On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Dr. Emami showed Howell the changes he proposed in the language of the credit letter. Howell was happy to agree to them, but the rewritten letter would have to go through the time-consuming process of being transmitted from Dallas to Dubai by Tested Telex and from Dubai to Tehran by telephone.

"Look," said Howell, "let's try to get all this done today. You could check the references of the Dallas bank now. We could find those other two bank directors, wherever in the city they are, and get their signatures this afternoon. We could call Dallas, give them the language changes, and get them to send the telex now. Dubai could confirm to you this afternoon. You could issue the bank guarantee--"

"There is a holiday in Dubai today," said Farhad.

"All right, Dubai can confirm tomorrow morning--"

"There is a strike tomorrow. Nobody will be here at the bank."

"Monday, then--"

The conversation was interrupted by the sound of a siren. A secretary put her head around the door and said something in Farsi. "There is an early curfew," Farhad translated. "We must all leave now."

Howell and Taylor sat there looking at each other. Two minutes later they were alone in the office. They had failed yet again.

That evening Simons said to Coburn: "Tomorrow is the day."

Coburn thought he was full of shit.

2____

In the morning on Sunday, February 11, the negotiating team went as usual to the EDS office they called "Bucharest." John Howell left, taking Abolhasan with him, for an eleven o'clock meeting with Dadgar at the Ministry of Health. The others--Keane Taylor, Bill Gayden, Bob Young, and Rich Gallagher--went up on the roof to watch the city burn.

Bucharest was not a high building, but it was located on a slope of the hills that rose to the north of Tehran, so from the roof they could see the city laid out like a tableau. To the south and east, where modern skyscrapers rose out of the low-rise villas and slums, great palls of smoke billowed up into the murky air, while helicopter gunships buzzed around the fires like wasps at a barbecue. One of EDS's Iranian drivers brought a transistor radio up to the roof and tuned it to a station that had been taken over by the revolutionaries. With the help of the radio and the driver's translation, they tried to identify the burning buildings.

Keane Taylor, who had abandoned his elegant vested suits for jeans and cowboy boots, went downstairs to take a phone call. It was the Cycle Man.

"You need to get out of there," the Cycle Man told Taylor. "Get out of the country as quickly as you can."

"You know we can't do that," Taylor said. "We can't leave without Paul and Bill."

"It's going to be very dangerous for you."

Taylor could hear, at the other end of the line, the noise of a terrific battle. "Where the hell are you, anyway?"

"Near the bazaar," said the Cycle Man. "I'm making Molotov cocktails. They brought in helicopters this morning and we just figured out how to shoot them down. We burned four tanks--"

The line went dead.

Incredible, Taylor thought as he cradled the phone. In the middle of a battle, he suddenly thinks of his American friends, and calls to warn us. Iranians will never cease to surprise me.

He went back up on the roof.

"Look at this," Bill Gayden said to him. Gayden, the jovial president of EDS World, had also switched to off-duty clothes: nobody was even pretending to do business anymore. He pointed to a column of smoke in the east. "If that isn't the Gasr Prison burning, it's damn close."

Taylor peered into the distance. It was hard to tell.

"Call Dadgar's office at the Ministry of Health," Gayden told Taylor. "Howell should be there now. Get him to ask Dadgar to release Paul and Bill to the custody of the Embassy, for their own safety. If we don't get them out, they're going to burn to death."

John Howell had hardly expected Dadgar to turn up. The city was a battlefield, and an investigation into corruption under the Shah now seemed an academic exercise. But Dadgar was there in his office, waiting for Howell. Howell wondered what the hell was driving the man. Dedication? Hatred of Americans? Fear of the incoming revolutionary government? He would probably never know.

Dadgar had asked Howell about EDS's relationship with Abolfath Mahvi, and Howell had promised a complete dossier. It seemed the information was important to Dadgar's mysterious purposes, for a few days later he had pressed Howell for the dossier, saying: "I can interrogate the people here and get the information I need," which Howell took as a threat to arrest more EDS executives.

Howell had prepared a twelve-page dossier in English, with a covering letter in Farsi. Dadgar read the covering letter, then spoke. Abolhasan translated: "Your company's helpfulness is laying the groundwork for a change in my attitude toward Chiapparone and Gaylord. Our legal code provides for such leniency toward those who supply information."