The seventh floor in Dallas blamed Perot for all this. He had leveled with the Consul, who had come to see him the night before, and they believed the leak started with the Consul. They were now frantically trying to get the story killed, but the newspaper was making no promises.
General Wilson called back. Sergeant Krause was not dying: Perot's help was not required.
Perot forgot about Krause and concentrated on his own problems.
The Consul called him. He had tried his best, but he could not help Perot buy or rent a small aircraft. It was possible to charter a plane to go from one airport to another within Turkey, but that was all.
Perot said nothing to him about the press leak.
He called in Dick Douglas and Julian 'Scratch' Kanauch, the two spare pilots he had brought specifically to fly small aircraft into Iran, and told them he had failed to find any such aircraft.
'Don't worry,' said Douglas. 'We'll get an airplane.'
'How?'
'Don't ask.'
'No, I want to know how.'
'I've operated in eastern Turkey. I know where there are planes. If you need 'em, we'll steal 'em.'
'Have you thought this through?' said Perot.
'You think it through,' Douglas said. 'If we get shot down over Iran, what difference does it make that we stole the plane? If we don't get shot down, we can put the planes back where we got them. Even if they have a few holes in them, we'll be out of the area before anybody knows. What else is there to think about?'
'That settles it,' said Perot. 'We're going.'
He sent John Carlen and Ron Davis to the airport to file a flight plan to Van, the nearest airport to the border.
Davis called from the airport to say that the 707 could not land at Van: it was a Turkish-language-only airport, so no foreign planes were allowed to land except U.S. military planes carrying interpreters.
Perot called Mr. Fish and asked him to arrange to fly the team to Van. Mr. Fish called back a few minutes later to say it was all fixed. He would go with the team as guide. Perot was surprised: until now, Mr. Fish had been adamant that he would not go to eastern Turkey. Perhaps he had become infected by the spirit of adventure.
However, Perot himself would have to stay behind. He was the hub of the wheel: he had to stay in telephone contact with the outside world, to receive reports from Boulware, from Dallas, from the Clean Team, and from the Dirty Team. If the 707 had been able to land at Van, Perot could have gone, for the plane's single-sideband radio enabled him to make phone calls all over the world; but without that radio he would be out of touch in eastern Turkey, and there would be no link between the fugitives in Iran and the people who were coming to meet them.
So he sent Pat Sculley, Jim Schwebach, Ron Davis, Mr. Fish, and the pilots Dick Douglas and Julian Kanauch to Van; and he appointed Pat Sculley leader of the Turkish Rescue Team.
When they had gone he was dead in the water again. They were just another bunch of his men off doing dangerous things in dangerous places. He could only sit and wait for news.
He spent a lot of time thinking about John Carlen and the crew of the Boeing 707. He had only known them for a few days: they were ordinary Americans. Yet Carlen had been prepared to risk his life to fly into Tehran and pick up a wounded marine. As Simons would say: This is what Americans are supposed to do for one another. It made Perot feel pretty good, despite everything.
The phone rang.
He answered. 'Ross Perot.'
'This is Ralph Boulware.'
'Hi, Ralph, where are you?'
'I'm at the border.'
'Good!'
'I've just seen Rashid.'
Perot's heart leaped. 'Great! What did he say?'
'They're safe.'
'Thank God!'
'They're in a hotel thirty or forty miles from the border. Rashid is just scouting the territory in advance. He's gone back now. He says they'll probably cross tomorrow, but that's just his idea, and Simons may think otherwise. If they're that close I don't see Simons waiting until morning.'
'Right. Now, Pat Sculley and Mr. Fish and the rest of the guys are on their way to you. They're flying to Van; then they'll rent a bus. Now, where will they find you?'
'I'm based in a village called Yuksekova, closest place to the border, at a hotel. It's the only hotel in the district.'
'I' ll tell Sculley.'
'Okay.'
Perot hung up. Oh, boy, he thought; at last things are beginning to go right!
Pat Sculley's orders from Perot were to go to the border, ensure that the Dirty Team got across safely, and bring them to Istanbul. If the Dirty Team failed to reach the border, he was to go into Iran and find them, preferably in a plane stolen by Dick Douglas, or failing that, by road.
Sculley and the Turkish Rescue Team took a scheduled flight from Istanbul to Ankara, where a chartered jet was waiting for them. (The charter plane would take them to Van and bring them back: it would not go anywhere they pleased. The only way of making the pilot take them into Iran would have been to hijack the plane.)
The arrival of a jet seemed to be a big event in the town of Van. Getting off the plane, they were met by a contingent of policemen who looked ready to give them a hard time. But Mr. Fish went into a huddle with the police chief and came out smiling.
'Now, listen,' said Mr. Fish. 'We're going to check into the best hotel in town, but I want you to know it's not the Sheraton, so please don't complain.'
They went off in two taxis.
The hotel had a high central hall with three floors of rooms reached via galleries, so that every room door could be seen from the hall. When the Americans walked in, the hall was full of Turks, drinking beer and watching a soccer match on a black-and-white TV, yelling and cheering. As the Turks noticed the strangers, the room quieted down until there was complete silence.
They were assigned rooms. Each bedroom had two cots and a hole in the corner, screened by a shower curtain, for a toilet. There were plank floors and whitewashed walls without windows. The rooms were infested with cockroaches. On each floor was one bathroom.
Sculley and Mr. Fish went to get a bus to take them all to the border. A Mercedes picked them up outside the hotel and took them to what appeared to be an electrical appliance store with a few ancient TV sets in the window. The place was closed--it was evening by now--but Mr. Fish banged on the iron grille protecting the windows, and someone came out.
They went into the back and sat at a table under a single lightbulb. Sculley understood none of the conversation, but by the end of it Mr. Fish had negotiated a bus and a driver. They returned to the hotel in the bus.
The rest of the team were gathered in Sculley's room. Nobody wanted to sit on these beds, let alone sleep in them. They all wanted to leave for the border immediately, but Mr. Fish was hesitant. 'It's two o'clock in the morning,' he said. 'And the police are watching the hotel.'
'Does that matter?' said Sculley.
'It means more questions, more trouble.'
'Let's give it a try.'
They all trooped downstairs. The manager appeared, looking anxious, and started to question Mr. Fish. Then, sure enough, two policemen came in from outside and joined in the discussion.
Mr. Fish turned to Sculley and said: 'They don't want us to go.'
'Why not?'
'We look very suspicious. Don't you realize that?'
