On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

They walked out of the airport. Perot said: "Are you satisfied that I didn't send you back here for any administrative b.s.?"

"I sure am," Taylor said.

They got into Taylor's car. Howell and Young got in the back.

As they pulled away, Taylor said: "I'm going to take an indirect route, to avoid the worst of the riots."

Perot did not find this reassuring.

The road was lined with tall, half-finished concrete buildings with cranes on top. Work seemed to have stopped. Looking closely, Perot saw that people were living in the shells. It seemed an apt symbol of the way the Shah had tried to modernize Iran too quickly.

Taylor was talking about cars. He had stashed all EDS's cars in a school playground and hired some Iranians to guard them, but he had discovered that the Iranians were busy running a used car lot, selling the damn things.

There were long lines at every gas station, Perot noticed. He found that ironic in a country rich in oil. As well as cars, there were people in the queues, holding cans. "What are they doing?" Perot asked. "If they don't have cars, why do they need gas?"

"They sell it to the highest bidder," Taylor explained. "Or you can rent an Iranian to stand in line for you."

They were stopped briefly at a roadblock. Driving on, they passed several burning cars. A lot of civilians were standing around with machine guns. The scene was peaceful for a mile or two; then Perot saw more burning cars, more machine guns, another roadblock. Such sights ought to have been frightening, but somehow they were not. It seemed to Perot that the people were just enjoying letting loose for a change, now that the Shah's iron grip was at last being relaxed. Certainly the military was doing nothing to maintain order, as far as he could see.

There was always something weird about seeing violence as a tourist. He recalled flying over Laos in a light plane and watching people fighting on the ground: he had felt tranquil, detached. He supposed that battle was like that: it might be fierce if you were in the middle of it, but five minutes away nothing was happening.

They drove into a huge circle with a monument in its center that looked like a spaceship of the far future, towering over the traffic on four gigantic splayed legs. "What is that?" said Perot.

"The Shahyad Monument," Taylor said. "There's a museum in the top."

A few minutes later they pulled into the forecourt of the Hyatt Crown Regency. "This is a new hotel," Taylor said. "They just opened it, poor bastards. It's good for us, though--wonderful food, wine, music in the restaurant in the evenings ... We're living like kings in a city that's falling apart."

They went into the lobby and took the elevator. "You don't have to check in," Taylor told Perot. "Your suite is in my name. No sense in having your name written down anywhere."

"Right."

They got out at the eleventh floor. "We've all got rooms along this hall," Taylor said. He unlocked a door at the far end of the corridor.

Perot walked in, glanced around, and smiled. "Would you look at this?" The sitting room was vast. Next to it was a large bedroom. He looked into the bathroom: it was big enough for a cocktail party.

"Is it all right?" Taylor said with a grin.

"If you'd seen the room I had last night in Amman, you wouldn't bother to ask."

Taylor left him to settle in.

Perot went to the window and looked out. His suite was at the front of the hotel, so he could look down and see the forecourt. I might hope to have warning, he thought, if a squad of soldiers or a revolutionary mob comes for me.

But what would I do?

He decided to map an emergency escape route. He left his suite and walked up and down the corridor. There were several empty rooms with unlocked doors. At either end was an exit to a staircase. He went down the stairs to the floor below. There were more empty rooms, some without furniture or decoration: the hotel was unfinished, like so many buildings in this town.

I could take this staircase down, he thought, and if I heard them coming up I could duck back into one of the corridors and hide in an empty room. That way I could get to ground level.

He walked all the way down the stairs and explored the ground floor.

He wandered through several banqueting rooms that he supposed were unused most, if not all, of the time. There was a labyrinth of kitchens with a thousand hiding places: he particularly noted some empty food containers big enough for a small man to climb into. From the banqueting area he could reach the health club at the back of the hotel. It was pretty fancy, with a sauna and a pool. He opened a door at the rear and found himself outside, in the hotel parking lot. Here he could take an EDS car and disappear into the city, or walk to the next hotel, the Evin, or just run into the forest of unfinished skyscrapers that began on the far side of the parking lot.