On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

now.

Kissinger's good news had been confirmed by a phone call from David Newsom, Cy Vance's deputy at the State Department. And Paul and Bill were getting out not a moment too soon. The news from Iran had been bad again today. Bakhtiar, the Shah's new Prime Minister, had been rejected by the National Front, the party that was now seen as the moderate opposition. The Shah had announced that he might take a vacation. William Sullivan, the American Ambassador, had advised the dependents of all Americans working in Iran to go home, and the embassies of Canada and Britain had followed suit. But the strike had closed the airport, and hundreds of women and children were stranded. However, Paul and Bill would not be stranded. Perot had had good friends at the Pentagon ever since the POW campaign: Paul and Bill would be flown out on a U.S. Air Force jet.

At one o'clock Perot called Tehran. There was no news. Well, he thought, everyone says the Iranians have no sense of time.

The irony of this whole thing was that EDS had never paid bribes, in Iran or anywhere else. Perot hated the idea of bribery. EDS's code of conduct was set out in a twelve-page booklet given to every new employee. Perot had written it himself. 'Be aware that federal law and the laws of most states prohibit giving anything of value to a government official with the intent to influence any official act ... Since the absence of such intent might be difficult to prove, neither money nor anything of value should be given to a federal, state, or foreign government official ... A determination that a payment or practice is not forbidden by law does not conclude the analysis ... It is always appropriate to make further inquiry into the ethics ... Could you do business in complete trust with someone who acts the way you do? The answer must be YES.' The last page of the booklet was a form that the employee had to sign, acknowledging that he had received and read the code.

When EDS first went to Iran, Perot's puritan principles had been reinforced by the Lockheed scandal. Daniel J. Haughton, chairman of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, had admitted to a Senate committee that Lockheed routinely paid millions of dollars in bribes to sell its planes abroad. His testimony had been an embarrassing performance that disgusted Perot: wriggling on his seat, Haughton had told the committee that the payments were not bribes but 'kickbacks.' Subsequently the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act made it an offense under U.S. law to pay bribes in foreign countries.

Perot had called in lawyer Tom Luce and made him personally responsible for ensuring that EDS never paid bribes. During the negotiation of the Ministry of Health contract in Iran, Luce had offended not a few EDS executives by the thoroughness and persistence with which he had cross-examined them about the propriety of their dealings.

Perot was not hungry for business. He was already making millions. He did not need to expand abroad. If you have to pay bribes to do business there, he had said, why, we just won't do business there.

His business principles were deeply ingrained. His ancestors were Frenchmen who came to New Orleans and set up trading posts along the Red River. His father, Gabriel Ross Perot, had been a cotton broker. The trade was seasonal, and Ross Senior had spent a lot of time with his son, often talking about business. 'There's no point in buying cotton from a farmer once,' he would say. 'You have to treat him fairly, earn his trust, and develop a relationship with him, so that he'll be happy to sell you his cotton year after year. Then you're doing business.' Bribery just did not fit in there.

At one-thirty Perot called the EDS office in Tehran again. Still there was no news. 'Call the jail, or send somebody down there,' he said. 'Find out when they're getting out.'

He was beginning to feel uneasy.

What will I do if this doesn't work out? he thought. If I put up the bail, I'll have spent thirteen million dollars and still Paul and Bill will be forbidden to leave Iran. Other ways of getting them out using the legal system came up against the obstacle raised by the Iranian lawyers--that the case was political, which seemed to mean that Paul's and Bill's innocence made no difference. But political pressure had failed so far: neither the U.S. Embassy in Tehran nor the State Department in Washington had been able to help; and if Kissinger should fail, that would surely be the end of all hope in that area. What, then, was left?

Force.

The phone rang. Perot snatched up the receiver. 'Ross Perot.'

'This is Lloyd Briggs.'

'Are they out?'

'No.'

Perot's heart sank. 'What's happening?'

'We spoke to the jail. They have no instructions to release Paul and Bill.'

Perot closed his eyes. The worst had happened. Kissinger had failed.

He sighed. 'Thank you, Lloyd.'

'What do we do next?'

'I don't know,' said Perot.

But he did know.

He said goodbye to Briggs and hung up the phone.

He would not admit defeat. Another of his father's principles had been: take care of the people who work for you. Perot could remember the whole family driving twelve miles on Sundays to visit an old black man who used to mow their lawn, just to make sure that he was well and had enough to eat. Perot's father would employ people he did not need, just because they had no job. Every year the Perot family car would go to the county fair crammed with black employees, each of whom was given a little money to spend and a Perot business card to show if anyone tried to give him a hard time. Perot could remember one who had ridden a freight train to California and, on being arrested for vagrancy, had shown Perot's father's business card. The sheriff had said: 'We don't care whose nigger you are, we're throwing you in jail.' But he had called Perot Senior, who had wired the train fare for the man to come back. 'I been to California, and I'se back,' the man said when he reached Texarkana; and Perot Senior gave him back his job.

Perot's father did not know what civil rights were: this was how you treated other human beings. Perot had not known his parents were unusual until he grew up.

His father would not leave his employees in jail. Nor would Perot.

He picked up the phone. 'Get T. J. Marquez.'

It was two in the morning, but T. J. would not be surprised: this was not the first time Perot had woken him up in the middle of the night, and it would not be the last.

A sleepy voice said: 'Hello?'

'Tom, it doesn't look good.'

'Why?'

'They haven't been released and the jail says they aren't going to be.'

'Aw, damn.'

'Conditions are getting worse over there--did you see the news?'

'I sure did.'

'Do you think it's time for Simons?'

'Yeah, I think it is.'

'Do you have his number?'

'No, but I can get it.'

'Call him,' said Perot.

3____

Bull Simons was going crazy.

He was thinking of burning down his house. It was an old woodframe bungalow, and it would go up like a pile of matchwood, and that would be the end of it. The place was hell to him--but it was a hell he did not want to leave, for what made it hell was the bittersweet memory of the time when it had been heaven.

Lucille had picked the place. She saw it advertised in a magazine, and together they had flown down from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to look it over. At Red Bay, in a dirt-poor part of the Florida Panhandle, the ramshackle house stood in forty acres of rough timber. But there was a two-acre lake with bass in it.