Guests of the Ayatollah

Hohman take off after five guards, kicking and swinging. If Hohman was afraid, then this was for real.

In the warehouse basement, German also prayed. He hadn’t been particularly religious since his childhood but it seemed the only thing to do. He prayed for himself and for his wife and family. He imagined what a shock his execution would be to them.

When he and the others were told to face the wall, Navy Commander Sharer refused.

“If you are going to shoot me, you’re not going to shoot me in the back,” he said.

And, amazingly, the would-be executioners obliged him.

To the rest, one of the guards screamed, “Arms against the walls! Spread your legs! Don’t drop your arms! Do not lower them a centimeter or you will die right now!”

Bob Englemann thought, “Negotiations must have broken down.” Apparently they were going to finish this.

Because of his illness, Queen could not keep his left hand up, and one of the guards kept hitting him with his weapon.

“He can’t get his hand up!” Hall protested.

“Shut up! No speak!” one of the gunmen screamed at him.

Scott’s hands were bound so he could not spread his arms as far apart as demanded. A guard pushed his hands higher up the wall and kicked his legs wider apart. He heard the guards behind him clear their weapons for firing.

Hall was more frightened than he had ever been. Jesus, this is it! They’re going to kill us! He asked God to take care of his wife, Cheri. He felt terrible about leaving her and then thought, I hope I get hit in the back of the head and that it will be over quickly. “God, take care of Cheri. God, take care of Cheri,” Hall kept repeating quietly to himself, shaking. His knees were banging together and suddenly they stopped. His whole body stiffened, as if clenching to receive a final blow.

Queen clenched his teeth and said the Lord’s Prayer.

Scott felt dizzy and ill and began to pray.

Jimmy Lopez wondered what it was going to feel like. He had heard about Iranian executions where they machine-gunned the victim starting with his lower legs and working their way up the body, to prolong the pain. How long would it last? Would it hurt or would it happen too fast to feel anything? He hoped that when they shot they hit his head right away.

Bill Keough stood with his hands held high, filled with disbelief. Like many of the others, his mind raced involuntarily to find some last reason to hope. For one thing, the wall they were up against was made of thin plasterboard. There were plenty of places nearby where there were concrete or brick walls. If they are going to shoot us, wouldn’t they put us in front of one of those? Some foreign ambassadors had just come through, checking to make sure everyone was well. Why would they do that and then perform a mass execution? It didn’t make sense. Still, it was a perilous moment. If one of my colleagues panics and goes after one of them, they might start shooting and that would be the end.

Don Cooke was as frightened as he had ever been. In the first days, when he had been taken out to a residence in north Tehran for a few weeks, he was convinced on that drive that he was being taken away to be shot, and for some reason he had been perfectly calm. Now, he was shaking so badly that he could barely keep himself upright.

“Oh my God!” he shouted. “No! No! No!”

Golacinski told Cooke to shut up. The embassy security chief didn’t want these assholes to see any American buckle in his final moments. He felt curiously calm, as though he were watching himself from the outside, thinking, So this is it. It was not the first time he had felt this way since all this started. And he felt relieved. At last this is over. Shoot straight.

Greg Persinger smelled fear. He had always heard that expression and never believed it, but suddenly he detected an odor coming from himself and knew immediately what it was.

A long moment passed. Then another.

Hall relaxed a little…maybe not? Had they gotten past the moment? Maybe they really weren’t going to shoot.

Jimmy Lopez turned around and sat down.

“I’m tired of this shit,” he said. “If you’re going to shoot me, just shoot me.”

Roeder’s fingers got tired, so he leaned his forearms on the wall, resting on his elbows. A guard smacked him sharply in the ribs and he pushed back out to his fingertips. He, too, looked for reasons not to believe that he was about to be shot. Beyond a certain point, he couldn’t take these guards seriously. They were stupid, but not stupid enough to shoot all of them. He was convinced America would turn Iran into a parking lot if that happened. The guards were acting angry and threatening, but when they cocked their weapons, readying them to fire, one of them let his slip from his hands. It clattered to the floor.

The suspense was broken not by an explosion but by the ringing of metal on the concrete floor. They had ejected the rounds.

“Pull up your pants!” one of the guards shouted at Rosen, who stooped to the task with trembling hands.

When it was over, the shaken hostages were led back to their cubicles and rooms, which had been ransacked.

“Goddamned sons of bitches!” shouted Lopez as they left him and Kirtley back in their chancery room. “Fuck you all!”

Limbert found his room in disarray. They had obviously gone through his extra pants and shirt. They had taken a heavy water pitcher that he had scrounged, and a fork, but they hadn’t taken his paper, nor had they found his hidden pencils and the radio! Kupke’s hidden stash of sugar cubes was gone—he had been hoarding them, stealing one or two extra every day at teatime. The guards had also found and taken a small piece of glass he had saved and hidden, and a stub of a pencil. Their belts were confiscated. In the Mushroom Inn, Roeder’s mattress was upended and a few of the little items he’d hoarded were gone. There were rumors that someone had attempted suicide, which would explain removing the belts.

In the room shared by Bob Ode, Barry Rosen, and Bob Blucker, everything had been upended and some things removed but there seemed to be no logic to it. Ode’s liniment for his sore back was gone but all of his mail was left behind. Rosen’s prized picture of his children was gone. Ode was given back his belt, which he had been forced to remove during the strip-search, but Rosen was not given back his.

Some of Bill Royer’s clothing was missing, a second pair of pants, a shirt, and his tweed jacket! He complained enough over the next few days that they brought back the sport coat.

When it was over, Kupke felt exhilarated. He and Kennedy and Graves were in terrifically high spirits, laughing and joking with one another. They were thrilled to still be alive.

In his room, Ode lay down on his mattress and suddenly felt his heart pounding heavily in his chest. He had a heart murmur and was now certain that he was suffering a heart attack. He believed he was dying. He lay perfectly still, in a cold sweat, terrified, but believing there was nothing that could be done. Gradually, his heartbeat slowed until it felt normal again. He felt the need to urinate, and as the guard led him back from the toilet he said in broken English, “These men not ours. They are very angry.”

The next morning, Hall asked Hamid the Liar.

“What was that shit about last night?”

“Oh, that was just a joke,” he said.

“Some goddamn joke. Why would you do that?”

Hamid said that it wasn’t him or his group, that it was a unit of exterior guards. It was just something they had wanted to do.

* * *

The mock execution marked the end of one stage of captivity and the beginning of another. It was the last time Rick Kupke felt threatened by the guards. As February wore on, the weather turned brutally cold and there was still boredom, confinement, hunger, and inactivity to cope with, but for a time things settled into a relatively comfortable routine. He, John Graves, and Mike Kennedy were moved to a room on the top floor of the chancery and were given a heater. Kupke was allowed to make a brief phone call home to his mother. The guards now let