Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis by Mark Bowden

like he was being led to his death. “We will teach you,” his captors said. “We will bring to you Khomeini’s thoughts.” He was surprised by how gentle they were. In the din he heard camera shutters clicking. Photographs of Belk emerging from the chancery would be transmitted around the world and would become emblematic. He was urging himself to maintain his dignity. If they are going to kill me, then at least I’ll keep my head up. He squared his shoulders and held high his blindfolded head.
    Bruce German was convinced that he was being led to his execution. He had been asked before leaving the building if he would make a statement to cameras outside denouncing President Carter.
    “I won’t say anything,” he said.
    As marine guard Rocky Sickmann was being led through the fine rain he heard the protesters around him making hissing sounds. Some would come right up to him and hiss loudly in his ear. He didn’t know what it meant. It sounded like they were shushing him, telling him not to say anything. He had nothing to say. The large angry crowd outside the embassy was apparently being held back, and inside the compound there were photographers snapping pictures of him and everyone else. One of the protesters came up to him and held a knife to his temple, which made the others around him laugh. Someone snapped a picture of it.
    Joe Hall felt oddly elated. A young army warrant officer from Oklahoma with a broad forehead, dark straight hair, and mustache, he had never liked the idea of being stationed in Tehran and had arrived with great reluctance that summer to work in the defense attaché’s office. He and his wife, Cherlynn, had worked together for four years at the U.S. embassy in Athens, and it had been the best four years of Hall’s life. This assignment meant they would have to live apart for a full year. They had been missing each other terribly. Hall had taken the post only because the army had tied it to the warrant officer promotion he felt he had earned, and he had resented it from the start. He had found Tehran to be dusty, dry, hot, crowded, and hostile. Now, bound and blindfolded, reeling under the waves of hatred from the Iranian mob, he walked with captors holding him on either side, feeling the drizzle on his face, the first rain he remembered since he had arrived, convinced that this meant his stay in Tehran would be over a lot sooner than planned. So his first reaction to being taken hostage was delight. He figured it meant they would all be evacuated as soon as the local authorities got things in hand. This was going to be the shortest assignment of his career. He would be back home with Cheri soon!
    John Limbert was delighted to get out of the tear gas and smoke. The rain felt soothing. He felt a sudden enormous rush of relief at having escaped death on the staircase and he was overjoyed just to be alive.
    In answer to the chanting crowd he shouted, “Allahuakbar!” in agreement, rejoicing.
    They must have thought he was nuts, an American official, a “spy” flushed from the very bowels of America’s espionage machine, blindfolded, shouting earnestly with them in the rain, “Allahuakbar!”
    President Jimmy Carter was awakened at Camp David with news of trouble at the embassy in Tehran. It was four-thirty in the morning and the call was from Zbigniew Brzezinski, his crisply efficient national security adviser. Carter then spoke briefly with his secretary of state, Cyrus Vance. The hostage takers were demanding the return of the shah, which was, of course, out of the question. Brzezinski was optimistic. So far none of the hostages had been shot, he said, which was a good sign, because such actions were usually the most violent in the first hours. But before he went back to sleep the president had an awful vision of hostages being executed, one a day, for his refusal to be blackmailed. What would he do then?
    As Carter tried to get back to sleep, word flew from phone to phone throughout