'Goddammit, you got us in here!'
Bill sat down slowly, too depressed to be angry.
'We're very sorry this has happened,' said Jordan. 'It came as a complete surprise to us. We were told that Dadgar was favorably disposed toward you ... The Embassy is filing a very serious protest.'
'But what are you doing to get us
'You must work through the Iranian legal system. Your attorneys--'
'Jesus Christ,' Paul said disgustedly.
Jordan said: 'We have asked them to move you to a better part of the jail.'
'Gee, thanks.'
Sorenson asked: 'Uh, is there anything else you need?'
'There's nothing I need,' Paul said. 'I'm not planning to be here very long.'
Bill said: 'I'd like to get some eye drops.'
'I'll see that you do,' Sorenson promised.
Jordan said: 'I think that's all for now ...' He looked at the guard.
Bill stood up.
Jordan spoke in Farsi to the guard, who motioned Paul and Bill to the door.
They followed the guard back across the courtyard. Jordan and Sorenson were low-ranking Embassy staff, Bill reflected. Why hadn't Goelz come? It seemed that the Embassy thought it was EDS's job to get them out: sending Jordan and Sorenson was a way of notifying the Iranians that the Embassy was concerned but at the same time letting Paul and Bill know that they could not expect much help from the U.S. government. We're a problem the Embassy wants to ignore, Bill thought angrily.
Inside the main building the guard opened a door they had not been through before, and they went from the reception area into a corridor. On their right were three offices. On their left were windows looking out into the courtyard. They came to another door, this one made of thick steel. The guard unlocked it and ushered them through.
The first thing Bill saw was a TV set.
As he looked around he started to feel a little better. This part of the jail was more civilized than the basement. It was relatively clean and light, with gray walls and gray carpeting. The cell doors were open and the prisoners were walking around freely. Daylight came in through the windows.
They continued along a hall with two cells on the right and, on the left, what appeared to be a bathroom: Bill looked forward to a chance to get clean again after his night downstairs. Glancing through the last door on the right, he saw shelves of books. Then the guard turned left and led them down a long, narrow corridor and into the last cell.
There they saw someone they knew.
It was Reza Neghabat, the Deputy Minister in charge of the Social Security Organization at the Ministry of Health. Both Paul and Bill knew him well and had worked closely with him before his arrest last September. They shook hands enthusiastically. Bill was relieved to see a familiar face, and someone who spoke English.
Neghabat was astonished. 'Why are you in here?'
Paul shrugged. 'I kind of hoped you might be able to tell us that.'
'But what are you accused of?'
'Nothing,' said Paul. 'We were interrogated yesterday by Mr. Dadgar, the magistrate who's investigating your former Minister, Dr. Sheik. He arrested us. No charges, no accusations. We're supposed to be 'material witnesses,' we understand.'
Bill looked around. On either side of the cell were paired stacks of bunks, three high, with another pair beside the window, making eighteen altogether. As in the cell downstairs, the bunks were furnished with thin foam-rubber mattresses, the bottom bunk of the three being no more than a mattress on the floor, and gray wool blankets. However, here some of the prisoners seemed to have sheets, as well. The window, opposite the door, looked out into the courtyard. Bill could see grass, flowers, and trees, as well as parked cars belonging, he presumed, to guards. He could also see the low building where they had just talked with Jordan and Sorenson.
Neghabat introduced Paul and Bill to their cellmates, who seemed friendly and a good deal less villainous than the inmates of the basement. There were several free bunks--the cell was not as crowded as the one downstairs--and Paul and Bill took beds on either side of the doorway. Bill's was the middle bunk of three, but Paul was on the floor again.
Neghabat showed them around. Next to their cell was a kitchen, with tables and chairs, where the prisoners could make tea and coffee or just sit and talk. For some reason it was called the Chattanooga Room. Beside it was a hatch in the wall at the end of the corridor: this was a commissary, Neghabat explained, where from time to time you could buy soap, towels, and cigarettes.
Walking back down the long corridor, they passed their own cell--Number 5--and two more cells before emerging into the hall, which stretched away to their right. The room Bill had glanced into earlier turned out to be a combination guard's office and library, with books in English as well as Farsi. Next to it were two more cells. Opposite these cells was the bathroom, with sinks, showers, and toilets. The toilets were Persian style--like a shower tray with a drain hole in the middle. Bill learned that he was not likely to get the shower he longed for: normally there was no hot water.
Beyond the steel door, Neghabat said, was a little office used by a visiting doctor and dentist. The library was always open and the TV was on all evening, although of course programs were in Farsi. Twice a week the prisoners in this section were taken out into the courtyard to exercise by walking in a circle for half an hour. Shaving was compulsory: the guards would allow mustaches, but not beards.
During the tour they met two more people they knew. One was Dr. Towliati, the Ministry data-processing consultant about whom Dadgar had questioned them. The other was Hussein Pasha, who had been Neghabat's financial man at the Social Security Organization.
Paul and Bill shaved with the electric razor brought in by Sorenson and Jordan. Then it was noon, and time for lunch. In the corridor wall was an alcove screened by a curtain. From there the prisoners took a linoleum mat, which they spread on the cell floor, and some cheap tableware. The meal was steamed rice with a little lamb, plus bread and yogurt, and tea or Pepsi-Cola to drink. They sat cross-legged on the floor to eat. For Paul and Bill, both gourmets, it was a poor lunch. However, Bill found he had an appetite: perhaps it was the cleaner surroundings.
After lunch they had more visitors: their Iranian attorneys. The lawyers did not know why they had been arrested, did not know what would happen next, and did not know what they could do to help. It was a desultory, depressing conversation. Paul and Bill had no faith in them anyway, for it was these lawyers who had advised Lloyd Briggs that the bail would not exceed twenty thousand dollars. They returned no wiser and no happier.
They spent the rest of the afternoon in the Chattanooga Room, talking to Neghabat, Towliati, and Pasha. Paul described his interrogation by Dadgar in detail. Each of the Iranians was highly interested in any mention of his own name during the interrogation. Paul told Dr. Towliati how his name had come up, in connection with a suggested conflict of interest. Towliati described how he, too, had been questioned by Dadgar in the same way before being thrown in jail. Paul recollected that Dadgar had asked about a memorandum written by Pasha. It had been a completely routine request for statistics, and nobody could figure out what was supposed to be special about it.
Neghabat had a theory as to why they were all in jail. 'The Shah is making scapegoats of us, to show the masses that he really is cracking down on corruption--but he picked a project where there was no corruption. There is nothing to crack down on--but if he releases us, he will look weak. If he had looked instead at the construction business, he would have found an unbelievable amount of corruption....'
It was all very vague. Neghabat was just rationalizing. Paul and Bill wanted specifics:
