would the guards do to him and Paul? What would the other prisoners do? Surely any minute now someone would come to get him released.
'Can I put on my coat?' he asked the guard.
The guard did not understand.
'Coat,' Bill said, and mimed putting on a coat.
The guard handed him his coat.
A little later another guard came in and told Bill to get dressed.
They were led back into the reception area. Once again, Bill looked around expectantly for lawyers or friends; once again, he was disappointed.
They were taken through the reception area. Another door was opened. They went down a flight of stairs into the basement.
It was cold, dim, and dirty. There were several cells, all crammed with prisoners, all of them Iranian. The stink of urine made Bill close his mouth and breathe shallowly through his nose. The guard opened the door to Cell Number 9. Paul and Bill walked in.
Sixteen unshaven faces stared at them, alive with curiosity. Paul and Bill stared back, horrified.
The cell door clanged shut behind them.
Two
1_______
Until this moment life had been extremely good to Ross Perot.
On the morning of December 28, 1978, he sat at the breakfast table in his mountain cabin at Vail, Colorado, and was served breakfast by Holly, the cook.
Perched on the mountainside and half-hidden in the aspen forest, the 'log cabin' had six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a thirty-foot living room, and an apres-ski 'recuperation room' with a Jacuzzi pool in front of the fireplace. It was just a holiday home.
Ross Perot was rich.
He had started EDS with a thousand dollars, and now the shares in the company--more than half of which he still owned personally--were worth several hundred million dollars. He was the sole owner of the Petrus Oil and Gas Company, which had reserves worth hundreds of millions. He also had an awful lot of Dallas real estate. It was difficult to figure out exactly how much money he had--a lot depended on just how you counted it--but it was certainly more than five hundred million dollars and probably less than a billion.
In novels, fantastically rich people were portrayed as greedy, power-mad, neurotic, hated, and unhappy-- always unhappy. Perot did not read many novels. He was happy.
He did not think it was the money that made him happy. He believed in moneymaking, in business and profits, because that was what made America tick; and he enjoyed a few of the toys money could buy--the cabin cruiser, the speedboats, the helicopter; but rolling around in hundred-dollar bills had never been one of his daydreams. He had dreamed of building a successful business that would employ thousands of people; but his greatest dream- come-true was right here in front of his eyes. Running around in thermal underwear, getting ready to go skiing, was his family. Here was Ross Junior, twenty years old, and if there was a finer young man in the state of Texas, Perot had yet to meet him. Here were four--count 'em, four--daughters: Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine. They were all healthy, smart, and lovable. Perot had sometimes told interviewers that he would measure his success in life by how his children turned out. If they grew into good citizens with a deep concern for other people, he would consider his life worthwhile. (The interviewers would say: 'Hell, I believe you, but if I put stuff like that in the article the readers will think I've been bought off!' And Perot would just say: 'I don't care. I'll tell you the truth--you write whatever you like.') And the children had turned out just exactly how he had wished, so far. Being brought up in circumstances of great wealth and privilege had not spoiled them at all. It was almost miraculous.
Running around after the children with ski-lift tickets, wool socks, and sunscreen lotion was the person responsible for this miracle, Margot Perot. She was beautiful, loving, intelligent, classy, and a perfect mother. She could, if she had wanted to, have married a John Kennedy, a Paul Newman, a Prince Rainier, or a Rockefeller. Instead, she had fallen in love with Ross Perot from Texarkana, Texas: five feet seven with a broken nose and nothing in his pocket but hopes. All his life Perot had believed he was lucky. Now, at the age of forty-eight, he could look back and see that the luckiest thing that ever happened to him was Margot.
He was a happy man with a happy family, but a shadow had fallen over them this Christmas. Perot's mother was dying. She had bone cancer. On Christmas Eve she had fallen at home: it was not a heavy fall, but because the cancer had weakened her bones, she had broken her hip and had to be rushed to Baylor Hospital in downtown Dallas.
Perot's sister, Bette, spent that night with their mother; then, on Christmas Day, Perot and Margot and the five children loaded the presents into the station wagon and drove to the hospital. Grandmother was in such good spirits that they all thoroughly enjoyed their day. However, she did not want to see them the following day: she knew they had planned to go skiing, and she insisted they go, despite her illness. Margot and the children left for Vail on December 26, but Perot stayed behind.
There followed a battle of wills such as Perot had fought with his mother in childhood. Lulu May Perot was only an inch or two over five feet, and slight, but she was no more frail than a sergeant in the marines. She told him he worked hard and he needed the holiday. He replied that he did not want to leave her. Eventually the doctors intervened, and told him he was doing her no good by staying against her will. The next day he joined his family in Vail. She had won, as she always had when he was a boy.
One of their battles had been fought over a Boy Scout trip. There had been flooding in Texarkana, and the Scouts were planning to camp near the disaster area for three days and help with relief work. Young Perot was determined to go, but his mother knew that he was too young--he would only be a burden to the scoutmaster. Young Ross kept on and on at her, and she just smiled sweetly and said no.
That time he won a concession from her: he was allowed to go and help pitch tents the first day, but he had to come home in the evening. It wasn't much of a compromise. But he was quite incapable of defying her. He just had to imagine the scene when he would come home, and think of the words he would use to tell her that he had disobeyed her--and he knew he could not do it.
He was never spanked. He could not remember even being yelled at. She did not rule him by fear. With her fair hair, blue eyes, and sweet nature, she bound him--and his sister, Bette--in chains of love. She would just look you in the eye and tell you what to do, and you simply could not bring yourself to make her unhappy.
Even at the age of twenty-three, when Ross had been around the world and come home again, she would say: 'Who have you got a date with tonight? Where are you going? What time will you be back?' And when he came home he would always have to kiss her good night. But by this time their battles were few and far between, for her principles were so deeply embedded in him that they had become his own. She now ruled the family like a constitutional monarch, wearing the trappings of power and legitimizing the real decision-makers.
He had inherited more than her principles. He also had her iron will. He, too, had a way of looking people in the eye. He had married a woman who resembled his mother. Blond and blue-eyed, Margot also had the kind of sweet nature that Lulu May had. But Margot did not dominate Perot.
Everybody's mother has to die, and Lulu May was now eighty-two, but Perot could not be stoical about it. She was still a big part of his life. She no longer gave him orders, but she did give him encouragement. She had encouraged him to start EDS, and she had been the company's book-keeper during the early years as well as a founding director. He could talk over problems with her. He had consulted her in December 1969, at the height of his campaign to publicize the plight of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam. He had been planning to fly to Hanoi, and his colleagues at EDS had pointed out that if he put his life in danger the price of EDS stock might fall. He was faced with a moral dilemma: Did he have the right to make shareholders suffer, even for the best of causes? He had put the question to his mother. Her answer had been unhesitating. 'Let them sell their shares.' The prisoners were dying, and that was far more important than the price of EDS stock.
It was the conclusion Perot would have come to on his own. He did not really need her to tell him what to do. Without her, he would be the same man and do the same things. He was going to miss her, that was all. He was going to miss her very badly indeed.
