Ken Follett - On Wings Of Eagles (1990)

Most of the others went up to the lounge. Once again, Simons and Coburn stretched out and went to sleep.

Halfway across the Atlantic, Keane Taylor, who for the last few weeks had been carrying around anything up to a quarter of a million dollars in cash and handing it out by the fistful, suddenly took it into his head to have an accounting.

He spread a blanket on the floor of the lounge and started collecting money. One by one, the other members of the team came up, fished wads of banknotes out of their pockets, their boots, their hats, and their shirtsleeves, and threw the money on the floor.

One or two other first-class passengers had come up to the lounge, despite the unsavory appearance of Mr. Perot's party; but now, when this smelly, villainous-looking crew, with their beards and knit caps and dirty boots and go-to-hell coats, spread out several hundred thousand dollars on the floor and started counting it, the other passengers vanished.

A few minutes later a stewardess came up to the lounge and approached Perot. "Some of the passengers are asking whether we should inform the police about your party," she said. "Would you come down and reassure them?"

"I'd be glad to."

Perot went down to the first-class cabin and introduced himself to the passengers in the forward seats. Some of them had heard of him. He began to tell them what had happened to Paul and Bill.

As he talked, other passengers came up to listen. The cabin crew stopped work and stood nearby; then some of the crew from the economy cabin came along. Soon there was a whole crowd.

It began to dawn on Perot that this was a story the world would want to hear.

Upstairs, the team were playing one last trick on Keane Taylor.

While collecting the money, Taylor had dropped three bundles of ten thousand dollars each, and Bill had slipped them into his own pocket.

The accounting came out wrong, of course. They all sat around on the floor, Indian fashion, suppressing their laughter, while Taylor counted it all again.

"How can I be thirty thousand dollars out?" Taylor said angrily. "Dammit, this is all I've got! Maybe I'm not thinking clearly. What the hell is the matter with me?"

At that point Bill came up from downstairs and said: "What's the problem, Keane?"

"God, we're thirty thousand dollars short, and I don't know what I did with all the rest of the money."

Bill took the three stacks out of his pocket and said: "Is this what you're looking for?"

They all laughed uproariously.

"Give me that," Taylor said angrily. "Dammit, Gaylord, I wish I'd left you in jail!"

They laughed all the more.

4_____

The plane came down toward Dallas.

Ross Perot sat next to Rashid and told him the names of the places they were passing over. Rashid looked out of the window, at the flat brown land and the big wide roads that went straight for miles and miles. America.

Joe Poche had a good feeling. He had felt this way as captain of a rugby club in Minnesota, at the end of a long match when his side had won. The same feeling had come to him when he had returned from Vietnam. He had been part of a good team, he had survived, he had learned a lot, he had grown.

Now all he wanted to make him perfectly happy was some clean underwear.

Ron Davis was sitting next to Jay Coburn. "Hey, Jay, what'll we do for a living now?"

Coburn smiled. "I don't know."

It would be strange, Davis thought, to sit behind a desk again. He was not sure he liked the idea.

He suddenly remembered that Marva was now three months pregnant. It would be starting to show. He wondered how she would look, with a bulging tummy.

I know what I need, he thought. I need a Coke. In the can. From a machine. In a gas station. And Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Pat Sculley was thinking: no more orange cabs.

Sculley was sitting next to Jim Schwebach: they were together again, the short but deadly duo, having fired not a single shot at anyone during the whole adventure. They had been talking about what EDS could learn from the rescue. The company had projects in other Middle Eastern countries and was pushing into the Far East: should there perhaps be a permanent rescue team, a group of troubleshooters trained and fit and armed and willing to do covert operations in faraway countries? No, they decided: this had been a unique situation. Sculley realized he did not want to spend any more time in primitive countries. In Tehran he had hated the morning trial of squeezing into an orange cab with two or three grumpy people, Persian music blaring from the car radio, and the inevitable quarrel with the driver over the fare. Wherever I work next, he thought, whatever I do, I'm going to ride to the office by myself, in my own car, a big fat American automobile with air-conditioning and soft music. And when I go to the bathroom, instead of squatting over a hole in the damn floor, there will be a clean white American toilet.

As the plane touched down Perot said to him: "Pat, you'll be last out. I want you to make sure everyone gets through the formalities and deal with any problems."

"Sure."

The plane taxied to a halt. The door was opened, and a woman came aboard. "Where is the man?" she said.

"Here," said Perot, pointing to Rashid.

Rashid was first off the plane.

Perot thought: Merv Stauffer has all that taken care of.

The others disembarked and went through customs.

On the other side, the first person Coburn saw was stocky, bespectacled Merv Stauffer, grinning from ear to ear. Coburn put his arms around Stauffer and hugged him. Stauffer reached into his pocket and pulled out Coburn's wedding ring.

Coburn was touched. He had left the ring with Stauffer for safekeeping. Since then, Stauffer had been the linchpin of the whole operation, sitting in Dallas with a phone to his ear making everything happen. Coburn had talked to him almost every day, relaying Simons's orders and demands, receiving information and advice: he knew better than anyone how important Stauffer had been, how they had all just relied on him to do whatever had to be done. Yet with all that happening, Stauffer had remembered the wedding band.

Coburn slipped it on. He had done a lot of hard thinking about his marriage, during the empty hours in Tehran; but now all that went out of his mind, and he looked forward to seeing Liz.

Merv told him to walk out of the airport and get on a bus that was waiting outside. Coburn followed directions. On the bus he saw Margot Perot. He smiled and shook hands. Then, suddenly, the air was filled with screams of joy, and four wildly excited children threw themselves at him: Kim, Kristi, Scott, and Kelly. Coburn laughed out loud and tried to hug them all at the same time.

Liz was standing behind the kids. Gently Coburn disentangled himself. His eyes filled with tears. He put his arms around his wife, and he could not speak.

When Keane Taylor got on the bus, his wife did not recognize him. Her normally elegant husband was wearing a filthy orange ski jacket and a knitted cap. He had not shaved for a week and he had lost fifteen pounds. He stood in front of her for several seconds, until Liz Coburn said: "Mary, aren't you going to say hello to Keane?" Then his children, Mike and Dawn, grabbed him.

Today was Taylor's birthday. He was forty-one. It was the happiest birthday of his life.

John Howell saw his wife, Angela, sitting at the front of the bus, behind the driver, with Michael, eleven months, on her lap. The baby was wearing blue jeans and a striped rugby shirt. Howell picked him up and said: "Hi, Michael, do you remember your daddy?"

He sat next to Angie and put his arms around her. It was kind of awkward, on the bus seat, and Howell was normally too shy for public displays of affection, but he kept right on hugging her because it felt so good.