Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis (76 page)

“No, you are going home. To your home,” said Akbar.

Queen still looked mystified.

“America,” said Akbar. “Ayatollah Khomeini has decided to release you to your parents.”

Later that day Gaptooth, Hussein Sheikh-ol-eslam, the student captors’ black-bearded leader, came into his room for a last political harangue.

“My people and the American people get along well,” he said, “but the government…the CIA is trying to destroy our revolution. No one tried to harass or kill the Americans who were leaving Iran at the time of the shah’s overthrow. The people had nothing against America, but the United States is trying to destroy the revolution. When you go back, speak the truth.” He apologized for any misbehavior by Queen’s guards, particularly in the first two months. “We tried to treat you well. The first two months were chaotic here—it was so disorganized.”

Hours later, Richard Queen was being carried off a plane in Zurich, Switzerland.

On the night of July 27, John Limbert heard car horns honking all over Isfahan. At first he thought it was a wedding. Iranians often celebrated by honking horns, but it was Ramadan, and there usually weren’t weddings during the holy season. Besides, the horns seemed to be sounding not just in one place but all over the city. Out in the yard the students had a television in a tent, and at night sometimes they would sit around it and turn it up. Limbert could stand by his window and pick up bits and pieces of the report. He heard the phrase, “vampire of the age,” and “bloodsucker.” Later, when one of his guards came in, a young man named Mohammed, Limbert asked about the car horns.

“It’s a wedding,” Mohammed said.

“Really? A wedding during Ramadan? These people must have been in an awful hurry to get married.”

Mohammed spent a lot of time talking to Limbert. He was twenty-two, and Limbert judged him to be a pretty good student. He was thoughtful, well spoken, and eager to learn. Most important, he didn’t seem to have a completely closed mind as so many of the other young Iranians did. They had struck a deal: Mohammed would play chess with Limbert in exchange for English lessons. They discussed religious ideas, and Limbert asked Mohammed to tell him about some of the characters in Iran’s long history. Once the guard asked a question that intrigued Limbert.

“Whenever you leave us here and go home, what are you going to say about us?”

“I will tell people that some of you were decent human beings and that some of you are filth,” he had said and then explained that, no matter how many decent individuals were involved, their action would be remembered in the latter category.

The offhand assumption behind the question intrigued Limbert, however, and gave him a sense of hope and relief at a time when he desperately needed it. It showed Mohammed was concerned that Americans not get the wrong idea about him and the other hostage takers, because he hadn’t given up hope of visiting and studying in the States.

“After all this is over, do you think I could get a visa?” he asked.

Not a chance in hell, Limbert thought, but said, diplomatically, “Well, Mohammed. All you can do is apply.”

Mohammed caught his captive’s drift and seemed crestfallen. That suited Limbert fine. He hoped he would worry about it.

On reflection, Limbert realized that he knew why horns were honking, and why Mohammed had been thinking about an end to this ordeal. His mind had assembled the clues—celebration, “bloodsucker,” “vampire,” and Mohammed’s unexpected question. The shah was dead. But what did it mean? That had been the pretense for holding them, but it had been apparent for months that the shah wasn’t coming back. Still, his death removed an important obstacle. The students would have had a harder time releasing him and the others if the shah were still lounging on a beach somewhere.

There was another demonstration in Isfahan during Limbert’s long summer. It was a Friday, the day of communal prayers in Iran, and after the usual chanting and singing outside, a group of young people, some portion of a local khomiteh, gathered to read off a windy umpteen-point political statement. Limbert was surprised to hear in this one a call for Type A blood for loyal soldiers hurt during fighting in Kurdistan.

“I understand you need Type A blood,” Limbert told the next guard to come by his room. “I am Type A, and I’d be perfectly happy to donate some if your soldiers in Kurdistan need it.”

His offer upset the guard. Limbert was not supposed to know of the fighting in Kurdistan or the need for blood. He was concerned about a breakdown in their security system at the villa.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“I just know,” Limbert told him unhelpfully. What he wanted was for the guard to think that one of his own had been talking. He kept renewing his offer to donate blood but was ignored.

Mohammed brought him a fresh towel, some comfortable Iranian-style pajama pants, and a small cassette tape player with recordings by Gordon Lightfoot, classical Iranian music, recitations of classical Persian poetry, and, for some reason, music by Mikis Theodorakis from the sound track of the movie Serpico. Limbert especially liked the old Iranian songs, which had been pronounced passé by the new regime, so were out of favor, but which had an irresistible pull even for the young guards. He noticed how they drifted in when he was playing them.

Eventually Limbert was moved to another room with its own bathroom, so he lost his message drop and all communication with Kalp. Each afternoon at about two, the guards would turn up their radios and listen to a broadcast sermon from a zealous cleric who ranted on and on, usually for nearly two hours, spouting bizarre revisionist history, spreading lies and distortions, condemning the late shah and denouncing everything about America and the West. It called to Limbert’s mind an old saying, “Against stupidity the gods themselves labor in vain.” For many weeks he had no contact with anyone other than his guards. He began to worry that something had happened. Had everyone else been released? Had he been left behind? Had the others been killed?

Then one day a guard asked him to define some English words that he didn’t understand.

The words were “raghead,” “bozo,” “motherfucker,” and “cocksucker.” Limbert laughed. It warmed his heart. Someplace nearby his captors were still coping with the United States Marine Corps.

Limbert made it a point to get along with everyone, but for some of the hostages it was a trial just getting along with each other. Colonel Chuck Scott found it difficult to share space with the sullen, white-bearded Bob Blucker. The colonel had initially been thrilled months ago at the chancery when, after a month in solitary, the middle-aged budget officer was led into his room. Blucker immediately told the guard that he didn’t want to stay. He said he preferred his own room across the hall, where it was cooler and there was no smoke. The guard refused to reconsider and Blucker stayed, but right from the start Scott was offended and disappointed. Though from time to time his new roommate had made an effort to indulge the colonel’s need for conversation, most of the time he was distant and sullen. Now, forced again to cohabit, their relationship worsened. Little things Blucker did or refused to do irritated Scott. For instance, after eating, if the colonel used the bathroom first he would scoop up all the dirty dishes on the way out and wash them in the bathroom sink. When Blucker went out, he took only his own dishes. If a guard dropped a treat, nuts or dates, into Scott’s bowl, the fussy Blucker declined to take one—he would eat only out of his own bowl, as if the colonel’s had not been adequately cleaned.

One morning, after months of being locked indoors, a guard announced as he served breakfast that they must eat it quickly because in fifteen minutes they would be allowed to exercise outdoors. Scott was delighted. He ate fast and donned his slacks and shirt. Blucker continued to pick slowly at his food.

“Bob, you better hurry,” Scott said. He was worried that if they both weren’t ready, neither of them would get to go outside. Blucker said he couldn’t care less.

“I’m not going to hurry through my breakfast just to go outside.”

They argued for a few moments, and Scott pleaded, “Come on, Bob, we’re in this thing together. I know you prefer to be alone, but give me a break.”

Blucker refused to hurry and Scott lost his temper. He grabbed hold of his roommate’s shirt and pulled him to his feet. He was going outside if he had to drag Blucker with him. They were arguing loudly when the guards intervened. Blucker claimed that Scott had hit him. Scott denied it.

As punishment, the colonel was left alone in a small, dark room, where he sat stewing over his roommate’s lack of basic consideration. He was angry at himself for losing both his temper and the trip outdoors, where the weather had turned warm. After an hour of cooling off, Akbar came to retrieve him.

“Mr. Blucker is afraid that if he is left with you that you will kill him,” he said. “He says you are crazy.”

Scott was placed in a new room with different roommates, which he found a vast improvement, and soon afterward he was summoned to an unusual session with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, one of the state’s most powerful clerics (and the eventual successor to the imam as supreme leader). In his capacity as military liaison, Scott had met Khamenei almost a year earlier. The ayatollah was in charge of Iran’s military, and the colonel had sought him out to discuss outstanding defense contracts. As the colonel saw it, no matter how hateful its bluster, Iran had an overwhelming interest in opening such discussions because there were still billions of dollars of Iranian money deposited in trusts to pay off military purchases, money that was earning interest in American banks. It was not unusual for payouts from these accounts to total $750 million per quarter. Evidently ignorant of the trust fund, Khamenei initially told Scott that he was wasting his time; Iran was not interested in doing business with the United States anymore, under any circumstances, and that any outstanding debts would not be paid.

“So, let me get this straight,” Scott had said. “If after all the contracts are paid out the fund still has a few hundred million dollars in it, we should just donate it to the U.S. Treasury?”

At that point the ayatollah became interested. This was the work Scott had been doing when taken hostage. It turned out that if Iran wanted to keep its air force flying, it had to continue doing business with the United States. In the weeks before the takeover, Scott had arranged for the first official purchase by revolutionary Iran from the U.S. military, a $10 million order of tires for their fleet of F-14s and F-5 fighters. All that now seemed like it had happened in a different world.

In the months since he had last seen Khamenei, Iran’s geopolitical position had grown more precarious. Saddam Hussein had become increasingly belligerent along its western border and just weeks before had executed a revered Shia leader. Ever since, Iran had been both mourning and girding for war. So it came as no surprise to Scott that Khamenei’s interest in American parts would be stronger than ever. He had come looking for the American colonel who had sold him aircraft tires. Delivery of that order had been frozen, along with the rest of Iran’s considerable assets in the United States, since the takeover of the embassy.

Sitting cross-legged on the rug, puffing on a pipe, wearing a fat gold Rolex on his wrist, Khamenei asked the colonel, “If we were to release all of you now, without any conditions, how long would it be before you could begin to supply us again with spare parts for our military forces?”

“You’re asking the wrong man,” said Scott. “I have had no contact with either my government or the American people since I became a hostage. I’ve been kept in the dark by your people.”

“But you have served in your army for many years. What do you think? How long would it take?”

“Frankly, my guess is that it will be a long time before you get any cooperation on spare parts from America, after what you have done and continue to do to us.”

Khamenei insisted that neither Scott nor any of the other hostages had been harmed; they were being “protected,” he said, and then explained how the United States had just sent commandos to Iran in a failed attempt to assassinate them. Scott quickly scrutinized this remark through a well-honed rhetorical filter—what Iran called an “assassination squad” would have to have been…yes, a rescue force! So there had been a rescue attempt! Scott now understood why they had all been so suddenly moved. He told the ayatollah that he doubted American troops would have been sent to kill him and the others. If Carter was that cavalier about their fate, he would have leveled Tehran months ago.

“You are lucky to be alive, don’t you know that?” Khamenei said, annoyed.

When the ayatollah departed he left instructions that the prisoners’ diets be improved, but despite this concern all three men fell ill with dysentery. On July 12, still weak from the illness, Scott, Don Sharer, and navy petty officer Sam Gillette were driven back to Tehran and locked in Komiteh prison. A single lightbulb dangled from the ceiling of a room about fifteen feet square, furnished with three Styrofoam mattresses, three wooden chairs, and a table. Their guard turned out to be Ahmad, the squat, balding man who in the Mushroom Inn had taken such pleasure in tormenting them. He told them that they were being placed in prison for their own safety.

“You know about the mission that was sent to kill you?” Ahmad asked.

They said they had heard the whole bullshit story, and then complained about being locked in a prison, reminding the guard of the repeated assurances that they were not “prisoners” but “guests.”

“This is not a prison,” said Ahmad. “It is only a place to keep hostages.”

By the end of summer all of the hostages were in Tehran prison cells.

John Limbert’s at Komiteh was about fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long, with two mattresses on the floor and a high window that admitted some light. It reminded him of Jack Benny’s “vault”—a standing joke on the famous comic’s TV program was that he was so miserly he kept all his money in a vault, which he would visit periodically on the show, passing through a series of huge, clanking doors draped with chains and locks. Komiteh was like that; it was so prison-like that it seemed over the top to Limbert, complete with echoing stone walls, and creaking steel doors with a lip on the bottom like those on naval vessels.