On Wings of Eagles (8 page)

    to make her unhappy.

    Even at the age of twenty-three, when Ross had been around the world and

    come home again, she would say: "Who have you got a date with tonight?

    Where are you going? What time will you be back?" And when he came home he

    would always have to kiss her good night. But by this time their battles

    were few and far between, for her principles were so deeply embedded in him

    that they had become his own. She now ruled the family Ue a constitutional

    monarch, wearing the trappings of power and legitimizing the real

    decision-makers.

    He had inherited more than her principles. He also had her iron will. He,

    too, had a way of looking, people in the eye. He had married a woman who

    resembled his mother. Blond and

48 Ken Follen

blue-eyed, Margot also had the kind of sweet nature that Lulu May had. But

Margot did not dominate Perot.

    Everybody's mother has to die, and Lulu May was now eighty-two, but Perot

    could not be stoical about it. She was still a big part of his life. She no

    longer gave him orders, but she did give him encouragement. She had

    encouraged him to start EDS, and she had been the company's bookkeeper

    during the early years as well as a founding director. He could talk over

    problems with her. He had consulted her in December 1969, at the height of

    his campaign to publicize the plight of American prisoners of war in North

    Vietnam. He had been planning to fly to Hanoi, and his colleagues at EDS

    had pointed out that if he put his life in danger the price of EDS stock

    might fall. He was faced with a moral dilemma: Did he have the right to

    make shareholders suffer, even for the best of causes? He had put the

    question to his mother. Her answer had been unhesitating. "Let them sell

    their shares. " The prisoners were dying, and that was far more important

    than the price of EDS stock.

    It was the conclusion Perot would have come to on his own. He did not

    really need her to tell him what to do. Without her, he would be the same

    man and do the same things. He was going to miss her, that was all. He was

    going to miss her very badly indeed.

    But he was not a man to brood. He could do nothing for her today. Two years

    ago, when she had a stroke, he had turned Dallas upside down on a Sunday

    afternoon to find the best neurosurgeon in town and bring him to the

    hospital. He responded to a crisis with action. But if there was nothing to

    be done he was able to shut the problem out of his mind, forgetting the bad

    news and going on to the next task. He would not now spoil his family's

    holiday by walking around with a mournful face. He would enter into the fun

    and games, and enjoy the company of his wife and children.

    The phone rang, interrupting his thoughts, and he stepped into the kitchen

    to pick it up.

:'Ross Perot," he said.

'Ross, this is Bill Gayden."

    'Hi, Bill." Gayden was an EDS old-timer, having joined the company in 1967.

    In some ways he was the typical salesman. He was a jovial man, everyone's

    buddy. He liked a joke, a drink, a smoke, and a hand of poker. He was also

    a wizard financier, very good around acquisitions, mergers, and deals,

    which was

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 49

why Perot had made lurn president of EDS World. Gayden's sense of humor was

irrepressible--he would find something funny to say in the most serious

situations-but now he sounded somber.

"Ross, we got a problem."

    It was an EDS catchphrase: We got a problem. It meant bad news.

Gayden went on: "It's Paul and Bill."

    Perot knew instantly what he was talking about. The way in which his two

    senior men in Iran had been, prevented from leaving the country was highly

    sinister, and it had never been far from his mind, even while his mother

    lay dying. "But they're supposed to be allowed out today.

"They've been arrested."

    The anger began as a small, hard knot in the pit of Perot's stomach. "Now,

    Bill, I was assured that they would be allowed to leave Iran as soon as

    this interview was over. Now I want to know how this happened."

"They just slung them in jail."

"On what charges?"

"They didn't specify charges."

"Under what law did they jail them?"

"They didn't say."

"What are we doing to get them out?"

    "Ross, they set bail at ninety million tomans. That's twelve million, seven

    hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

"Twelve million?"

"That's right. -

"Now how the devil has this happened?"

    "Ross, I've been on the phone with Lloyd Briggs for half an hour, trying to

    understand it, and the fact is that Lloyd doesn't understand it either. -

    Perot paused. EDS executives were supposed to give him answers, not

    questions. Gayden knew better than to call without briefing himself as

    thoroughly as possible. Perot was not going to get any more out of him

    right now; Gayden just didn't have the information.

    "Get Tom Luce into the office," Perot said. "Call the State Department in

    Washington. This takes priority over everything else. I don't want them to

    stay in that *1 another damn minute!

50 Ken Folleu

Margot pricked up her ears when she heard Ross say damn: it was most unusual

for him to curse, especially in front of the children. He came in from the

kitchen with his face set. His eyes were as blue as the Arctic Ocean, and as

cold. She knew that look. It was not just anger: he was not the kind of man

to dissipate his energy in a display of bad temper. It was a look of

inflexible determination. It meant he had decided to do sornething and he

would move heaven and earth to get it done. She had seen that determination,

that strength, in him when she had first met him, at the Naval Academy in

Annapolis ... could it really be twenty-five years ago? It was the quality

that cut him out from the herd, made him different from the mass of men. Oh,

he had other qualities-he was smart, he was funny, he could charm the birds

out of the trees-but what made him excepdonal was his strength of will. When

he got that look in his eyes you could no more stop him than you could stop

a railway train on a downhill gradient.

"The Iranians put Paul and Bill in jail," he said.

    Margot's thoughts flew at once to their wives. She had known them both for

    years. Ruthie Chiapparone was a small, placid, smiling girl with a shock of

    fair hair. She had a vulnerable look: men wanted to protect her. She would

    take it hard. Emily Gaylord was tougher, at least on the surface. A thin

    blond woman, Emily was vivacious and spirited: she would want to get on a

    plane and go spring Bill from jail herself. The difference in the two women

    showed in their clothes: Ruthie chose soft fabrics and gentle outlines;

    Emily went in for smart tailoring and bright colors. Emily would suffer on

    the inside.

-I'm going back to Dallas," Ross said.

    "Mere's a blizzard out there," said Margot, looking out at the snowflakes

    swirling down the mountainside. She knew she was wasting her breath: snow

    and ice would not stop him now. She thought ahead: Ross would not be able

    to sit behind a desk in Dallas for very long while two of his men were in

    an Iranian jail. He's not going to Dallas, she thought; he's going to Iran.

    - I'll take the four-wheel drive," he said. "I can catch a plane in Denver.

    11

    Margot suppressed her fears and smiled brightly. "Drive carefully, won't

    you," she said.

Perot sat hunched over the wheel of the GM Suburban, driving carefully. The

road was icy. Snow built up along the bottom

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 51

edge of the windshield, shortening the travel of the wipers. He peered at

the road ahead. Denver was 106 miles from Vail. It gave him time to think.

He was still furious.

    It was not just that Paul and Bill were in jail. They were in jail because

    they had gone to Iran, and they had gone to Iran because Perot had sent

    them there.

    He had been worried about Iran for months. One day, after lying awake at

    night thinking about it, he had gone into the office and said: "Let's

    evacuate. If we're wrong, all we've lost is the price of three or four

    hundred plane tickets. Do it today. -

    It had been one of the rare occasions on which his orders were not carried

    out. Everyone had dragged their feet, in Dallas and in Tehran. Not that he

    could blame them. He had lacked determination. If he had been firm they

    would have evacuated that day; but he had not been firm, and the following

    day the passports had been called for.

    He owed Paul and Bill a lot anyway. He felt a special debt of loyalty to

    the men who had gambled their careers by joining EDS when it was a

    struggling young company. Many times he had found the right man,

    interviewed him, got him interested, and offered him the job, only to find

    that, on talking it over with his family, the man had decided that EDS was

    just too small, too new, too risky.

    Paul and Bill had not only taken the chance-they had worked their butts off

    to make sure their gamble paid. Bill had designed the basic computer system

    for the administration of Medicare and Medicaid programs that, used now in

    many American states, formed the foundation of EDS's business. He had

    worked long hours, spent weeks away from home, and moved his family all

    over the country in those days. Paul had been no less dedicated: when the

    company had too few men and very little cash, Paul had done the work of duw

    systems engineers. Perot could remember the company's first contract in New

    York, with Pepsico; and Paul walking from Manhattan across the Brooklyn

    Bridge in the snow, to sneak past a picket line-the plant was on strikeand

    go to work.

Perot owed it to Paul and Bill to get them out.

    He owed it to them to get the government of the United States to bring the

    whole weight of its influence to bear on the hanians.

America had asked for Perot's help, once; and he had given

52 Ken Follett

three years of his life-and a bunch of money-to the prisonersof-war

campaign. Now he was going to ask for America's help.

    His mind went back to 1969, when the Vietnam War was at its height. Some of

    his friends from the Naval Academy had been killed or captured: Bill

    Leftwich, a wonderfully warm, strong, kind man, had been killed in battle

    at the age of thirty-nine; Bill Lawrence was a prisoner of the North

    Vietnamese. Perot found it hard to watch his country, the greatest country

    in the world, losing a war because of lack of will; and even harder to see

    millions of Americans protesting, not without justification, that the war

    was wrong and should not be won. Then, one day in 1969, he had met little

    Billy Singleton, a boy who did not know whether he had a father or not.

    Billy's father had been missing in Vietnam before ever seeing his son:

    there was no way of knowing whether he was a prisoner, or dead. It was

    heartbreaking.

    For Perot, sentiment was not a mournful emotion but a clarion call to

    action.

    He learned that Billy's father was not unique. There were many, perhaps

    hundreds, of wives and children who did not know whether their husbands and

    fathers had been killed or just captured. The Vietriamese, arguing that

    they were not bound by the rules of the Geneva Convention because the

    United States had never declared war, refused to release the names of their

    prisoners.

    Worse still, many of the prisoners were dying of brutality and neglect.

    President Nixon was planning to "Vietnamize" the war and disengage in three

    years' time, but by then, according to CIA reports, half the prisoners

    would have died. Even if Billy Singleton's father were alive, he might not

    survive to come home.

Perot wanted to do something.

    EDS had good connections with the Nixon White House. Perot went to

    Washington and talked to Chief Foreign Policy Advisor Henry Kissinger. And

    Kissinger had a plan.

    The Vietnamese were maintaining, at least for the purposes of propaganda,

    that they had no quarrel with the American peopleonly with the U.S.

    government. Furthermore, they were presenting themselves to the world as

    the little guy in a David-andGoliath conflict. It seemed that they valued

    their public image. It might be possible, Kissinger thought, to embarrass

    them into improving their treatment of prisoners, and releasing the names,

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 53

by an international campaign to publicize the sufferings of the prisoners

and their families.

    The campaign must be privately financed, and must seem to be quite