just under six feet tall, with the shoulders of an ox. His white hair was cropped in a military crewcut, but his bushy eyebrows were still black. On either side of his big nose, two deep lines ran down to the corners of his mouth, giving him a permanently aggressive expression. He had a big head, big ears, a strong jaw, and the most powerful hands Perot had ever seen. The man looked as if he had been carved from a single block of granite.
After spending a day with him, Perot thought: in a world of counterfeits, he is the genuine article.
That day and in years to come Perot learned a lot about Simons. What impressed him most was the attitude of Simons's men toward their leader. He reminded Perot of Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers: he inspired in his men emotions ranging from fear through respect and admiration to love. He was an imposing figure and an aggressive commander--he cursed a lot, and would tell a soldier: 'Do what I say or I'll cut your bloody head off!'--but that by itself could not account for his hold on the hearts of skeptical, battle-hardened commandos. Beneath the tough exterior there was a tough interior.
Those who had served under him liked nothing better than to sit around telling Simons stories. Although he had a bull-like physique, his nickname came not from that but, according to legend, from a game played by Rangers called The Bull Pen. A pit would be dug, six feet deep, and one man would get into it. The object of the game was to find out how many men it took to throw the first man out of the pit. Simons thought the game was foolish, but was once needled into playing it. It took fifteen men to get him out, and several of them spent the night in the hospital with broken fingers and noses and severe bite wounds. After that he was called 'Bull.'
Perot learned later that almost everything in this story was exaggerated. Simons played the game more than once; it generally took four men to get him out; no one ever had any broken bones. Simons was simply the kind of man about whom legends are told. He earned the loyalty of his men not by displays of bravado but by his skill as a military commander. He was a meticulous, endlessly patient planner; he was cautious--one of his catchphrases was: 'That's a risk we don't have to take'; and he took pride in bringing all his men back from a mission alive.
In the Vietnam War Simons had run Operation White Star. He went to Laos with 107 men and organized twelve battalions of Mao tribesmen to fight the Vietnamese. One of the battalions defected to the other side, taking as prisoners some of Simons's Green Berets. Simons took a helicopter and landed inside the stockade where the defecting battalion was. On seeing Simons, the Laotian colonel stepped forward, stood at attention, and saluted. Simons told him to produce the prisoners immediately, or he would call an air strike and destroy the entire battalion. The colonel produced the prisoners. Simons took them away, then called the air strike anyway. Simons had come back from Laos three years later with all his 107 men. Perot had never checked out this legend--he liked it the way it was.
The second time Perot met Simons was after the war. Perot virtually took over a hotel in San Francisco and threw a weekend party for the returning prisoners of war to meet the Son Tay Raiders. It cost Perot a quarter of a million dollars, but it was a hell of a party. Nancy Reagan, Clint Eastwood, and John Wayne came. Perot would never forget the meeting between John Wayne and Bull Simons. Wayne shook Simons's hand with tears in his eyes and said: 'You
Before the ticker-tape parade Perot asked Simons to talk to his Raiders and warn them against reacting to demonstrators. 'San Francisco has had more than its share of antiwar demonstrations, ' Perot said. 'You didn't pick your Raiders for their charm. If one of them gets irritated he might just snap some poor devil's neck and regret it later.'
Simons looked at Perot. It was Perot's first experience of The Simons Look. It made you feel as if you were the biggest fool in history. It made you wish you had not spoken. It made you wish the ground would swallow you up.
'I've already talked to them,' Simons said. 'There won't be a problem.'
That weekend and later, Perot got to know Simons better, and saw other sides of his personality. Simons could be very charming, when he chose to be. He enchanted Perot's wife, Margot, and the children thought he was wonderful. With his men he spoke soldiers' language, using a great deal of profanity, but he was surprisingly articulate when talking at a banquet or press conference. His college major had been journalism. Some of his tastes were simple--he read westerns by the boxful, and enjoyed what his sons called 'supermarket music'--but he also read a lot of nonfiction, and had a lively curiosity about all sorts of things. He could talk about antiques or history as easily as battles and weaponry.
Perot and Simons, two willful, dominating personalities, got along by giving one another plenty of room. They did not become close friends. Perot never called Simons by his first name, Art (although Margot did). Like most people, Perot never knew what Simons was thinking unless Simons chose to tell him. Perot recalled their first meeting in Fort Bragg. Before getting up to make his speech, Perot had asked Simons's wife, Lucille: 'What is Colonel Simons really like?' She had replied: 'Oh, he's just a great big teddy bear.' Perot repeated this in his speech. The Son Tay Raiders fell apart. Simons never cracked a smile.
Perot did not know whether this impenetrable man would care to rescue two EDS executives from a Persian jail. Was Simons grateful for the San Francisco party? Perhaps. After that party Perot had financed Simons on a trip to Laos to search for MIAs--American soldiers missing in action--who had not come back with the prisoners of war. On his return from Laos, Simons had remarked to a group of EDS executives: 'Perot is a hard man to say no to.'
As he pulled into Denver Airport. Perot wondered whether, six years later, Simons would still find him a hard man to say no to.
But that contingency was a long way down the line. Perot was going to try everything else first.
He went into the terminal, bought a seat on the next flight to Dallas, and found a phone. He called EDS and spoke to T. J. Marquez, one of his most senior executives, who was known as T. J. rather than Tom because there were so many Toms around EDS. 'I want you to go find my passport,' he told T. J., 'and get me a visa for Iran.'
T. J. said: 'Ross, I think that's the world's worst idea.'
T. J. would argue until nightfall if you let him. 'I'm not going to debate with you,' Perot said curtly. 'I talked Paul and Bill into going over there, and I'm going to get them out.'
He hung up the phone and headed for the departure gate. All in all, it had been a rotten Christmas.
T. J. was a little wounded. An old friend of Perot's as well as a vice-president of EDS, he was not used to being talked to like the office boy. This was a persistent failing of Perot's: when he was in high gear, he trod on people's toes and never knew he had hurt them. He was a remarkable man, but he was not a saint.
2_______
Ruthie Chiapparone also had a rotten Christmas.
She was staying at her parents' home, an eighty-five-year-old two-story house on the southwest side of Chicago. In the rush of the evacuation from Iran she had left behind most of the Christmas presents she had bought for her daughters, Karen, eleven, and Ann Marie, five; but soon after arriving in Chicago she had gone shopping with her brother Bill and bought some more. Her family did their best to make Christmas Day happy. Her sister and three brothers visited, and there were lots more toys for Karen and Ann Marie; but everyone asked about Paul.
Ruthie needed Paul. A soft, dependent woman, five years younger than her husband--she was thirty-four--she loved him partly because she could lean on his broad shoulders and feel safe. She had always been looked after. As a child, even when her mother was out at work--supplementing the wages of Ruthie's father, a truck driver--Ruthie had two older brothers and an older sister to take care of her.
When she first met Paul he had ignored her.
She was secretary to a colonel; Paul was working on data processing for the army in the same building. Ruthie used to go down to the cafeteria to get coffee for the colonel, some of her friends knew some of the young officers, she sat down to talk with a group of them, and Paul was there and he ignored her. So she ignored him for a while; then all of a sudden he asked her for a date. They dated for a year and a half and then got married.
Ruthie had not wanted to go to Iran. Unlike most of the EDS wives, who had found the prospect of moving to a new country exciting, Ruthie had been highly anxious. She had never been outside the United States--Hawaii was the farthest she had ever traveled--and the Middle East seemed a weird and frightening place. Paul took her to Iran for a week in June of 1977, hoping she would like it, but she was not reassured. Finally she agreed to go, but only because the job was so important to him.
