Read On Wings of Eagles Online
Authors: Ken Follett
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Military, #Espionage, #General, #History, #Special Forces, #Biography & Autobiography
"Let's give it a try."
Paul stood at the roadside and waved at the next car that came along. (He
remembered not to stick out his thumb the American way---this was an
obscene gesture i Iran.) The car stopped. There were two Iranian men in it.
Paul and Bill got in the back.
Paul decided not to mention the name of the hotel. "We're going to TaJrish,
" he said. That was a bazaar area to the north of the city.
"We can take you part of the way," said the driver.
"Thanks." Paul offered them cigarettes, then sat back gratefully and lit
one for himself.
The Iranians dropped them off at Kurosh-e-Kabir, several miles south of
Tajrish, not far from where Paul had lived. They were in a main street,
with plenty of traffic and a lot more people around. Paul decided not to
make himself conspicuous by hitchhiking here.
"We could take refuge in the Catholic Mission," Bill suggested.
Paul considered. The authorities presumably knew that Father Williams had
visited them in Gasr Prison just two days ago. "The Mission might be the
first place Dadgar looks for us."
Maybe. "
"We should go to the Hyatt."
"The guys may not be there any longer."
"But there'll be phones, some way to get plane tickets .
"And hot showers."
'Right. "
They walked on.
Suddenly a voice called: "Mr. Paul! Mr. Bill!"
Paul's heart stopped. He looked around. He saw a car full of
274 Ken Folleu
people moving slowly along the road beside him. He recognized one of the
passengers: it wa's a guard from the Gasr Prison.
The guard had changed into civilian clothes, and looked as if he had joined
the revolution. His big smile seemed to say: don't tell who I am, and I
won't tell who you are.
He waved, then the car gathered speed and passed on.
Paul and Bill laughed with a mixture of amusement and relief.
They turned into a quiet street, and Paul started to hitchhike again. He
stood in the road waving while Bill stayed on the sidewalk, so that
motorists might think there was only one man, an Iranian.
A young couple stopped. Paul got into the car and Bill jumped in after him.
"We're headed north," Paul said.
The woman looked at her man.
The man said: "We could take you to Niavron Palace."
-Mank YOU. 11
The car pulled away.
The scene in the streets changed again. They could hear much more gunfire,
and the traffic became heavier and more frantic, with all the cars honking
continually. They saw press cameramen and television crews standing on car
roofs taking pictures. The mob was burning the police stations near where
Bill had lived. The Iranian couple looked nervous as the car inched through
the crowd: having two Americans in their car could get them into trouble in
this atmosphere.
ft began to get dark.
Bill leaned forward. "Boy, it's getting a bit late," he said. "It sure
would be nice if y'all could take us to the Hyatt Hotel. We'd be happy to,
you know, thank you and give you something for taking us there."
"Okay," said the driver.
He did not ask how much.
They passed the Niavron Palace, the Shah's winter residence. 17here were
tanks outside, as always, but now they had white flags attached to their
antennae: they had surrendered to the revolution.
The car went on, past wrecked and burning buildings, turned back every now
and again by street barricades.
At last they saw the Hyatt.
"Oh, boy," Paul said feelingly. "An American hotel."
They drove into the forecourt.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 275
Paul was so grateful that he gave the Iranian couple two hundred dollars.
The car drove off. Paul and Bill waved, then walked into the hotel.
Suddenly Paul wished he were wearing his EDS uniform of business suit and
white shirt, instead of prison dungarees and a dirty raincoat.
The magnificent lobby was deserted.
They walked to the reception desk. After a moment someone came out from an
office.
Paul asked for Bill Gayden's room number.
The clerk checked, then told him there was no one of that name registered.
"How about Bob Young?"
'No. -
"Rich Gallagher?"
"No. 1~
"Jay Coburn?"
"No. 91
I've got the wrong hotel, Paul thought. How could I have made a mistake
like that?
"What about John Howell?" he said, remembering the lawyer.
"Yes," the clerk said at last, and he gave them a room number on the
eleventh floor.
They went up in the elevator.
They found Howell's mom and knocked. There was no answer.
"What do you think we ought to do?" Bill said.
"I'm going to check in," said Paul. "I'm fired. Why don't we check in, have
a meal. We'll call the States, tell them we're out of jail, everything will
be fine."
"Okay. "
They walked back to the elevator.
Bit by bit, Keane Taylor got the story out of Rashid.
He had stood just inside the prison gates for about an hour. The scene was
a shambles; eleven thousand people were trying to get out through a small
doorway, and in the panic women and old men were getting trampled. Rashid
had waited, thinking of what he would say to Paul and Bill when he saw
them. After an hour the flood of people slowed to a trickle, and he
concluded that most people were out. He started asking: "Have you seen any
Americans?" Someone told him that A the foreigners had
276 Ken Folleu
been kept in Building Number 8. He went there and found it empty. He
searched every building in the compound. He then returned to the Hyatt by
the route Paul and Bill were most likely to take. Walking and hitching
rides, he had looked for them all the way. At the Hyatt he had been refused
admission because he was still carrying his rifle. He gave the gun away to
the nearest youngster and came in.
While he was telling his story Coburn arrived, all set to go looking for
Paul and Bill on Majid's motorcycle. He had a crash helmet with a visor
that would hide his white face.
Rashid offered to take an EDS car and drive the route between the hotel and
the prison, making one more sweep there and back before Coburn risked his
neck in the mobs. Taylor gave him the keys to a car. Gayden got on the
phone to tell Dallas the latest news. Rashid and Taylor left the suite and
walked down the corridor.
Suddenly Rashid yelled: "I thought you were dead!" and broke into a run.
Then Taylor saw Paul and Bill.
Rashid was hugging them both, screaming: "I couldn't find you! I couldn't
find you!"
Taylor ran up and embraced Paul and Bill. "Thank Godl- he said.
Rashid ran back into Gayden's suite, yelling: "Paul and Bill are here! Paul
and Bill are here!"
An instant later Paul and Bill walked in, and all hell broke loose.
TEN
It was an unforgettable moment.
Everyone was yelling, no one was listening, and they all wanted to hug Paul
and Bill at the same time.
Gayden was bellowing into the phone: "We got the guys! We got the guys!
Fantastic! They just walked in the door! Fantastic! -
Somebody yelled: "We beat them! We beat those sonsabitches! -
"We did it!"
"In your ear, Dadgar!"
Buffy barked like a mad thing.
Paul looked around at his friends, and realized that they had stayed here
in the middle of a revolution to help him, and he found he had difficulty
speaking.
Gayden dropped the phone and came over to shake hands. Paul, with tears in
his eyes, said: "Gayden, I just saved you twelve and a half million
dollars-I think you ought to buy me a drink. I I
Gayden fixed him a stiff scotch.
Paul tasted his first alcoholic drink for six weeks.
Gayden said into the phone: "I have somebody would like to speak to you."
He handed the phone to Paul.
Paul said: "Hello."
He heard the syrupy voice of Tom Walter. "Hi, there, buddy!"
"God almighty, - said Paul, out of general exhaustion and relief.
"We were wondering where you guys were!"
"So was 1, for the last three hours."
"How'd you get to the hotel, Paul?"
Paul did not have the energy to tell Walter the whole story. "Fortunately
Keane left me a lot of money one day."
277
278 Ken Follett
"Fantastic. Golly, Paul! Is Bill okay?"
"Yeah, he's a little shook up but he's all right."
"We're all a little shook up. Oh, boy. Boy, it's good to hear you. 11
Another voice came on the line. "Paul? This is Mitch." Mitch Hart was a
former president of EDS. "I figured that Italian street fighter would get
out of there."
"How's Ruthie?" said Paul.
Tom Walter answered. They must be using the telephone conference circuit,
Paul guessed. "Paul, she's great. I just talked to her a little while ago.
Jean's calling her right now, she's on the other phone." .
"Kids doing all right?"
"Yeah, fine. Boy, she'll be glad to hear!"
"Okay, I'll let you talk to my other half." Paul handed the phone to Bill.
While he had been speaking, an Iranian employee, Gholam, had arrived. He
had heard about the jailbreak and had gone looking for Paul and Bill in the
streets around the prison.
Jay Coburn was worried by the arrival of Gholam. For a few minutes there,
Coburn had been too full of tearful joy to think of anything else, but now
he reverted to his role as Simons's lieutenant. He quietly left the suite,
found another open door, went into the room, and called the Dvoranchik
apartment.
Simons answered the phone.
"It's Jay. They got here."
"Good.-
"The security is all shot to hell here. They're using the names over the
phone, everybody's wandering around, we have Iranian employees walking in
. . .-
-Get a couple of rooms away from the others. We'll be right there. "
"Okay." Coburn hung up.
He went down to the reception desk and asked for a two-bedroom suite on the
tweft floor. There was no problem: the hotel had hundreds of empty rooms.
He gave a false name. He was not asked for his passport.
He returned to Gayden's suite.
A few minutes later Simons walked in and said: "Hang up the goddam phone."
Bob Young, who was holding the line open to Dallas, put down the phone.
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 279
Joe Poch6 walked in behind Simons and started closing the curtains.
It was incredible. Suddenly Simons was in charge. Gayden, the president of
EDS World, was the senior man there; and an hour ago he had told Tom Walter
that "The Sunshine Boys" -Simons, Coburn, and Poch6--seemed useless and
ineffectual; yet now he deferred to Simons without even thinking about it.
"Take a look around, Joe," Simons said to Poch6. Coburn knew what this
meant. The team had scouted the hotel and its grounds during their weeks of
waiting, and Poch6 would now see whether there had been any changes.
T'he phone rang. John Howell answered it. "It's Abolhasan," he said to the
others. He listened for a couple of minutes, then said: "Hold on." He
covered the mouthpiece with his hand and spoke to Simons. "This is an
Iranian employee who translates for me at meetings with Dadgar. His father
is a friend of Dadgar's. He's at his father's house, and just got a call
from Dadgar. 11
The room went very quiet.
"Dadgar said: 'Did you know the Americans are out of jail?' Abolhasan said:
'It's news to me.' Dadgar said: 'Get hold of EDS and tell them that if they
find Chiapparone and Gaylord they are to turn them in, that I'm now willing
to renegotiate the bail and it ought to be much more reasonable.'
Gayden said: "Fuck him."
"All right," Simons said. "Tell Abolhasan to give Dadgar a message. Say we
are searching for Paul and Bill, but meanwhile we hold Dadgar personally
responsible for their safety."
Howell smiled and nodded, and began speaking to Abolhasan.
Simons turned to Gayden. "Call the American Embassy. Yell at them a little.
They got Paul and Bill thrown in jail, now the jail has been stormed and we
don't know where Paul and Bill are, but we hold the Embassy responsible for
their safety. Make it convincing. There must be Iranian spies at the
Embassy-you can bet your ass Dadgar will have the text of the message in
minutes. -
Gayden went to find a phone.
Simons, Coburn, and Pochd, with Paul and Bill, moved to the new suite
Coburn had taken on the floor above.
Coburn ordered two steak dinners for Paul and Bill. He told room service to
send them to Gayden's suite: there was to be no unnecessary traffic in and