they had been when they started. They were moving south, and the fighting was always worse in the south.
They stopped outside an unfinished building. 'We could duck in there and hide until nightfall,' Paul said. 'After dark nobody will notice that you're American.'
'We might get shot for being out after curfew.'
'You think there's still a curfew?'
Bill shrugged.
'We're doing all right so far,' Paul said. 'Let's go on a little longer.'
They went on.
It was two hours--two hours of crowds and street battles and stray sniper fire--before at last they could turn north. Then the scene changed. The gunfire receded, and they found themselves in a relatively affluent area of pleasant villas. They saw a child on a bicycle, wearing a T-shirt that said something about southern California.
Paul was tired. He had been in jail for forty-five days, and during most of that time he had been sick: he was no longer strong enough to walk for hours. 'What do you say we hitchhike?' he asked Bill.
'Let's give it a try.'
Paul stood at the roadside and waved at the next car that came along. (He remembered not to stick out his thumb the American way--this was an obscene gesture in Iran.) The car stopped. There were two Iranian men in it. Paul and Bill got in the back.
Paul decided not to mention the name of the hotel. 'We're going to Tajrish,' he said. That was a bazaar area to the north of the city.
'We can take you part of the way,' said the driver.
'Thanks.' Paul offered them cigarettes, then sat back gratefully and lit one for himself.
The Iranians dropped them off at Kurosh-e-Kabir, several miles south of Tajrish, not far from where Paul had lived. They were in a main street, with plenty of traffic and a lot more people around. Paul decided not to make himself conspicuous by hitchhiking here.
'We could take refuge in the Catholic Mission,' Bill suggested.
Paul considered. The authorities presumably knew that Father Williams had visited them in Gasr Prison just two days ago. 'The Mission might be the first place Dadgar looks for us.'
'Maybe.'
'We should go to the Hyatt.'
'The guys may not be there any longer.'
'But there'll be phones, some way to get plane tickets...'
'And hot showers.'
'Right.'
They walked on.
Suddenly a voice called: 'Mr. Paul! Mr. Bill!'
Paul's heart stopped. He looked around. He saw a car full of people moving slowly along the road beside him. He recognized one of the passengers: it was a guard from the Gasr Prison.
The guard had changed into civilian clothes, and looked as if he had joined the revolution. His big smile seemed to say: don't tell who I am, and I won't tell who you are.
He waved; then the car gathered speed and passed on.
Paul and Bill laughed with a mixture of amusement and relief.
They turned into a quiet street, and Paul started to hitchhike again. He stood in the road waving while Bill stayed on the sidewalk, so that motorists might think there was only one man, an Iranian.
A young couple stopped. Paul got into the car and Bill jumped in after him.
'We're headed north,' Paul said.
The woman looked at her man.
The man said: 'We could take you to Niavron Palace.'
'Thank you.'
The car pulled away.
The scene in the streets changed again. They could hear much more gunfire, and the traffic became heavier and more frantic, with all the cars honking continually. They saw press cameramen and television crews standing on car roofs taking pictures. The mob was burning the police stations near where Bill had lived. The Iranian couple looked nervous as the car inched through the crowd: having two Americans in their car could get them into trouble in this atmosphere.
It began to get dark.
Bill leaned forward. 'Boy, it's getting a bit late,' he said. 'It sure would be nice if y'all could take us to the Hyatt Hotel. We'd be happy to, you know, thank you and give you something for taking us there.'
'Okay,' said the driver.
He did not ask how much.
They passed the Niavron Palace, the Shah's winter residence. There were tanks outside, as always, but now they had white flags attached to their antennae: they had surrendered to the revolution.
The car went on, past wrecked and burning buildings, turned back every now and again by street barricades.
At last they saw the Hyatt.
'Oh, boy,' Paul said feelingly. 'An American hotel.'
They drove into the forecourt.
Paul was so grateful that he gave the Iranian couple two hundred dollars.
The car drove off. Paul and Bill waved, then walked into the hotel.
Suddenly Paul wished he were wearing his EDS uniform of business suit and white shirt, instead of prison dungarees and a dirty raincoat.
The magnificent lobby was deserted.
They walked to the reception desk. After a moment someone came out from an office.
Paul asked for Bill Gayden's room number.
The clerk checked, then told him there was no one of that name registered.
'How about Bob Young?'
'No.'
'Rich Gallagher?'
'No.'
'Jay Coburn?'
'No.'
I've got the wrong hotel, Paul thought. How could I have made a mistake like that?
'What about John Howell?' he said, remembering the lawyer.
'Yes,' the clerk said at last, and he gave them a room number on the eleventh floor.
They went up in the elevator.
They found Howell's room and knocked. There was no answer.
'What do you think we ought to do?' Bill said.
'I'm going to check in,' said Paul. 'I'm tired. Why don't we check in, have a meal. We'll call the States, tell them we're out of jail, everything will be fine.'
'Okay.'
They walked back to the elevator.
Bit by bit, Keane Taylor got the story out of Rashid.
He had stood just inside the prison gates for about an hour. The scene was a shambles; eleven thousand people were trying to get out through a small doorway, and in the panic women and old men were getting trampled. Rashid had waited, thinking of what he would say to Paul and Bill when he saw them. After an hour the flood of people slowed to a trickle, and he concluded that most people were out. He started asking: 'Have you seen any Americans?' Someone told him that all the foreigners had been kept in Building Number 8. He went there and found it empty. He searched every building in the compound. He then returned to the Hyatt by the route Paul and Bill were most likely to take. Walking and hitching rides, he had looked for them all the way. At the Hyatt he had been
