On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

They were taken into an adjoining room and told to remove their clothes. They both stripped to their undershorts. Their clothing and their bodies were searched. Paul was told to get dressed again, but not Bill. It was very cold: the heat was off here, too. Naked and shivering, Bill wondered what would happen now. Obviously they were the only Americans in the jail. Everything he had ever read or heard about being in prison was awful. What would the guards do to him and Paul? What would the other prisoners do? Surely any minute now someone would come to get him released.

"Can I put on my coat?" he asked the guard.

The guard did not understand.

"Coat," Bill said, and mimed putting on a coat.

The guard handed him his coat.

A little later another guard came in and told Bill to get dressed.

They were led back into the reception area. Once again, Bill looked around expectantly for lawyers or friends; once again, he was disappointed.

They were taken through the reception area. Another door was opened. They went down a flight of stairs into the basement.

It was cold, dim, and dirty. There were several cells, all crammed with prisoners, all of them Iranian. The stink of urine made Bill close his mouth and breathe shallowly through his nose. The guard opened the door to Cell Number 9. Paul and Bill walked in.

Sixteen unshaven faces stared at them, alive with curiosity. Paul and Bill stared back, horrified.

The cell door clanged shut behind them.

Two

1_______

Until this moment life had been extremely good to Ross Perot.

On the morning of December 28, 1978, he sat at the breakfast table in his mountain cabin at Vail, Colorado, and was served breakfast by Holly, the cook.

Perched on the mountainside and half-hidden in the aspen forest, the "log cabin" had six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a thirty-foot living room, and an apres-ski "recuperation room" with a Jacuzzi pool in front of the fireplace. It was just a holiday home.

Ross Perot was rich.

He had started EDS with a thousand dollars, and now the shares in the company--more than half of which he still owned personally--were worth several hundred million dollars. He was the sole owner of the Petrus Oil and Gas Company, which had reserves worth hundreds of millions. He also had an awful lot of Dallas real estate. It was difficult to figure out exactly how much money he had--a lot depended on just how you counted it--but it was certainly more than five hundred million dollars and probably less than a billion.

In novels, fantastically rich people were portrayed as greedy, power-mad, neurotic, hated, and unhappy--always unhappy. Perot did not read many novels. He was happy.

He did not think it was the money that made him happy. He believed in moneymaking, in business and profits, because that was what made America tick; and he enjoyed a few of the toys money could buy--the cabin cruiser, the speedboats, the helicopter; but rolling around in hundred-dollar bills had never been one of his daydreams. He had dreamed of building a successful business that would employ thousands of people; but his greatest dream-come-true was right here in front of his eyes. Running around in thermal underwear, getting ready to go skiing, was his family. Here was Ross Junior, twenty years old, and if there was a finer young man in the state of Texas, Perot had yet to meet him. Here were four--count 'em, four--daughters: Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine. They were all healthy, smart, and lovable. Perot had sometimes told interviewers that he would measure his success in life by how his children turned out. If they grew into good citizens with a deep concern for other people, he would consider his life worthwhile. (The interviewers would say: "Hell, I believe you, but if I put stuff like that in the article the readers will think I've been bought off!" And Perot would just say: "I don't care. I'll tell you the truth--you write whatever you like.") And the children had turned out just exactly how he had wished, so far. Being brought up in circumstances of great wealth and privilege had not spoiled them at all. It was almost miraculous.

Running around after the children with ski-lift tickets, wool socks, and sunscreen lotion was the person responsible for this miracle, Margot Perot. She was beautiful, loving, intelligent, classy, and a perfect mother. She could, if she had wanted to, have married a John Kennedy, a Paul Newman, a Prince Rainier, or a Rockefeller. Instead, she had fallen in love with Ross Perot from Texarkana, Texas: five feet seven with a broken nose and nothing in his pocket but hopes. All his life Perot had believed he was lucky. Now, at the age of forty-eight, he could look back and see that the luckiest thing that ever happened to him was Margot.