On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

When he thought about the bail he found it staggering. No one had ever paid that much ransom, anywhere in the world. He recalled news stories about American businessmen kidnapped in South America and held for a million or two million dollars. (They were usually killed.) Other kidnappings, of millionaires, politicians, and celebrities, had involved demands for three or four million--never thirteen. No one would pay that much for Paul and Bill.

Besides, even that much money would not buy them the right to leave the country. They would probably be kept under house arrest in Tehran--white the mobs took over. Bail sometimes seemed more like a trap than a way of escape. It was a catch-22.

The whole experience was a lesson in values. Bill learned that he could do without his fine house, his cars, fancy food, and clean clothes. It was no big deal to be living in a dirty room with bugs crawling across the walls. Everything he had in life had been stripped away, and he discovered that the only thing he cared about was his family. When you got right down to it, that was all that really counted: Emily, Vicki, Jackie, Jenny, and Chris.

Coburn's visit had cheered him a little. Seeing Jay in that big down coat and woolen hat, with a growth of red beard on his chin, Bill had guessed that he was not in Tehran to work through legal channels. Coburn had spent most of the visit with Paul, and if Paul had learned more, he had not passed it on to Bill. Bill was content: he would find out as soon as he needed to know.

But the day after Coburn's visit there was bad news. On January 16 the Shah left Iran.

The television set in the hall of the jail was switched on, exceptionally, in the afternoon; and Paul and Bill, with all the other prisoners, watched the little ceremony in the Imperial Pavilion at Mehrabad Airport. There was the Shah, with his wife, three of his four children, his mother-in-law, and a crowd of courtiers. There, to see them off, was Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar, and a crowd of generals. Bakhtiar kissed the Shah's hand, and the royal party went out to the airplane.

The Ministry people in the jail were gloomy: most of them had been friends, of one kind or another, with the royal family or its immediate circle. Now their patrons were leaving. It meant, at the very least, that they had to resign themselves to a long stay in jail. Bill felt that the Shah had taken with him the last chance of a pro-American outcome in Iran. Now there would be more chaos and confusion, more danger to all Americans in Tehran--and less chance of a swift release for Paul and Bill.

Soon after the television showed the Shah's jet rising into the sky, Bill began to hear a background noise, like a distant crowd, from outside the jail. The noise quickly grew to a pandemonium of shouting and cheering and hooting of horns. The TV showed the source of the noise: a crowd of hundreds of thousands of Iranians was surging through the streets, yelling: "Shah raft!" The Shah has gone! Paul said it reminded him of the New Year's Day parade in Philadelphia. All cars were driving with their headlights on and most were hooting continuously. Many drivers pulled their windshield wipers forward, attached rags to them, and turned them on, so that they swayed from side to side, permanent mechanical flag-wavers. Truckloads of jubilant youths careened around the streets celebrating, and all over the city crowds were pulling down and smashing statues of the Shah. Bill wondered what the mobs would do next. This led him to wonder what the guards and the other prisoners would do next. In the hysterical release of all this pent-up Iranian emotion, would Americans become targets?

He and Paul stayed in their cell for the rest of the day, trying to be inconspicuous. They lay on their bunks, talking desultorily. Paul smoked. Bill tried not to think about the terrifying scenes he had watched on TV, but the roar of that lawless multitude, the collective shout of revolutionary triumph, penetrated the prison walls and filled his ears, like the deafening crack and roll of nearby thunder a moment before the lightning strikes.

Two days later, on the morning of January 18, a guard came to Cell Number 5 and said something in Farsi to Reza Neghabat, the former Deputy Minister. Neghabat translated to Paul and Bill: "You must get your things together. They are moving you."

"Where to?" Paul asked.

"To another jail."

Alarm bells rang in Bill's mind. What kind of jail were they going to? The kind where people were tortured and killed? Would EDS be told where they had gone, or would the two of them simply disappear? This place was not wonderful, but it was the devil they knew.

The guard spoke again, and Neghabat said: "He tells you not to be concerned--this is for your own good."

It was the work of minutes to put together their toothbrushes, their shared shaver, and their few spare clothes. Then they sat and waited--for three hours.