Newsom was calling from the Situation Room in the White House, where Zbigniew Brzezinski was chairing a meeting on Iran. He asked for Sullivan's assessment of the current position in Tehran. Sullivan gave it to him in a few short phrases, and told him that right at that moment he was preoccupied with saving the life of the senior American military officer in Iran.
A few minutes later Sullivan got a call from an Embassy official who had succeeded in reaching Ibrahim Yazdi, a Khomeini sidekick. The official was telling Sullivan that Yazdi might help when the call was overridden and Newsom came on the line again.
Newsom said: 'The National Security Advisor has asked for your view of the possibility of a coup d'etat by the Iranian military to take over from the Bakhtiar government, which is clearly faltering.'
The question was so ridiculous that Sullivan blew his cool. 'Tell Brzezinski to fuck off,' he said.
'That's not a very helpful comment,' said Newsom.
'You want it translated into Polish?' Sullivan said, and he hung up the phone.
On the roof of Bucharest, the negotiating team could see the fires spreading uptown. The noise of shooting was also coming closer to where they stood.
John Howell and Abolhasan returned from their meeting with Dadgar. 'Well?' Gayden said to Howell. 'What did that bastard say?'
'He won't let them go.'
'Bastard.'
A few minutes later they all heard a noise that sounded distinctly like a bullet whistling by. A moment later the noise came again. They decided to get off the roof.
They went down to the offices and watched from the windows. They began to see, in the street below, boys and young men with rifles. It seemed the mob had broken into a nearby armory. This was too close for comfort: it was time to abandon Bucharest and go to the Hyatt, which was farther uptown.
They went out and jumped into two cars, then headed up the Shahanshahi Expressway at top speed. The streets were packed, and there was a carnival atmosphere. People were leaning out of windows yelling
They reached the Hyatt and assembled in the sitting room of the eleventh-floor corner suite that Gayden had taken over from Perot. They were joined by Rich Gallagher's wife, Cathy, and her white poodle, Buffy.
Gayden had stocked the suite with booze from the abandoned homes of EDS evacuees, and he now had the best bar in Tehran; but no one felt much like drinking.
'What do we do next?' Gayden asked.
Nobody had any ideas.
Gayden got on the phone to Dallas, where it was now six A.M. He reached Tom Walter and told him about the fires, the fighting, and the kids on the streets with their automatic rifles.
'That's all I got to report,' he finished.
In his slow Alabama drawl, Walter said: 'Other than that a quiet day, huh?'
They discussed what they would do if the phone lines went down. Gayden said he would try to get messages through via the U.S. military: Cathy Gallagher worked for the army and she thought she could swing it.
Keane Taylor went into the bedroom and lay down. He thought about his wife, Mary. She was in Pittsburgh, staying with his parents. Taylor's mother and father were both past eighty and in failing health. Mary had called to tell him his mother had been rushed to the hospital: it was her heart. Mary wanted Taylor to come home. He had spoken to his father, who had said ambiguously: 'You know what you have to do.' It was true: Taylor knew he had to stay here. But it was not easy, not for him or for Mary.
He was dozing on Gayden's bed when the phone rang. He reached out to the bedside table and picked it up. 'Hello?' he said sleepily.
A breathless Iranian voice said: 'Are Paul and Bill there?'
'What?' said Taylor. 'Rashid--is that you?'
'Are Paul and Bill there?' Rashid repeated.
'No. What do you mean?'
'Okay, I'm coming, I'm coming.'
Rashid hung up.
Taylor got off the bed and went into the sitting room. 'Rashid just called,' he told the others. 'He asked me if Paul and Bill were here.'
'What did he mean?' said Gayden. 'Where was he calling from?'
'I couldn't get anything else out of him. He was all excited, and you know how bad his English is when he gets wound up.'
'Didn't he say any more?'
'He said: 'I'm coming,' then he hung up.'
'Shit.' Gayden turned to Howell. 'Give me the phone.' Howell was sitting with the phone to his ear, saying nothing: they were keeping the line to Dallas open. At the other end an EDS switchboard operator was listening, waiting for someone to speak. Gayden said: 'Let me talk to Tom Walter again, please.'
As Gayden told Walter about Rashid's call, Taylor wondered what it meant. Why would Rashid imagine Paul and Bill might be at the Hyatt? They were in jail--weren't they?
A few minutes later Rashid burst into the room, dirty, smelling of gunsmoke, with clips of G3 ammunition falling out of his pockets, talking a mile a minute so that nobody could understand a word. Taylor calmed him down. Eventually he said: 'We hit the prison. Paul and Bill were gone.'
Paul and Bill stood at the foot of the prison wall and looked around.
The scene in the street reminded Paul of a New York parade. In the apartment buildings across from the jail everyone was at the windows, cheering and applauding as they watched the prisoners escape. At the street corner a vendor was selling fruit from a stall. There was gunfire not far away, but in the immediate vicinity nobody was shooting. Then, as if to remind Paul and Bill that they were not yet out of danger, a car full of revolutionaries raced by with guns sticking out of every window.
'Let's get out of here,' said Paul.
'Where do we go? The U.S. Embassy? The French Embassy?'
'The Hyatt.'
Paul started walking, heading north. Bill walked a little behind him, with his coat collar turned up and his head bent to hide his pale American face. They came to an intersection. It was deserted: no cars, no people. They started across. A shot rang out.
Both of them ducked and ran back the way they had come.
It was not going to be easy.
'How are you doing?' said Paul.
'Still alive.'
They walked back past the prison. The scene was the same: at least the authorities had not yet got organized enough to start rounding up the escapees.
Paul headed south and east through the streets, hoping to circle around until he could go north again. Everywhere there were boys, some only thirteen or fourteen, with automatic rifles. On every corner was a sandbagged bunker, as if the streets were divided up into tribal territories. Farther on they had to push their way through a crowd of yelling, chanting, almost hysterical people: Paul carefully avoided meeting people's eyes, for he did got want them to notice him, let alone speak to him--if they were to learn there were two Americans in their midst they might turn ugly.
The rioting was patchy. It was like New York, where you had only to walk a few steps and turn a corner to find the character of the district completely changed. Paul and Bill went through a quiet area for half a mile, then ran into a battle. There was a barricade of overturned cars across the road and a bunch of youngsters with rifles shooting across the barricade toward what looked like a military installation. Paul turned away quickly, fearful of being hit by a stray bullet.
Each time he tried to turn north he ran into some obstruction. They were now farther from the Hyatt than
