the whole country exploded?
It was increasingly dangerous for the EDS people to come to the south of the city, where the jail was. Paul and Bill never knew when the next visit would come, or whether there would be a next visit. As four days went by, then five, Bill would wonder whether all the others had gone back to the United States and left him and Paul behind. Considering that the bail was impossibly high, and the streets of Tehran impossibly dangerous, might they all give up Paul and Bill as a lost cause? They might be forced, against their wills, to leave in order to save their own lives. Bill recalled the American withdrawal from Vietnam, with the last Embassy officials being lifted off the roofs by helicopter, and he could imagine the scene repeated at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
He was occasionally reassured by a visit from an Embassy official. They, too, were taking a risk in coming, but they never brought any hard news about government efforts to help Paul and Bill, and Bill came to the conclusion that the State Department was inept.
Visits from Dr. Houman, their Iranian attorney, were at first highly encouraging; but then Bill realized that in typically Iranian fashion Houman was promising much and producing little. The fiasco of the meeting with Dadgar was desperately depressing. It was frightening to see how easily Dadgar outmaneuvered Houman, and how determined Dadgar was to keep Paul and Bill jailed. Bill had not slept that night.
When he thought about the bail he found it staggering. No one had ever paid that much ransom, anywhere in the world. He recalled news stories about American businessmen kidnapped in South America and held for a million or two million dollars. (They were usually killed.) Other kidnappings, of millionaires, politicians, and celebrities, had involved demands for three or four million--never thirteen. No one would pay that much for Paul and Bill.
Besides, even that much money would not buy them the right to leave the country. They would probably be kept under house arrest in Tehran--white the mobs took over. Bail sometimes seemed more like a trap than a way of escape. It was a catch-22.
The whole experience was a lesson in values. Bill learned that he could do without his fine house, his cars, fancy food, and clean clothes. It was no big deal to be living in a dirty room with bugs crawling across the walls. Everything he had in life had been stripped away, and he discovered that the only thing he cared about was his family. When you got right down to it, that was all that really counted: Emily, Vicki, Jackie, Jenny, and Chris.
Coburn's visit had cheered him a little. Seeing Jay in that big down coat and woolen hat, with a growth of red beard on his chin, Bill had guessed that he was not in Tehran to work through legal channels. Coburn had spent most of the visit with Paul, and if Paul had learned more, he had not passed it on to Bill. Bill was content: he would find out as soon as he needed to know.
But the day after Coburn's visit there was bad news. On January 16 the Shah left Iran.
The television set in the hall of the jail was switched on, exceptionally, in the afternoon; and Paul and Bill, with all the other prisoners, watched the little ceremony in the Imperial Pavilion at Mehrabad Airport. There was the Shah, with his wife, three of his four children, his mother-in-law, and a crowd of courtiers. There, to see them off, was Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar, and a crowd of generals. Bakhtiar kissed the Shah's hand, and the royal party went out to the airplane.
The Ministry people in the jail were gloomy: most of them had been friends, of one kind or another, with the royal family or its immediate circle. Now their patrons were leaving. It meant, at the very least, that they had to resign themselves to a long stay in jail. Bill felt that the Shah had taken with him the last chance of a pro-American outcome in Iran. Now there would be more chaos and confusion, more danger to all Americans in Tehran--and less chance of a swift release for Paul and Bill.
Soon after the television showed the Shah's jet rising into the sky, Bill began to hear a background noise, like a distant crowd, from outside the jail. The noise quickly grew to a pandemonium of shouting and cheering and hooting of horns. The TV showed the source of the noise: a crowd of hundreds of thousands of Iranians was surging through the streets, yelling:
He and Paul stayed in their cell for the rest of the day, trying to be inconspicuous. They lay on their bunks, talking desultorily. Paul smoked. Bill tried not to think about the terrifying scenes he had watched on TV, but the roar of that lawless multitude, the collective shout of revolutionary triumph, penetrated the prison walls and filled his ears, like the deafening crack and roll of nearby thunder a moment before the lightning strikes.
Two days later, on the morning of January 18, a guard came to Cell Number 5 and said something in Farsi to Reza Neghabat, the former Deputy Minister. Neghabat translated to Paul and Bill: 'You must get your things together. They are moving you.'
'Where to?' Paul asked.
'To another jail.'
Alarm bells rang in Bill's mind. What kind of jail were they going to? The kind where people were tortured and killed? Would EDS be told where they had gone, or would the two of them simply disappear? This place was not wonderful, but it was the devil they knew.
The guard spoke again, and Neghabat said: 'He tells you not to be concerned--this is for your own good.'
It was the work of minutes to put together their toothbrushes, their shared shaver, and their few spare clothes. Then they sat and waited--for three hours.
It was unnerving. Bill had got used to this jail, and--despite his occasional paranoia--basically he trusted his cellmates. He feared the change would be for the worse.
Paul asked Neghabat to try to get news of the move to EDS, maybe by bribing the colonel in charge of the jail.
The cell father, the old man who had been so concerned for their welfare, was upset that they were leaving. He watched sadly as Paul took down the pictures of Karen and Ann Marie. Impulsively Paul gave the photographs to the old man, who was visibly moved and thanked him profusely.
At last they were taken out into the courtyard and herded onto a minibus, along with half a dozen other prisoners from different parts of the jail. Bill looked around at the others, trying to figure out what they had in common. One was a Frenchman. Were all the foreigners being taken to a jail of their own, for their safety? But another was the burly Iranian who had been boss of the downstairs cell where they had spent their first night--a common criminal, Bill assumed.
As the bus pulled out of the courtyard, Bill spoke to the Frenchman. 'Do you know where we're going?'
'I am to be released,' the Frenchman said.
Bill's heart leaped. This was good news! Perhaps they were all to be released.
He turned his attention to the scene in the streets. It was the first time for three weeks he had seen the outside world. The government buildings all around the Ministry of Justice were damaged: the mobs really had run wild. Burned cars and broken windows were everywhere. The streets were full of soldiers and tanks, but they were doing nothing--not maintaining order, not even controlling the traffic. It seemed to Bill only a matter of time before the weak Bakhtiar government would be overthrown.
What had happened to the EDS people--Taylor, Howell, Young, Gallagher, and Coburn? They had not appeared at the jail since the Shah left. Had they been forced to flee, to save their own lives? Somehow Bill was sure they were still in town, still trying to get him and Paul out of jail. He began to hope that this transfer had been arranged by them. Perhaps, instead of taking the prisoners to a different jail, the bus would divert and take them to the U.S. air base. The more he thought about it, the more he believed that everything had been arranged for their release. No doubt the American Embassy had realized, since the departure of the Shah, that Paul and Bill were in serious danger, and had at last got on the case with some real diplomatic muscle. The bus ride was a ruse, a cover story to get them out of the Ministry of Justice jail without arousing the suspicion of hostile Iranian officials such as Dadgar.
The bus was heading north. It passed through districts with which Bill was familiar, and he began to feel safer as the turbulent south of the city receded behind him.
