On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follett Page A

office building, and took the
        elevator to the fifth floor, where he went to Gayden's comer office.
        Gayden was at his desk. Gayden always managed to look untidy, despite the
        EDS dress code. He had taken his jacket off. His tie was loosened, the
        collar of his button-down shirt was open, his,Mr was mussed, and a
        cigarette dangled from the comer of his mouth. He stood up when Perot
        walked in.
    "Ross, how's your mother?"
    "She's in good spirits, thank you."
    "That's good."
    Perot sat down. "Now, where are we on Paul and Bill?"
        Gayden picked up the phone, saying: "Lemme get T.J. in here." He punched T.
        J. Marquez's number and said: "Ross is here . . . Yeah. My office." He hung
        up and said: "He'll be right down. Uh ... I called the State Department.
        The head of the Iran Desk is a man called Henry Precht. At first he
        wouldn't return my call. In the end I told his secretary, I said: 'If he
        doesn't call me within twenty minutes, I'm going to call CBS and ABC and
        NBC, and in one hour's time Ross Perot is going to give a press conference
        to say that we have two Americans-in trouble in Iran and our country won't
        help them.' He called back five minutes later."
    "What did he say?"
        Gayden sighed. "Ross, their basic attitude up there is that if Paul and
        Bill are in jail they must have done something wrong.
    "But what are they going to do?"
    "Contact the Embassy, look into it, blah blah blah."
        "Well, we're going to have to put a firecracker under Precht's tail," Perot
        said angrily. "Now, Tom Luce is the man to do that." Luce, an aggressive
        young lawyer, was the founder of the Dallas firm of Hughes & Hill, which
        handled most of EDS's legal business. Perot had retained him as EDS's
        counsel years ago, mainly because Perot could relate to a young man who,
        like himself, had left a big company to start his own business and was
        struggling to pay the bills. Hughes & Hill, like EDS, had grown rapidly.
        Perot had never regretted hiring Luce.
    Gayden said: "Luce is right here in the office somewhere."
    "How about Tom Walter?"
    I 'He's here, too."
    66 Ken Follett
     
        Walter, a tall Alabaman with a voice like molasses, was EDS's chief
        financial officer and probably the smartest man, in terms of sheer brains,
        in the company. Perot said: "I want Walter to go to work on the bail. I
        don't want to pay it, but I will if we have to. Walter should figure out
        how we go about paying it. You can bet they won't take American Express."
    "Okay," Gayden said.
    A voice from behind said: "Hi, Ross!"
        Perot looked around and saw T. J. Marquez. "Hi, Tom." T.J, was a tall, slim
        man of forty with Spanish good looks: olive skin, short, curly black hair,
        and a big smile that showed lots of white teeth. The first employee Perot
        ever hired, he was living evidence that Perot had an uncanny knack of
        picking good men. T.J. was now a vice-president of EDS, and his personal
        shareholding in the company was worth millions of dollars. "The Lord has
        been good to us," T.J. would say. Perot knew that T.J.'s parents had really
        struggled to send him to college. Their sacrifices had been well rewarded.
        One of the best things about the meteoric success of EDS, for Perot, had
        been sharing the triumph with people like T.J.
    T.J. sat down and talked fast. "I called Claude."
        Perot nodded: Claude Chappelear was the company's in-house lawyer.
        "Claude's friendly with Matthew Nimetz, counselor to Secretary of State
        Vance. I thought Claude might get Nimetz to talk to Vance himself. Nimetz
        called personally a little later: he wants to help us. He's going to send
        a cable under Vance's name to the U.S. Embassy in