On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Keane Taylor was the most frequent visitor to the jail. Each time he came, he would hand Paul a pack of cigarettes with fifty or a hundred dollars folded inside. Paul and Bill could use the money in jail to buy special privileges, such as a bath. During one visit the guard left the room for a moment, and Taylor handed over four thousand dollars.

On another visit Taylor brought Father Williams.

Williams was pastor of the Catholic Mission where, in happier times, Paul and Bill had met with the EDS Tehran Roman Catholic Sunday Brunch Poker School. Williams was eighty years old, and his superiors had given him permission to leave Tehran, because of the danger. He had preferred to stay at his post. This kind of thing was not new to him, he told Paul and Bill: he had been a missionary in China during World War II, when the Japanese had invaded, and later, during the revolution that brought Mao Tse-tung to power. He himself had been imprisoned, so he understood what Paul and Bill were going through.

Father Williams boosted their morale almost as much as Ross Perot had. Bill, who was more devout than Paul, felt deeply strengthened by the visit. It gave him the courage to face the unknown future. Father Williams granted them absolution for their sins before he left. Bill still did not know whether he would get out of the jail alive, but now he felt prepared to face death.

Iran exploded into revolution on Friday, February 9, 1979.

In just over a week Khomeini had destroyed what was left of legitimate government. He had called on the military to mutiny and the members of Parliament to resign. He had appointed a "provisional government" despite the fact that Bakhtiar was still officially Prime Minister. His supporters, organized into revolutionary committees, had taken over responsibility for law and order and garbage collection, and had opened more than a hundred Islamic cooperative stores in Tehran. On February 8 a million people or more marched through the city in support of the Ayatollah. Street fighting went on continually between stray units of loyalist soldiers and gangs of Khomeini men.

On February 9, at two Tehran air bases--Doshen Toppeh and Farahabad--formations of homafars and cadets gave a salute to Khomeini. This infuriated the Javadan Brigade, which had been the Shah's personal bodyguard, and they attacked both air bases. The homafars barricaded themselves in and repelled the loyalist troops, helped by crowds of armed revolutionaries milling around inside and outside the bases.

Units of both the Marxist Fedayeen and the Muslim Mujahedeen guerrillas rushed to Doshen Toppeh. The armory was broken open and weapons were distributed indiscriminately to soldiers, guerrillas, revolutionaries, demonstrators, and passersby.

That night at eleven o'clock the Javadan Brigade returned in force. Khomeini supporters within the military warned the Doshen Toppeh rebels that the Brigade was on its way, and the rebels counterattacked before the Brigade reached the base. Several senior officers among the loyalists were killed early in the battle. The fighting continued all night, and spread to a large area around the base.

By noon on the following day, the battlefield had widened to include most of the city.

That day John Howell and Keane Taylor went downtown for a meeting.

Howell was convinced they would get Paul and Bill released within hours. They were all set to pay the bail.

Tom Walter had a Texas bank ready to issue a letter of credit for $12,750,000 to the New York branch of Bank Melli. The plan was that the Tehran branch of Bank Melli would then issue a bank guarantee to the Ministry of Justice, and Paul and Bill would be bailed out. It had not worked quite that way. The deputy managing director of Bank Melli, Sadr-Hashemi, had recognized--as had all the other bankers--that Paul and Bill were commercial hostages, and that once they were out of jail EDS could argue in an American court that the money had been extorted and should not be paid. If that happened, Bank Melli in New York would not be able to collect on the letter of credit--but Bank Melli in Tehran would still have to pay the money to the Iranian Ministry of Justice. Sadr-Hashemi said he would change his mind only if his New York lawyers told him there was no way EDS could block payment on the letter of credit. Howell knew perfectly well that no decent American attorney would issue such an opinion.