On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

And even Simons, who had no wife to pester him, broke security by telling his brother Stanley in New Jersey ...

It proved equally impossible to keep the rescue plan from other senior executives at EDS. The first to figure it all out was Keane Taylor, the tall, irritable, well-dressed ex-marine whom Perot had turned around in Frankfurt and sent back to Tehran.

Since that New Year's Day, when Perot had said: "I'm sending you back to do something very important," Taylor had been sure that a secret operation was being planned; and it did not take him long to figure out who was doing it.

One day, on the phone from Tehran to Dallas, he had asked for Ralph Boulware.

"Boulware's not here," he was told.

"When will he be back?"

"We're not sure."

Taylor, never a man to suffer fools gladly, had raised his voice. "So, where has he gone?"

"We're not sure."

"What do you mean, you're not sure?"

"He's on vacation."

Taylor had known Boulware for years. It had been Taylor who gave Boulware his first management opportunity. They were drinking partners. Many times Taylor, drinking himself sober with Ralph in the early hours of the morning, had looked around and realized his was the only white face in an all-black bar. Those nights they would stagger back to whichever of their homes was nearest, and the unlucky wife who welcomed them would call the other and say: "It's okay, they're here."

Yes, Taylor knew Boulware; and he found it hard to believe that Ralph would go on vacation while Paul and Bill were still in jail.

The next day he asked for Pat Sculley, and got the same runaround.

Boulware and Sculley on vacation while Paul and Bill were in jail?

Bullshit.

The next day he asked for Coburn.

Same story.

It was beginning to make sense: Coburn had been with Perot when Perot sent Taylor back to Tehran. Coburn, Director of Personnel, evacuation mastermind, would be the right choice to organize a secret operation.

Taylor and Rich Gallagher, the other EDS man still in Tehran, started making a list.

Boulware, Sculley, Coburn, Ron Davis, Jim Schwebach, and Joe Poche were all "on vacation."

That group had a few things in common.

When Paul Chiapparone had first come to Tehran he found that EDS's operation there was not organized to his liking: it had been too loose, too casual, too Persian. The Ministry contract had not been running to time. Paul had brought in a number of tough, down-to-earth EDS troubleshooters, and together they had knocked the business back into shape. Taylor himself had been one of Paul's tough guys. So had Bill Gaylord. And Coburn, and Sculley, and Boulware, and all the guys who were now "on vacation."

The other thing they had in common was that they were all members of the EDS Tehran Roman Catholic Sunday Brunch Poker School. Like Paul and Bill, like Taylor himself, they were Catholics, with the exception of Joe Poche (and of Glenn Jackson, the only rescue-team member Taylor failed to spot). Each Sunday they had met at the Catholic Mission in Tehran. After the service they would all go to the house of one of them for brunch. And while the wives were cooking and the children playing, the men would get into a poker game.

There was nothing like poker for revealing a man's true character.

If, as Taylor and Gallagher now suspected, Perot had asked Coburn to put together a team of completely trustworthy men, then Coburn was sure to have picked them from the poker school.

"Vacation my ass," Taylor said to Gallagher. "This is a rescue team."

The rescue team returned to the lake house on the morning of January 4 and went over the whole plan again.

Simons had endless patience for detail, and he was determined to prepare for every possible snag that anyone could dream up. He was much helped by Joe Poche, whose tireless questioning--wearying though it was, to Coburn at least--was in fact highly creative, and led to numerous improvements of the rescue scenario.

First, Simons was dissatisfied with the arrangements for protecting the rescue team's flanks. The idea of Schwebach and Sculley, short but deadly, just plain shooting anyone who tried to interfere was crude. It would be better to have some kind of diversion, to distract any police or military types who might be nearby. Schwebach suggested setting fire to a car down the street from the jail. Simons was not sure that would be enough--he wanted to blow up a whole building. Anyway, Schwebach was given the job of designing a time bomb.

They thought of a small precaution that would shave a second or two off the time for which they would be exposed. Simons would get out of the van some distance from the jail and walk up to the fence. If all was clear he would give a hand signal for the van to approach.