On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Mr. Fish was very jumpy. On the way to meet Ilsman, he took Boulware through a whole cloak-and-dagger routine, changing cars and switching to a bus for part of the journey, as if he were trying to shake off a tail. Boulware could not see the need for all that if they were really going to visit a perfectly upright citizen who just happened to work in the intelligence community. But Boulware was a foreigner in a strange country, and he just had to go along with Mr. Fish and trust the man.

They ended up at a big, run-down apartment building in an unfamiliar section of the city. The power was off--just like Tehran!--so it took Mr. Fish a while to find the right apartment in the dark. At first he could get no answer. His attempt to be secretive fell apart at this point, for he had to hammer on the door for what seemed like half an hour, and every other inhabitant of the building got a good look at the visitors in the meantime. Boulware just stood there feeling like a white man in Harlem. At last a woman opened up, and they went in.

It was a small, drab apartment crowded with ancient furniture and dimly lit by a couple of candles. Ilsman was a short, fat man of about Boulware's age, thirty-five. Ilsman had not seen his feet for many years--he was gross. He made Boulware think of the stereotyped fat police sergeant in the movies, with a suit too small and a sweaty shirt and a wrinkled tie wrapped around the place where his neck would have been if he had had a neck.

They sat down, and the woman--Mrs. Ilsman, Boulware presumed--served tea--just like Tehran! Boulware explained his problem, with Mr. Fish translating. Ilsman was suspicious. He cross-questioned Boulware about the two fugitive Americans. How could Boulware be sure they were innocent? Why did they have no passports? What would they bring into Turkey? In the end he seemed convinced that Boulware was leveling with him, and he offered to get Paul and Bill from the border to Istanbul for eight thousand dollars, in all.

Boulware wondered whether Ilsman was for real. Smuggling Americans into the country was a funny pastime for an intelligence agent. And if Ilsman really was MIT, who was it that Mr. Fish thought might have been following him and Boulware across town?

Perhaps Ilsman was freelancing. Eight thousand dollars was a lot of money in Turkey. It was even possible that Ilsman would tell his superiors what he was doing. After all--Ilsman might figure--if Boulware's story were true no harm would be done by helping; and if Boulware were lying, the best way to find out what he was really up to might be to accompany him to the border.

Anyway, at this point Ilsman seemed to be the best Boulware could get. Boulware agreed to the price, and Ilsman broke out a bottle of scotch.

While other members of the rescue team were fretting in various parts of the world, Simons and Coburn were driving the road from Tehran to the Turkish border.

Reconnaissance was a watchword with Simons, and he wanted to be familiar with every inch of his escape route before he embarked on it with Paul and Bill. How much fighting was there in that part of the country? What was the police presence? Were the roads passable in winter? Were the filling stations open?

In fact there were two routes to Sero, the border crossing he had chosen. (He preferred Sero because it was a little-used frontier post at a tiny village, so there would be few people and the border would be lightly guarded, whereas Barzagan--the alternative Mr. Fish kept recommending-- would be busier.) The nearest large town to Sero was Rezaiyeh. Directly across the path from Tehran to Rezaiyeh lay Lake Rezaiyeh, a hundred miles long: you had to drive around it, either to the north or to the south. The northerly route went through larger towns and would have better roads. Simons therefore preferred the southerly route, provided the roads were passable. On this reconnaissance trip, he decided, they would check out both routes, the northerly going and the southerly on the return.

He decided that the best kind of car for the trip was a British Range Rover, a cross between a jeep and a station wagon. There were no dealerships or used car lots open in Tehran now, so Coburn gave the Cycle Man the job of getting hold of two Range Rovers. The Cycle Man's solution to the problem was characteristically ingenious. He had a notice printed with his telephone number and the message: "If you would like to sell your Range Rover, call this number." Then he went around on his motorcycle and put a copy under the windshield wipers of every Range Rover he saw parked on the streets.

He got two vehicles for twenty thousand dollars each, and he also bought tools and spare parts for all but the most major repairs.