On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

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.