On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

two.

'But it's worse than that. Your men would be in a position much worse than soldiers in battle--international laws and the Geneva Convention, which protect soldiers in uniform, would not protect the rescue team.

'If they get captured in Iran ... Ross, they'll be shot. If they get captured in any country that has an extradition treaty with Iran, they'll be sent back and shot. Instead of two innocent employees in jail, you could have eight guilty employees dead.

'And if that happens, the families of the dead men may turn on you--understandably, because this whole thing will look stupid. The widows will have huge claims against EDS in the American courts. They could bankrupt the company. Think of the ten thousand people who would be out of a job if that happened. Think of yourself--Ross, there might even be criminal charges against you that could put you in jail!'

Perot said calmly: 'I appreciate your advice, Tom.'

Luce stared at him. 'I'm not getting through to you, am I?'

Perot smiled. 'Sure you are. But if you go through life worrying about all the bad things that can happen, you soon convince yourself that it's best to do nothing at all.'

The truth was that Perot knew something Luce did not.

Ross Perot was lucky.

All his life he had been lucky.

As a twelve-year-old boy he had had a paper route in the poor black district of Texarkana. The Texarkana Gazette cost twenty-five cents a week in those days, and on Sundays, when he collected the money, he would end up with forty or fifty dollars in quarters in his pocket. And every Sunday, somewhere along the route, some poor man who had spent his week's wages in a bar the previous night would try to take the money from little Ross. This was why no other boy would deliver papers in that district. But Ross was never scared. He was on a horse; the attempts were never very determined; and he was lucky. He never lost his money.

He had been lucky again in getting admitted to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Applicants had to be sponsored by a senator or a congressman, and of course the Perot family did not have the right contacts. Anyway, young Ross had never even seen the sea--the farthest he had ever traveled was to Dallas, 180 miles away. But there was a young man in Texarkana called Josh Morriss, Jr., who had been to Annapolis and told Ross all about it, and Ross had fallen in love with the navy without ever seeing a ship. So he just kept writing to senators begging for sponsorship. He succeeded--as he would many times during later life--because he was too dumb to know it was impossible.

It was not until many years later that he found out how it had happened. One day back in 1949 Senator W. Lee O'Daniel was clearing out his desk: it was the end of his term and he was not going to run again. An aide said: 'Senator, we have an unfilled appointment to the Naval Academy.'

'Does anyone want it?' the senator said.

'Well, we've got this boy from Texarkana who's been trying for years ...'

'Give it to him,' said the senator.

The way Perot heard the story, his name was never actually mentioned during the conversation.

He had been lucky once again in setting up EDS when he did. As a computer salesman for IBM, he realized that his customers did not always make the best use of the machines he sold them. Data processing was a new and specialized skill. The banks were good at banking, the insurance companies were good at insurance, the manufacturers were good at manufacturing--and the computer men were good at data processing. The customer did not want the machine, he wanted the fast, cheap information it could provide. Yet, too often, the customer spent so much time creating his new data-processing department and learning how to use the machine that his computer caused him trouble and expense instead of saving them. Perot's idea was to sell a total package--a complete data-processing department with machinery, software, and staff. The customer had only to say, in simple language, what information he needed, and EDS would give it to him. Then he could get on with what he was good at--banking, insurance, or manufacturing.

IBM turned down Perot's idea. It was a good concept but the pickings would be small. Out of every dollar spent on data processing, eighty cents went into hardware--the machinery--and only twenty cents into software, which was what Perot wanted to sell. IBM did not want to chase pennies under the table.

So Perot drew a thousand dollars out of his savings and started up on his own. Over the next decade the proportions changed until software was taking seventy cents of every data-processing dollar, and Perot became one of the richest self-made men in the world.

The chairman of IBM, Tom Watson, met Perot in a restaurant one day and said: 'I just want to know one thing, Ross. Did you foresee that the ratio would change?'

'No,' said Perot. 'The twenty cents looked good enough to me.'

Yes, he was lucky; but he had to give his luck room to operate. It was no good sitting in a corner being careful. You never got the chance to be lucky unless you took risks. All his life Perot had taken risks.

This one just happened to be the biggest.

Merv Stauffer walked into the office. 'Ready to go?' he said.

'Yes.'

Perot got up and the two men left the office. They went down in the elevator and got into Stauffer's car, a brand-new four-door Lincoln Versailles. Perot read the nameplate on the dashboard: 'Merv and Helen Stauffer.' The interior of the car stank of Simons's cigars.

'He's waiting for you,' Stauffer said.

'Good.'

Perot's oil company, Petrus, had offices in the next building along Forest Lane. Merv had already taken Simons there, then come for Perot. Afterward he would take Perot back to EDS, then return for Simons. The object of the exercise was secrecy: as few people as possible were to see Simons and Perot together.

In the last six days, while Simons and the rescue team had been doing their thing out at Lake Grapevine, the prospects of a legal solution to the problem of Paul and Bill had receded. Kissinger, having failed with Ardeshir Zahedi, was unable to do anything else to help. Lawyer Tom Luce had been busy calling every single one of the twenty-four Texas congressmen, both Texas senators, and anyone else in Washington who would take his calls; but what they all did was to call the State Department to find out what was going on, and all the calls ended up on the desk of Henry Precht.

EDS's chief financial officer, Tom Walter, still had not found a bank willing to post a letter of credit for $12,750,000. The difficulty, Walter had explained to Perot, was this: under American law, an individual or a corporation could renege on a letter of credit if there was proof that the letter had been signed under illegal pressure--for example, blackmail or kidnapping. The banks saw the imprisonment of Paul and Bill as a straightforward piece of extortion, and they knew EDS would be able to argue, in an American court, that the letter was invalid and the money should not be paid. In theory that would not matter, for by then Paul and Bill would be home, and the American bank would simply--and quite legally--refuse to honor the letter of credit when it was presented for payment by the Iranian government. However, most American banks had large loans outstanding with Iran, and their fear was that the Iranians would retaliate by deducting $12,750,000 from what they owed. Walter was still searching for a large bank that did no business with Iran.

So, unfortunately, Operation Hotfoot was still Perot's best bet.

Perot left Stauffer in the car park and went into the oil company building.

He found Simons in the little office reserved for Perot. Simons was eating peanuts and listening to a portable radio. Perot guessed that the peanuts were his lunch and the radio was to swamp any eavesdropping devices that might be hidden in the room.

They shook hands. Perot noticed that Simons was growing a beard. 'How are things?' he said.

'They're good,' Simons answered. 'The men are beginning to pull together as a team.'

'Now,' said Perot, 'you realize you can reject any member of the team you find unsatisfactory.' A couple of days earlier Perot had proposed an addition to the team, a man who knew Tehran and had an outstanding military record, but Simons had turned him down after a short interview, saying: 'That guy believes his own bullshit.' Now Perot wondered whether Simons had found fault, during the training period, with any of the others. He went on: