feeling stronger; but Simons was not optimistic. He fumed at the Embassy. "There are so many ways the State Department could get someone out of the country and protect them if they wanted to," he said. "Put them in a case, ship them out as cargo ... if they were interested, it would be a snap."

Bill began to feel like the cause of all the trouble. "I think it's insane for nine people to risk their lives for the sake of two," he said. "If Paul and I weren't here, none of you would be in any danger--you could just wait here until flights out resume. Maybe Paul and I should throw ourselves on the mercy of the U.S. Embassy."

Simons said: "And what if you two get out, then Dadgar decides to take other hostages?"

Anyway, Coburn thought, Simons won't let these two out of his sight now, not until they're back in the U.S.A.

The bell at the street gate rang, and everybody froze.

"Move into the bedrooms, but quietly," Simons said.

Coburn went to the window. The landlady still thought there were only two people living here, Coburn and Poche-- she had never seen Simons--and neither she nor anyone else was supposed to know that there were now eleven people in the house.

As Coburn watched, she walked across the courtyard and opened the gate. She stood there for a few minutes, talking to someone Coburn could not see, then closed the gate and came back alone.

When he heard her door slam shut upstairs, he called: "False alarm."

They all prepared for the journey by looting the Dvoranchik place for warm clothes. Paul thought: Toni Dvoranchik would die of embarrassment if she knew about all these men going through her drawers. They ended up with a peculiar assortment of ill-fitting hats, coats, and sweaters.

After that they had nothing to do but wait: wait for Majid to find another Range Rover, wait for Cathy to get better, and wait for Perot to get the Turkish Rescue Team organized.

They watched some old football games on a Betamax video. Paul played gin with Gayden. The dog got on everyone's nerves, but Coburn decided not to slit its throat until the last minute, in case there was a change of plan and it could be saved. John Howell read The Deep by Peter Benchley: he had seen part of the movie on the flight over and had missed the ending because the plane landed before the movie finished, and he had never figured out who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. Simons said: "Those who wish to drink can do so, but if we have to move fast we'll be much better without any alcohol in our systems," but despite the warning both Gayden and Gallagher surreptitiously mixed Drambuie with their coffee. The bell rang once more, and they all went through the same routine, but again it was for the landlady.

They were all remarkably good-tempered, considering how many of them were crammed into the living room and three bedrooms of the place. The only one to get irritable was--predictably--Keane Taylor. He and Paul cooked a big dinner for everyone, almost emptying the freezer; but by the time Taylor came in from the kitchen, the others had eaten every scrap and there was nothing for him. He cursed them all roundly for a bunch of greedy hogs, and they all laughed, the way they always did when Taylor got mad.

During the night he got mad again. He was sleeping on the floor next to Coburn, and Coburn snored. The noise was so awful that Taylor could not get to sleep. He could not even wake Coburn to tell him to stop snoring, and that made him even madder.

It was snowing in Washington that night. Ross Perot was tired and tense.

With Mitch Hart, he had spent most of the day in a last-ditch effort to persuade the government to fly his people out of Tehran. He had seen Undersecretary David Newsom at the State Department, Thomas V. Beard at the White House, and Mark Ginsberg, a young Carter aide whose job was liaison between the White House and the State Department. They were doing their best to arrange to fly the remaining one thousand Americans out of Tehran, and they were not about to make special plans for Ross Perot.

Resigned to going to Turkey, Perot went to a sporting-goods store and bought himself cold-weather clothes. The leased 707 arrived from Dallas, and Pat Sculley called from Dulles Airport to say that some mechanical problems had surfaced during the flight: the transponder and the inertial navigation system did not work properly, the Number I engine was using oil at twice the normal rate, there was insufficient oxygen aboard for cabin use, there were no spare tires, and the water-tank valves were frozen solid.

While mechanics worked on the plane, Perot sat in the Madison Hotel with Mort Meyerson, a vice-president of EDS.

At EDS there was a special group of Perot associates, men such as T. J. Marquez and Merv Stauffer, to whom he turned for help with matters that were not part of the day-to-day business of computer software: schemes like the prisoners-of-war campaign, the Texas War on Drugs, and the rescue of Paul and Bill. Although Meyerson did not get involved in Perot's special projects, he was fully informed about the rescue plan and had given it his blessing: he knew Paul and Bill well, having worked alongside them in earlier years as a systems engineer. For business matters he was Perot's top man, and he would soon become president of EDS. (Perot would continue to be chairman of the board.)

Now Perot and Meyerson talked business, reviewing each of EDS's current projects and problems. Both knew, though neither said, that the reason for the conference was that Perot might never come back from Turkey.

In some ways the two men were as different as chalk and cheese. Meyerson's grandfather was a Russian Jew who had saved for two years to buy his rail ticket from New York to Texas. Meyerson's interests ranged from athletics to the arts: he played handball, was involved with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and was himself a good pianist. Making fun of Perot and his "eagles," Meyerson called his own close colleagues "Meyerson's toads." But in many ways he was like Perot, a creative and daring businessman whose bold ideas often scared more conventional executives in EDS. Perot had given instructions that, if something were to happen to him during the rescue, all his stock would be voted by Meyerson. EDS would continue to be run by a leader, not a bureaucrat.

While Perot discussed business and worried about the plane and fumed against the State Department, his deepest concern was for his mother. Lulu May Perot was sinking fast, and Perot wanted to be with her. If she were to die while he was in Turkey, he would never see her again, and that would break his heart.

Meyerson knew what was on his mind. He broke off the business talk to say: "Ross, why don't I go?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why don't I go to Turkey instead of you? You've done your share--you went to Iran. There's nothing you can do that I can't do in Turkey. And you want to stay with your mother."

Perot was touched. Mort didn't have to say that, he thought. "If you're willing..." He was tempted. "That's something I'd sure want to think about. Let me think about it."

He was not sure he had the right to let Meyerson do this instead of him. "Let's see what the others think." He picked up the phone, called Dallas, and reached T. J. Marquez. "Mort's offered to go to Turkey instead of me," he told T. J. "What's your reaction to that?"

"It's the worst idea in the world," T. J. said. "You've been close to this project from the start, and you couldn't possibly tell Mort everything he needs to know in a few hours. You know Simons, you know how his mind works--Mort doesn't. Plus, Simons doesn't know Mort--and you're aware of how Simons feels about trusting people he doesn't know. Well, he won't trust them, that's how he feels."

"You're right," Perot said. "It's not for consideration."

He hung up. "Mort, I sure appreciate your offer, but I'm going to Turkey."

"Whatever you say."

A few minutes later Meyerson left, to return to Dallas in the chartered Lear jet. Perot called EDS again and spoke to Merv Stauffer. "Now, I want you guys to work in shifts and get some sleep," Perot said. "I don't want to be talking to a bunch of zombies back there."

"Yes, sir!"

Perot took his own advice and got some sleep.

The phone woke him at two A.M. It was Pat Sculley, calling from the airport: the plane's mechanical problems were fixed.

Perot got a cab to Dulles Airport. It was a hair-raising thirty-mile ride on icy roads.

The Turkish Rescue Team was now together: Perot; Pat Sculley and Jim Schwebach--the deadly duo; young Ron Davis; the crew of the 707; and the two extra pilots, Dick Douglas and Julian "Scratch" Kanauch. But the plane was not mended. It needed a spare part that was not available in Washington. Gary Femandes--the EDS manager who had worked on the leasing contract for the plane--had a friend who was in charge of ground support for one of the airlines at New York's LaGuardia Airport: he called the friend, and the friend got out of bed, found the part, and put it on a plane for Washington. Meanwhile, Perot lay down on a bench in the terminal and slept for a couple more hours.

They boarded at six A.M. Perot looked around the interior of the aircraft in amazement. It had a bedroom with a king-size bed, three bars, a sophisticated hi-fi system, a television, and an office with a phone. There were plush carpets, suede upholstery, and velvet walls. "It looks like a Persian whorehouse," said Perot, although he had never seen a Persian whorehouse.

The plane took off. Dick Douglas and Scratch Kanauch immediately curled up and went to sleep. Perot tried to follow their example: he had sixteen hours of nothing to do in front of him. As the plane headed out across the Atlantic Ocean, he wondered again whether he was doing the right thing.

He might, after all, have left Paul and Bill to take their chances in Tehran. Nobody would have blamed him: it was the government's job to rescue them. Indeed, the Embassy might even now be able to get them out unharmed.

On the other hand, Dadgar might pick them up and throw them in jail for twenty years--and the Embassy, on past performance, might not protect them. And what would the revolutionaries do if they got hold of Paul and Bill? Lynch them?

No, Perot could not leave his men to take then chances--it was not his way. Paul and Bill were his responsibility--he did not need his mother to tell him that. The trouble was that he was now putting more men at risk. Instead of having two people hiding in Tehran, he would now have eleven employees on the run in the wilds of northwest Iran, and another four, plus two pilots, searching for them. If things went wrong--if someone got killed--the world would see this whole thing as a foolhardy adventure by a man who thought he was still living in the Wild West. He could imagine the newspaper headlines: MILLIONAIRE TEXAN'S IRAN RESCUE BID ENDS IN DEATH ...

Suppose we lose Coburn, he thought; what would I tell his wife? Liz might find it hard to understand why I staked the lives of seventeen men to gain the freedom of two.

He had never broken the law in his life, and now he was involved in so many major illegal activities he could not count them.

He put all that out of his mind. The decision was made. If you go through life thinking about all the bad things that can happen, you soon talk yourself into doing nothing at all. Concentrate on the problems that can be solved. The chips are on the table and the wheel is in spin. The last game has begun.

4______

On Tuesday the U.S. Embassy announced that evacuation flights for all Americans in Tehran would leave during the coming weekend.

Simons got Coburn and Poche in one of the bedrooms of the Dvoranchik place and closed the door. "This solves some of our problems," he said. "I want to split them up at this point in the game. Some can take the Embassy evacuation flight, leaving a manageable group for the overland trip."

Coburn and Poche agreed.

"Obviously, Paul and Bill have to go overland," Simons said. "Two of us three have to go with them: one to escort them across the mountains and the other to cross the border legitimately and meet up with Boulware. We'll need an Iranian driver for each of the two Range Rovers. That leaves us two spare seats. Who takes them? Not Cathy--she'll be much better off on the Embassy flight."

"Rich will want to go with her," said Coburn.

"And that fucking dog," Simons added.

Buffy's life is saved, Coburn thought. He was rather glad.

Simons said: "There's Keane Taylor, John Howell, Bob Young, and Bill Gayden. Here's the problem: Dadgar might pick people up at the airport, and we'll end up back where we started--with EDS men in jail. Who is at most risk?"

"Gayden," said Coburn. "He's president of EDS World. As a hostage, he'd be better than Paul and Bill. In fact, when Dadgar arrested Bill Gaylord, we wondered whether it was a mistake, and he really wanted Bill Gayden, but got confused because of the similarity of the names."

"Gayden comes out overland with Paul and Bill, then."

"John Howell is not even employed by EDS. And he's a lawyer. He should be all right."

"Howell goes out by air."

"Bob Young is employed by EDS in Kuwait, not Iran. If Dadgar has a list of EDS names, Young won't be on it."

"Young flies. Taylor drives. Now, one of us has to go on the evacuation flight with the Clean Team. Joe, that's you. You've kept a lower profile than Jay. He's been on the streets, at meetings at the Hyatt--whereas nobody knows you're here."

"Okay," said Poche.

"So the Clean Team is the Gallaghers, Bob Young, and John Howell, led by Joe. The Dirty Team is me, Jay, Keane Taylor, Bill Gayden, Paul, Bill, and two Iranian drivers. Let's go tell 'em."

They went into the living room and everyone sat down. As Simons talked, Coburn admired how he announced his decision in such a way that they all thought they were being asked for their opinions rather than being told what to do.

There was some discussion of who should be in which team--both John Howell and Bob Young would have preferred to be in the Dirty Team, feeling themselves vulnerable to arrest by Dadgar--but in the end they all reached the decision Simons had already made.

The Clean Team might as well move into the Embassy compound as soon as possible, Simons said. Gayden and Joe Poche went off to find Lou Goelz, the Consul General, and talk to him about it.

The Dirty Team would leave tomorrow morning.

Coburn had to organize the Iranian drivers. These were to have been Majid and his cousin, the professor, but the professor was in Rezaiyeh and could not get to Tehran, so Coburn had to find a replacement.

He had already decided on Seyyed. Seyyed was a young Iranian systems engineer like Rashid and the Cycle Man, but from a much wealthier family: relatives of his had been high in politics and the army under the Shah. Seyyed had been educated in England and spoke with a British accent. His great asset, from Coburn's point of view, was that he came from the northwest, so he knew the territory and he spoke Turkish.

Coburn called Seyyed and they met at Seyyed's house. Coburn told him lies. "I need to gather intelligence on the roads between here and Khoy," Coburn said. "I'll need someone to drive me. Will you do it?"

"Sure," said Seyyed.

"Meet me at ten forty-five tonight at Argentine Square."

Seyyed agreed.

Simons had instructed Coburn to go through all this. Coburn trusted Seyyed, but of course Simons did not; so Seyyed would not know where the team was staying until he got there, and he would not know about Paul and Bill until he saw them; and from that moment on he would not be out of Simons's sight.

When Coburn returned to the Dvoranchik place, Gayden and Poche were back from seeing Lou Goelz. They had told Goelz that a few EDS men were staying in Tehran to look for Paul and Bill, but the others wanted to leave on the first evacuation flight, and stay at the Embassy in the meantime. Goelz had said that the Embassy was full, but they could stay at his house.

They all thought that was pretty damn good of Goelz. Most of them had got mad at him once or twice over the last two months, and had made it pretty clear that they blamed him and his colleagues for the arrest of Paul and Bill: it was big of him to open his house to them after all that. As everything came unglued in Iran, Goelz was becoming less of a bureaucrat and showing that his heart was in the right place.

The Clean Team and the Dirty Team shook hands and wished each other luck, not knowing who needed it most; then the Clean Team left for Goelz's house.

It was now evening. Coburn and Keane Taylor went to Majid's house to pick him up: he would spend the night at the Dvoranchik place like Seyyed. Coburn and Taylor also had to get a fifty-five-gallon drum of fuel that Majid had been keeping for them.

When they got to the house Majid was out.

They waited, fretting. At last Majid came in. He greeted them, welcomed them to his home, called for tea, the whole nine yards. Eventually Coburn said: "We're leaving tomorrow morning. We want you to come with us now."

Majid asked Coburn to step into another room with him; then he said: "I can't go with you."

"Why not?"

"I have to kill Hoveyda."

"What?" said Coburn incredulously. "Who?"

"Amir Abbas Hoveyda, who used to be Prime Minister."

"Why do you have to kill him?"

"It's a long story. The Shah had a land-reform program, and Hoveyda tried to take away my family's tribal lands, and we rebelled, and Hoveyda put me in jail ... I have been waiting all these years for my revenge."

"You have to kill him right away?" said Coburn, astonished.

"I have the weapons and the opportunity. In two days' time all may be different."

Coburn was nonplussed. He did not know what to say. It was clear Majid could not be talked around.

Coburn and Taylor manhandled the fuel drum into the back of the Range Rover, then took their leave. Majid wished them luck.

Back at the Dvoranchik place, Coburn started trying to reach the Cycle Man, hoping he would replace Majid as driver. The Cycle Man was as elusive as Coburn himself. He could normally be reached at a certain phone number--some kind of revolutionary headquarters, Coburn suspected--just once a day. The regular time for him to drop by this place was now past--it was late in the evening--but Coburn tried anyway. The Cycle Man was not there. He tried a few more phone numbers without success.

At least they had Seyyed.

At ten-thirty Coburn went out to meet Seyyed. He walked through the darkened streets to Argentine Square, a mile from the Dvoranchik place, then picked his way across a construction site and into an empty building to wait.

At eleven o'clock Seyyed had not arrived.

Simons had told Coburn to wait fifteen minutes, no longer; but Coburn decided to give Seyyed a little more time.

He waited until eleven-thirty.

Seyyed was not coming.

Coburn wondered what had happened: given Seyyed's family connections, it was quite possible he had fallen victim to the revolutionaries.

For the Dirty Team this was a disaster. Now they had no Iranians to go with them. How the hell will we get through all those roadblocks? wondered Coburn. What a shitty break: the professor drops out, Majid drops out, the Cycle Man can't be found, then Seyyed drops out. Shit.

He left the construction site and walked away. Suddenly he heard a car. He looked back, and saw a jeep full of armed revolutionaries swinging around the square. He ducked behind a convenient bush. They went by.

He went on, hurrying now, wondering whether the curfew was in force tonight. He was almost home when the jeep came roaring back toward him.

They saw me last time, he thought, and they've come back to pick me up.

It was very dark. They might not have spotted him yet. He turned and ran back. There was no cover on this street. The noise of the jeep became louder. At last Coburn saw some shrubbery and flung himself into it. He lay there listening to his heartbeat as the jeep came closer. Were they looking for him? Had they picked up Seyyed and tortured him, and made him confess that he had an appointment with a capitalist American pig at Argentine Square at ten forty-five ... ?

The jeep went by without stopping.

Coburn picked himself up.

He ran all the way to the Dvoranchik place.

He told Simons they now had no Iranian drivers.

Simons cursed. "Is there another Iranian we can call?"

"Only one. Rashid."

Simons did not want to use Rashid, Coburn knew, because Rashid had led the jailbreak, and if someone who remembered him from that should see him driving a carload of Americans, there might be trouble. But Coburn could not think of anyone else.

"Okay," said Simons. "Call him."

Coburn dialed Rashid's number.

He was at home!

"This is Jay Coburn. I need your help."

"Sure."

Coburn did not want to give the address of the hideout over the phone, in case the line was wiretapped. He recalled that Bill Dvoranchik had a slight squint. He said: "You remember the guy with the funny eye?"

"With a funny eye? Oh, yeah--"

"Don't say his name. Remember where he used to live?"

"Sure--"

"Don't say it. That's where I am. I need you here."

"Jay, I live miles from there and I don't know how I'm going to get across the city--"

"Just try," Coburn said. He knew how resourceful Rashid was. Give him a task and he just hated to fail. "You'll get here."

"Okay."

"Thanks." Coburn hung up.

It was midnight.

Paul and Bill had each picked a passport from the ones Gayden had brought from the States, and Simons had made them learn the names, dates of birth, personal details, and all the visas and country stamps. The photograph in Paul's passport looked more or less like Paul, but Bill's was a problem. None of them was right, and he ended up with the passport of Larry Humphreys, a blond, rather Nordic type who really did not look like Bill.

The tension mounted as the six men discussed details of the journey they would begin within the next few hours. There was fighting in Tabriz, according to Rich Gallagher's military contacts; so they would stick to the plan of taking the low road, south of Lake Rezaiyeh, passing through Mahabad. The story they would tell, if questioned, would be as close to the truth as possible--always Simons's preference when lying. They would say they were businessmen who wanted to get home to their families, the airport was closed, and they were driving to Turkey.

In support of that story, they would carry no weapons. It was a difficult decision--they knew they might regret being unarmed and helpless in the middle of a revolution--but Simons and Coburn had found, on the reconnaissance trip, that the revolutionaries at the roadblocks always searched for weapons. Simons's instinct told him they would be better off talking their way out of trouble than trying to shoot their way out.

They also decided to leave behind the fifty-five-gallon fuel drum, on the grounds that they made the team look too professional, too organized, for businessmen quietly driving home.

They would, however, take a lot of money. Joe Poche and the Clean Team had gone off with fifty thousand dollars, but Simons's crew still had around a quarter of a million dollars, some of it in Iranian rials, deutsche marks, sterling, and gold. They packed fifty thousand dollars into kitchen Baggies, weighted the bags with shot, and put them in a gas can. They hid some in a Kleenex box and more in the battery hold of a flashlight. They passed the rest out for each to conceal about his person.

At one o'clock Rashid still had not arrived. Simons sent Coburn to stand at the street gate and watch for him.

Coburn stood in the darkness, shivering, hoping Rashid would show up. They would leave tomorrow, with or without him, but without him they might not get far. The villagers in the countryside would probably detain Americans just on general principles. Rashid would be the ideal guide, despite Simons's worries: the kid had a silver tongue.

Coburn's thoughts turned to home. Liz was mad at him, that he knew. She had been giving Merv Stauffer a hard time, calling every day and asking where her husband was and what he was doing and when he was coming home.

Coburn knew he would have to make some decisions when he got home. He was not sure that he was going to spend the rest of his life with Liz; and after this episode, maybe she would begin to feel the same way. I suppose we were in love, once upon a time, he thought. Where did all that go?

He heard footsteps. A short, curly-headed figure was walking along the sidewalk toward him, shoulders hunched against the cold.

"Rashid!" hissed Coburn.

"Jay?"

"Boy, am I glad to see you!" Coburn took Rashid's arm. "Let's go inside."

They went into the living room. Rashid said hello to everyone, smiling and blinking: he blinked a lot, especially in moments of excitement, and he had a nervous cough. Simons sat him down and explained the plan to him. Rashid blinked faster.

When he understood what was being asked of him, he became a little self-important. "I will help you on one condition," he said, and coughed. "I know this country and I know this culture. You are all important people in EDS, but this is not EDS. If I lead you to the border, you must agree always to do everything I say, without question."

Coburn held his breath. Nobody talked like this to Simons.

But Simons grinned. "Anything you say, Rashid."

A few minutes later Coburn got Simons in a corner and said quietly: "Colonel, did you mean that about Rashid being in charge?"

"Sure," said Simons. "He's in charge as long as he's doing what I want."

Coburn knew, better than Simons, how hard it was to control Rashid even when Rashid was supposed to be obeying orders. On the other hand, Simons was the most skilled leader of small groups Coburn had ever met. Then again, this was Rashid's country, and Simons did not speak Farsi.... The last thing they needed on this trip was a power struggle between Simons and Rashid.

Coburn got on the phone to Dallas and spoke to Merv Stauffer. Paul had encoded a description of the Dirty Team's proposed route to the border, and Coburn now gave Stauffer the coded message.

Then they discussed how they would communicate en route. It would probably be impossible to call Dallas from countryside pay phones, so they decided they would pass messages through an EDS employee in Tehran, Gholam. Gholam was not to know he was being used this way. Coburn would call Gholam once a day. If all was well he would say: "I have a message for Jim Nyfeler: We are okay." Once the team reached Rezaiyeh he would add: "We are at the staging area." Stauffer, in his turn, would simply call Gholam and ask whether there were any messages. So long as all went well, Gholam would be kept in the dark. If things went wrong, the pretense would be abandoned: Coburn would level with Gholam, tell him what the trouble was, and ask him to call Dallas.

Stauffer and Coburn had become so familiar with the code that they could hold a discussion, using mostly ordinary English mixed with a few letter groups and key code words, and be sure that anyone listening in on a wiretap would be unable to figure out what they meant.

Merv explained that Perot had contingency plans to fly into northwest Iran from Turkey to pick up the Dirty Team if necessary. Perot wanted the Range Rovers to be clearly identifiable from the air, so he proposed that each of them should have a large "X" on its roof, either painted or made of black electrician's tape. If a vehicle had to be abandoned--because it broke down, or ran out of gas, or for any other reason--the "X" should be changed to an "A."

There was another message from Perot. He had talked with Admiral Moorer, who had said that things were going to get worse and the team should get out of there. Coburn told Simons this. Simons said: "Tell Admiral Moorer that the only water here is in the kitchen sink--I look out the window and I see no ships." Coburn laughed, and told Stauffer: "We understand the message."

It was almost five A.M. There was no more time to talk. Stauffer said: "Take care of yourself, Jay." He sounded choked up. "Keep your head down, y'hear?"

"I sure will."

"Good luck."

"Bye, Merv."

Coburn hung up.

As dawn broke, Rashid went out in one of the Range Rovers to reconnoiter the streets. He was to find a route out of the city avoiding roadblocks. If the fighting was heavy, the team would consider postponing their departure another twenty-four hours.

At the same time, Coburn left in the second Range Rover to meet with Gholam. He gave Gholam cash to cover the next payday at Bucharest, and said nothing about using Gholam to pass messages to Dallas. The object of the exercise was a pretense of normality, so that it would be a few days before the remaining Iranian employees began to suspect that their American bosses had left town.

When he got back to the Dvoranchik place, the team discussed who should go in which car. Rashid should drive the lead car, obviously. His passengers would be Simons, Bill, and Keane Taylor. In the second car would be Coburn, Paul, and Gayden.

Simons said: "Coburn, you're not to let Paul out of your sight until you're in Dallas. Taylor, the same goes for you and Bill."

Rashid came back and said the streets were remarkably quiet.

"All right," said Simons. "Let's get this show on the road."

Keane Taylor and Bill went out to fill the gas tanks of the Range Rovers from the fifty-five-gallon drum. The fuel had to be siphoned into the cars, and the only way to start the flow was to suck the fuel through: Taylor swallowed so much gasoline that he went back into the house and vomited, and for once nobody laughed at him.

Coburn had some pep pills that he had bought, on Simons's instructions, at a Tehran drugstore. He and Simons had had no sleep for twenty-four hours straight, and now they each took a pill to keep them awake.

Paul emptied the kitchen of every kind of food that would keep: crackers, cupcakes, canned puddings, and cheese. It was not very nutritious, but it would fill them.

Coburn whispered to Paul: "Make sure we get the cassette tapes, so we can have some music in our car."

Bill loaded the cars with blankets, flashlights, and can openers.

They were ready.

They all went outside.

As they were getting into the cars, Rashid said: "Paul, you drive the second car, please. You are dark enough to pass for Iranian if you don't speak."

Paul glanced at Simons. Simons gave a slight nod. Paul got behind the wheel.

They drove out of the courtyard and into the street.

Eleven

1____

As the Dirty Team drove out of the Dvoranchik place, Ralph Boulware was at Istanbul Airport, waiting for Ross Perot.

Boulware had mixed feelings about Perot. Boulware had been a technician when he joined EDS. Now he was a manager. He had a fine big house in a white Dallas suburb, and an income few black Americans could ever hope for. He owed it all to EDS, and to Perot's policy of promoting talent. They didn't give you all this stuff for nothing, of course: they gave it for brains and hard work and good business judgment. But what they did give you for nothing was the chance to show your stuff.

On the other hand, Boulware suspected Perot wanted to own his men body and soul. That was why ex-military people got on well at EDS: they were comfortable with discipline and used to a twenty-four-hour-a-day job. Boulware was afraid that one day he might have to decide whether he was his own man or Perot's.

He admired Perot for going to Iran. For a man as rich and comfortable and protected as that to put his ass on the line the way he had ... that took some balls. There was probably not one other chairman of the board of an American corporation who would conceive the rescue plan, let alone participate in it.

And then again, Boulware wondered--all his life he would wonder--whether he could ever really trust a white man.

Perot's leased 707 touched down at six A.M. Boulware went on board. He took in the lush decor at a glance and then forgot about it: he was in a hurry.

He sat down with Perot. "I'm catching a plane at six-thirty so I got to make this fast," he said. "You can't buy a helicopter and you can't buy a light plane."

"Why not?"

"It's against the law. You can charter a plane, but it won't take you just anywhere you want to go--you charter for a specified trip."

"Who says?"

"The law. Also, chartering is so unusual that you'll have the government all over you asking questions, and you might not want that. Now--"

"Just a minute, Ralph, not so fast," said Perot. He had that I'm-the-boss look in his eye. "What if we get a helicopter from another country and bring it in?"

"I have been here a month and I have looked into all this thoroughly, and you can't rent a helicopter and you can't rent a plane, and I have to leave now to meet Simons at the border."

Perot backed off. "Okay. How are you going to get there?"

"Mr. Fish got us a bus to go to the border. It's on its way already--I was going with it; then I had to stay behind to brief you. I'm going to fly to Adana--that's about halfway--and catch up with the bus there. I got Ilsman with me, he's the secret service guy, and another guy to translate. What time do the fellows expect to reach the border?"

"Two o'clock tomorrow afternoon," said Perot.

"It's going to be tight. I'll see you guys later."

He ran back to the terminal building and just made his flight.

Ilsman, the fat secret policeman, and the interpreter--Boulware did not know his name so he called him Charlie Brown--were on board. They took off at six-thirty.

They flew east to Ankara, where they waited several hours for their connection. At midday they reached Adana, near the biblical city of Tarsus in south central Turkey.

The bus was not there.

They waited an hour.

Boulware decided the bus was not going to come.

With Ilsman and Charlie Brown, he went to the information desk and asked about flights from Adana to Van, a town about a hundred miles from the border crossing.

There were no flights to Van from anywhere.

"Ask where we can charter a plane," Boulware told Charlie. Charlie asked.

"There are no planes for charter here."

"Can we buy a car?"

"Cars are very scarce in this part of the country."

"Are there no car dealers in town?"

"If there are, they won't have any cars to sell."

"Is there any way to get to Van from here?"

"No."

It was like the joke about the tourist who asks a farmer for directions to London, and the farmer replies: "If I was going to London, I wouldn't start from here."

They wandered out of the terminal and stood beside the dusty road. There was no sidewalk: this was really the sticks. Boulware was frustrated. So far he had had it easier than most of the rescue team--he had not even been to Tehran. Now that it was his turn to achieve something, it looked as though he would fail. Boulware hated to fail.

He saw a car approaching with some kind of markings in Turkish on its side. "Hey," he said, "is that a cab?"

"Yes," said Charlie.

"Hell, let's get a cab!"

Charlie hailed the cab and they got in. Boulware said: "Tell him we want to go to Van."

Charlie translated.

The driver pulled away.

After a few seconds the driver asked a question. Charlie translated. "Van, where?"

"Tell him Van, Turkey."

The driver stopped the car.

Charlie said: "He says: 'Do you know how far it is?' "

Boulware was not sure, but he knew it was halfway across Turkey. "Tell him yes."

After another exchange Charlie said: "He won't take us."

"Does he know anyone who will?"

The driver shrugged elaborately as he replied. Charlie said: "He's going to take us to the cabstand so we can ask around."

"Good."

They drove into the town. The cabstand was just another dusty piece of road with a few cars parked, none of them new. Ilsman started talking to the drivers. Boulware and Charlie found a little shop and bought a bag of hard-boiled eggs.

When they came out, Ilsman had found a driver and negotiated a price. The driver proudly pointed out his car. Boulware looked at it in dismay. It was a Chevrolet, around fifteen years old, and it looked as if it still had the original tires.

"He says we'll need some food," Charlie said.

"I got some eggs."

"Maybe we'll need more."

Boulware went back into the shop and bought three dozen oranges.

They got into the Chevrolet and drove to a filling station. The driver bought a spare tank of fuel and put it in the trunk. "Where we're going, there are no gas stations," Charlie explained.

Boulware was looking at a map. Their journey was about five hundred miles through mountain country. "Listen," he said. "There is no way this car is going to get us to the border by two o'clock tomorrow afternoon."

"You don't understand," Charlie said. "This man is a Turkish driver."

"Oh, boy," said Boulware; and he sat back in the seat and closed his eyes.

They drove out of town and headed up into the mountains of central Turkey.

The road was of dirt and gravel, with enormous potholes, and in places it was not much wider than the car. It snaked over the mountainsides, with a breathtaking sheer drop at one edge. There was no guardrail to stop an incautious driver shooting over the precipice into the abyss. But the scenery was spectacular, with stunning views across the sunlit valleys, and Boulware made up his mind to go back one day, with Mary and Stacy and Kecia, and do the trip again, at leisure.

Up ahead, a truck was approaching them. The cabby braked to a halt. Two men in uniform got out of the truck. "Army patrol," said Charlie Brown.

The driver wound down his window. Ilsman talked to the soldiers. Boulware did not understand what was said, but it seemed to satisfy the patrol. The cabby drove on.

An hour or so later they were stopped by another patrol, and the same thing happened.

At nightfall they spotted a roadside restaurant and pulled in. The place was primitive and filthy dirty. "All they have is beans and rice," said Charlie apologetically as they sat down.

Boulware smiled. "I been eating beans and rice all my life."

He studied the cabdriver. The man was about sixty years old, and looked tired. "I guess I'll drive for a while," said Boulware.

Charlie translated, and the cabby protested vehemently.

"He says you won't be able to drive that car," Charlie said. "It's an American car with a very peculiar gearshift."

"Look, I am American," Boulware said. "Tell him that lots of Americans are black. And I know how to drive a 'sixty-four Chevy with a standard shift, for Pete's sake!"

The three Turks argued about it while they ate. Finally Charlie said: "You can drive, so long as you promise to pay for the damage if you wreck the car."

"I promise," said Boulware, thinking: Big deal.

He paid the bill, and they walked out to the car. It was beginning to rain.

Boulware found it impossible to make any speed, but the big car was stable, and its powerful engine took the gradients without difficulty. They were stopped a third time by an army patrol. Boulware showed his American passport, and once again Ilsman made them happy somehow. This time, Boulware noted, the soldiers were unshaven and wore somewhat ragged uniforms.

As they pulled away, Ilsman spoke, and Charlie said: "Try not to stop for any more patrols."

"Why not?"

"They might rob us."

That's great, thought Boulware.

Near the town of Maras, a hundred miles from Adana and another four hundred from Van, the rain became heavy, making the mud-and-gravel road treacherous, and Boulware had to slow down even more.

Soon after Maras, the car died.

They all got out and lifted the hood. Boulware could see nothing wrong. The driver spoke, and Charlie translated: "He can't understand it--he has just tuned the engine with his own hands."

"Maybe he didn't tune it right," said Boulware. "Let's check a few things."

The driver got some tools and a flashlight out of the trunk, and the four men stood around the engine in the rain, trying to find out what had gone wrong.

Eventually they discovered that the points were incorrectly set. Boulware guessed that either the rain, or the thinner mountain air, or both, had made the fault critical. It took a while to adjust the points, but finally the engine fired. Cold and wet and tired, the four men got back into the old car and Boulware drove on.

The countryside grew more desolate as they traveled east--no towns, no houses, no livestock, nothing. The road became even worse: it reminded Boulware of a trail in a cowboy movie. Soon the rain turned to snow and the road became icy. Boulware kept glancing over the sheer drop at the side. If you go off this, sucker, he said to himself, you ain't going to get hurt--you're going to die.

Near Bingol, halfway to their destination, they climbed up out of the storm. The sky was clear and there was a bright moon, almost like daylight. Boulware could see the snow clouds and the flashing lightning in the valleys below. The mountainside was frozen white, and the road was like a bobsled run.

Boulware thought: Man, I'm going to die up here, and nobody's even going to know it, because they don't know where I am.

Suddenly the steering wheel bucked in his hands and the car slowed: Boulware had a moment of panic, thinking he was losing control, then realized he had a flat tire. He brought the car gently to a halt.

They all got out and the cabdriver opened the trunk. He hauled out the extra fuel tank to get at the spare wheel. Boulware was freezing: the temperature had to be way below zero. The cabby refused any help and insisted on changing the wheel himself. Boulware took off his gloves and offered them to the cabby: the man shook his head. Pride, I guess, thought Boulware.

By the time the job was done, it was four A.M. Boulware said: "Ask him if he wants to take over the driving--I'm bushed."

The driver agreed.

Boulware got into the back. The car pulled away. Boulware closed his eyes and tried to ignore the bumps and jerks. He wondered whether he would reach the border in time. Shit, he thought, nobody could say we didn't try.

A few seconds later he was asleep.

2_____

The Dirty Team blew out of Tehran like a breeze.

The city looked like a battlefield from which everyone had gone home. Statues had been pulled down, cars burned, and trees felled to make roadblocks; then the roadblocks had been cleared--the cars pushed to the curb, the statues smashed, the trees burned. Some of those trees had been hand-watered every day for fifty years.

But there was no fighting. They saw very few people and little traffic. Perhaps the revolution was over. Or perhaps the revolutionaries were having tea.

They drove past the airport and took the highway north, following the route Coburn and Simons had taken on their reconnaissance trip. Some of Simons's plans had come to nothing, but not this one. Still, Coburn was apprehensive. What was ahead of them? Did armies rage and storm in towns and hamlets still? Or was the revolution done? Perhaps the villagers had returned to their sheep and their plows.

Soon the two Range Rovers were bowling along at seventy miles an hour at the foot of a mountain range. On their left was a flat plain; on their right, steep green hillsides topped by snowy mountain peaks against the blue sky. Coburn looked at the car in front and saw Taylor taking photographs through the tailgate window with his Instamatic. "Look at Taylor," he said.

"What does he think this is?" said Gayden. "A package tour?"

Coburn began to feel optimistic. There had been no trouble so far: maybe the whole country was calming down. Anyway, why should the Iranians give them a hard time? What was wrong with foreigners leaving the country?

Paul and Bill had false passports and were being hunted by the authorities, that was what was wrong.

Thirty miles from Tehran, just outside the town of Karaj, they came to their first roadblock. It was manned, as they usually were, by machine-gun-toting men and boys in ragged clothes.

The lead car stopped, and Rashid jumped out even before Paul had brought the second car to a halt, making sure that he, rather than the Americans, would do the talking. He immediately began speaking loud and rapid Farsi, with many gestures. Paul wound down the window. From what they could understand, it seemed Rashid was not giving the agreed story: he was saying something about journalists.

After a while Rashid told them all to get out of the cars. "They want to search us for weapons."

Coburn, remembering how many times he had been frisked on the reconnaissance trip, had concealed his little Gerber knife in the Range Rover.

The Iranians patted them down, then perfunctorily searched the cars: they did not find Coburn's knife, nor did they come across the money.

A few minutes later Rashid said: "We can go."

A hundred yards down the road was a filling station. They pulled in: Simons wanted to keep the fuel tanks as full as possible.

While the cars were being fueled Taylor produced a bottle of Cognac, and they all took a swig except Simons, who disapproved, and Rashid, whose beliefs forbade him to take alcohol. Simons was mad at Rashid. Instead of saying the group were businessmen trying to go home, Rashid had said they were journalists going to cover the fighting in Tabriz. "Stick to the goddam story," Simons said.

"Sure," said Rashid.

Coburn thought Rashid would probably continue to say the first thing that came into his head at the time. That was how he operated.

A small crowd gathered at the filling station, watching the foreigners. Coburn looked at the bystanders nervously. They were not exactly hostile, but there was something vaguely menacing about their quiet surveillance.

Rashid bought a can of oil.

What now?

He took the fuel can, which contained most of the money in weighted plastic bags, out of the back of the car, and poured oil into it to conceal the money. It's not a bad idea, Coburn thought, but I would have mentioned it to Simons before doing it.

He tried to read the expressions on the faces in the crowd. Were they idly curious? Resentful? Suspicious? Malevolent? He could not tell, but he wanted to get away.

Rashid paid the bill and the two cars pulled slowly out of the filling station.

They had a clear run for the next seventy miles. The road, the new Iranian State Highway, was in good condition. It ran through a valley, alongside a single-track railroad, with snowcapped mountains above. The sun was shining.

The second roadblock was outside Qazvin.

It was an unofficial one--the guards were not in uniform--but it was bigger and more organized than the last. There were two checkpoints, one after another, and a line of cars waiting.

The two Range Rovers joined the queue.

The car in front of them was searched methodically. A guard opened the trunk and took out what looked like a rolled-up sheet. He unrolled it and found a rifle. He shouted something and waved the rifle in the air.

Other guards came running. A crowd gathered. The driver of the car was questioned. One of the guards knocked him to the ground.

Rashid pulled his car out of the line.

Cobum told Paul to follow.

"What's he doing?" Gayden said.

Rashid inched through the crowd. The people made way as the Range Rover nudged them--they were interested in the man with the rifle. Paul kept the second Range Rover right on the tail of the first. They passed the first checkpoint.

"What the fuck is he doing?" said Gayden.

"This is asking for trouble," said Coburn.

They approached the second checkpoint. Without stopping, Rashid yelled at the guard through the window. The guard said something in reply. Rashid accelerated. Paul followed.

Coburn breathed a sigh of relief. That was just like Rashid: he did the unexpected, on impulse, without thinking through the consequences; and somehow he always got away with it. It just made life a little tense for the people with him.

Next time they stopped, Rashid explained that he had simply told the guard the two Range Rovers had been cleared at the first checkpoint.

At the next roadblock Rashid persuaded the guards to write a pass on his windshield in magic marker, and they were waved through another three roadblocks without being searched.

Keane Taylor was driving the lead car when, climbing a long, winding hill, they saw two heavy trucks, side by side and filling the whole width of the road, coming downhill fast toward them. Taylor swerved off the road and bumped to a halt in the ditch, and Paul followed. The trucks went by, still side by side, and everyone said what a lousy driver Taylor was.

At midday they took a break. They parked at the roadside near a ski lift and lunched on dry crackers and cupcakes. Although there was snow on the mountainsides, the sun was shining and they were not cold. Taylor got out his bottle of Cognac, but it had leaked and was empty: Coburn suspected that Simons had surreptitiously loosened the cork. They drank water.

They passed through the small, neat town of Zanjan, where on the reconnaissance trip Coburn and Simons had talked to the chief of police.

Just beyond Zanjan the Iranian State Highway ended--rather abruptly. In the second car, Coburn saw Rashid's Range Rover suddenly disappear from view. Paul slammed on the brakes and they got out to look.

Where the tarmac ended, Rashid had gone down a steep slope for about eight feet and landed nose-down in mud. Off to the right, their route continued up an unpaved mountain road.

Rashid restarted the stalled engine and put the car into four-wheel drive and reverse gear. Slowly he inched back up the bank and onto the road.

The Range Rover was covered with mud. Rashid turned on the wipers and washed the windshield. When the mud splashes were gone, so was the pass that had been written on with magic marker. Rashid could have rewritten it, but nobody had a magic marker.

They drove west, heading for the southern tip of Lake Rezaiyeh. The Range Rovers were built for rough roads, and they could still do forty miles per hour. They were climbing all the time: the temperature dropped steadily, and the countryside was covered with snow, but the road was clear. Coburn wondered whether they might even make the border tonight, instead of tomorrow as planned.

Gayden, in the backseat, leaned forward and said: "Nobody's going to believe it was this easy. We better make up some war stories to tell when we get home."

He spoke too soon.

As daylight faded they approached Mahabad. Its outskirts were marked by a few scattered huts, made of wood and mud brick, along the sides of the winding road. The two Range Rovers swept around a bend and pulled up sharply: the road was blocked by a parked truck and a large but apparently disciplined crowd. The men were wearing the traditional baggy trousers, black vest, red-and-white checkered headdress and bandolier of Kurdish tribesmen.

Rashid jumped out of the lead car and went into his act.

Coburn studied the guns of the guards, and saw both Russian and American automatic weapons.

"Everyone out of the cars," said Rashid.

By now it was routine. One by one they were searched. This time the search was a little more thorough, and they found Keane Taylor's little switchblade knife, but they let him keep it. They did not find Coburn's knife, or the money.

Coburn waited for Rashid to say: "We can go." It was taking longer than usual. Rashid argued with the Kurds for a few minutes, then said: "We have to go and see the head man of the town."

They got back into the cars. A Kurd with a rifle joined them in each car and directed them into the little town.

They were ordered to stop outside a small whitewashed building. One of the guards went in, came out again a minute later, and got back into the car without explanation.

They stopped again outside what was clearly a hospital. Here they picked up a passenger, a young Iranian in a suit.

Coburn wondered what the hell was going on.

Finally they drove down an alley and parked outside what looked like a small private house.

They went inside. Rashid told them to take off their shoes.

Gayden had several thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in his shoes. As he took them off he frantically stuffed the money up into the toes of the shoes.

They were ushered into a large room furnished with nothing but a beautiful Persian carpet. Simons quietly told everyone where to sit. Leaving a space in the circle for the Iranians, he put Rashid on the right of the space. Next to Rashid was Taylor, then Coburn, then Simons himself opposite the space. On Simons's right Paul and Bill sat, back a little from the line of the circle, where they would be least conspicuous. Gayden, completing the circle, sat on Bill's right.

As Taylor sat down he saw that he had a big hole in the toe of his sock, and hundred-dollar bills were poking through the hole. He cursed under his breath and hastily pushed the money back toward his heel.

The young man in the suit followed them in. He seemed educated and spoke good English. "You are about to meet a man who has just escaped after twenty-five years in jail," he said.

Bill almost said: Well, how about that, I've just escaped from jail myself!--but he stopped himself just in time.

"You are to be put on trial, and this man will be your judge," the young Iranian went on.

The words on trial hit Paul like a blow, and he thought: We've come all this way for nothing.

3______

The Clean Team spent Wednesday at Lou Goelz's house in Tehran.

Early in the morning a call came through from Tom Walter in Dallas. The line was poor and the conversation confused, but Joe Poche was able to tell Walter that he and the Clean Team were safe, would move into the Embassy as soon as possible, and would leave the country whenever the Embassy got the evacuation flights finally organized. Poche also reported that Cathy Gallagher's condition had not improved, and she had been taken to the hospital the previous evening.

John Howell called Abolhasan, who had another message from Dadgar. Dadgar was willing to negotiate a lower bail. If EDS located Paul and Bill, the company should turn them in and post the lower bail. The Americans should realize that it would be hopeless for Paul and Bill to try to leave Iran by regular means and very dangerous for them to leave otherwise.

Howell took that to mean that Paul and Bill would not have been allowed to get out on an Embassy evacuation flight. He wondered again whether the Clean Team might be in more danger than the Dirty Team. Bob Young felt the same. While they were discussing it, they heard shooting. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the U.S. Embassy.

The National Voice of Iran, a radio station broadcasting from Baku across the border in the Soviet Union, had for several days been issuing "news" bulletins about clandestine American plans for a counterrevolution. On Wednesday the National Voice announced that the files of SAVAK, the Shah's hated secret police force, had been transferred to the U.S. Embassy. The story was almost certainly invented, but it was highly plausible: the CIA had created SAVAK and was in close contact with it, and everyone knew that U.S. embassies--like all embassies--were full of spies thinly disguised as diplomatic attaches. Anyway, some of the revolutionaries in Tehran believed the story, and--without consulting any of the Ayatollah's aides--decided to take action.

During the morning they entered the high buildings surrounding the Embassy compound and took up position with automatic weapons. They opened fire at ten-thirty.

Ambassador William Sullivan was in his outer office, taking a call at his secretary's desk. He was speaking to the Ayatollah's Deputy Foreign Minister. President Carter had decided to recognize the new, revolutionary government in Iran, and Sullivan was making arrangements to deliver an official note.

When he put the phone down, he turned around to see his press attache, Barry Rosen, standing there with two American journalists. Sullivan was furious, for the White House had given specific instructions that the decision to recognize the new government was to be announced in Washington, not Tehran. Sullivan took Rosen into the inner office and chewed him out.

Rosen told him that the two journalists were there to make arrangements for the body of Joe Alex Morris, the Los Angeles Times correspondent who had been shot during the fighting at Doshen Toppeh. Sullivan, feeling foolish, told Rosen to ask the journalists not to reveal what they had learned in overhearing Sullivan on the phone.

Rosen went out. Sullivan's phone rang. He picked it up. There was a sudden tremendous crash of gunfire, and a hail of bullets shattered his windows.

Sullivan hit the floor.

He slithered across the room and into the next office, where he came nose-to-nose with his deputy, Charlie Naas, who had been holding a meeting about the evacuation flights. Sullivan had two phone numbers that he could use, in an emergency, to reach revolutionary leaders. He now told Naas to call one, and the army attache to call the other. Still lying an the floor, the two men pulled telephones off a desk and started dialing.

Sullivan took out his walkie-talkie and called for reports from the marine units in the compound.

The machine-gun attack had been covering fire for a squad of about seventy-five revolutionaries who had come over the front wall of the Embassy compound and were now advancing on the ambassadorial residence. Fortunately most of the staff were with Sullivan in the chancery building.

Sullivan ordered the marines to fall back, not to use their rifles, and to fire their sidearms only in self-defense.

Then he crawled out of the executive suite and into the corridor.

During the next hour, as the attackers took the residence and the cafeteria building, Sullivan got all the civilians in the chancery herded into the communications vault upstairs. When he heard the attackers breaking down the steel doors of the building, he ordered the marines inside to join the civilians in the vault. There he made them pile their weapons in a corner, and ordered everyone to surrender as soon as possible.

Eventually Sullivan himself went into the vault, leaving the army attache and an interpreter outside.

When the attackers reached the second floor, Sullivan opened the vault door and walked out with his hands over his head.

The others--about a hundred people--followed him.

They were all herded into the waiting room of the executive suite and frisked. There was a confused dispute between two factions of Iranians, and Sullivan realized that the Ayatollah's people had sent a rescue force--presumably in response to the phone calls by Charlie Naas and the army attache--and the rescuers had arrived on the second floor at the same time as the attackers.

Suddenly a shot came through the window.

All the Americans dropped to the floor. One of the Iranians seemed to think the shot had come from within the room, and he swung his AK-47 rifle wildly at the tangle of prisoners on the floor; then Barry Rosen, the press attache, yelled in Farsi: "It came from outside! It came from outside!" At that moment Sullivan found himself lying next to the two journalists who had been in his outer office. "I hope you're getting all this down in your notebooks," he said.

Eventually they were taken out into the courtyard, where Ibrahim Yazdi, the Ayatollah's new Deputy Prime Minister, apologized to Sullivan for the attack.

Yazdi also gave Sullivan a personal escort, a group of students who would henceforth be responsible for the safety of the U.S. Ambassador. The leader of the group explained to Sullivan that they were well qualified to guard him. They had studied him, and were familiar with his routine, for until recently their assignnent had been to assassinate him.

Late that afternoon Cathy Gallagher called from the hospital. She had been given some medication that solved her problem, at least temporarily, and she wanted to rejoin her husband and the others at Lou Goelz's house.

Joe Poche did not want any more of the Clean Team to leave the house, but he also did not want any Iranians to know where they were; so he called Gholam and asked him to pick up Cathy at the hospital and bring her to the corner of the street, where her husband would meet her.

She arrived at around seven-thirty that evening. She was feeling better, but Gholam had told her a horrifying story. "They shot up our hotel rooms yesterday," she said.

Gholam had gone to the Hyatt to pay EDS's bill and pick up the suitcases they had left behind, Cathy explained. The rooms had been wrecked, there were bullet holes everywhere, and the luggage had been slashed to ribbons.

"Just our rooms?" Howell asked.

"Yes."

"Did he find out how it happened?"

When Gholam went to pay the bill, the hotel manager had said to him: "Who the hell were those people--the CIA?" Apparently, on Monday morning, shortly after all the EDS people left the hotel, the revolutionaries had taken it over. They had harassed all the Americans, demanding their passports, and had shown pictures of two men whom they were seeking. The manager had not recognized the men in the photographs. Nor had anyone else.

Howell wondered what had so enraged the revolutionaries that they had smashed up the rooms. Perhaps Gayden's well-stocked bar offended their Muslim sensibilities. Also left behind in Gayden's suite were a tape recorder used for dictation, some suction microphones for taping phone conversations, and a child's walkie-talkie set. The revolutionaries might have thought this was CIA surveillance gear.

Throughout the day, vague and alarming reports of what was happening at the Embassy reached Howell and the Clean Team through Goelz's houseman, who was calling friends. But Goelz returned as the others were having dinner, and after a couple of stiff drinks he was none the worse for his experience. He had spent a good deal of time lying on his ample belly in a corridor. The next day he went back to his desk, and he came home that evening with good news: evacuation flights would start on Saturday, and the Clean Team would be on the first.

Howell thought: Dadgar may have other ideas about that.

4_______

In Istanbul, Ross Perot had a dreadful feeling that the whole operation was slipping out of control.

He heard, via Dallas, that the U.S. Embassy in Tehran had been overrun by revolutionaries. He also knew, because Tom Walter had talked to Joe Poche earlier, that the Clean Team had been planning to move into the Embassy compound as soon as possible. But after the attack on the Embassy, almost all telephone lines to Tehran had been disconnected, and the White House was monopolizing the few lines left. So Perot did not know whether the Clean Team had been in the Embassy at the time of the attack, nor did he know what kind of danger they might be in even if they were still at Goelz's house.

The loss of phone contact also meant that Merv Stauffer could not call Gholam to find out whether the Dirty Team had sent "a message for Jim Nyfeler" saying either that they were okay or that they were in trouble. The whole seventh-floor crew in Dallas was at work pulling strings to get one of the few remaining lines so they could talk to Gholam. Tom Walter had got on to A.T.&T. and spoken to Ray Johnson, who handled the EDS phone account. It was a very big account--EDS's computers in different parts of the U.S.A. talked to one another along telephone lines--and Johnson had been keen to help a major customer. He had asked whether EDS's call to Tehran was a matter of life and death. You bet it is, said Tom Walter. Johnson was trying to get them a line. At the same time, T. J. Marquez was sweet-talking an international operator, trying to persuade her to break the rules.

Perot had also lost touch with Ralph Boulware, who was supposed to meet the Dirty Team on the Turkish side of the border. Boulware had last been heard from in Adana, five hundred miles from where he was supposed to be. Perot presumed he was now on his way to the rendezvous, but there was no way of telling how far he had got or whether he would make it on time.

Perot had spent most of the day trying to get a light plane or a helicopter with which to fly into Iran. The Boeing 707 was no use for that, because Perot would need to fly low and search for the Range Rovers with "X" or "A" on their roofs, then land on tiny, disused airfields or even on a road or in a meadow. But so far his efforts had only confirmed what Boulware had told him at six o'clock that morning: it was not going to happen.

In desperation Perot had called a friend in the Drug Enforcement Agency and asked for the phone number of the agency's man in Turkey, thinking that narcotics people would surely know how to get hold of light planes. The DEA man had come to the Sheraton, accompanied by another man who, Perot gathered, was with the CIA; but if they knew where to get a plane they weren't telling.

In Dallas, Merv Stauffer was calling all over Europe looking for a suitable aircraft that could be bought or rented immediately and flown into Turkey: he, too, had failed so far.

Late in the afternoon Perot had said to Pat Sculley: "I want to talk to the highest-ranking American in Istanbul."

Sculley had gone off and raised a little hell at the American Consulate, and now, at ten-thirty P.M., a Consul was sitting in Perot's suite at the Sheraton.

Perot was leveling with him. "My men aren't criminals of any kind," he said. "They're ordinary businessmen who have wives and children worrying themselves to death back home. The Iranians kept them in jail for six weeks without bringing any charges or finding any evidence against them. Now they're free and they're trying to get out of the country. If they're caught, you can imagine how much chance they'd have of justice: none at all. The way things are in Iran now, my men may not get as far as the border. I want to go in and get them, and that's where I need your help. I have to borrow, rent, or buy a small aircraft. Now, can you help me?"

"No," said the Consul. "In this country it's against the law for private individuals to have aircraft. Because it's against the law, the planes aren't here even for someone who's prepared to break the law."

"But you must have aircraft."

"The State Department has no aircraft."

Perot despaired. Was he to sit and do nothing to help the Dirty Team?

The Consul said: "Mr. Perot, we're here to help American citizens, and I'm going to try to get you an aircraft. I'll pull whatever strings I can. But I'll tell you now that my chance of success is close to zero."

"Well, I appreciate it."

The Consul got up to go.

Perot said: "It's very important that my presence in Turkey be kept secret. Right now the Iranian authorities have no idea where my men are. If they should learn that I'm here, they will be able to figure out how my men are getting out, and that would be a catastrophe. So please be very discreet."

"I understand."

The Consul left.

A few minutes later the phone rang. It was T. J. Marquez calling from Dallas.

"Perot, you're on the front page of the paper today."

Perot's heart sank: the story was out.

T. J. said: "The governor just appointed you chairman of the Drug Commission."

Perot breathed again. "Marquez, you scared me."

T. J. laughed.

"You shouldn't do that to an old man," Perot said. "Boy, you really caught my attention there."

"Wait a minute, Margot's on the other line," said T. J. "She just wants to wish you a happy Valentine's Day."

Perot realized it was February 14. He said: "Tell her I'm completely safe, and being guarded at all times by two blondes."

"Wait a minute, I'll tell her." T. J. came back on the line a minute later, laughing. "She says, isn't it interesting that you need two to replace her?"

Perot chuckled. He had walked into that one: he should have known better than to try to score points off Margot. "Now, did you get through to Tehran?"

"Yes. The international operator got us a line, and we blew it on a wrong number. Then A.T. and T. got us a line and we reached Gholam."

"And?"

"Nothing. He hasn't heard from them."

Perot's temporary cheerfulness vanished. "What did you ask him?"

"We just said: 'Are there any messages?' and he said there weren't."

"Damn." Perot almost wished the Dirty Team had called to say they were in trouble, for then at least he would have known their location.

He said goodbye to T. J. and got ready for bed. He had lost the Clean Team, he had lost Boulware, and now he had lost the Dirty Team. He had failed to get hold of an aircraft in which to go looking for them. The whole operation was a mess--and there was not a thing he could do about it.

The suspense was killing him. He realized that never in his life had he experienced this much tension. He had seen men crumble under stress but he had never really been able to relate to their suffering because it had never happened to him. Stress did not upset him, normally--in fact, he thrived on it. But this was different.

He broke his own rule, and allowed himself to think about all the bad things that could happen. What was at stake here was his freedom, for if this rescue were to go wrong he would end up in jail. Already he had assembled a mercenary army, connived at the misuse of American passports, arranged the forgery of U.S. military identity cards, and conspired to effect an illegal border crossing. He hoped he would go to jail in the U.S. rather than in Turkey. The worst would be if the Turks sent him to Iran to be tried for his "crimes" there.

He lay awake on his hotel bed, worrying about the Clean Team, about the Dirty Team, about Boulware, and about himself. There was nothing he could do but endure it. In the future he would be more sympathetic to the men he put under stress. If he had a future.

5____

Coburn was tense, watching Simons.

They all sat in a circle on the Persian carpet, waiting for the "judge." Simons had told Coburn, before they left Tehran:

"Keep your eye on me." So far Simons had been passive, rolling with the punches, letting Rashid do the talking, allowing the team to be arrested. But there might come a moment when he changed his tactics. If he decided to start a fight, he would let Coburn know a split second before it happened.

The judge arrived.

Aged about fifty, he wore a dark blue jacket with a light tan sweater underneath, and an open-neck shirt. He had the air of a professional man, a doctor or a lawyer. He had a .45 stuck in his belt.

Rashid recognized him. His name was Habib Bolourian, and he was a leading Communist.

Bolourian sat in the space Simons had intended for him.

He said something in Farsi, and the young man in the suit--who now took on the role of interpreter--asked for their passports.

This is it, Coburn thought; this is where we get into trouble. He will look at Bill's passport and realize it belongs to someone else.

The passports were piled up on the carpet in front of Bolourian. He looked at the top one. The interpreter began to write down details. There was some confusion about surnames and given names: Iranians often got the two mixed up, for some reason. Rashid was handing the passports to Bolourian, and Gayden was leaning over and pointing out things; and it dawned on Coburn that between the two they were making the confusion worse. Rashid was giving Bolourian the same passport more than once, and Gayden, in leaning over to point out things in a passport, was covering up the photograph. Coburn admired their nerve. In the end the passports were handed back, and it seemed to Coburn that Bill's had never actually been opened.

Bolourian began to interrogate Rashid in Farsi. Rashid seemed to be telling the official cover story, about their being ordinary American businessmen trying to go home, with some embellishments about family members on the point of death back in the States.

Eventually the interpreter said in English: "Would you tell us exactly what you're doing here?"

Rashid said: "Well, you see--" then a guard behind him slammed in the bolt on his machine gun and stuck the barrel into the back of Rashid's neck. Rashid fell silent. Clearly the interpreter wanted to hear what the Americans had to say, to see whether their story matched Rashid's; the guard's action was a brutal reminder that they were in the power of violent revolutionaries.

Gayden, as the senior EDS executive there, replied to the interpreter. "We all work for a data-processing company called PARS Data Systems, or PDS," he said. In fact, PDS was the Iranian company jointly owned by EDS and Abolfath Mahvi. Gayden did not mention EDS because, as Simons had pointed out before they left Tehran, Dadgar might put out a blanket arrest order on anyone connected with EDS. "We had a contract with Bank Omran," Gayden went on, telling the truth but by no means the whole truth. "We weren't getting paid, people were throwing rocks at our windows, we had no money, we missed our families, and we just wanted to go home. The airport was closed, so we decided to drive."

"That's right," said the interpreter. "The same thing happened to me--I wanted to fly to Europe but the airport was closed."

We may have an ally here, Coburn thought.

Bolourian asked, and the interpreter translated: "Did you have a contract with ISIRAN?"

Coburn was astonished. For someone who had spent twenty-five years in jail, Bolourian was remarkably well informed. ISIRAN--Information Systems Iran--was a data-processing company that had once been owned by Abolfath Mahvi and had subsequently been bought by the government. The company was widely believed to have close links with the secret police, SAVAK. Worse, EDS did have a contract with ISIRAN: in partnership, the two companies had created a document-control system for the Iranian Navy back in 1977.

"We have absolutely nothing to do with ISIRAN," Gayden lied.

"Can you give us some proof of whom you work for?"

That was a problem. Before leaving Tehran they had all destroyed any papers connected with EDS, under Simons's instructions. Now they all searched their pockets for anything they might have overlooked.

Keane Taylor found his health insurance card, with "Electronic Data Systems Corp." printed across the bottom. He handed it to the interpreter, saying: "Electronic Data Systems is the parent company of PDS."

Bolourian got up and left the room.

The interpreter, the armed Kurds, and the EDS men waited in silence. Coburn thought: What now?

Could Bolourian possibly know that EDS had once had a contract with ISIRAN? If so, would he jump to the conclusion that the EDS men were connected with SAVAK? Or had his question about ISIRAN been a shot in the dark? In that case, had he believed their story about being ordinary businessmen trying to go home?

Opposite Coburn, on the far side of the circle, Bill was feeling strangely at peace. He had peaked out on fear during the questioning, and he was simply incapable of worrying any longer. We've tried our hardest to get out, he thought, and if they put us up against the wall right now and shoot us, so be it.

Bolourian walked back in, loading a gun.

Coburn glanced at Simons: his eyes were riveted on the gun.

It was an old M1 carbine that looked as if it dated from World War II.

He can't shoot us all with that, Coburn thought.

Bolourian handed the gun to the interpreter and said something in Farsi.

Coburn gathered his muscles to spring. There would be a hell of a mess if they opened fire in this room--

The interpreter took the gun and said: "And now you will be our guests, and drink tea."

Bolourian wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to the interpreter. Coburn realized that Bolourian had simply issued the gun to the interpreter and given him a permit to carry it. "Christ, I thought he was going to shoot us," Coburn muttered.

Simons's face was expressionless.

Tea was served.

It was not dark outside. Rashid asked whether there was somewhere the Americans could spend the night. " You will be our guests," said the interpreter. "I will personally look after you." Coburn thought: For that, he needs a gun? The interpreter went on: "In the morning our mullah will write a note to the mullah of Rezaiyeh, asking him to let you pass."

Coburn murmured to Simons: "What do you think? Should we stay the night here, or go on?"

"I don't think we have a choice," Simons said. "When he said 'guests,' he was just being polite."

They drank their tea, and the interpreter said: "Now we will go and have dinner."

They got up and put on their shoes. Walking out to the cars, Coburn noticed that Gayden was limping. "What's the matter with your feet?" he said.

"Not so loud," Gayden hissed. "I got all the money stuffed up in the toes of my shoes and my feet are killing me."

Coburn laughed.

They got into the cars and drove off, still accompanied by Kurdish guards and the interpreter. Gayden surreptitiously eased off his shoes and rearranged the money. They pulled into a filling station. Gayden murmured: "If they weren't going to let us go, they wouldn't take us to gas up ... would they?"

Coburn shrugged.

They drove to the town restaurant. The EDS men sat down, and the guards sat at tables around them, forming a rough circle and cutting them off from the townspeople.

A TV set was on, and the Ayatollah was making a speech. Paul thought: Jesus, it had to be now, when we're in trouble, that this guy comes to power. Then the interpreter told him that Khomeini was saying Americans should not be molested, but should be allowed to leave Iran unharmed, and Paul felt better.

They were served chella kebab--lamb with rice. The guards ate heartily, their rifles on the tables beside their plates.

Keane Taylor ate a little rice, then put down his spoon. He had a headache: he had been sharing the driving with Rashid, and he felt as if the sun had been in his eyes all day. He was also worried, for it occurred to him that Bolourian might call Tehran during the night to check out EDS. The guards kept telling him, with gestures, to eat, but he sat and nursed a Coke.

Coburn was not hungry either. He had recalled that he was supposed to phone Gholam. It was late: they would be worried sick in Dallas. But what should he tell Gholam--that they were okay, or that they were in trouble?

There was some discussion about who should pay the bill when the meal was over. The guards wanted to pay, Rashid said. The Americans were anxious not to offend by offering to pay when they were supposed to be guests, but also keen to ingratiate themselves with these people. In the end Keane Taylor paid for everyone.

As they were leaving, Coburn said to the interpreter: "I'd sure like to call Tehran, to let our people know we're all right."

"Okay," said the young man.

They drove to the post office. Coburn and the interpreter went in. There was a crowd of people waiting to use the three or four phone booths. The interpreter spoke to someone behind the counter, then told Coburn: "All the lines to Tehran are busy--it's very difficult to get through."

"Could we come back later?"

"Okay."

They drove out of the town in the dark. After a few minutes they stopped at a gate in a fence. The moonlight showed the distant outline of what might have been a dam.

There was a long delay while keys to the gate were found; then they drove in. They found themselves in a small park surrounding an ornate, modern two-story building made of white granite. "This is one of the Shah's palaces," the interpreter explained. "He has used it only once, when he opened the power station. Tonight we will use it."

They went inside. The place was cozily warm. The interpreter said indignantly: "The heating has been on for three years just in case the Shah should decide to drop by."

They all went upstairs and looked at their quarters. There was a luxurious royal suite with an enormous fancy bathroom; then along the corridor were smaller rooms, each containing two single beds and a bathroom, presumably for the Shah's bodyguard. Under each bed was a pair of slippers.

The Americans moved into the guards' rooms and the revolutionary Kurds took over the Shah's suite. One of them decided to take a bath: the Americans could hear him splashing about, hooting, and hollering. After a while he came out. He was the biggest and burliest of them, and he had put on one of the Shah's fancy bathrobes. He came mincing down the corridor while his colleagues fell about laughing. He went up to Gayden and said in heavily accented English: "Complete gentleman." Gayden broke up.

Coburn said to Simons: "What's the routine for tomorrow?"

"They want to escort us to Rezaiyeh and hand us over to the head man there," said Simons. "It'll help to have them with us if we meet any more roadblocks. But when we get to Rezaiyeh, we may be able to persuade them to take us to the professor's house instead of the head man."

Coburn nodded. "Okay."

Rashid looked worried. "These are bad people," he whispered. "Don't trust them. We've got to get out of here."

Coburn was not sure he trusted the Kurds, but he was quite certain there would be trouble if the Americans tried to leave now.

He noticed that one of the guards had a G3 rifle. "Hey, that's a real neat firearm," he said.

The guard smiled and seemed to understand.

"I've never seen one before," Coburn said. "How do you load it?"

"Load ... so," said the guard, and showed him.

They sat down and the guard explained the rifle. He spoke enough English to make himself understood with the help of gestures.

After a while Coburn realized that he was now holding the rifle.

He started to relax.

The others wanted to take showers, but Gayden went first and used all the hot water. Paul took a cold shower: he had sure as hell got used to cold showers lately.

They learned a little about their interpreter. He was studying in Europe and had been home on holiday when the revolution caught him and prevented his going back: that was how come he knew the airport was closed.

At midnight Coburn asked him: "Can we try to place that call again?"

"Okay."

One of the guards escorted Coburn back into town. They went to the post office, which was still open. However, there were no lines to Tehran.

Coburn waited until two o'clock in the morning, then gave up.

When he returned to the palace beside the dam, everyone was fast asleep.

He went to bed. At least they were all still alive. That was enough to be thankful for. Nobody knew what was between them and the border. He would worry about that tomorrow.

Twelve

1_____

"Wake up, Coburn, let's move, let's go!"

Simons's gravelly voice penetrated Coburn's slumber and he opened his eyes, thinking: Where am I?

In the Shah's palace at Mahabad.

Oh, shit.

He got up.

Simons was getting the Dirty Team ready to go, but there was no sign of their guards: Apparently they were all still asleep. The Americans made plenty of noise, and eventually the Kurds emerged from the royal suite.

Simons said to Rashid: "Tell them we have to go, we're in a hurry, our friends are waiting at the border for us."

Rashid told them, then said: "We have to wait."

Simons did not like this. "What for?"

"They all want to take showers."

Keane Taylor said: "I don't see the urgency--most of them haven't taken a shower in a year or two; you'd think they could wait another day."

Simons contained his impatience for half an hour, then told Rashid to tell the guards again that the team had to hurry.

"We have to see the Shah's bathroom," Rashid said.

"Goddammit, we've seen it," said Simons. "What's the delay?"

Everyone trooped into the royal suite and dutifully exclaimed at the shameful luxury of an unused palace; and still the guards would not move out.

Coburn wondered what was happening. Had they changed their minds about escorting the Americans to the next town? Had Bolourian checked up on EDS during the night? Simons would not be kept here much longer ...

Finally the young interpreter showed up, and it turned out the guards had been waiting for him. The plan was unchanged : a group of Kurds would go with the Americans on the next leg of their journey.

Simons said: "We have friends in Rezaiyeh--we'd like to be taken to their house, rather than go see the head man of the town."

"It's not safe," said the interpreter. "The fighting is heavy north of here--the city of Tabriz is still in the hands of the Shah's supporters. I must hand you over to people who can protect you."

"All right, but can we leave now?"

"Sure."

They left.

They drove into the town and were ordered to stop outside a house. The interpreter went in. They all waited. Somebody bought bread and cream cheese for breakfast. Coburn got out of his car and went to Simons's. "What's happening now?"

"This is the mullah's house," Rashid explained. "He is writing a letter to the mullah of Rezaiyeh, about us."

It was about an hour before the interpreter came out with the promised letter.

Next they drove to the police station, and there they saw their escort vehicle: a big white ambulance with a flashing red light on top, its windows knocked out, and some kind of identification scrawled on its side in Farsi with red magic marker, presumably saying "Mahabad Revolutionary Committee" or something similar. It was full of gun-toting Kurds.

So much for traveling inconspicuously.

At last they got on the road, the ambulance leading the way.

Simons was anxious about Dadgar. Clearly no one in Mahabad had been alerted to look out for Paul and Bill, but Rezaiyeh was a much bigger town. Simons did not know whether Dadgar's authority extended into the countryside: all he knew was that so far Dadgar had always surprised everyone by his dedication and his ability to persist through changes of government. Simons wished the team did not have to be taken before the Rezaiyeh authorities.

"We have good friends in Rezaiyeh," he told the young interpreter. "If you could take us to their house, we'd be very safe there."

"Oh, no," said the interpreter. "If I disobey orders and you get hurt, there will be hell to pay."

Simons gave up. It was clear they were as much prisoners as guests of the Kurds. The revolution in Mahabad was characterized by Communist discipline rather than Islamic anarchy, and the only way to get rid of the escort would be by violence. Simons was not yet ready to start a fight.

Just outside the town, the ambulance pulled off the road and stopped at a little cafe.

"Why are we stopping?" Simons said.

"Breakfast," said the interpreter.

"We don't need breakfast," Simons said forcefully.

"But--"

"We don't need breakfast!"

The interpreter shrugged, and shouted something to the Kurds getting out of the ambulance. They got back in and the convoy drove on.

They reached the outskirts of Rezaiyeh late in the morning.

Their way was barred by the inevitable roadblock. This one was a serious, military-style affair of parked vehicles, sandbags, and barbed wire. The convoy slowed, and an armed guard waved them off the road and into the forecourt of a filling station that had been turned into a command post. The approach road was well covered by machine guns in the filling-station building.

The ambulance failed to stop soon enough and ran right into the barbed-wire fence.

The two Range Rovers pulled up in an orderly fashion.

The ambulance was immediately surrounded by guards, and an argument started. Rashid and the interpreter went over to join in. The Rezaiyeh revolutionaries did not automatically assume that the Mahabad revolutionaries were on their side. The Rezaiyeh men were Azerbaijanis, not Kurds, and the argument took place in Turkish as well as Farsi.

The Kurds were being ordered to turn in their weapons, it seemed, and they were refusing angrily. The interpreter was showing the note from the Mahabad mullah. Nobody was taking much notice of Rashid, who was suddenly an outsider.

Eventually the interpreter and Rashid came back to the cars. "We're going to take you to a hotel," said the interpreter, "then I will go and see the mullah."

The ambulance was all tangled up in the barbed-wire fence, and had to be extricated before they could go. Guards from the roadblock escorted them into the town.

It was a large town by the standards of the Iranian provinces. It had plenty of concrete and stone buildings and a few paved roads. The convoy pulled up in a main street. Distant shouting could be heard. Rashid and the interpreter went into a building--presumably a hotel--and the others waited.

Coburn felt optimistic. You didn't put prisoners into a hotel before shooting them. This was just administrative hassle.

The distant shouting grew louder, and a crowd appeared at the end of the street.

In the rear car Coburn said: "What the hell is this?"

The Kurds jumped out of their ambulance and surrounded the two Range Rovers, forming a wedge in front of the lead car. One of them pointed to Coburn's door and made a motion like turning a key. "Lock the doors," Coburn said to the others.

The crowd came closer. It was some kind of street parade, Coburn realized. At the head of the procession were a number of army officers in tattered uniforms. One of them was in tears. "You know what I think?" said Coburn. "The army just surrendered, and they're running the officers down Main Street."

The vengeful crowd surged around the vehicles, jostling the Kurdish guards and looking through the windows with hostile glares. The Kurds stood their ground and tried to push the crowds away from the cars. It looked as though it would turn into a fight at any moment. "This is getting ugly," said Gayden. Coburn kept an eye on the car in front, wondering what Simons would do.

Coburn saw the snout of a gun aimed at the window on the driver's side. "Paul, don't look now, but someone's pointing a gun at your head."

"Jesus ..."

Coburn could imagine what would happen next: The mob would start rocking the cars; then they would turn them over...

Then, suddenly, it ended. The defeated soldiers were the main attraction, and as they passed on, the crowd followed. Coburn relaxed. Paul said: "For a minute there ..."

Rashid and the interpreter came out of the hotel. Rashid said: "They don't want to know about a bunch of Americans going into their hotel--they won't take the risk." Coburn took that to mean that feelings were running so high in the town that the hotel could get burned by the mob for taking in foreigners. "We have to go to revolutionary headquarters."

They drove on. There was feverish activity in the streets: lines of pickup trucks of all shapes and sizes were being loaded with supplies, presumably for the revolutionaries still fighting in Tabriz. The convoy stopped at what appeared to be a school. There was a huge, noisy crowd outside the courtyard, apparently waiting to get in. After an argument, the Kurds persuaded the gate sentry to admit the ambulance and the two Range Rovers. The crowd reacted angrily when the foreigners went in. Coburn breathed a sigh of relief as the courtyard gate closed behind him.

They got out of the cars. The courtyard was crammed with shot-up automobiles. A mullah was standing on a stack of rifle crates conducting a noisy and passionate ceremony with a crowd of men. Rashid said: "He is swearing in fresh troops to go to Tabriz and fight for the revolution."

The guards led the Americans toward the school building on one side of the courtyard. A man came down the steps and started yelling at them angrily, pointing at the Kurds. "They must not go into the building armed," Rashid translated.

Coburn could tell the Kurds were getting jumpy: to their surprise, they found themselves in hostile territory. They produced the note from the Mahabad mullah. There was more argument.

Eventually Rashid said: "You all wait here. I'm going inside to talk to the leader of the revolutionary committee." He went up the steps and disappeared.

Paul and Gayden lit cigarettes. Paul felt scared and dejected. These people were bound to call Tehran, he felt, and find out all about him. Getting sent back to jail might be the least of his worries now. He said to Gayden: "I really appreciate what you've done for me, but it's a shame--I think we've had it."

Coburn was more worried about the mob outside the gate. In here at least someone was trying to maintain order. Out there was a wolf pack. What if they persuaded some goofy guard to open the gate? It would be a lynch mob. In Tehran a fellow--an Iranian--who had done something to anger a crowd had been literally pulled apart, his arms and legs torn off by people who were just crazed, hysterical.

The guards jerked their weapons, indicating that the Americans should move to one side of the courtyard and stand against a wall. They obeyed, feeling vulnerable. Coburn looked at the wall. It had bullet holes in it. Paul had seen them, too, and his face was white. "My God," he said. "I think we bought the farm."

Rashid asked himself: What will be the psychology of the leader of the revolutionary committee?

He has a million things to do, Rashid thought. He has just taken control of this town, and he has never been in power before. He must deal with the officers of the defeated army, he must round up suspected SAVAK agents and interrogate them, he must get the town running normally, he must guard against a counterrevolution, and he must send troops to fight in Tabriz.

All he wants to do, Rashid concluded, is cross things off his list.

He has no time or sympathy for fleeing Americans. If he must make a decision, he will simply throw us in jail for the time being, and deal with us later, at his leisure. Therefore, I must make sure that he does not decide.

Rashid was shown into a schoolroom. The leader was sitting on the floor. He was a tall, strong man with the thrill of victory in his face; but he looked exhausted, confused, and restless.

Rashid's escort said in Farsi: "This man comes from Mahabad with a letter from the mullah--he has six Americans with him."

Rashid thought of a movie he had seen in which a man got into a guarded building by flashing his driving license instead of a pass. If you had enough confidence you could undermine people's suspicions.

"No, I come from the Tehran Revolutionary Committee," Rashid said. "There are five or six thousand Americans in Tehran, and we have decided to send them home. The airport is closed, so we will bring them all out this way. Obviously we must make arrangements and set up procedures for handling all these people. That is why I am here. But you have many problems to deal with--perhaps I should discuss the details with your subordinates."

"Yes," said the leader, and waved them away.

It was the technique of the Big Lie, and it had worked.

"I'm the deputy leader," said Rashid's escort as they left the room. They went into another room where five or six people were drinking tea. Rashid talked to the deputy leader, loud enough for the others to hear. "These Americans just want to get home and see their families. We're happy to get rid of them, and we want to treat them right so they won't have anything against the new regime."

"Why do you have Americans with you now?" the deputy asked.

"For a trial run. This way, you know, we find out what the problems are ..."

"But you don't have to let them cross the border."

"Oh, yes. They are good men who have never done any harm to our country, and they have wives and children at home--one of them has a little child dying in the hospital. So the Revolutionary Committee in Tehran has instructed me to see them across the border ..."

He kept talking. From time to time the deputy would interrupt him with a question: Whom did the Americans work for? What did they have with them? How did Rashid know they were not SAVAK agents spying for the counterrevolutionaries in Tabriz? For every question Rashid had an answer, and a long one. While he was talking, he could be persuasive; whereas if he were silent, the others would have time to think of objections. People came in and went out continually. The deputy left three or four times.

Eventually he came in and said: "I have to clear this with Tehran."

Rashid's heart sank. Of course nobody in Tehran would verify his story. But it would take forever to get a call through. "Everything has been verified in Tehran, and there is no need to reverify," he said. "But if you insist, I'll take these Americans to a hotel to wait." He added: "You had better send some guards with us." The deputy would have sent the guards anyway: asking for them was a way of allaying suspicion.

"I don't know," said the deputy.

"This is not a good place to keep them," Rashid said. "It could cause trouble. They might be harmed." He held his breath. Here they were trapped. In a hotel they would at least have the chance to make a break for the border...

"Okay," said the deputy.

Rashid concealed his relief.

Paul was deeply grateful to see Rashid coming down the steps of the schoolhouse. It had been a long wait. Nobody had actually pointed guns at them, but they had got an awful lot of hostile looks.

"We can go to the hotel," said Rashid.

The Kurds from Mahabad shook hands with them and left in their ambulance. A few moments later the Americans left in the two Range Rovers, followed by four or five armed guards in another car. They drove to the hotel. This time they all went in. There was an argument between the hotel keeper and the guards, but the guards won, and the Americans were assigned four rooms on the third floor at the back, and told to keep the curtains drawn and stay away from windows in case local snipers thought Americans inviting targets.

They gathered in one of the rooms. They could hear distant gunfire. Rashid organized lunch and ate with them: barbecued chicken, rice, bread, and Coke. Then he left for the school.

The guards wandered in and out of the room, carrying their rifles. One of them struck Coburn as being evil. He was young, short, and muscular, with black hair and eyes like a snake. As the afternoon wore on, he seemed to get bored.

One time he walked in and said: "Carter no good."

He looked around for a reaction.

"CIA no good," he said. "America no good."

Nobody replied. He went out.

"That guy is trouble," Simons said calmly. "Don't anybody take the bait."

The guard tried again a little later. "I am very strong," he said. "Wrestling. Wrestle champion. I went to Russia."

Nobody spoke.

He sat down and fiddled with his gun, as if he did not know how to load it. He appealed to Coburn. "You know guns?"

Coburn shook his head.

The guard looked at the others. "You know guns?"

The gun was an M1, a weapon they were all familiar with, but nobody said anything.

"You want to trade?" the guard said. "This gun for a backpack?"

Coburn said: "We don't have a backpack and we don't want a gun."

The guard gave up and went out into the corridor again.

Simons said: "Where the hell is Rashid?"

2_____

The car hit a pothole, jolting Ralph Boulware awake. He felt tired and groggy after his short, restless sleep. He looked through the windows. It was early morning. He saw the shore of a vast lake, so big he could not see the far side.

"Where are we?" he said.

"That's Lake Van," said Charlie Brown, the interpreter.

There were houses and villages and civilian cars: they had come out of the wild mountain country and returned to what passed for civilization in this part of the world. Boulware looked at a map. He figured they were about a hundred miles from the border.

"Hey, this is good!" he said.

He saw a filling station. They really were back in civilization. "Let's get gas," he said.

At the filling station they got bread and coffee. The coffee was almost as good as a shower: Boulware felt raring to go. He said to Charlie: "Tell the old man I want to drive."

The cabby had been doing thirty or forty miles per hour, but Boulware pushed the ancient Chevrolet up to seventy. It looked as though he had a real chance of getting to the border in time to meet Simons.

Bowling along the lakeside road, Boulware heard a muffled bang, followed by a tearing sound; then the car began to buck and bump, and there was a screech of metal on stone: he had blown a tire.

He braked hard, cursing.

They all got out and looked at the wheel: Boulware, the elderly cabby, Charlie Brown, and fat Ilsman. The tire was completely shredded and the wheel deformed. And they had used the spare wheel during the night, after the last blowout.

Boulware looked more closely. The wheel nuts had been stripped: even if they could get another spare, they would not be able to remove the damaged wheel.

Boulware looked around. There was a house a ways up the hill. "Let's go there," Boulware said. "We can phone."

Charlie Brown shook his head. "No phones around here."

Boulware was not about to give up, after all he had gone through: he was too close. "Okay," he said to Charlie. "Hitch a ride back to the last town and get us another cab."

Charlie started walking. Two cars passed him without stopping; then a truck pulled up. It had hay and a bunch of children in the back. Charlie jumped in, and the truck drove out of sight.

Boulware, Ilsman, and the cabby stood looking at the lake, eating oranges.

An hour later a small European station wagon came tearing along the road and screeched to a halt. Charlie jumped out.

Boulware gave the driver from Aadana five hundred dollars, then got into the new taxi with Ilsman and Charlie and drove off, leaving the Chevrolet beside the lake, looking like a beached whale.

The new driver went like the wind, and by midday they were in Van, on the eastern shore of the lake. Van was a small town, with brick buildings in the center and mud-hut suburbs. Ilsman directed the driver to the home of a cousin of Mr. Fish.

They paid their driver and went in. Ilsman got into a long discussion with Mr. Fish's cousin. Boulware sat in the living room, listening but not understanding, impatient to get moving. After an hour he said to Charlie: "Listen, let's just get another cab. We don't need the cousin."

"It's a very bad place between here and the border," Charlie said. "We're foreigners, we need protection."

Boulware forced himself to be patient.

At last Ilsman shook hands with Mr. Fish's cousin and Charlie said: "His sons will take us to the border."

There were two sons and two cars.

They drove up into the mountains. Boulware saw no sign of the dangerous bandits against whom he was being protected : just snow-covered fields, scrawny goats, and a few ragged people living in hovels.

They were stopped by the police in the village of Yuksekova, a few miles from the border, and ordered into the little whitewashed police station. Ilsman showed his credentials and they were quickly released. Boulware was impressed : maybe Ilsman really was with the Turkish equivalent of the CIA.

They reached the border at four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, having been on the road for twenty-four hours.

The border station was in the middle of nowhere. The guard post consisted of two wooden buildings. There was also a post office. Boulware wondered who the hell used it. Truck drivers, perhaps. Two hundred yards away, on the Iranian side, was a bigger cluster of buildings.

There was no sign of the Dirty Team.

Boulware felt angry. He had broken his neck to get here more or less on time: where the hell was Simons?

A guard came out of one of the huts and approached him, saying: "Are you looking for the Americans?"

Boulware was surprised. The whole thing was supposed to be top secret. It looked like security had gone all to hell. "Yes," he said. "I'm looking for the Americans."

"There's a phone call for you."

Boulware was even more surprised. "No kidding!" The timing was phenomenal. Who the hell knew he was here?

He followed the guard into the hut and picked up the phone. "Yes?"

"This is the American Consulate," said the voice. "What's your name?"

"Uh, what is this about?" Boulware said warily.

"Look, would you just tell me what you're doing there?"

"I don't know who you are and I'm not going to tell you what I'm doing."

"Okay, listen, I know who you are and I know what you're doing. If you have any problems, call me. Got a pencil?"

Boulware took down the number, thanked the man, and hung up, mystified. An hour ago I didn't know I was going to be here, he thought, so how could anyone else? Least of all the American Consulate. He thought again about Ilsman. Maybe Ilsman was in touch with his bosses, the Turkish MIT, who were in touch with the CIA, who were in touch with the Consulate. Ilsman could have asked somebody to make a call for him in Van, or even at the police station in Yuksekova.

He wondered whether it was good or bad that the Consulate knew what was happening. He recalled the "help" Paul and Bill had got from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran: with friends in the State Department a man had no need of enemies.

He pushed the Consulate to the back of his mind. The main problem now was, where was the Dirty Team?

He went back outside and looked across no-man's-land He decided to stroll across and talk to the Iranians. He called to Ilsman and Charlie Brown to come with him.

As he approached the Iranian side he could see that the frontier guards were not in uniform. Presumably they were revolutionaries who had taken over when the government fell.

He said to Charlie: "Ask them if they've heard anything about some American businessmen coming out in two jeeps."

Charlie did not need to translate the reply: the Iranians shook their heads vigorously.

An inquisitive tribesman, with a ragged headband and an ancient rifle, came up on the Iranian side. There was an exchange of some length; then Charlie said: "This man says he knows where the Americans are and he will take you to them if you pay."

Boulware wanted to know how much, but Ilsman did not want him to accept the offer at any price. Ilsman spoke forcefully to Charlie, and Charlie translated. "You're wearing a leather coat and leather gloves and a fine wristwatch."

Boulware, who was into watches, was wearing one Mary had given him when they got married. "So?"

"With clothes like that they think you're SAVAK. They hate SAVAK over there."

"I'll change my clothes. I have another coat in the car."

"No," Charlie said. "You have to understand. They just want to get you over there and blow your head off."

"All right," Boulware said.

They walked back to the Turkish side. Since there was a post office so conveniently nearby, he decided to call Istanbul and check in with Ross Perot. He went into the post office. He had to sign his name. The call would take some time to place, the clerk told him.

Boulware went back outside. The Turkish border guards were now getting edgy, Charlie told him. Some of the Iranians had wandered back with them, and the guards did not like people milling around in no-man's-land: it was disorderly.

Boulware thought: Well, I'm doing no good here.

He said: "Would these guys call us, if the team comes across while we're back in Yuksekova?"

Charlie asked them. The guards agreed. There was a hotel in the village, they said; they would call there.

Boulware, Ilsman, Charlie, and the two sons of Mr. Fish's cousin got into the two cars and drove back to Yuksekova.

There they checked into the worst hotel in the whole world. It had dirt floors. The bathroom was a hole in the ground under the stairs. All the beds were in one room. Charlie Brown ordered food, and it came wrapped in newspaper.

Boulware was not sure he had made the right decision in leaving the border station. So many things could go wrong: the guards might not phone as they had promised. He decided to accept the offer of help from the American Consulate, and ask them to seek permission for him to stay at the border station. He called the number he had been given on the hotel's single ancient windup telephone. He got through, but the line was bad, and both parties had trouble making themselves understood. Eventually the man at the other end said something about calling back, and hung up.

Boulware stood by the fire, fretting. After a while he lost patience, and decided to return to the border without permission.

On the way they had a flat tire.

They all stood in the road while the sons changed the wheel. Ilsman appeared nervous. Charlie explained: "He says this is a very dangerous place--the people are all murderers and bandits."

Boulware was skeptical. Ilsman had agreed to do all this for a flat fee of eight thousand dollars, and Boulware now suspected the fat man was getting ready to up his price. "Ask him how many people were killed on this road last month," Boulware told Charlie.

He watched Ilsman' face as he replied. Charlie translated : "Thirty-nine."

Ilsman looked serious. Boulware thought: Shit, this guy's telling the goddam truth. He looked around. Mountains, snow... He shivered.

3_______

In Rezaiyeh, Rashid took one of the Range Rovers and drove from the hotel back to the school that had been turned into revolutionary headquarters.

He wondered whether the deputy leader had called Tehran. Coburn had been unable to get a line the previous night: would the revolutionary leadership have the same problem? Rashid thought they probably would. Now, if the deputy could not get through, what would he want to do? He had only two options: hold the Americans, or let them go without checking. The man might feel foolish about letting them go without checking: he might not want Rashid to know that things were so loosely organized here. Rashid decided to act as if he assumed the call had been made and verification completed.

He went into the courtyard. The deputy leader was there, leaning against a Mercedes. Rashid started talking to him about the problem of bringing six thousand Americans through the town on the way to the border. How many people could be accommodated overnight in Rezaiyeh? What facilities were there at the Sero border station for processing them? He emphasized that the Ayatollah Khomeini had given instructions for Americans to be well treated as they left Iran, for the new government did not want to quarrel with the U.S.A. He got onto the subject of documentation: perhaps the Rezaiyeh committee should issue passes to the Americans authorizing them to go through Sero. He, Rashid, would certainly need such a pass today, to take these six Americans through. He suggested the deputy and he should go into the school and draft a pass.

The deputy agreed.

They went into the library.

Rashid found paper and pen and gave them to the deputy.

"What should we write?" said Rashid. "Probably we should say, the person who carries this letter can take six Americans through Sero. No, say Barzagan or Sero, in case Sero is closed."

The deputy wrote.

"Maybe we should say, um: It is expected that all guards will give their best cooperation and assistance, they are fully inspected and identified, and if necessary escort them."

The deputy wrote it down.

Then he signed his name.

Rashid said: "Maybe we should put, Islamic Revolution Commandant Committee."

The deputy did so.

Rashid looked at the document. It seemed somehow inadequate, improvised. It needed something to make it look official. He found a rubber stamp and an inking pad, and stamped the letter. Then he read what the stamp said: "Library of the School of Religion, Rezaiyeh. Founded 1344."

Rashid put the document in his pocket.

"We should probably print six thousand of these, so they can just be signed," he said.

The deputy nodded.

"We can talk some more about these arrangements tomorrow," Rashid went on. "I'd like to go to Sero now, to discuss the problem with the border officials there."

"Okay."

Rashid walked away.

Nothing was impossible.

He got into the Range Rover. It was a good idea to go to the border, he decided: he could find out what the problems might be before making the trip with the Americans.

On the outskirts of Rezaiyeh was a roadblock manned by teenage boys with rifles. They gave Rashid no trouble, but he worried about how they might react to six Americans: the kids were evidently itching to use their guns.

After that the road was clear. It was a dirt road, but smooth enough, and he made good speed. He picked up a hitchhiker and asked him about crossing the border on horseback. No problem, said the hitchhiker. It could be done, and as it happened, his brother had horses ...

Rashid did the forty-mile journey in a little over an hour. He pulled up at the border station in his Range Rover. The guards were suspicious of him. He showed them the pass written by the deputy leader. The guards called Rezaiyeh and--they said--spoke to the deputy, who vouched for Rashid.

He stood looking across to Turkey. It was a pleasant sight. They had all been through a lot of anguish just to walk across there. For Paul and Bill it would mean freedom, home, and family. For all the EDS men it would be the end of a nightmare. For Rashid it meant something else: America.

He understood the psychology of EDS executives. They had a strong sense of obligation. If you helped them, they liked to show their appreciation, to keep the books balanced. He knew he only had to ask, and they would take him with them to the land of his dreams.

The border station was under the control of the village of Sero, just half a mile away down a mountain track. Rashid decided he would go and see the village chief, to establish a friendly relationship and smooth the way for later.

He was about to turn away when two cars drove up on the Turkish side. A tall black man in a leather coat got out of the first car and came to the chain on the edge of no-man's -land.

Rashid's heart leaped, He knew that man! He started waving and yelled: "Ralph! Ralph Boulware! Hey, Ralph!"

4______

Thursday morning found Glenn Jackson--hunter. Baptist, and Rocket Man--in the skies over Tehran in a chartered jet.

Jackson had stayed in Kuwait after reporting on the possibility of Paul and Bill coming out of Iran that way. On Sunday, the day Paul and Bill got out of jail, Simons had sent orders, via Merv Stauffer, that Jackson was to go to Amman, Jordan, and there try to charter a plane to fly into Iran.

Jackson had reached Amman on Monday and had gone to work straightaway. He knew that Perot had flown into Tehran from Amman on a chartered jet of Arab Wings. He also knew that the president of Arab Wings, Akel Biltaji, had been helpful, allowing Perot to go in with NBC's television tapes as a cover. Now Jackson contacted Biltaji and asked for his help again.

He told Biltaji that EDS had two men in Iran who had to be brought out. He invented false names for Paul and Bill. Even though Tehran Airport was closed, Jackson wanted to fly in and try to land. Biltaji was willing to give it a try.

However, on Wednesday Stauffer--on Simons's instructions--changed Jackson's orders. Now his mission was to check on the Clean Team: the Dirty Team was no longer in Tehran, as far as Dallas knew.

On Thursday Jackson took off from Amman and headed east.

As they came down toward the bowl in the mountains where Tehran nestled, two aircraft took off from the city.

The planes came closer, and Jackson saw that they were fighter jets of the Iranian Air Force.

He wondered what would happen next.

His pilot's radio came to life with a burst of static. As the fighters circled, the pilot talked: Jackson could not understand the conversation, but he was glad the Iranians were talking rather than shooting.

The discussion went on. The pilot seemed to be arguing. Eventually he turned to Jackson and said: "We have to go back. They won't let us land."

"What will they do if we land anyway?"

"Shoot us down."

"Okay," said Jackson. "We'll try again this afternoon."

On Thursday morning in Istanbul, an English-language newspaper was delivered to Perot's suite at the Sheraton.

He picked it up and eagerly read the front-page story about yesterday's takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran. None of the Clean Team was mentioned, he was relieved to see. The only injury had been suffered by a marine sergeant, Kenneth Krause. However, Krause was not getting the medical attention he needed, according to the newspaper.

Perot called John Carlen, the captain of the Boeing 707, and asked him to come to the suite. He showed Carlen the newspaper and said: "How would you feel about flying into Tehran tonight and picking up the wounded marine?"

Carlen, a laid-back Californian with graying hair and a tan, was very cool. "We can do that," he said.

Perot was surprised that Carlen did not even hesitate. He would have to fly through the mountains at night with no air-traffic control to help him, and land at a closed airport. "Don't you want to talk to the rest of the crew?" Perot asked.

"No, they'll want to do it. The people who own the airplane will go bananas."

"Don't tell them. I'll be responsible."

"I'll need to know exactly where that marine is going to be," Carlen went on. "The Embassy will have to get him to the airport. I know a lot of people at that airport--I can talk my way in, bending the rules a little bit, and either talk my way out again or just take off."

Perot thought: And the Clean Team will be the stretcher bearers.

He called Dallas and reached Sally Walther, his secretary. He asked her to patch him through to General Wilson, commandant of the Marine Corps. He and Wilson were friends.

Wilson came on the line.

"I'm in Turkey on business," Perot told him. "I've just read about Sergeant Krause. I have a plane here. If the Embassy can get Krause to the airport, we will fly in tonight and pick him up and see he gets proper medical care."

"All right," said Wilson. "If he's dying I want you to pick him up. If not, I won't risk your crew. I'll get back to you."

Perot got Sally back on the line. There was more bad news. A press officer in the State Department's Iran Task Force had talked to Robert Dudney, Washington correspondent for the Dallas Times-Herald,and revealed that Paul and Bill were on their way out overland.

Perot cursed the State Department yet again. If Dudney published the story, and the news reached Tehran, Dadgar would surely intensify border security.

The seventh floor in Dallas blamed Perot for all this. He had leveled with the Consul, who had come to see him the night before, and they believed the leak started with the Consul. They were now frantically trying to get the story killed, but the newspaper was making no promises.

General Wilson called back. Sergeant Krause was not dying: Perot's help was not required.

Perot forgot about Krause and concentrated on his own problems.

The Consul called him. He had tried his best, but he could not help Perot buy or rent a small aircraft. It was possible to charter a plane to go from one airport to another within Turkey, but that was all.

Perot said nothing to him about the press leak.

He called in Dick Douglas and Julian "Scratch" Kanauch, the two spare pilots he had brought specifically to fly small aircraft into Iran, and told them he had failed to find any such aircraft.

"Don't worry," said Douglas. "We'll get an airplane."

"How?"

"Don't ask."

"No, I want to know how."

"I've operated in eastern Turkey. I know where there are planes. If you need 'em, we'll steal 'em."

"Have you thought this through?" said Perot.

"You think it through," Douglas said. "If we get shot down over Iran, what difference does it make that we stole the plane? If we don't get shot down, we can put the planes back where we got them. Even if they have a few holes in them, we'll be out of the area before anybody knows. What else is there to think about?"

"That settles it," said Perot. "We're going."

He sent John Carlen and Ron Davis to the airport to file a flight plan to Van, the nearest airport to the border.

Davis called from the airport to say that the 707 could not land at Van: it was a Turkish-language-only airport, so no foreign planes were allowed to land except U.S. military planes carrying interpreters.

Perot called Mr. Fish and asked him to arrange to fly the team to Van. Mr. Fish called back a few minutes later to say it was all fixed. He would go with the team as guide. Perot was surprised: until now, Mr. Fish had been adamant that he would not go to eastern Turkey. Perhaps he had become infected by the spirit of adventure.

However, Perot himself would have to stay behind. He was the hub of the wheel: he had to stay in telephone contact with the outside world, to receive reports from Boulware, from Dallas, from the Clean Team, and from the Dirty Team. If the 707 had been able to land at Van, Perot could have gone, for the plane's single-sideband radio enabled him to make phone calls all over the world; but without that radio he would be out of touch in eastern Turkey, and there would be no link between the fugitives in Iran and the people who were coming to meet them.

So he sent Pat Sculley, Jim Schwebach, Ron Davis, Mr. Fish, and the pilots Dick Douglas and Julian Kanauch to Van; and he appointed Pat Sculley leader of the Turkish Rescue Team.

When they had gone he was dead in the water again. They were just another bunch of his men off doing dangerous things in dangerous places. He could only sit and wait for news.

He spent a lot of time thinking about John Carlen and the crew of the Boeing 707. He had only known them for a few days: they were ordinary Americans. Yet Carlen had been prepared to risk his life to fly into Tehran and pick up a wounded marine. As Simons would say: This is what Americans are supposed to do for one another. It made Perot feel pretty good, despite everything.

The phone rang.

He answered. "Ross Perot."

"This is Ralph Boulware."

"Hi, Ralph, where are you?"

"I'm at the border."

"Good!"

"I've just seen Rashid."

Perot's heart leaped. "Great! What did he say?"

"They're safe."

"Thank God!"

"They're in a hotel thirty or forty miles from the border. Rashid is just scouting the territory in advance. He's gone back now. He says they'll probably cross tomorrow, but that's just his idea, and Simons may think otherwise. If they're that close I don't see Simons waiting until morning."

"Right. Now, Pat Sculley and Mr. Fish and the rest of the guys are on their way to you. They're flying to Van; then they'll rent a bus. Now, where will they find you?"

"I'm based in a village called Yuksekova, closest place to the border, at a hotel. It's the only hotel in the district."

"I' ll tell Sculley."

"Okay."

Perot hung up. Oh, boy, he thought; at last things are beginning to go right!

Pat Sculley's orders from Perot were to go to the border, ensure that the Dirty Team got across safely, and bring them to Istanbul. If the Dirty Team failed to reach the border, he was to go into Iran and find them, preferably in a plane stolen by Dick Douglas, or failing that, by road.

Sculley and the Turkish Rescue Team took a scheduled flight from Istanbul to Ankara, where a chartered jet was waiting for them. (The charter plane would take them to Van and bring them back: it would not go anywhere they pleased. The only way of making the pilot take them into Iran would have been to hijack the plane.)

The arrival of a jet seemed to be a big event in the town of Van. Getting off the plane, they were met by a contingent of policemen who looked ready to give them a hard time. But Mr. Fish went into a huddle with the police chief and came out smiling.

"Now, listen," said Mr. Fish. "We're going to check into the best hotel in town, but I want you to know it's not the Sheraton, so please don't complain."

They went off in two taxis.

The hotel had a high central hall with three floors of rooms reached via galleries, so that every room door could be seen from the hall. When the Americans walked in, the hall was full of Turks, drinking beer and watching a soccer match on a black-and-white TV, yelling and cheering. As the Turks noticed the strangers, the room quieted down until there was complete silence.

They were assigned rooms. Each bedroom had two cots and a hole in the corner, screened by a shower curtain, for a toilet. There were plank floors and whitewashed walls without windows. The rooms were infested with cockroaches. On each floor was one bathroom.

Sculley and Mr. Fish went to get a bus to take them all to the border. A Mercedes picked them up outside the hotel and took them to what appeared to be an electrical appliance store with a few ancient TV sets in the window. The place was closed--it was evening by now--but Mr. Fish banged on the iron grille protecting the windows, and someone came out.

They went into the back and sat at a table under a single lightbulb. Sculley understood none of the conversation, but by the end of it Mr. Fish had negotiated a bus and a driver. They returned to the hotel in the bus.

The rest of the team were gathered in Sculley's room. Nobody wanted to sit on these beds, let alone sleep in them. They all wanted to leave for the border immediately, but Mr. Fish was hesitant. "It's two o'clock in the morning," he said. "And the police are watching the hotel."

"Does that matter?" said Sculley.

"It means more questions, more trouble."

"Let's give it a try."

They all trooped downstairs. The manager appeared, looking anxious, and started to question Mr. Fish. Then, sure enough, two policemen came in from outside and joined in the discussion.

Mr. Fish turned to Sculley and said: "They don't want us to go."

"Why not?"

"We look very suspicious. Don't you realize that?"

"Look, is it against the law for us to go?"

"No, but--"

"Then we're going. Just tell them."

There was more argument in Turkish, but finally the policemen and the hotel manager appeared to give in, and the team boarded the bus.

They left town. The temperature dropped rapidly as they drove up into the snow-covered hills. They all had warm coats, and blankets in their backpacks, and they needed them.

Mr. Fish sat next to Sculley and said: "This is where it gets serious. I can handle the police, because I have ties with them; but I'm worried about the bandits and the soldiers--I have no connections there."

"What d'you want to do?"

"I believe I can talk my way out of trouble, so long as none of you have guns."

Sculley considered. Only Davis was armed anyway; and Simons had always worried that weapons could get you into trouble more readily than they could get you out of it: the Walther PPKs had never left Dallas. "Okay," Sculley said.

Ron Davis threw his .38 out of the window into the snow.

A little later the headlights of the bus revealed a soldier in uniform standing in the middle of the road, waving. The bus driver kept right on going, as if he intended to run the man down, but Mr. Fish yelled and the driver pulled up.

Looking out the window, Sculley saw a platoon of soldiers armed with high-powered rifles on the mountainside, and thought: if we hadn't stopped, we'd have been mown down.

A sergeant and a corporal got on the bus. They checked all the passports. Mr. Fish offered them cigarettes. They stood talking to him while they smoked; then they waved and got off.

A few miles farther on, the bus was stopped again, and they went through a similar routine.

The third time, the men who got on the bus had no uniforms. Mr. Fish became very jumpy. "Act casual," he hissed at the Americans. "Read books, just don't look at these guys." He talked to the Turks for something like half an hour, and when the bus was finally allowed to proceed, two of them stayed on it. "Protection," Mr. Fish said enigmatically, and he shrugged.

Sculley was nominally in charge, but there was little he could do other than follow Mr. Fish's directions. He did not know the country, nor did he speak the language: most of the time he had no idea what was going on. It was hard to have control under those circumstances. The best he could do, he figured, was to keep Mr. Fish pointed in the right direction and lean on him a little when he began to lose his nerve.

At four o'clock in the morning they reached Yuksekova, the nearest village to the border station. Here, according to Mr. Fish's cousin in Van, they would find Ralph Boulware.

Sculley and Mr. Fish went into the hotel. It was dark as a barn and smelled like the men's room at a football stadium. They yelled for a while, and a boy appeared with a candle. Mr. Fish spoke to him in Turkish, then said: "Boulware's not here. He left hours ago. They don't know where he went."

Thirteen

1____

At the hotel in Rezaiyeh, Jay Coburn had that sick, helpless feeling again, the feeling he had had in Mahabad, and then in the courtyard of the schoolhouse: he had no control over his own destiny, his fate was in the hands of others--in this case, the hands of Rashid.

Where the hell was Rashid?

Coburn asked the guards if he could use the phone. They took him down to the lobby. He dialed the home of Majid's cousin, the professor, in Rezaiyeh, but there was no answer.

Without much hope he dialed Gholam's number in Tehran. To his surprise he got through.

"I have a message for Jim Nyfeler," he said. "We are at the staging area."

"But where are you?" said Gholam.

"In Tehran," Coburn lied.

"I need to see you."

Coburn had to continue the deception. "Okay, I'll meet you tomorrow morning."

"Where?"

"At Bucharest."

"Okay."

Coburn went back upstairs. Simons took him and Keane Taylor into one of the rooms. "If Rashid isn't back by nine o'clock, we're leaving," Simons said.

Coburn immediately felt better.

Simons went on: "The guards are getting bored, their vigilance is slipping. We'll either sneak past them or deal with them the other way."

"We've only got one car," said Coburn.

"And we're going to leave it here, to confuse them. We'll walk to the border. Hell, it's only thirty or forty miles. We can go across country: we'll avoid roadblocks by avoiding roads."

Coburn nodded. This was what he wanted. They were taking the initiative again.

"Let's get the money together," Simons said to Taylor. "Ask the guards to take you down to the car. Bring the Kleenex box and the flashlight up here and take the money out of them."

Taylor left.

"We might as well eat first," Simons said. "It's going to be a long walk."

Taylor went into an empty room and spilled the money out of the Kleenex box and the flashlight onto the floor.

Suddenly the door was flung open.

Taylor's heart stopped.

He looked up and saw Gayden, grinning all over his face. "Gotcha!" Gayden said.

Taylor was furious. "You bastard, Gayden," he said. "You gave me a fucking heart attack."

Gayden laughed like hell.

The guards took them downstairs to the dining room. The Americans sat at a big circular table, and the guards took another table across the room. Lamb with rice was served, and tea. It was a grim meal: they were all worried about what might have happened to Rashid, and how they would manage without him.

There was a TV set on, and Paul could not take his eyes off the screen. He expected at any minute to see his own face appear like a "Wanted" poster.

Where the hell was Rashid?

They were only an hour from the border, yet they were trapped, under guard, and still in danger of being sent back to Tehran and jail.

Someone said: "Hey, look who's here!"

Rashid walked in.

He came over to their table, wearing his self-important look. "Gentlemen," he said, "this is your last meal."

They all stared at him, horrified.

"In Iran, I mean," he added hastily. "We can leave."

They all cheered.

"I got a letter from the revolutionary committee," he went on. "I went to the border to check it out. There are a couple of roadblocks on the way, but I have arranged everything. I know where we can get horses to cross the mountains--but I don't think we need them. There are no government people at the border station--the place is in the hands of the villagers. I saw the head man of the village, and it will be all right for us to cross. Also, Ralph Boulware is there. I talked to him."

Simons stood up. "Let's move," he said. "Fast."

They left their meal half-eaten. Rashid talked to the guards, and showed them his letter from the deputy leader. Keane Taylor paid the hotel bill. Rashid had bought a stack of Khomeini posters, and he gave them to Bill to stick on the cars.

They were out of there in minutes.

Bill had done a good job with the posters. Everywhere you looked on the Range Rovers, the fierce, white-bearded face of the Ayatollah glared out at you.

They pulled away, Rashid driving the first car.

On the way out of town Rashid suddenly braked, leaned out of the window, and waved frantically at an approaching taxi.

Simons growled: "Rashid, what the fuck are you doing?"

Without answering, Rashid jumped out of the car and ran over to the taxi.

"Jesus Christ," said Simons.

Rashid talked to the cabdriver for a minute; then the cab went on. Rashid explained: "I asked him to show us a way out of town by the back streets. There is one roadblock I want to avoid because it is manned by kids with rifles and I don't know what they might do. The cabby has a fare already, but he's coming back. We'll wait."

"We won't wait very goddam long," Simons said.

The cab returned in ten minutes. They followed it through the dark, unpaved streets until they came to a main road. The cabby turned right. Rashid followed, taking the corner fast. On the left, just a few yards away, was the roadblock he had wanted to avoid, with teenage boys firing rifles into the air. The cab and the two Range Rovers accelerated fast away from the corner, before the kids could realize that someone had sneaked past them.

Fifty yards down the road, Rashid pulled into a gas station.

Keane Taylor said to him: "What the hell are you stopping for?"

"We've got to get gas."

"We've got three-quarters of a tankful, plenty to jump the border on--let's get out of here."

"It may be impossible to get gas in Turkey."

Simons said: "Rashid, let's go."

Rashid jumped out of the car.

When the fuel tanks had been topped up, Rashid was still haggling with the taxi driver, offering him a hundred rials--a little more than a dollar--for guiding them out of town.

Taylor said: "Rashid, just give him a handful of money and let's go."

"He wants too much," Rashid said.

"Oh, God," said Taylor.

Rashid settled with the cabby for two hundred rials and got back into the Range Rover, saying: "He would have got suspicious if I didn't argue."

They drove out of town. The road wound up into the mountains. The surface was good and they made rapid progress. After a while the road began to follow a ridge, with deep wooded gulleys on either side. "There was a checkpoint around here somewhere this afternoon," Rashid said. "Maybe they went home."

The headlights picked out two men standing beside the road, waving them down. There was no barrier. Rashid did not brake.

"I guess we'd better stop," Simons said.

Rashid kept going right past the two men.

"I said stop!" Simons barked.

Rashid stopped.

Bill stared out through the windshield and said: "Would you look at that?"

A few yards ahead was a bridge over a ravine. On either side of the bridge, tribesmen were emerging from the ravine. They kept coming--thirty, forty, fifty--and they were armed to the teeth.

It looked very like an ambush. If the cars had tried to rush the checkpoint, they would have been shot full of holes.

"Thank God we stopped," Bill said fervently.

Rashid jumped out of the car and started talking. The tribesmen put a chain across the bridge and surrounded the cars. It rapidly became clear that these were the most unfriendly people the team had yet encountered. They surrounded the cars, glaring in and hefting their rifles, while two or three of them started yelling at Rashid.

It was maddening, Bill thought, to have come so far, through so much danger and adversity, only to be stopped by a bunch of dumb farmers. Wouldn't they just like to take these two fine Range Rovers and all our money? he thought. And who would ever know?

The tribesmen got meaner. They started pushing and shoving Rashid. In a minute they'll start shooting, Bill thought.

"Do nothing," Simons said. "Stay in the car, let Rashid handle it."

Bill decided Rashid needed some help. He touched his pocket rosary and started praying. He said every prayer he knew. We're in God's hands now, he thought; it will take a miracle to get us out of this mess.

In the second car Coburn sat frozen while a tribesman outside pointed a rifle directly at his head.

Gayden, sitting behind, was seized by a wild impulse, and whispered: "Jay! Why don't you lock the door!"

Coburn felt hysterical laughter bubble up in his throat.

Rashid felt he was on the cliff-edge of death.

These tribesmen were bandits, and they would kill you for the coat on your back: they didn't care. The revolution was nothing to them. No matter who was in power, they recognized no government, obeyed no laws. They did not even speak Farsi, the language of Iran, but Turkish.

They pushed him around, yelling at him in Turkish. He yelled right back in Farsi. He was getting nowhere. They're working themselves up to shoot us all, he thought.

He heard the sound of a car. A pair of headlights approached from the direction of Rezaiyeh. A Land Rover pulled up and three men got out. One of them was dressed in a long black overcoat. The tribesmen seemed to defer to him. He addressed Rashid. "Let me see the passports, please."

"Sure," said Rashid. He led the man to the second Range Rover. Bill was in the first, and Rashid wanted the overcoat man to get bored with looking at passports before he got to Bill's. Rashid tapped on the car window, and Paul rolled it down. "Passports."

The man seemed to have dealt with passports before. He examined each one carefully, checking the photograph against the face of the owner. Then, in perfect English, he asked questions: Where were you born? Where do you live? What is your date of birth? Fortunately Simons had made Paul and Bill learn every piece of information contained in their false passports, so Paul was able to answer the overcoat man's questions without hesitation.

Reluctantly, Rashid led the man to the first Range Rover. Bill and Keane Taylor had changed seats, so that Bill was on the far side, away from the light. The man went through the same routine. He looked at Bill's passport last. Then he said: "The picture is not of this man."

"Yes, it is," Rashid said frantically. "He's been very sick. He's lost weight, his skin has changed color--don't you understand that he's dying? He has to get back to America as quickly as possible so he can have the right medical attention, and you are delaying him--do you want him to die because the Iranian people had no pity for a sick man? Is this how you uphold the honor of our country? Is--"

"They're Americans," the man said. "Follow me."

He turned and went into the little brick hut beside the bridge.

Rashid followed him in. "You have no right to stop us," he said. "I have been instructed by the Islamic Revolution Commandant Committee in Rezaiyeh to escort these people to the border, and to delay us is a counterrevolutionary crime against the Iranian people." He flourished the letter written by the deputy leader and stamped with the library stamp.

The man looked at it. "Still, that one American does not look like the picture in his passport."

"I told you, he has been sick!" Rashid yelled. "They have been cleared to the border by the revolutionary committee! Now get these bandits out of my way!"

"We have our own revolutionary committee," the man said. "You will all have to come to our headquarters."

Rashid had no choice but to agree.

Jay Coburn watched Rashid come out of the hut with the man in the long black overcoat. Rashid looked really shook.

"We're going to their village to be checked out," Rashid said. "We have to go in their cars."

It was looking bad, Coburn thought. All the other times they had been arrested, they had been allowed to stay in the Range Rovers, which made them feel a little less like prisoners. Getting out of the cars was like losing touch with base.

Also, Rashid had never looked so frightened.

They all got into the tribesmen's vehicles, a pickup truck and a battered little station wagon. They were driven along a dirt track through the mountains. The Range Rovers followed, driven by tribesmen. The track twisted away into darkness. Well, shit, this is it, Coburn thought; nobody will ever hear from us again.

After three or four miles they came to the village. There was one brick building with a courtyard: the rest were mud-brick huts with thatched roofs. But in the courtyard were six or seven fine jeeps. Coburn said: "Jesus, these people live by stealing cars." Two Range Rovers would make a nice addition to their collection, he thought.

The two vehicles containing the Americans were parked in the courtyard; then the Range Rovers; then two more jeeps, blocking the exit and precluding a quick getaway.

They all got out.

The man in the overcoat said: "You need not be afraid. We just need to talk with you awhile; then you can go on." He went into the brick building.

"He's lying!" Rashid hissed.

They were herded into the building and told to take off their shoes. The tribesmen were fascinated by Keane Taylor's cowboy boots: one of them picked up the boots and inspected them, then passed them around for everyone to see.

The Americans were led into a big, bare room, with a Persian rug on the floor and bundles of rolled-up bedding pushed against the walls. It was dimly lit by some kind of lantern. They sat in a circle, surrounded by tribesmen with rifles.

On trial again, just like Mahabad, Coburn thought.

He kept an eye on Simons.

In came the biggest, ugliest mullah they had ever seen; and the interrogation began again.

Rashid did the talking, in a mixture of Farsi, Turkish, and English. He produced the letter from the library again, and gave the name of the deputy leader. Someone went off to check with the committee in Rezaiyeh. Coburn wondered how they would do that: the oil lamp indicated there was no electricity here, so how could they have phones? All the passports were examined again. People kept coming in and going out.

What if they have got a phone? wondered Coburn. And what if the committee in Rezaiyeh has heard from Dadgar?

We might be better off if they do check us out, he thought; at least that way somebody knows we're here. At the moment we could be killed, our bodies would disappear without a trace in the snow, and nobody would ever know we had been here.

A tribesman came in, handed the library letter to Rashid, and spoke to the mullah.

"It's okay," Rashid said. "We've been cleared."

Suddenly the whole atmosphere changed.

The ugly mullah turned into the Jolly Green Giant and shook hands with everyone. "He welcomes you to his village," Rashid translated. Tea was brought. Rashid said: "We are invited to be the guests of the village for the night."

Simons said: "Tell him definitely no. Our friends are waiting for us at the border."

A small boy of about ten years appeared. In an effort to cement the new friendship, Keane Taylor took out a photograph of his son Michael, aged eleven, and showed it to the tribesmen. They got very excited, and Rashid said: "They want to have their pictures taken."

Gayden said: "Keane, get out your camera."

"I'm out of film," said Taylor.

"Keane, get out your fucking camera."

Taylor took out his camera. In fact, he had three shots left, but he had no flash, and would have needed a camera far more sophisticated than his Instamatic to take pictures by the light of the lantern. But the tribesmen lined up, waving their rifles in the air, and Taylor had no option but to snap them.

It was incredible. Five minutes earlier these people had seemed ready to murder the Americans: now they were horsing around, hooting and hollering and having a good time.

They could probably change again just as quickly.

Taylor's sense of humor took over and he started hamming it up, making like a press photographer, telling the tribesmen to smile or move closer together so he could get them all in, "taking" dozens of shots.

More tea was brought. Coburn groaned inwardly. He had drunk so much tea in the last few days that he felt awash with it. He surreptitiously poured his out, making an ugly brown stain on the gorgeous rug.

Simons said to Rashid: "Tell them we have to go."

There was a short exchange; then Rashid said: "We must drink tea once more."

"No," said Simons decisively, and he stood up. "Let's move." Smiling calmly, nodding and bowing to the tribesmen, Simons started giving very sharp commands in a voice that belied his courteous demeanor: "On your feet, everybody. Get your shoes on. Come on, let's get out of here, let's go."

They all got up. Every man in the tribe wanted to shake hands with every one of the visitors. Simons kept herding them toward the door. They found their shoes and put them on, still bowing and shaking hands. At last they got outside and climbed into the Range Rovers. There was a wait, while the villagers maneuvered the two jeeps blocking the exit. At last they moved off, following the same two jeeps along the mountain track.

They were still alive, still free, still moving.

The tribesmen took them to the bridge, then said goodbye.

Rashid said: "But aren't you going to escort us to the border?"

"No," one of them replied. "Our territory ends at the bridge. The other side belongs to Sero."

The man in the long black overcoat shook hands with everyone in both Range Rovers. "Don't forget to send us the pictures," he said to Taylor.

"You bet," said Taylor with a straight face.

The chain across the bridge was down. The two Range Rovers drove to the far side and accelerated up the road.

"I hope we don't have the same trouble at the next village," said Rashid. "I saw the head man this afternoon and arranged everything with him."

The Range Rover built up speed.

"Slow down," said Simons.

"No, we must hurry."

They were a mile or so from the border.

Simons said: "Slow the goddam jeep down. I don't want to get killed at this point in the game."

They were driving past what looked like a filling station. There was a little hut with a light on inside. Suddenly Taylor yelled: "Stop! Stop!"

Simons said: "Rashid--"

In the following car Paul honked and flashed his headlights.

Out of the corner of his eye Rashid saw two men running out from the filling station, locking and loading their rifles as they ran.

He stood on the brake.

The car screeched to a halt. Paul had already stopped, right by the gas station. Rashid backed up and jumped out.

The two men pointed their rifles at him.

Here we go again, he thought.

He went into his routine, but they weren't interested. One of them got into each car. Rashid climbed back into the driving seat.

"Drive on," he was told.

A minute later they were at the foot of the hill leading to the border. They could see the lights of the frontier station up above. Rashid's captor said: "Turn right."

"No," said Rashid. "We've been cleared to the border and--"

The man raised his rifle and thumbed the safety.

Rashid stopped the car. "Listen, I came to your village this afternoon and got permission to pass--"

"Go down there."

They were less than half a mile from Turkey and freedom. There were seven of the Dirty Team against two guards. It was tempting...

A jeep came tearing down the hill from the border station and skidded to a stop in front of the Range Rover. An excited young man jumped out, carrying a pistol, and ran over to Rashid's window.

Rashid wound down the window and said: "I'm under orders from the Islamic Revolution Commandant Committee--"

The excited young man pointed his pistol at Rashid's head. "Go down the track!" he screamed.

Rashid gave in.

They drove along the track. It was even narrower than the last. The village was less than a mile away. When they arrived, Rashid jumped out of the car, saying: "Stay here--I'll deal with this."

Several men came out of the huts to see what was going on. They looked even more like bandits than the inhabitants of the last village. Rashid said loudly: "Where is the head man?"

"Not here," someone replied.

"Then fetch him. I spoke to him this afternoon--I am a friend of his--I have permission from him to cross the border with these Americans."

"Why are you with Americans?" someone asked.

"I am under orders from the Islamic Revolution Commandant Committee--"

Suddenly, out of nowhere, appeared the head man of the village, to whom Rashid had spoken in the afternoon. He came up and kissed Rashid on both cheeks.

In the second Range Rover, Gayden said: "Hey, it's looking good!"

"Thank God for that," said Coburn. "I couldn't drink any more tea to save my life."

The man who had kissed Rashid came over. He was wearing a heavy Afghan coat. He leaned through the car window and shook hands with everyone.

Rashid and the two guards got back into the cars.

A few minutes later they were climbing the hill to the frontier station.

Paul, driving the second car, suddenly thought about Dadgar again. Four hours ago, in Rezaiyeh, it had seemed sensible to abandon the idea of crossing the border on horseback, avoiding the road and the station. Now he was not so sure. Dadgar might have sent pictures of Paul and Bill to every airport, seaport, and border crossing. Even if there were no government people here, the photographs might be stuck up on a wall somewhere. The Iranians seemed to be glad of any excuse to detain Americans and question them. All along EDS had underestimated Dadgar...

The frontier station was brightly lit by high neon lamps. The two cars drove slowly along, past the buildings, and stopped where a chain across the road marked the limit of Iranian territory.

Rashid got out.

He spoke to the guards at the station, then came back and said: "They don't have a key to unloosen the chain."

They all got out.

Simons said to Rashid: "Go over to the Turkish side and see if Boulware's there."

Rashid disappeared.

Simons lifted the chain. It would not go high enough to let a Range Rover pass underneath.

Somebody found a few planks and leaned them on the chain, to see whether the cars could be driven over the chain on the planks. Simons shook his head: it was not going to work.

He turned to Coburn. "Is there a hacksaw in the tool kit?"

Coburn went back to the car.

Paul and Gayden lit cigarettes. Gayden said: "You need to decide what you want to do with that passport."

"What do you mean?"