On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Late last night Perot had called the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and asked Charles Naas why he still had not met with the officials named by Kissinger and Zahedi. The answer was simple: those officials were making themselves unavailable to Naas.

Today Perot had called Kissinger again and reported this. Kissinger was sorry: he did not think there was anything more he could do. However, he would call Zahedi and try again.

One more piece of bad news completed the picture. Tom Walter had been trying to establish, with the Iranian lawyers, the conditions under which Paul and Bill might be released on bail: for example, would they have to promise to return to Iran for further questioning if required, or could they be interrogated outside the country? Neither, he was told: If they were released from prison they still would not be able to leave Iran.

Now it was New Year's Eve. For three days Perot had been living at the office, sleeping on the floor and eating cheese sandwiches. There was nobody to go home to--Margot and the children were still in Vail--and, because of the nine-and-a-half-hour time difference between Texas and Iran, important phone calls were often made in the middle of the night. He was leaving the office only to visit his mother, who was now out of the hospital and recuperating at her Dallas home. Even with her, he talked about Paul and Bill--she was keenly interested in the progress of events.

This evening he felt the need of hot food, and he decided to brave the weather--Dallas was suffering an ice storm--and drive a mile or so to a fish restaurant.

He left the building by the back door and got behind the wheel of his station wagon. Margot had a Jaguar, but Perot preferred nondescript cars.

He wondered just how much influence Kissinger had now, in Iran or anywhere. Zahedi and any other Iranian contacts Kissinger had might be like Richard Helms's friends--all out of the mainstream, powerless. The Shah seemed to be hanging on by the skin of his teeth.

On the other hand, that whole group might soon need friends in America, and might welcome the opportunity to do Kissinger a favor.

While he was eating, Perot felt a large hand on his shoulder, and a deep voice said: "Ross, what are you doing here, eating all by yourself on New Year's Eve?"

He turned around to see Roger Staubach, quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, a fellow Naval Academy graduate and an old friend. "Hi, Roger! Sit down."

"I'm here with the family," Staubach said. "The heat's off in our house on account of the ice storm."

"Well, bring them over."

Staubach beckoned to his family, then said: "How's Margot?"

"Fine, thank you. She's skiing with the children in Vail. I had to come back--we've got a big problem." He proceeded to tell the Staubach family all about Paul and Bill.

He drove back to the office in good spirits. There were still a bunch of good people in the world.

He thought again of Colonel Simons. Of all the schemes he had for getting Paul and Bill out, the jailbreak was the one with the longest lead time: Simons would need a team of men, a training period, equipment ... And yet Perot still had not done anything about it. It had seemed such a distant possibility, a last resort: while negotiations had seemed promising he had blocked it out of his mind. He was still not ready to call Simons--he would wait for Kissinger to have one more try with Zahedi--but perhaps there was something he could do to prepare for Simons.

Back at EDS he found Pat Sculley. Sculley, a West Point graduate, was a thin, boyish, restless man of thirty-one. He had been a project manager in Tehran and had come out with the December 8 evacuation. He had returned after Ashura, then come out again when Paul and Bill were arrested. His job at the moment was to make sure that the Americans remaining in Tehran--Lloyd Briggs, Rich Gallagher and his wife, Paul and Bill--had reservations on a flight out every day, just in case the prisoners should be released.

With Sculley was Jay Coburn, who had organized the evacuation, and then, on December 22, had come home to spend Christmas with his family. Coburn had been about to go back to Tehran when he got the news that Paul and Bill had been arrested, so he had stayed in Dallas and organized the second evacuation. A placid, stocky man, Coburn was thirty-two but looked forty: the reason, Perot believed, was that Coburn had lived eight years in one as a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam. For all that, Coburn smiled a lot--a slow smile that began as a twinkle in his eye and often ended in a shoulder-shaking belly laugh.