Guests of the Ayatollah

“The president is going to go through with this thing,” Powell told Defense Secretary Brown. “I can sense it. If we can bring our people out of there, it will do more good for this country than anything that has happened in twenty years.”

“Yes,” said Brown, “and if we fail, that will be the end of the Carter presidency.”

“We don’t really have much choice, do we?” said Powell.

In order to maintain appearances, Carter sent Jordan back to Paris for a scheduled second secret meeting with Ghotbzadeh at Hector Villalon’s apartment. The Iranian foreign minister was deflated. He complained that the White House decision to break diplomatic ties had been a tragic mistake; it would drive his country into the arms of the Soviets. Ghotbzadeh confirmed the intractable nature of the impasse, predicting now that it would be many months before the hostages would be released. He was apologetic, but explained that to take a “soft” position on the hostage issue in Iran at that point was tantamount to political, if not actual, suicide.

“I just hope your president doesn’t do anything rash,” he said, “like attack Iran or mine our harbors.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jordan. “He won’t. President Carter is not a militaristic man.”

That conversation itself, however, further hardened the decision to send Delta Force. Ghotbzadeh’s prediction of “many months” confirmed the White House’s grim assessment. At that point, the only things that might have averted the rescue was word that release was imminent.

Vance was alarmed when he learned of Carter’s thinking. The president listened coolly to his secretary of state’s impassioned argument against going, which Vance delivered in person when he returned from vacation. He pointed out that in just about any projected scenario some of the hostages would be hurt or killed and reminded the president of his pledge to the families. There were hundreds of American journalists in Tehran—they had been allowed back in after a brief period of exile. Even if the rescue mission was successful, what was to stop angry Iranians from seizing them? They might end up with more hostages and an even more volatile situation. There was some consideration given to taking a number of Iranians hostage and bringing them back as bargaining chips in the event more Americans were kidnapped in Iran, but this tack led to increasingly un-seemly scenarios. What would the United States do with its captive Iranians if the radical students began defiantly executing American reporters? Brzezinski responded with the kind of joke a man makes to poke fun at himself, exaggerating his own perceived worst tendencies: “They could always just fall out of a helicopter over the Red Sea,” he said.

The idea of seizing hostages was quickly dropped, but Carter was inclined to go ahead even without answers for every conceivable contingency. Diplomacy had proved useless, and he felt he was wrong to have pursued it for so long. He was responsible for State Department employees and military staffers in Tehran in a more direct way than for reporters who had traveled there on their own.

Colonel Beckwith was summoned to the White House, and the two Georgia natives swapped stories about their neighboring home counties. The tough, gray-haired colonel gave a brisk, detailed account of the plan, and Carter was impressed. Beckwith had spent a career selling the idea of his elite unit, and now that he had created it he was eager to show what miracles it could perform. Despite his initial misgivings about being assigned such a hard task the first time out, the colonel was more convinced than ever that it could work. He was eager. Briefing the Pentagon brass the day before, he had concluded with an enthusiastic, “Hey, we gotta do this thing!” His enthusiasm was infectious. He and his men were going to make history, not just sever this particular Gordian knot but write their names in the annals of military glory. In a sense, Beckwith’s career-long crusade to create Delta had been a rebellion against the mechanization and bureaucratization of modern warfare. He held to an older, more visceral conviction: War was the business of brave men. He loved soldiers and soldiering, and his vision was of a company of men like himself, impatient with rank, rules, and politics, focused entirely on the mission. Now he had created such a force, choosing the best of the best and training them to perfection. They were not just good, they were magnificent. In his eyes they were beautiful. And now he would lead them into battle. They were going to prove themselves on the most difficult, improbable mission in American history, moving straight into the enemy’s heart, a small force of brave men hopelessly outnumbered, shouldering impossible odds. The fact that it seemed so far-fetched made it all the more appealing. It was perfect. He sold it well, projecting his own brand of brute certainty.

“On behalf of my men, sir, I hope you will let us go,” Beckwith told Carter.

Eight choppers were waiting beneath the decks of the Nimitz. Staging areas in Wadi Kena, the abandoned Soviet airstrip in Egypt, and Masirah, an island off the coast of Oman, were being readied to receive his men and planes. Dick Meadows was packing his bags for a return trip to Tehran. It would take about two weeks to move everything into position.

Technically, Carter had not yet given the go-ahead, but when he left the White House Beckwith was certain the mission was on. He flew to Delta’s stockade at Fort Bragg and immediately assembled his top men. He was elated.

“You can’t tell the people, you can’t tell anybody,” the colonel said. “Don’t talk about this to anyone, but the president has approved the mission and we’re going to go on April 24.”

* * *

One morning, for no reason he could discern, Michael Metrinko was allowed to go outside. He was taken from the basement of the chancery to a walled garden outside the ambassador’s residence. It was a sunny morning, and the first time Metrinko had been outdoors since mid-November. The odors, the color, the feel of sunshine on his skin, the slight breeze…it was all intoxicating. It was as though he had been blind and his sight was suddenly restored. He was allowed to walk around the garden slowly, drinking it in.

He noticed that someone was using one of the embassy’s sterling silver candleholders to prop open a window apparently ignorant of how valuable it was. It crossed his mind to take it, but what would he do with it? Metrinko had always been acquisitive. He loved beautiful things, and in his years of travel he had accumulated a small treasure of valuable objects, which had decorated his apartment in Tehran. The candlestick reminded him of such luxuries, which now, walking in his silly plastic flip-flops and oversized pants bunched at the waist with a paper clip, seemed to him frivolous. His instinct to grab the candlestick made him laugh.

Archbishop Hilarion Capucci was sent by the Vatican to visit with the hostages near Easter, and the occasion prompted the guards to bring Metrinko upstairs. He had met the archbishop before when he had stayed at the Greek Catholic patriarchate in Jerusalem for a week in 1969, on his first visit to Israel. They remembered each other right away. He told Capucci that he was being kept in solitary confinement and was badly treated, and the archbishop just nodded and smiled and said he would pray for him. He urged Metrinko to be patient. The hostage wondered what his other options were.

The guards were careful about what he got to read. One of the publications they judged innocuous was the Sporting News, and though Metrinko was not a sports fan he was so desperate for any diversion he began reading about games and athletes and teams that held no interest for him. In one of the stories about a baseball game—the season was just beginning at home—he was stunned to read that the host stadium had welcomed the six former hostages who had escaped Iran with the Canadian ambassador! His heart leapt with the news. The story didn’t name the escapees, but he assumed that among them were Bruce Laingen, Victor Tomseth, and Mike Howland, who had gone to the Foreign Ministry on the morning of the takeover and never returned. His pleasure in the news that his colleagues had escaped was heightened by the way he discovered it. The English-speaking students who censored his reading wouldn’t have had the patience to wade through all these stories about batting averages and sore pitching arms. Any small victory over them was enough to lift his spirits for days.

3. You’ve Got a Mother

The punishment Kevin Hermening expected after the guards discovered his note to Rupiper never came. Instead, in the days after Easter the guards became suspiciously friendly toward him. Those who spoke English stopped to chat and, for some reason, asked a lot of questions about his family. They wanted to know what his father did for a living, and his mother, where he lived, about his brothers and sisters. He was happy to tell them, and although both he and Golacinski suspected that something odd was afoot, they couldn’t figure out what it was. In their most optimistic moments they toyed with the idea that perhaps Hermening, the youngest of the hostages, was going to be released.