“Tell them to come out,” he was told. “If not, you are going to see what we are going to do.”
Golacinski’s amplified voice echoed off the orange brick of the front wall. “These people say if you come out they won’t hurt you. This is just like February fourteenth,” he said.
The militant with the gun was growing irate. He spoke in Farsi to two of the others, who ran off toward the motor pool just east of the chancery.
“They are going to get the rope!” explained a young man in a rugby shirt who spoke fluent English.
Golacinski gathered from this that they intended to string him up, a fear quickened by the jeering multitude behind him, both inside and outside the embassy walls, which had been roaring thunderously ever since he had been led around to the front of the building, thrilled to see a hated American captured. He felt a sudden quiver in his knees and bowels.
One of the other protesters pounded on the door and shouted in English, “Open these doors! You will see what we do to your brother!”
Nothing happened. The doors stayed shut and the gunman returned without a rope. Golacinski was relieved, and also struck by the apparent confusion among these protesters. There seemed to be violent ones, like the one with the gun, more moderate ones, like the one in the rugby shirt, and others who just seemed to be going with the flow. No one appeared to be in charge.
One of the Iranians tied a cloth strip over his eyes.
“Okay,” the gunman said. “We are going to go in there. You are going to go in first. If anything happens, you die.”
They walked him down to the concrete moat and, with the gunman holding the pistol to the back of his head, he was directed to climb back down the same opened window he had climbed up and out of an hour earlier. Held by both arms and blindfolded, Golacinski eased himself down awkwardly, feeling his way. They had rigged a chair on top of a table that he had to negotiate blind. The air inside was choked with tear gas and smoke. Right behind him was the gunman, and Golacinski knew it didn’t take much pressure on the trigger. A sudden slip by either of them might end his life. When he got both feet on the floor he was grateful. The Iranians who followed then pushed him through the basement hallway, advancing warily past the office doors on either side.
“Tell them, no shoot!” the gunman said.
Golacinski knew that by now everyone was upstairs, but nevertheless he shouted, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” as they made their way up the steps to the first floor and then up the steps to the second-floor landing. The door had a cipher lock by the handle. Tear gas had pooled in the stairwell, which was now crowded with invaders.
The blindfolded captive’s nerves were about shot, and when one of his captors rolled up a magazine and lit it and he felt the flame near his face, he panicked.
“Don’t burn me!” he screamed. “Shoot me, don’t burn me!”
“No, no, no,” one of the Iranians told him. “For the gas. For the gas.”
Another demanded, “Open the door.”
“Open the door or you will see what we will do!” shouted several of the men around him.
“They have eight of us!” yelled Golacinski, referring to the others he knew were being held by the protesters outside.
Behind the door he heard one of his colleagues shouting, “They’re trying to burn it down!”
After seeing Golacinski outside with a gun to his head, it was clear that this demonstration had aims beyond simply the reading of a “declaration,” which is what the aide in the prime minister’s office had assured Limbert would happen.
He phoned the provisional government once more and this time spoke with an assistant in the office of Mahdi Chamran, a deputy minister. Limbert explained the situation with more vehemence, and once again was told not to worry.
“Everything is under control,” the assistant said.
Limbert said that things didn’t look under control from his vantage point. There was no sign of the force that had been promised earlier.
“What is being done?” Limbert asked. “What are you going to do?”
“What we are going to do is have a meeting this afternoon to decide what to do about this problem,” the assistant said peevishly.
Limbert understood that they were on their own. The government was neither inclined to nor capable of coming to their rescue, so delay wasn’t going to solve anything. The goal now was to protect the embassy personnel and employees, which could probably best be accomplished by surrender. His greatest fear was that one of the marines would shoot a protester. He could imagine the frenzy a martyr’s blood would ignite. They would all surely be killed.
He spoke to the demonstrators on the radio. They had taken walkie-talkies from the marines and from the security chief, and Limbert could hear them talking back and forth, trying to figure out how the equipment worked.
The smell of smoke sent a ripple of alarm through the crowd of Americans and embassy workers in the corridor upstairs. The downside of being locked on the top floor was that there was no way out. Now smoke began to curl up from underneath the furniture piled against the door. Limbert tried to get someone on the other side to talk to him. He spoke briefly to Golacinski, who told him that there was a gun to his head and that if the door wasn’t opened they would shoot him. Limbert told them all to stand back.
“We’re going to open the door and I’m going to come out to talk,” he said.
It was a decision Limbert made on the spot. Once he learned that help was not coming, it was clear that someone who spoke Farsi would have to try talking to the protesters. If he could find what they wanted, perhaps they could work out an arrangement where nobody would get hurt. Two of the marines pulled back the barricade and one of them opened the door enough for Limbert to slip out to the landing. The door slammed shut behind him.
Crowded on the staircase before him leading down to the first floor were fifty or more very excited young Iranian men, unshaven, wet, and wearing rumpled, worn clothing. Limbert knew immediately that he was going to get nowhere with this bunch. As the door closed behind him he thought,
Golacinski was four or five steps down. Limbert rubbed his tearing eyes and felt his nose begin to run from the pungent stab of gas and smoke. He tried to speak calmly. He introduced himself and adopted a scolding professorial tone—he had taught students exactly like these years before at Shiraz University.
“You really need to get out of here before someone gets hurt,” he told them in Farsi. “We have been in contact with the authorities. They are sending police to clear the compound. You have no business here. If someone is hurt it’s going to be your responsibility. You are going to be responsible for the bloodshed.”
His words stunned the crowd momentarily. The last thing they had expected from the top floor of the American embassy was a stern lecture from someone in fluent, unaccented Farsi.
“You’re not an American,” one of the students protested. “You’re a Persian speaker.”
“Yes, but I am an American,” Limbert said. He pushed ahead, asking questions: “Who are you?” and “What do you want?”
“Are you armed in there?” one of the militants asked.
“That’s no business of yours,” said Limbert. “What do you care?”
“We want to get in.”
“Is there somebody here from the government?” he asked.
“We don’t care about the government,” came the answer.
“What about the Revolutionary Council?” Limbert asked.
“We don’t care about the Revolutionary Council,” one of the young men said.
The Iranians were now arguing among themselves. They kept referring to their own “five-man council” that made decisions, but apparently no one from that controlling group was here on the steps. So they quarreled.
“Let’s go in now!” said one.
“No, we’ve got to discuss this.”
“Let’s just knock the door down!” shouted another.
