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  ON WINGS OF EAGLES

  by

  Ken Follett

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Law,

  London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,

  Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

  Toronto. Ontario, Canada M4V 3112

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,

  Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  A hardcover edition of this book was published by William Morrow and

  Company, Inc.

  First Signet Printing, September, 1984

  23 22 21

  Copyright C 1983 by Petancor BV All rights reserved. For information

  address Penguin Books USA Inc.

  The excerpt from Night Over Water. by Ken Follett, appeared previously in

  a William Morrow hardcover edition. Copyright 0 1991 by Ken Follett.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use the following

  photographs:

  p. 1: top, Skeeter Hagler; bottom, UP[; p. 3: top and bottom, Skeeter

  Hagler; p. 4: top and bottom, UPI; p. 5: top, UPI; bottom, Skeeter Hagler;

  pp. 6-7, Skeeter Hagler; p. 8: top, Carl Covington; bottom, UPI; p. 9: UPI;

  pp. 10-13, photographs taken by unidentified members of rescue team; pp.

  14-15, Dale Walker; p. 16: top, Dale Walker; bottom, unidentified member of

  rescue team.

  0 REGISTERED TRADEMARK-MARCA REGISTRADA

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this

  publication my be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval

  system, or transmitted, in any form, orby any meam (electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording, orotherwise), without the prior written permission

  of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  publisher and neither die author nor the publisher has received any payment

  for this "stripped book."

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  DALLAS

  Ross Perot, Chairman of the Board, Electronic Data Systems Corporation,

  Dallas, Texas

  Merv Stauffer, Perot's right-hand man

  T. J. Marquez, a vice-president of EDS

  Tom Walter, chief financial officer of EDS

  Mitch Hart, a former president of EDS who had good connections in the

  Democratic party

  Tom Luce, founder of the Dallas law firm Hughes & Hill

  Bill Gayden, president of EDS World, a subsidiary of EDS

  Mort Meyerson, a vice-president of EDS

  TEHRAN

  Paul Chiapparone, Country Manager, EDS Corporation Iran; Ruthie Chiapparone,

  his wife

  Bill Gaylord, Paul's deputy; Endly Gaylord, Bill's wife

  Lloyd Briggs, Paul's Number 3

  Rich Gallagher, Paul's administrative assistant; Cathy Gallagher, Rich's

  wife; Buffy, Cathy's poodle

  Paul Bucha, formerly Country Manager of EDS Corporation Iran, latterly based

  in Paris

  Bob Young, Country Manager for EDS in Kuwait

  John Howell, lawyer with Hughes & Hill

  Keane Taylor, manager of the Bank Orman project

  THE TEAM

  Lt. Col. Arthur D. "Bull" Simons, in command

  Jay Coburn, second-in-command

  Ron Davis, point

  Ralph Boulware, shotgun

  Joe Pochk, driver

  Glenn Jackson, driver

  Pat Sculley, flank

  Jim Schwebach, flank and explosives

  THE IRANIANS

  Abolhasan, Lloyd Briggs's deputy and the most senior Iranian

  employee

  Majid, assistant to Jay Coburn; Fara, Majid's daughter

  Rashid

  Seyyed trainee systems engineers

  "the Cycle Man" I

  Gholam, personnel/purchasing officer under Jay Coburn

  Hosain Dadpr, examining magistrate

  AT THE U.S. EMBASSY

  William Sullivan, Ambassador

  Charles Naas, Minister Counselor, Sullivan's deputy

  Lou Goelz, Consul General

  Bob Sorenson, Embassy official

  Ali Jordan, Iranian employed by the Embassy

  Barry Rosen, press attach6

  ISTANBUL

  "Mr. Fish," resourceful travel agent

  Ilsman, employee of MIT, the Turkish intelligence agency

  "Charlie Brown," interpreter

  WASHINGTON

  Zbignkw Brzezinski, National Security Advisor Cyrus Vance, Secretary of

  State David Newsom, Undersecretary at the State Department Henry Precht,

  head of the h-an Desk at the State Department Mark Ginsberg, White

  House-State Department liaison Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chairman of the

  Joint Chiefs of Staff

  PREFACE

  This is a true story about a group of people who, accused of crimes they did

  not commit, decided to make their own justice.

  When the adventure was over there was a court case, and they were cleared

  of all charges. The case is not part of my story, but because it

  established their innocence I have included details of the court's Findings

  and Judgment as an appendix to this book.

  In telling the story I have taken two small liberties with the truth.

  Several people are referred to by pseudonyms or nicknames, usually to

  protect them from the revenge of the government of Iran. The false names

  are: Majid, Fara, Abolhasan, Mr. Fish, Deep Throat, Rashid, the Cycle Man,

  Mehdi, Malek, Gholam, Seyyed, and Charlie Brown. All other names are real.

  Secondly, in recalling conversations that took place three or four years

  ago, people rarely remember the exact words used; furthermore, real-Iffe

  conversation, with its gestures and interruptions and unfinished sentences,

  often makes no sense when it is written down. So the dialogue in this book

  is both reconstructed and edited. However, every reconstructed conversation

  has been shown to at least one of the participants for correction or

  approval.

  With those two qualifications, I believe every word of what follows is

  true. This is not a "fictionalization" or a "nonfiction novel. " I have not

  invented anything. What you are about to read is what really happened.

  I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.

  -EXODUS 19:4

  ONE

  It all started on December 5, 1978.

  Jay Coburn, Director of Personnel for EDS Corporation Iran, sat in his

  office in uptown Tehran w
ith a lot on his mind.

  The office was in a three-story concrete building known as Bucharest

  (because it was in an alley off Bucharest Street). Coburn was on the second

  floor, in a room large by American standards. It had a parquet floor, a

  smart wood executive desk, and a picture of the Shah on the wall. He sat

  with his back to the window. Through the glass door he could see into the

  open-plan office where his staff sat at typewriters and telephones. The

  glass door had curtains, but Coburn never closed them.

  It was cold. It was always cold: thousands of Iranians were on strike, the

  city's power supply was intermittent, and the heating was off for several

  hours most days.

  Coburn was a tall, broad-shouldered man, five feet eleven inches and two

  hundred pounds. His red-brown hair was cut businessman-short and carefully

  combed, with a part. Although he was only thirty-two, he looked nearer to

  forty. On closer examination his youth showed in his attractive, open face

  and ready smile; but he had an air of early maturity, the look of a man who

  grew up too fast.

  All his life he had shouldered responsibility: as a boy, working in his

  father's flower shop; at the age of twenty, as a helicopter pilot in

  Vietnam; as a young husband and father; and now, as Personnel Director,

  holding in his hands the safety of 131 American employees and their 220

  dependents in a city where mob violence ruled the streets.

  Today, like every day, he was making phone calls around Tehran trying to

  find out where the fighting was, where it would

  13

  14 Ken Folleu

  break out next, and what the prospects were for the next few days.

  He called the U.S. Embassy at least once a day. The Embassy had an

  information room that was manned twenty-four hours a day. Americans would

  call in from different areas of the city to report demonstrations and

  riots, and the Embassy would spread the news that this district or that was

  to be avoided. But for advance information and advice Coburn found the

  Embassy close to useless. At weekly briefings, which he attended

  faidifully, he would always be told that Americans should stay indoors as

  much as possible and keep away from crowds at all costs, but that the Shah

  was in control and evacuation was not recommended at this time. Coburn

  understood their probleni--if the U.S. Embassy said the Shah was tottering,

  the Shah would surely fall--but they were so cautious they hardly gave out

  any information at all. Disenchanted with the Embassy, the American

  business community in Tehran had set up its own information network. The

  biggest U.S. corporation in town was Bell Helicopter, whose Iran operation

  was run by a retired major general, Robert N. Mackinnon. Mackinnon had a

  first-class intelligence service and he shared everything. Coburn also knew

  a couple of intelligence officers in the U.S. military and he called them.

  Today the city was relatively quiet: There were no major demonstrations.

  The last outbreak of serious trouble had been three days earlier, on

  December 2, the first day of the general strike, when seven hundred people

  had been reported killed in street fighting. According to Coburn's sources

  the lull could be expected to continue until December 10, the Muslim holy

  day of Ashura.

  Coburn was worried about Ashura. The Muslim winter holiday was not a bit

  like Christmas. A day of fasting and mourning for the death of the

  Prophet's grandson Husayn, its keynote was remorse. There would be massive

  street processions, during which the more devout believers would flog

  themselves. In that aftnosphere hysteria and violence could erupt fast.

  This year, Coburn feared, the violence might be directed against Americans.

  A series of nasty incidents had convinced him that anti-American feeling

  was growing rapidly. A card had been pushed through his door saying: "If

  you value your life and possessions, get out of Iran." Friends of his had

  received similar postcards. Spray-can artists had painted "Americans live

  here" on the wall of his

  ON WINGS OF EAGLES 15

  house. The bus that took his children to the Tehran American School had been

  rocked by a crowd of demonstrators. Other EDS employees had been yelled at

  in the streets and had their cars damaged. One scary afternoon Iranians at

  the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare-EDS's biggest customer--had gone

  on the rampage, smashing windows and burning pictures of the Shah, while EDS

  executives in the building barricaded themselves inside an office until the

  mob went away.

  In some ways the most sinister development was the change in the attitude

  of Coburn's landlord.

  Like most Americans in Tehran, Coburn rented half of a two-family home: he

  and his wife and children lived upstairs, and the landlord's family lived

  on the ground floor. When the Coburns had arrived, in March of that year,

  the landlord had taken them under his wing. The two families had become

  friendly. Coburn and the landlord discussed religion: the landlord gave him

  an English translation of the Koran, and the landlord's daughter would read

  to her father out of Coburn's Bible. They all went on weekend trips to the

  countryside together. Scott, Coburn's sevenyear-old son, played soccer in

  the street with the landlord's boys. One weekend the Coburns had the rare

  privilege of attending a Muslim wedding. It had been fascinating. Men and

  women had been segregated all day, so Coburn and Scott went with the men,

  Coburn's wife Liz and their three daughters went with the women, and Coburn

  never got to see the bride at all.

  After the summer, things had gradually changed. The weekend trips stopped.

  The landlord's sons were forbidden to play with Scott in the street.

  Eventually all contact between the two families ceased even within the

  confines of the house and its courtyard, and the children would be

  reprimanded for just speaking to Coburn's family.

  The landlord had not suddenly started hating Americans. One evening he had

  proved that he still cared for the Coburns. There had been a shooting

  incident in the street: one of his sons had been out after curfew, and

  soldiers had fired at the boy as he ran home and scrambled over the

  courtyard wall. Coburn and Liz had watched the whole thing from their

  upstairs verandah, and Liz had been scared. The landlord had come up to

  tell them what had happened and to reassure them that all was well. But he

  clearly felt that for the safety of his family he could not be seen to be

  friendly with Americans: he knew which way the wind was blowing. For Coburn

  it was yet another bad sign.

  16 Ken FoUett

  Now, Coburn heard on the grapevine, there was wild talk in the mosques and

  bazaars of a holy war against Americans beginning on Ashura. It was five

  days away, yet the Americans in Tehran were surprisingly calm.

  Coburn remembered when the curfew had been introduced: it had not even

  interfered with the monthly EDS poker game. He and his fellow gamblers had

  simply brought their wives and children, turned it into a slumber party,

  and stayed until morning.
They had got used to the sound of gunfire. Most

  of the heavy fighting was in the older, southern sector where the bazaar

  was, and in the area around the University; but everyone heard shots from

  tune to tune. After the first few occasions they had become curiously

  indifferent to it. Whoever was speaking would pause, then continue when the

  shooting stopped, just as he might in the States when a jet aim-raft passed

  overhead. It was as if they could not imagine that shots might be aimed at

  them.

  Coburn was not blas6 about gunfire. He had been shot at rather a lot during

  his young life. In Vietnam he had piloted both helicopter gunships, in

  support of ground operations, and trooptsupply-carrying ships, landing and

  taking off in battlefields. He had killed people, and he had seen men die.

  In those days the army,gave an Air Medal for every twenty-five hours of

  combat flying: Coburn had come home with thirty-nine of them. He also got

  two Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Silver Star, and a bullet in the

  calf---the most vulnerable part of a helicopter pilot. He had learned,

  during that year, that he could handle himself pretty well in action, when

  there was so much to do and no time to be frightened; but every time he

  returned from a mission, when it was all over and he could think about what

  he had done, his knees would shake.

  in a strange way he was grateful for the experience. He had grown up fast,

  and it had given him an edge over his contemporaries in business life. It

  had also given him a healthy respect for the sound of gunfire.

  But most of his colleagues did not feel that way, nor did their wives.

  Whenever evacuation was discussed they resisted the idea. They had time,

  work, and pride invested in EDS Corporation Iran, and they did not want to

  walk away from it. Their wives had turned the rented apartments into real

  homes, and they were making p1m for Christmas. The children had their

  schools, their friends, their bicycles, and their pets. Surely, they were

  telling themselves, if we just lie low and hang on, the trouble will blow