Part 7 (1/2)

That night, everyone slept in their clothes, ready to bolt at the first sign of danger. Kathy and Cora shared the bedroom, while Mark, Joe, and Bob stayed up most of the night in the living room, talking and thinking. Mark was especially worried about Cora. He thought about the events leading up to his wife's coming to Iran. They'd been college sweethearts and had gotten married soon after she graduated. Initially, once Mark had arrived in Iran and seen how bad things were, he had second thoughts-officials at the State Department, he thought, had painted a much rosier picture than the reality. Cora had told him he was overreacting. Now he wished he'd stood his ground and persuaded her not to come. Along with Joe and Kathy, they were the only married couples at the emba.s.sy in Iran, and his main concern was that he and Cora would be captured and the militants would use them against each other. He thought about the ways they could mistreat her, harm her-anything they wanted to get to him, and vice versa. It made him feel very vulnerable. This wasn't some Hollywood movie, but life. The stakes were high.

As the Americans sat in the living room, outside the lonely komiteh made his nightly rounds, his whistle piercing the calm with its shrill wail. The noose was tightening around them and they knew it. And it felt like there was not a single thing they could do about it.

5

CANADA TO THE RESCUE

Just before sunup on the morning of November 10, the fugitive Americans had already made up their minds. Graves's house just wasn't safe enough anymore. It was time to leave.

They organized themselves quickly, agreeing that it would be better if they made the trip before it got light. They were in such a hurry they even forgot a load of laundry in the was.h.i.+ng machine. Sam called an Armenian taxi driver friend, who came over and picked everyone up. Kate Koob's home was the logical choice.

At Koob's house, they sat uneasily in the darkness, too afraid to turn on any lights. When it was finally bright enough to see, they did a quick tour of the house and realized immediately that they wouldn't be able to stay. It was located on the corner and right up against the sidewalk. It also had large floortoceiling windows without any drapes, and they wouldn't even be able to enter the kitchen without the whole world knowing. Despair set in once more; they had to find yet another hideout, and fast. Luckily, Anders had a plan.

Two days earlier, on November 8, after Laingen had called to tell the Americans they were on their own, Anders, who had a few numbers with him, phoned a good friend at the Australian emba.s.sy. Delighted to hear that Anders was fine, the friend readily agreed to take him in, but when Anders mentioned the others, the friend begged off, saying he just didn't have the room. Anders then remembered John Sheardown, a colleague at the Canadian emba.s.sy whom he'd gotten to know well over the previous months. The two had met at one of the many Western-emba.s.sy functions that had become so popular in the absence of any nightlife in the city. They had a lot in common. Like Anders, Sheardown had served in World War II, and at fifty-five he was considered to be an old-timer among the Canadian diplomats in Iran. A distinguished balding man with a penchant for smoking pipes, Sheardown was the chief of the immigration section at the Canadian emba.s.sy. Since Bob had been in Iran without his family, John had frequently invited him over to his house for dinner. John's wife, Zena, was not a Canadian citizen but was originally from British Guiana (now the independent nation of Guyana). This meant she didn't have diplomatic immunity. A warm and vivacious person, she loved to entertain but rarely left the house.

After striking out with his Australian friend, Anders picked up the phone again and dialed the Canadian emba.s.sy. Sheardown, of course, knew about the attack on the U.S. emba.s.sy and had just a.s.sumed that Anders had been taken along with everyone else. He was amazed to hear that his friend had gotten out. ”Where are you?” he asked with incredulity.

Anders tried to explain but gave up after a few minutes. The streets in Tehran were complicated enough, and to make matters worse they'd all been renamed after the revolution. ”I don't know where I am exactly,” he said.

Sheardown asked him what he needed. This was on Thursday, before the Americans knew they would soon be moving to Koob's house. Anders told him that they were okay for the moment but that they might need to find another place soon. ”We're in a bit of a bind,” he said.

Sheardown didn't hesitate. ”Why didn't you call me before?” he said. ”What took you so long?”

Anders explained that he was with four other Americans and that they had decided to remain as a group. Because of this, they'd been reluctant to impose on anyone for fear of putting lives in unnecessary danger. Despite not having official permission to do so, Sheardown told Anders that he'd be happy to help in any way he could. Like most Western diplomats in Tehran, he was incensed when Khomeini had endorsed the emba.s.sy takeover. The diplomatic community in Tehran was a tight-knit group, and not only did Sheardown know many of the people who were now being held against their will, but the entire exercise went against the conventions of international law and diplomacy. The fact that it was Anders who was calling only made him all the more willing to break with conventions. ”We have plenty of room here,” Sheardown said.

Anders thanked him and they agreed to keep in touch if the situation ever changed.

As soon as he had gotten off the phone with Anders, Sheardown walked upstairs to see his boss, Canadian amba.s.sador Ken Taylor. At forty-five and sporting a salt-and-pepper 1970s perm and mod-style gla.s.ses, Taylor was a bit of an iconoclast among the senior diplomats in Tehran. Born in 1934, Taylor had entered the Canadian Foreign Service in 1959 and made his way up the ranks as a trade counselor. Eventually he had become the director of Canada's Trade Commissioner Service in 1974. Taylor had always had a bit of an unorthodox working style that sometimes rubbed the more genteel types in the Canadian diplomatic corps the wrong way. He worked at a table instead of a desk, and refused to use in/out boxes. But whatever his style, he got results. He was a tireless worker and a good manager, and his employees enjoyed working for him.

Taylor had been in Tehran since 1977 and had garnered a reputation for being decisive and calm under pressure for his handling of the evacuation of a sizable contingent of Canadian nationals just weeks before the shah had abdicated.

Sheardown had been relatively certain that Taylor would support his decision to help the Americans. Like Sheardown, Taylor was disgusted by the notion that innocent diplomats should be taken hostage and used by a government as leverage. Almost immediately after the attack, Taylor had begun working with the heads of other foreign emba.s.sies in Tehran to try to lodge an official protest of some kind against the Iranian government. In addition, a few days after the takeover, he'd been asked by the U.S. State Department to liaise with Bruce Laingen at the Iranian foreign ministry, which he would eventually do a week later, bringing with him, among other things, books and a bottle of English Leather cologne that was actually filled with single-malt scotch.

Sheardown explained his phone call with Anders and brought Taylor up to speed. He reiterated that the Americans were safe for the moment but would probably need a place to stay very soon. Taylor, to his credit, didn't hesitate, and agreed that they should do whatever they could to help. The two then began discussing the best place to hide the Americans. The Canadian emba.s.sy had the benefit of security, but was heavily trafficked and didn't have any living quarters. In addition, it was located downtown, close to the U.S. emba.s.sy. In the end they decided they would split the Americans between Sheardown's and Taylor's private residences. Both were in a quiet part of town and, more important, far away from the U.S. emba.s.sy. As an added bonus, the houses also fell under the protection of diplomatic immunity, not that that amounted to much in Iran. But it was something.

At that point, Taylor began working on a cable to send back to Ottawa, in the hopes of obtaining his government's official permission. In it he outlined his own opinions on the matter and also the plan that he and Sheardown had just worked out.

Of America's many allies, Canada had been one of the most outspoken in condemning Iran for the emba.s.sy attack, and it took only a day for Taylor to get his answer, which arrived the following morning. In the cable from Ottawa, he was told to use discretion, but was given a green light to do whatever he thought necessary to help the Americans. The approval had come directly from the Canadian prime minister, Joseph Clark.

The timing could not have been more fortuitous for the fugitive Americans. Bob Anders called Sheardown a second time from Kate Koob's house Sat.u.r.day morning just hours after Taylor had received the cable.

”Well, John,” Anders said. ”I guess now's the time.”

”Do you have a way of getting over here?” Sheardown asked.

”Not really,” Anders responded. He explained how the two British staffers had driven them over to Graves's house, and Sheardown agreed to track them down.

”Sit tight,” he said.