Ken Follett - On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Abolhasan said nothing.

"He can't be serious," Paul said.

"He's serious," said Abolhasan.

Suddenly Bill was mad as hell--mad at Dadgar, mad at Lou Goelz, mad at the whole damn world. It had been a sucker trap and they had fallen right into it. Why, they had walked in here of their own free will, to keep an appointment made by the U.S. Embassy. They had done nothing wrong and nobody had a shred of evidence against them--yet they were going to jail, and worse, an Iranian jail!

Abolhasan said: "You are allowed one phone call each."

Just like the cop shows on TV--one phone call, then into the slammer.

Paul picked up the phone and dialed. "Lloyd Briggs, please. This is Paul Chiapparone ... Lloyd? I can't make dinner tonight. I'm going to jail."

Bill thought: Paul doesn't really believe it yet.

Paul listened for a moment, then said: "How about calling Gayden, for a start?" Bill Gayden, whose name was so similar to Bill Gaylord's, was president of EDS World and Paul's immediate boss. As soon as this news reaches Dallas, Bill thought, these Iranian jokers will see what happens when EDS really gets into gear.

Paul hung up and Bill took his turn on the phone. He dialed the U.S. Embassy and asked for the Consul General.

"Goelz? This is Bill Gaylord. We've just been arrested, and bail has been set at thirteen million dollars."

"How did that happen?"

Bill was infuriated by Goelz's calm, measured voice. "You arranged this meeting and you told us we could leave afterward!"

"I'm sure, if you've done nothing wrong--"

"What do you mean if?" Bill shouted.

"I'll have someone down at the jail as soon as possible," Goelz said.

Bill hung up.

The two Iranians who had been hanging about in the corridor all day came in. Bill noticed they were big and burly, and realized they must be plainclothes policemen.

Abolhasan said: "Dadgar said it would not be necessary to handcuff you."

Paul said: "Gee, thanks."

Bill suddenly recalled the stories he had heard about the torturing of prisoners in the Shah's jails. He tried not to think about it.

Abolhasan said: "Do you want to give me your briefcases and wallets?"

They handed them over. Paul kept back a hundred dollars.

"Do you know where the jail is?" Paul asked Abolhasan.

"You're going to a Temporary Detention Facility at the Ministry of Justice on Khayyam Street."

"Get back to Bucharest fast and give Lloyd Briggs all the details."

"Sure."

One of the plainclothes policemen held the door open. Bill looked at Paul. Paul shrugged.

They went out.

The policemen escorted them downstairs and into a little car. "I guess we'll have to stay in jail for a couple of hours," Paul said. "It'll take that long for the Embassy and EDS to get people down there to bail us out."

"They might be there already," Bill said optimistically.

The bigger of the two policemen got behind the wheel. His colleague sat beside him in the front. They pulled out of the courtyard and onto Eisenhower Avenue, driving fast. Suddenly they turned into a narrow one-way street, heading the wrong way at top speed. Bill clutched the seat in front of him. They swerved in and out, dodging the cars and buses coming the other way, other drivers honking and shaking their fists.

They headed south and slightly east. Bill thought ahead to their arrival at the jail. Would people from EDS or the Embassy be there to negotiate a reduction in the bail so that they could go home instead of to a cell? Surely the Embassy staff would be outraged at what Dadgar had done. Ambassador Sullivan would intervene to get them released at once. After all, it was iniquitous to put two Americans in an Iranian jail when no crime had been committed and then set bail at thirteen million dollars. The whole situation was ridiculous.

Except that here he was, sitting in the back of this car, silently looking out of the windows and wondering what would happen next.

As they went farther south, what he saw through the window frightened him even more.

In the north of the city, where the Americans lived and worked, riots and fighting were still an occasional phenomenon, but here--Bill now realized--they must be continuous. The black hulks of burned buses smoldered in the streets. Hundreds of demonstrators were running riot, yelling and chanting, setting fires and building barricades. Young teenagers threw Molotov cocktails--bottles of gasoline with blazing rag fuses--at cars. Their targets seemed random. We might be next, Bill thought. He heard shooting, but it was dark and he could not see who was firing at whom. The driver never went at less than top speed. Every other street was blocked by a mob, a barricade, or a blazing car: the driver turned around, blind to all traffic signals, and raced through side streets and back alleys at breakneck speed to circumvent the obstacles. We're not going to get there alive, Bill thought. He touched the rosary in his pocket.

It seemed to go on forever--then, suddenly, the little car swung into a circular courtyard and pulled up. Without speaking, the burly driver got out of the car and went into the building.

The Ministry of Justice was a big place, occupying a whole city block. In darkness--the streetlights were all off-Bill could make out what seemed to be a five-story building. The driver was inside for ten or fifteen minutes. When he came out he climbed behind the wheel and drove around the block. Bill assumed he had registered his prisoners at the front desk.

At the rear of the building the car mounted the curb and stopped on the sidewalk by a pair of steel gates set into a long, high brick wall. Somewhere over to the right, where the wall ended, there was the vague outline of a small park or garden. The driver got out. A peephole opened in one of the steel doors, and there was a short conversation in Farsi. Then the doors opened. The driver motioned Paul and Bill to get out of the car.

They walked through the doors.

Bill looked around. They were in a small courtyard. He saw ten or fifteen guards armed with automatic weapons scattered around the courtyard. In front of him was a circular driveway with parked cars and trucks. To his left, up against the brick wall, was a single-story building. On his right was another steel door.

The driver went up to the second steel door and knocked. There was another exchange in Farsi through another peephole. Then the door was opened, and Paul and Bill were ushered inside.

They were in a small reception area with a desk and a few chairs. Bill looked around. There were no lawyers, no Embassy staff, no EDS executives here to spring him from jail. We're on our own, he thought, and this is going to be dangerous.

A guard stood behind the desk with a ballpoint pen and a pile of forms. He asked a question in Farsi. Guessing, Paul said: "Paul Chiapparone," and spelled it.

Filling out the forms took close to an hour. An English-speaking prisoner was brought from the jail to help translate. Paul and Bill gave their Tehran addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, and listed their possessions. Their money was taken away and they were each given two thousand rials, about thirty dollars.

They were taken into an adjoining room and told to remove their clothes. They both stripped to their undershorts. Their clothing and their bodies were searched. Paul was told to get dressed again, but not Bill. It was very cold: the heat was off here, too. Naked and shivering, Bill wondered what would happen now. Obviously they were the only Americans in the jail. Everything he had ever read or heard about being in prison was awful. What would the guards do to him and Paul? What would the other prisoners do? Surely any minute now someone would come to get him released.

"Can I put on my coat?" he asked the guard.