On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

T. J. would argue until nightfall if you let him. "I'm not going to debate with you," Perot said curtly. "I talked Paul and Bill into going over there, and I'm going to get them out."

He hung up the phone and headed for the departure gate. All in all, it had been a rotten Christmas.

T. J. was a little wounded. An old friend of Perot's as well as a vice-president of EDS, he was not used to being talked to like the office boy. This was a persistent failing of Perot's: when he was in high gear, he trod on people's toes and never knew he had hurt them. He was a remarkable man, but he was not a saint.

2_______

Ruthie Chiapparone also had a rotten Christmas.

She was staying at her parents' home, an eighty-five-year-old two-story house on the southwest side of Chicago. In the rush of the evacuation from Iran she had left behind most of the Christmas presents she had bought for her daughters, Karen, eleven, and Ann Marie, five; but soon after arriving in Chicago she had gone shopping with her brother Bill and bought some more. Her family did their best to make Christmas Day happy. Her sister and three brothers visited, and there were lots more toys for Karen and Ann Marie; but everyone asked about Paul.

Ruthie needed Paul. A soft, dependent woman, five years younger than her husband--she was thirty-four--she loved him partly because she could lean on his broad shoulders and feel safe. She had always been looked after. As a child, even when her mother was out at work--supplementing the wages of Ruthie's father, a truck driver--Ruthie had two older brothers and an older sister to take care of her.

When she first met Paul he had ignored her.

She was secretary to a colonel; Paul was working on data processing for the army in the same building. Ruthie used to go down to the cafeteria to get coffee for the colonel, some of her friends knew some of the young officers, she sat down to talk with a group of them, and Paul was there and he ignored her. So she ignored him for a while; then all of a sudden he asked her for a date. They dated for a year and a half and then got married.

Ruthie had not wanted to go to Iran. Unlike most of the EDS wives, who had found the prospect of moving to a new country exciting, Ruthie had been highly anxious. She had never been outside the United States--Hawaii was the farthest she had ever traveled--and the Middle East seemed a weird and frightening place. Paul took her to Iran for a week in June of 1977, hoping she would like it, but she was not reassured. Finally she agreed to go, but only because the job was so important to him.

However, she ended up liking it. The Iranians were nice to her, the American community there was close-knit and sociable, and Ruthie's serene nature enabled her to deal calmly with the daily frustrations of living in a primitive country, like the lack of supermarkets and the difficulty of getting a washing machine repaired in less than about six weeks.

Leaving had been strange. The airport had been crammed, just an unbelievable number of people in there. She had recognized many of the Americans, but most of the people were fleeing Iranians. She had thought: I don't want to leave like this--why are you pushing us out? What are you doing? She had traveled with Bill Gaylord's wife, Emily. They went via Copenhagen, where they spent a freezing cold night in a hotel where the windows would not close: the children had to sleep in their clothes. When she got back to the States, Ross Perot had called her and talked about the passport problem, but Ruthie had not really understood what was happening.

During that depressing Christmas Day--so unnatural to have Christmas with the children and no Daddy--Paul had called from Tehran. "I've got a present for you," he had said.

"Your airline ticket?" she said hopefully.

"No. I bought you a rug."

"That's nice."

He had spent the day with Pat and Mary Sculley, he told her. Someone else's wife had cooked his Christmas dinner, and he had watched someone else's children open their presents.

Two days later she heard that Paul and Bill had an appointment, the following day, to see the man who was making them stay in Iran. After the meeting they would be let go.

The meeting was today, December 28. By midday Ruthie was wondering why nobody from Dallas had called her yet. Tehran was eight and a half hours ahead of Chicago: surely the meeting was over? By now Paul should be packing his suitcase to come home.

She called Dallas and spoke to Jim Nyfeler, an EDS man who had left Tehran last June. "How did the meeting work out?" she asked him.

"It didn't go too well, Ruthie..."

"What do you mean, it didn't go too well?"

"They were arrested."

"They were arrested? You're kidding!"

"Ruthie, Bill Gayden wants to talk to you."

Ruthie held the line. Paul arrested? Why? For what? By whom?

Gayden, the president of EDS World and Paul's boss, came on the line. "Hello, Ruthie."

"Bill, what is all this?"