Read On Wings of Eagles Online
Authors: Ken Follett
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Military, #Espionage, #General, #History, #Special Forces, #Biography & Autobiography
Embassy flight."
"Rich will want to go with her," said Coburn.
"And that fucking dog," Simons added.
Bufly's life is saved, Coburn thought. He was rather glad.
Simons said: "There's Keane Taylor, John Howell , Bob Yourig, and Bill
Gayden. Here's the problem: Dadgar might pick people up at the airport, and
we'll end up back where we started--with EDS men in jail. Who is at most
risk?"
"Gayden," said Cobm. "He's president of EDS World. As a hostage, he'd be
better than Paul and Bill. In fact, when Dadgar arrested Bill Gaylord, we
wondered whether it was a mistake, and he really wanted Bill Gayden, but
got confused becaose of the similarity of the names."
"Gayden comes out overland with Paul and Bill, then."
"John Howell is not even employed by EDS. And he's a lawyer. He should be
all right."
"Howell goes out by air."
"Bob Young is employed by EDS in Kuwait, not Iran. If Dadgar has a list of
EDS names, Young won't be on it."
"Young flies. Taylor drives. Now, one of us has to go on the evacuation
flight with the Clean Tearn. Joe, that's you. You've
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kept a lower profile, than Jay. He's been on the streets, at meetings at the
Hyatt-whereas nobody knows you're here."
'Okay," said Poch6.
"So the Clean Team is the Gallaghers, Bob Young, and John Howell, led by
Joe. The Dirty Team is me, Jay, Keane Taylor, Bill Gayden, Paul, Bill, and
two Iranian drivers. Let's go tell em. I I
They went into the living room and everyone sat down. As Simons talked,
Coburn admired how he announced his decision in such a way that they all
thought they were being asked for their opinions rather than being told
what to do.
There was some discussion of who should be in which teamboth John Howell
and Bob Young would have preferred to be in the Dirty Team, feeling
themselves vulnerable to arrest by Dadgar--but in the end they all reached
the decision Simons had already made.
The Clean Team might as well move into the Embassy compound as soon as
possible, Simons said. Gayden and Joe Poch6 went off to find Lou Goelz, the
Consul General, and talk to him about it.
The Dirty Team would leave tomorrow morning.
Coburn had to organize the Iranian drivers. These were to have been Majid
and his cousin the professor, but the professor was in Rezaiyeh and could
not get to Tehran, so Coburn had to find a replacement.
He had already decided on Seyyed. Seyyed was a youtig Iranian systems.
engineer like Rashid and the Cycle Man, but from a much wealthier family:
relatives of his had been high in politics and the army under the Shah.
Seyyed had been educated in England and spoke with a British accent. His
great asset, from Coburn's point of view, was that he came from the
northwest, so he knew the territory and he spoke Turkish.
Coburn called Seyyed and they met at Seyyed's house. Coburn told him lies.
"I need to gather intelligence on the roads between here and Khoy," Coburn
said. "I'll need someone to drive me. Will you do it?"
"Sure," said Seyyed.
"Meet me at ten forty-five tonight at Argentine Square."
Seyyed agreed.
Simons had instructed Coburn to go through all this. Coburn trusted Seyyed,
but of course Simons did not; so Seyyed would not know where the team was
staying until he got there, and he
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would not know about Paul and Bill until he saw them; and from that moment
on he would not be out of Simons's sight.
When Coburn returned to the Dvoranchik place, Gayden. and Poch6 were back
from seeing Lou Goelz. They had told Goelz that a few EDS men were staying
in Tehran to look for Paul and Bill, but the others wanted to leave on the
first evacuation flight, and stay at the Embassy in the meantime. Goelz had
said that the Embassy was full, but they could stay at his house.
They all thought that was pretty damn good of Goelz. Most of them had got
mad at him once or twice over the last two months, and had made it pretty
clear that they blamed him and his colleagues for the arrest of Paul and
Bill: it was big of him to open his house to them after all that. As
everything came unglued in Iran, Goelz was becoming less of a bureaucrat
and showing that his heart was in the right place.
The Clean Team and the Dirty Team shook hands and wished each other luck,
not knowing who needed it most; then the Clean Team left for Goelz's house.
It was now evening. Coburn and Keane Taylor went to Majid's house to pick
him up: he would spend the night at the Dvoranchik place like Seyyed.
Coburn and Taylor also had to get a fifty-fivegallon drum of fuel that
Majid had been keeping for them.
When they got to the house Majid was out.
They waited, fretting. At last Majid came in. He greeted them, welcomed
them to his home, called for tea, the whole nine yards. Eventually Coburn
said: "We're leaving tomorrow morning. We want you to come with us now - "
Majid asked Coburn to step into another room with him, then he said: "I
can't go with you."
"Why not?"
"I have to kill Hoveyda."
"What?" said Coburn incredulously. "Who?"
"Amir Abbas Hoveyda, who used to be Prime Minister."
"Why do you have to kill him?"
"It's a long story. The Shah had a land-reform program, and Hoveyda tried
to take away my family's tribal lands, and we rebelled, and Hoveyda put me
in jail ... I have been waiting all these years for my revenge."
"You have to kill him right away?" said Coburn, astonished.
"I have the weapons and the opportunity. In two days' time all may be
different."
300 Ken Follett
Coburn was nonplussed. He did not know what to say. It was clear Majid
could not be talked around.
Coburn and Taylor manhandled the fuel drum into the back of the Range
Rover, then took their leave. Majid wished them luck.
Back at the Dvoranchik place, Coburn started trying to reach the Cycle Man,
hoping he would replace Majid as driver. The Cycle Man was as elusive as
Coburn himself. He could normally be reached at a certain phone number-some
kind of revolutionary headquarters, Coburn suspected-just once a day. The
regular time for him to drop by this place was now past--it was late in the
evening--but Coburn tried anyway. The Cycle Man was not there. He tried a
few more phone numbers without success.
At least they had Seyyed.
At ten-thirty Coburn went out to meet Seyyed. He walked through the
darkened streets to Argentine Square, a mile from the Dvoranchik place,
then picked his way across a construction site and into an empty building
to wait.
At eleven o'clock Seyyed had not arrived.
Simons had told Coburn to wait fifteen minutes, no longer; but Coburn
decided to give Seyyed a little more time.
He waited until eleven-thirty.
Seyyed was not coming.
Coburn wondered what had happened: given Seyyed's family connections, it
was quite possible he had fallen victim to the revolutionaries.
For the Dirty Team this was a disaster. Now they had no Iranians to go with
them. How the hell will we get through all those roadblocks? wondered
Coburn. What a shitty break: the professor drops out, Majid drops out, the
Cycle Man can't be found, then Seyyed drops out. Shit.
He left the construction site and walked away. Suddenly he heard a car. He
looked back, and saw a jeep full of armed revolutionaries swinging around
the square. He ducked behind a convenient bush. They went by.
He went on, hurrying now, wondering whether the curfew was in force
tonight. He was almost home when the jeep came roaring back toward him.
They saw me last time, he thought, and they've come back to pick me up.
It was very dark. They might not have spotted him yet. He turned and ran
back. There was no cover on this street. The noise of the jeep became
louder. At last Coburn saw some
ON WINGS OF EAGLES 301
shrubbery and flung himself into it. He lay there listening to his heartbeat
as the jeep came closer. Were they looking for him? Had they picked up
Seyyed and tortured him, and made him confess that he had an appointment
with a capitalist American pig at Argentine Square at ten forty-five ... ?
The jeep went by without stopping.
Coburn picked himself up.
He ran all the way to the Dvoranchik place.
He told Simons they now had no Iranian drivers.
Simons cursed. "Is there another Iranian we can call?"
"Only one. Rashid."
Simons did not want to use Rashid, Coburn knew, because Rashid had led the
jailbreak, and if someone who remembered him from that should see him
driving a carload of Americans, there might be trouble. But Coburn could
not think of anyone else.
"Okay," said Simons. "Call him."
Coburn dialed Rashid's number.
He was at home!
"This is Jay Coburn. I need your help."
"Sure. 11
Coburn did not want to give the address of the hideout over the phone, in
case the line was wiretapped. He recalled that Bill Dvoranchik had a slight
squint. He said: "You remember the guy with the funny eye?"
"With a funny eye? Oh, yeah-"
"Don't say his name. Remember where he used to live?"
"Sure.-"
"Don't say it. That's where I am. I need you here."
"Jay, I live miles from there and I don't know how I'm going to get across
the city-"
"Just try," Coburn said. He knew how resourceful Rashid was. Give him a
task and he just hated to fad. "You'll get here.11
- 'Okay.
"Thanks." Coburn hung up.
It was midnight.
Paul and Bill had each picked a passport from the ones Gayden had brought
from the States, and Simons had made them learn the names, dates of birth,
personal details, and all the visas and country stamps. The photograph in
Paul's passport looked more or less like Paul, but Bill's was a problem.
None of them
302 Ken Follett
was right, and he ended up with the passport of Larry Humphreys, a blond,
rather Nordic type who really did not look like Bill.
The tension mounted as the six men discussed details of the journey they
would begin within the next few hours. There was fighting in Tabriz,
according to Rich Gallagher's military contacts; so they would stick to the
plan of taking the low road, south of Lake Rezaiyeh, passing through
Mahabad. The story they would tell, if questioned, would be as close to the
truth as possible,always Simons's preference when lying. They would say
they were businessmen who wanted to get home to their families, the airport
was closed, and they were driving to Turkey.
In support of that story, they would carry no weapons. It was a difficult
decision-they knew they might regret being unarmed and helpless in the
middle of a revolution-but Simons and Coburn had found, on the
reconnaissance trip, that the revolutionaries at the roadblocks always
searched for weapons. Simons's instinct told him they would be better off
talking their way out of trouble than trying to shoot their way out.
They also decided to leave behind the fifty-five-gallon fuel drums, on the
grounds that they made the team look too professional, too organized, for
businessmen quietly driving home.
They would, however, take a lot of money. Joe Poch6 and the Clean Team had
gone off with fifty thousand dollars, but Simons's crew still had around a
quarter of a million dollars, some of it in Iranian rials, deutschmarks,
sterling, and gold. They packed fifty thousand dollars into kitchen
baggies, weighted the bags with shot, and put them in a gas can. They hid
some in a Kleenex box and more in the battery hold of a flashlight. They
passed the rest out for each to conceal about his person.
At one o'clock Rashid still had not arrived. Simons sent Coburn to stand at
the street gate and watch for him.
Coburn stood in the darkness, shivering, hoping Rashid would show up. They
would leave tomorrow, with or without him, but without him they might not
get far. The villagers in the countryside would probably detain Americans
just on general principles. Rashid would be the ideal guide, despite
Simons's worries: the kid had a silver tongue.
Coburn's thoughts turned to home. Liz was mad at him, that he knew.'She had
been giving Merv Stauffer a hard time, calling every day and asking where
her husband was and what he was doing and when he was coming home.
Coburn knew he would have to make some decisions when he
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