decorations left over from a Halloween party that had been organized the week before by Hall’s subordinate, Joe Subic. One of them fingered a hanging cartoon skeleton and asked, “What’s this?”
“It’s part of a holiday celebration, a holiday for children,” Hall said.
“You do this sort of stuff for children?” the Iranian asked, surveying the images of witches, goblins, and spooky pumpkin heads.
“It’s an old custom,” Hall started to explain but then realized how peculiar the holiday actually was. “We give candy to children.”
Hall saw Subic in that upstairs room, and true to form the eager young sergeant was volunteering to be helpful. He had a yellow legal pad and was pointing out all the captives and giving their names, job titles, and descriptions. He seemed to be enjoying himself. They would stop at a blindfolded prisoner, and Subic would say, “This is Greg Persinger. He’s a marine sergeant,” and then they would move on to the next person. Before Sharer, he said, “This is Commander Don Sharer, he’s an F-14 expert, he works for the United States Navy, and he was in Vietnam.” Sharer had earlier given his name as “Mickey Mouse.” Many of the top embassy officials had been trying to keep their status and responsibilities obscure. “It would probably be best to just drop ‘sir’ from your vocabulary for the time being,” consular officer Don Cooke had advised the marines bound to chairs near him. Whatever Subic’s instincts were, they didn’t run along these lines. Before Colonel Scott, Subic said, “This is Colonel Chuck Scott, the military liaison officer. He’s been in Iran many times before. He was an attache here in the sixties and he speaks fluent Farsi.” Scott would like to have punched the young sergeant in the face, both for being so helpful to their captors and for calling him “Chuck,” a level of familiarity that ignored their difference in rank and actual relationship. Some of those identified asked Subic, “Why are you doing this?” or told him angrily, “Keep your mouth shut,” or “Leave it alone, Joe.” It didn’t seem to bother or deter him at all. Hall had found Subic a difficult employee ever since he had arrived in Tehran. The chubby soldier with glasses and dirty-blond hair was so eager to take on responsibility and to get involved with work others were doing in the embassy that he tended to neglect his own duties. Subic was a well-meaning busybody, who seemed compelled to be at the center of attention, and now he was doing it here, with all of his colleagues tied to chairs.
“Joe, sit down and mind your own business,” Hall told him.
“Shut up!” one of the guards shouted at him. “No speak!” The way the guards pronounced “speak” added a vowel to the front end, so it came out as “
Subic kept talking. Hall overheard the sergeant say, “Well, I can take you and show you.”
Marines Sickmann and Persinger were bound next to each other. They were approached by an English- speaking Iranian who had a cameraman with him. He asked them their names and what their jobs were.
“We’re pizza runners,” said Sickmann.
“We work for the laundry department,” said Persinger. “We clean laundry, and this guy”—nodding toward Sickmann—“he gets pizzas for all the marines. In fact, I’d like a pizza right now.”
They speculated on how long they would be held. Some felt it might be until Christmas. Sickmann, who had heard that his captors were students, assumed that like American college students they would all be finishing their school year next May, so he predicted it might last until then.
Dinner was served in shifts in the residence kitchen. Young women in
“Would you like a beer?” a young man asked him.
“Yes, I would,” said Queen.
The young man left and never returned.
After the moment captured in the much-reprinted photo of Bill Belk, he had been marched across the compound to one of the yellow cottages.
“We are going to teach you,” his captor told him.
Belk wondered what that meant.
“We will teach you about God,” the young man said. “We will teach the CIA not to interfere with our country.”
Uncomfortable with his hands tied behind his back with nylon rope, Belk fidgeted for about three hours, listening to the din outside. He kept asking his guards if they would give him one of the cigarettes in his shirt pocket.
“Don’t speak!” the guard said.
He persisted, and finally one of them removed a cigarette, put it between his lips, and lit it. Belk almost choked trying to smoke it. He had no way of taking it from his mouth. He did the best he could, but after a few puffs he spit it out. At one point, early in the evening, somebody fed him a spoonful of ice cream. Later he was escorted to the toilet, where his hands were unbound and, still blindfolded, he did his best to hit the bowl. When he finished his hands were retied and he was returned to the chair.
Belk was miserable, hungry, and increasingly worried about what would happen next. The nylon rope cut into his wrists. He finally managed to fall asleep in the chair.
Charles Jones finished the day in Bruce Laingen’s upstairs bedroom with some of the marines. He flopped on Laingen’s bed and fell asleep, snoring contentedly. Hermening watched him with admiration.
When Kupke’s questioning ended, he was taken to the ambassador’s residence and deposited on the floor in an upstairs bedroom, blindfolded and tied hand and foot. He turned on his side and tried to get comfortable on the carpet, but he was bruised and sore. His head was pounding with pain and it felt like his jaw was broken; he could not completely close his mouth.
In the middle of the night he was awakened by an Iranian.
“Can I get you anything?” he was asked.
Kupke asked for some water and was given some.
“I would give anything for some aspirin,” he said. His guard fetched him two tablets, then left. Kupke had forgotten to ask for more water, so he put them in his mouth and chewed them.
Queen and Limbert got beds of their own. After his long, harrowing day, Al Golacinski slept fitfully on the floor under his chair.
At the Foreign Ministry, Bruce Laingen, the charge, dozed on a couch in the huge formal dining room.
Marine Kevin Hermening woke up at about three in the morning in the bed alongside two fellow hostages. He lifted his head and looked around and was surprised to see about twenty of the students in the room in various postures of sleep, some of them in chairs, others sprawled on the floor. It was like a big sleepover.
Downstairs, Joe Hall woke up at five. It took him a second or two to focus. Around him were guards and beneath the blanket one of his hands was still bound with cloth.
14. Okay, Go Ahead and Shoot
There was to be little sleep for Bill Daugherty, who was taken early in the evening from the ambassador’s residence by a student with a .38 caliber pistol, who called out his name and told him that he was wanted for questioning. The novice CIA officer was escorted across the embassy grounds back to the chancery, up the steep staircase of the back entrance, and then up the central stairway to the second floor. He was taken into his own office, still bound and blindfolded, and leaned gently against the wall. It was well after midnight but crowds were still celebrating outside. He was exhausted and could still taste tear gas deep in his nose and throat.
He had more reason than most of the newly taken hostages to fear questioning. Daugherty had been assigned to Tehran only six months after joining the agency. He did not speak Farsi, and had been in Iran for only
