On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Dadgar had wanted to see Paul Chiapparone's files. The filing cabinet in Paul's secretary's office was locked and nobody could find the key. Of course that made Dadgar all the more keen to see the files. Keane Taylor had solved the problem in characteristically direct fashion: he had got a crowbar and broken the cabinet open.

Meanwhile, Howell snuck out of the building, met Dr. Houman, and went to the Ministry of Justice.

That, too, had been scary, for he had been obliged to fight his way through an unruly crowd that was demonstrating, outside the Ministry, against the holding of political prisoners.

Howell and Houman had an appointment with Dr. Kian, Dadgar's superior.

Howell told Kian that EDS was a reputable company that had done nothing wrong, and it was eager to cooperate in any investigation in order to clear its name, but it wanted to get its employees out of jail.

Kian said he had asked one of his assistants to ask Dadgar to review the case.

That sounded to Howell like nothing at all.

He told Kian he wanted to talk about a reduction in the bail.

The conversation took place in Farsi, with Houman translating. Houman said that Kian was not inflexibly opposed to a reduction in the bail. In Houman's opinion they might expect it to be halved.

Kian gave Howell a note authorizing him to visit Paul and Bill in jail.

The meeting had been just about fruitless, Howell thought afterward, but at least Kian had not arrested him.

When he returned to Bucharest he found that Dadgar had not arrested anyone either.

His lawyer's instinct still told him not to see Dadgar; but now that instinct struggled with another side of his personality: impatience. There were times when Howell wearied of research, preparation, foresight, planning--times when he wanted to move on a problem instead of thinking about it. He liked to take the initiative, to have the opposition reacting to him rather than the other way around. This inclination was reinforced by the presence in Tehran of Ross Perot, always up first in the morning, asking people what they had achieved yesterday and what tasks they intended to accomplish today, always on everyone's back. So impatience got the better of caution, and Howell decided to confront Dadgar.

This was why he was scared.

If he was unhappy, his wife was more so.

Angela Howell had not seen much of her husband in the last two months. He had spent most of November and December in Tehran, trying to persuade the Ministry to pay EDS's bill. Since getting back to the States he had been staying at EDS headquarters until all hours of the night, working on the Paul and Bill problem, when he was not dashing off to New York for meetings with Iranian lawyers there. On December 31 Howell had arrived home at breakfast time, after working all night at EDS, to find Angela and baby Michael, nine months old, huddled in front of a wood fire in a cold, dark house: the ice storm had caused a power failure. He had moved them into his sister's apartment and gone off to New York again.

Angela had had about as much as she could take, and when he announced he was going to Tehran again she had been upset. "You know what's going on over there," she had said. "Why do you have to go back?"

The trouble was, he did not have a simple answer to that question. It was not clear just what he was going to do in Tehran. He was going to work on the problem, but he did not know how. If he had been able to say, "Look, this is what has to be done, and it's my responsibility, and I'm the only one who can do it," she might have understood.

"John, we're a family. I need your help to take care of all this," she had said, meaning the ice storm, the blackouts, and the baby.

"I'm sorry. Just do the best you can. I'll try to stay in touch," Howell had said.

They were not the kind of married couple to express their feelings by yelling at each other. On the frequent occasions when he upset her by working late, leaving her to sit alone and eat the dinner she had fixed for him, a certain coolness was the closest they came to fighting. But this was worse than missing supper: he was abandoning her and the baby just when they needed him.

They had a long talk that evening. At the end of it Angela was no happier, but she was at least resigned.

He had called her several times since, from London and from Tehran. She was watching the riots on the TV news and worrying about him. She would have been even more worried if she had known what he was about to do now.

He pushed domestic concerns to the back of his mind and went to find Abolhasan.