from Dallas to Dubai by Tested Telex and from Dubai to Tehran by telephone.
'Look,' said Howell, 'let's try to get all this done
'There is a holiday in Dubai today,' said Farhad.
'All right, Dubai can confirm tomorrow morning--'
'There is a strike tomorrow. Nobody will be here at the bank.'
'Monday, then--'
The conversation was interrupted by the sound of a siren. A secretary put her head around the door and said something in Farsi. 'There is an early curfew,' Farhad translated. 'We must all leave now.'
Howell and Taylor sat there looking at each other. Two minutes later they were alone in the office. They had failed yet again.
That evening Simons said to Coburn: 'Tomorrow is the day.'
Coburn thought he was full of shit.
2____
In the morning on Sunday, February 11, the negotiating team went as usual to the EDS office they called 'Bucharest.' John Howell left, taking Abolhasan with him, for an eleven o'clock meeting with Dadgar at the Ministry of Health. The others--Keane Taylor, Bill Gayden, Bob Young, and Rich Gallagher--went up on the roof to watch the city burn.
Bucharest was not a high building, but it was located on a slope of the hills that rose to the north of Tehran, so from the roof they could see the city laid out like a tableau. To the south and east, where modern skyscrapers rose out of the low-rise villas and slums, great palls of smoke billowed up into the murky air, while helicopter gunships buzzed around the fires like wasps at a barbecue. One of EDS's Iranian drivers brought a transistor radio up to the roof and tuned it to a station that had been taken over by the revolutionaries. With the help of the radio and the driver's translation, they tried to identify the burning buildings.
Keane Taylor, who had abandoned his elegant vested suits for jeans and cowboy boots, went downstairs to take a phone call. It was the Cycle Man.
'You need to get out of there,' the Cycle Man told Taylor. 'Get out of the country as quickly as you can.'
'You know we can't do that,' Taylor said. 'We can't leave without Paul and Bill.'
'It's going to be very dangerous for you.'
Taylor could hear, at the other end of the line, the noise of a terrific battle. 'Where the hell are you, anyway?'
'Near the bazaar,' said the Cycle Man. 'I'm making Molotov cocktails. They brought in helicopters this morning and we just figured out how to shoot them down. We burned four tanks--'
The line went dead.
Incredible, Taylor thought as he cradled the phone. In the middle of a battle, he suddenly thinks of his American friends, and calls to warn us. Iranians will never cease to surprise me.
He went back up on the roof.
'Look at this,' Bill Gayden said to him. Gayden, the jovial president of EDS World, had also switched to off- duty clothes: nobody was even pretending to do business anymore. He pointed to a column of smoke in the east. 'If that isn't the Gasr Prison burning, it's damn close.'
Taylor peered into the distance. It was hard to tell.
'Call Dadgar's office at the Ministry of Health,' Gayden told Taylor. 'Howell should be there now. Get him to ask Dadgar to release Paul and Bill to the custody of the Embassy, for their own safety. If we don't get them out, they're going to burn to death.'
John Howell had hardly expected Dadgar to turn up. The city was a battlefield, and an investigation into corruption under the Shah now seemed an academic exercise. But Dadgar was there in his office, waiting for Howell. Howell wondered what the hell was driving the man. Dedication? Hatred of Americans? Fear of the incoming revolutionary government? He would probably never know.
Dadgar had asked Howell about EDS's relationship with Abolfath Mahvi, and Howell had promised a complete dossier. It seemed the information was important to Dadgar's mysterious purposes, for a few days later he had pressed Howell for the dossier, saying: 'I can interrogate the people here and get the information I need,' which Howell took as a threat to arrest more EDS executives.
Howell had prepared a twelve-page dossier in English, with a covering letter in Farsi. Dadgar read the covering letter, then spoke. Abolhasan translated: 'Your company's helpfulness is laying the groundwork for a change in my attitude toward Chiapparone and Gaylord. Our legal code provides for such leniency toward those who supply information.'
It was farcical. They could all be killed in the next few hours, and here was Dadgar still talking about applicable provisions of the legal code.
Abolhasan began to translate the dossier aloud into Farsi. Howell knew that choosing Mahvi as an Iranian partner had not been the smartest move EDS ever made: Mahvi had got the company its first small contract in Iran, but subsequently he had been blacklisted by the Shah and had caused trouble over the Ministry of Health contract. However, EDS had nothing to hide. Indeed, Howell's boss Tom Luce, in his eagerness to place EDS above suspicion, had filed details of the EDS-Mahvi relationship with the American Securities Exchange Commission, so that much of what was in the dossier was already public knowledge.
The phone interrupted Abolhasan's translation. Dadgar picked it up, then handed it to Abolhasan, who listened for a moment, then said: 'It's Keane Taylor.'
A minute later he hung up and said to Howell: 'Keane has been up on the roof at Bucharest. He says there are fires down by Gasr Prison. If the mob attacks the prison, Paul and Bill could get hurt. He suggested we ask Dadgar to turn them over to the American Embassy.'
'Okay,' Howell said. 'Ask him.'
He waited while Abolhasan and Dadgar conversed in Farsi.
Finally Abolhasan said: 'According to our laws, they have to be kept in an Iranian prison. He can't consider the U.S. Embassy to be an Iranian prison.'
Crazier and crazier. The whole country was falling apart, and Dadgar was still consulting his book of rules. Howell said: 'Ask how he proposes to guarantee the safety of two American citizens who have not been charged with any crime.'
Dadgar's reply was: 'Don't be concerned. The worst that could happen is that the prison might be overrun.'
'And what if the mob decides to attack Americans?'
'Chiapparone will probably be safe--he could pass for Iranian.'
'Terrific,' said Howell. 'And what about Gaylord?'
Dadgar just shrugged.
Rashid left his house early that morning.
His parents, his brother, and his sister planned to stay indoors all day, and they had urged him to do the same, but he would not listen. He knew it would be dangerous on the streets, but he could not hide at home while his countrymen were making history. Besides, he had not forgotten his conversation with Simons.
He was living by impulse. On Friday he had found himself at Farahabad Air Base during the clash between the homafars and loyalist Javadan Brigade. For no particular reason, he had gone into the armory and started passing out rifles. After half an hour of that he got bored and left.
