On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Taylor's Marine Corps sensitivity training was operating, Howell thought.

Dadgar said: "If he speaks like this, he will go to jail."

"Just as my staff would if I brought them back to Iran," said Taylor.

Howell broke in: "Would you be able to give a legal guarantee that any returning staff would not be arrested or harassed in any way?"

"I could not give a formal guarantee," Dadgar replied. "However, I would give my personal word of honor."

Howell darted an anxious glance at Taylor. Taylor did not speak, but his expression said he would not give two cents for Dadgar's word of honor. "We could certainly investigate ways of arranging the turnover," Howell said. Dadgar had at last given him something to bargain with, even though it was not much. "There would have to be safeguards, of course. For example, you would have to certify that the machinery was handed over to you in good condition--but perhaps we could employ independent experts to do that ..." Howell was shadowboxing. If the data center was handed over, there would be a price: the release of Paul and Bill.

Dadgar demolished that idea with his next sentence. "Every day new complaints are being made about your company to my investigators, complaints that would justify increases in the bail. However, if you cooperate in the turnover of the 125 Data Center, I can in return ignore the new complaints and refrain from increasing the bail."

Taylor said: "Goddammit, this is nothing but blackmail!"

Howell realized that the 125 Data Center was a side-show. Dadgar had raised the question, no doubt at the urging of these officials, but he did not care about it enough to offer serious concessions. So what did he care about?

Howell thought of Lucio Randone, the former cellmate of Paul and Bill. Randone's offer of help had been followed up by EDS manager Paul Bucha, who had gone to Italy to talk to Randone's company, Condotti d'Acqua. Bucha reported that the company had been building apartment blocks in Tehran when their Iranian financiers ran out of money. The company naturally stopped building; but many Iranians had already paid for apartments under construction. Given the present atmosphere, it was not surprising that the foreigners got blamed, and Randone had been jailed as a scapegoat. The company had found a new source of finance and resumed building, and Randone had got out of jail at the same time, in a package deal arranged by an Iranian lawyer, Ali Azmayesh. Bucha also reported that the Italians kept saying: "Remember, Iran will always be Iran. It never changes." He took this to be a hint that a bribe was part of the package deal. Howell also knew that a traditional channel for paying a bribe was a lawyer's fee: the lawyer would do, say, a thousand dollars' worth of work and pay a ten-thousand-dollar bribe, then charge his client eleven thousand dollars. This hint of corruption made Howell nervous, but despite that he had gone to see Azmayesh, who had advised him: "EDS does not have a legal problem--it has a business problem." If EDS could come to a business arrangement with the Ministry of Health, Dadgar would go away. Azmayesh had not mentioned bribery.

All this had started, Howell thought, as a business problem: the customer unable to pay, the supplier refusing to go on working. Might a compromise be possible, under which EDS would switch on the computers and the Ministry would pay at least some money? He decided to ask Dadgar directly.

"Would it help if EDS were to renegotiate its contract with the Ministry of Health?"

"This might be very helpful," Dadgar answered. "It would not be a legal solution to our problem, but it might be a practical solution. Otherwise, to waste all the work that has been done in computerizing the Ministry would be a pity."

Interesting, thought Howell. They want a modern social-security system--or their money back. Putting Paul and Bill in jail on thirteen million dollars' bail was their way of giving EDS those two options--and no others. We're getting straight talk, at last.

He decided to be blunt. "Of course, it would be out of the question to begin negotiations while Chiapparone and Gaylord are still in jail."

Dadgar replied: "Still, if you commit to good-faith negotiations, the Ministry will call me and the charges might be changed, the bail might be reduced, and Chiapparone and Gaylord might even be released on their personal guarantees."

Nothing could be plainer than that, Howell thought. EDS had better go see the Minister of Health.

Since the Ministry stopped paying its bills there had been two changes of government. Dr. Sheikholeslamizadeh, who was now in jail, had been replaced by a general; and then, when Bakhtiar became Prime Minister, the general had in turn been replaced by a new Minister of Health. Who, Howell wondered, was the new guy; and what was he like?

"Mr. Young, of the American company EDS, is calling you, Minister," said the secretary.