On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follett

the ininates spoke to them in Farsi. Paul said: "Does anyone here
        speak English?"
        From another cell across the corridor a voice called: "I speak English.
        There was a shouted conversation in rapid Farsi, then the interpreter
        called: "What is your crime?"
    "We haven't done anything," Paul said.
    "What are you accused of?"
        "Nothing. We're just ordinary American businessmen with wives and children,
        and we don't know why we're in jail."
        This was translated. There was more rapid Farsi, then the interpreter said:
        "This one who is talking to me, he is the boss of your cell, because he is
        there the longest.
    "We understand," Paul said.
    "He will tell you where to sleep."
        The tension eased as they talked. Paul took in his surroundings. The
        concrete walls were painted what niight once have been orange but now just
        looked dirty. There was some kind of thin carpet or matting covering most
        of the concrete floor. Around the cell were six sets of bunks, stacked
        three high: the lowest bunk was no more than a thin mattress on the floor.
        The room was lit by a single dim bulb and ventilated by a grille in the
        wall that let in the bitterly cold night air. The cell was very crowded.
        After a while a guard came down, opened the door of Cell Number 9, and
        motioned Paul and Bill to come out.
        This is it, Paul thought; we'll be released now. Thank God I don't have to
        spend a night in that awful cell.
    64 Ken FoUett
     
        They followed the guard upstairs and into a little room. He pointed at
        their shoes.
    They understood they were to take their shoes off.
    The guard handed them each a pair of plastic slippers.
        Paul realized with bitter disappointment that they were not about to be
        released; he did have to spend a night in the cell. He thought with anger
        of the Embassy staff they had arranged the meeting with Dadgar, they had
        advised Paul against taking lawyers, they had said Dadgar was "favorably
        disposed" . . . Ross Perot would say: "Some people can't organize a two-car
        ftmeral." Mmt applied to the U.S. Embassy staff. They were simply
        incompetent. Surely, Paul thought , after all the mistakes they have made,
        they ought to come here tonight and try to get us out?
        They put on the plastic slippers and followed the guard back downstairs.
        The other prisoners were getting ready for sleep, lying on the bunks and
        wrapping themselves in thin wool blankets. The cell boss, using sign
        language, showed Paul and Bill where to he down: Bill was on the middle
        bunk of a stack, Paul below him with just a thin mattress between his body
        and the floor.
        They lay down. The light stayed on, but it was so dim it hardly mattered.
        After a while Paul no longer noticed the smell, but he did not get used to
        the cold. With the concrete floor, the open vent, and no heating, it was
        almost like sleeping out of doors. What a terrible fife criminals lead,
        Paul thought, having to endure conditions such as these; I'm glad I'm not
        a criminal. One night of this will be more than enough.
     
        3
     
    Ross Perot took a taxi from the Dallas/Fort Worth regional airport to EDS
    corporate headquarters at 7171 Forest Lane. At the EDS gate he rolled down
    the window to let the security guards see his face, then sat back again as
    the car wound along the quarter-mile driveway through the park. The site had
    once been a country club, and these grounds a golf course. EDS headquarters
    loomed ahead, a seven-story office building, and
        ON WINGS OF EAGLES 65
     
    next to it a tomado-proof blockhouse containing the vast computers with
    their thousands of miles of magnetic tape,
        Perot paid the driver, walked into the