On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

General Mohari, who ran the prison, had explained to Paul and Bill that he was in charge of all the jails in Tehran, and he had arranged for their transfer to this one for their own safety. It was small consolation: being less vulnerable to the mobs, this place was also more difficult, if not impossible, for the rescue team to attack.

The Gasr Prison was part of a large military complex. On its west side was the old Gasr Ghazar Palace, which had been turned into a police academy by the Shah's father. The prison compound had once been the palace gardens. To the north was a military hospital; to the east an army camp where helicopters took off and landed all day.

The compound itself was bounded by an inner wall twenty-five or thirty feet high, and an outer wall twelve feet high. Inside were fifteen or twenty separate buildings, including a bakery, a mosque, and six cell blocks, one reserved for women.

Paul and Bill were in Building Number 8. It was a two-story block in a courtyard surrounded by a fence of tall iron bars covered with chicken wire. The environment was not bad, for a jail. There was a fountain in the middle of the courtyard, rose bushes around the sides, and ten or fifteen pine trees. The prisoners were allowed outside during the day, and could play volleyball or Ping-Pong in the courtyard. However, they could not pass through the courtyard gate, which was manned by a guard.

The ground floor of the building was a small hospital with twenty or so patients, mostly mental cases. They screamed a lot. Paul and Bill and a handful of other prisoners were on the first floor. They had a large cell, about twenty feet by thirty, which they shared with only one other prisoner, an Iranian lawyer in his fifties who spoke English and French as well as Farsi. He had showed them pictures of his villa in France. There was a TV set in the cell.

Meals were prepared by some of the prisoners--who were paid for this by the others--and eaten in a separate dining room. The food here was better than at the first jail. Extra privileges could be bought, and one of the other inmates, apparently a hugely wealthy man, had a private room and meals brought in from outside. The routine was relaxed: there were no set times for getting up and going to bed.

For all that, Paul was thoroughly depressed. A measure of extra comfort meant little. What he wanted was freedom.

He was not much cheered when they were told, on the morning of January 19, that they had visitors.

There was a visiting room on the ground floor of Building Number 8, but today, without explanation, they were taken out of the building and along the street.

Paul realized they were headed for a building known as the Officers' Club, set in a small tropical garden with ducks and peacocks. As they approached the place he glanced around the compound and saw his visitors coming in the opposite direction.

He could not believe his eyes.

"My God!" he said delightedly. "It's Ross!"

Forgetting where he was, he turned to run over to Perot: the guard jerked him back.

"Can you believe this?" he said to Bill. "Perot's here!"

The guard hustled him through the garden. Paul kept looking back at Perot, wondering whether his eyes were deceiving him. He was led into a big circular room with banqueting tables around the outside and walls covered with small triangles of mirrored glass: it was like a small ball-room. A moment later Perot came in with Gallagher, Coburn, and several other people.

Perot was grinning broadly. Paul shook his hand, then embraced him. It was an emotional moment. Paul felt the way he did when he listened to "The Star Spangled Banner": a kind of shiver went up and down his spine. He was loved, he was cared for, he had friends, he belonged. Perot had come halfway across the world into the middle of a revolution just to visit him.

Perot and Bill embraced and shook hands. Bill said: "Ross, what in the world are you doing here? Have you come to take us home?"

"Not quite," Perot said. "Not yet."

The guards gathered at the far end of the room to drink tea. The Embassy staff who had come in with Perot sat around another table, talking to a woman prisoner.

Perot put his box on a table. "There's some long underwear in here for you," he said to Paul. "We couldn't buy any, so this is mine, and I want it back, you hear?"

"Sure," Paul grinned.

"We brought you some books as well, and groceries--peanut butter and tuna fish and juice and I don't know what." He took a stack of envelopes from his pocket. "And your mail."

Paul glanced at his. There was a letter from Ruthie. Another envelope was addressed to "Chapanoodle." Paul smiled: that would be from his friend David Behne, whose son Tommy, unable to pronounce "Chiapparone," had dubbed Paul "Chapanoodle." He pocketed the letters to read later, and said: "How's Ruthie?"