As he approached the motor pool he saw Bill Keough, a giant of a man who stood six-six and weighed almost three hundred pounds, towering in the fine rain over a small mob of chanting protesters. Keough was a school headmaster who had come to Tehran for only a few days to sort out the records from the closed American school. He looked down on his tormentors like a bemused Gulliver.
One of the young men in the crowd around Golacinski was filming him now with a small 8mm camera, and it slowly dawned on the soggy security chief that he was no longer so much leading this crowd as being led by it. He heard Farsi coming from his walkie-talkie; the protesters had evidently grabbed some of the marines’ radios.
His own was then snatched from him. The wiry young man he had seized in the basement had melted off into the crowd. He was now addressed by a bigger man with a gruff voice, who appeared to have taken charge. Golacinski recognized him as one of the Revolutionary Guards who had chased off Mashallah, and was at first relieved. Then the man said, “No more on the radio.”
“Okay, but I told you, I’ve got to get permission for you people to be on the compound here. If not, something bad is going to happen.” His bluff sounded lame.
He was led toward the motor pool office building. Looking over his left shoulder, Golacinski saw that the chancery was now ringed by thousands of protesters, who were holding hands and chanting. It looked like they were performing an exorcism, and it reminded him of the Pentagon demonstration more than a decade ago when flaky antiwar protesters had tried to levitate the building.
“Let me have a cigarette,” he asked one of the Iranians. A young man handed him one and then lit it for him.
At the motor pool garage, he phoned Sergeant Wesley Williams, a marine guard at the chancery’s main post inside the front door.
“Look, things are starting to turn here, Williams,” Golacinski told him. “It’s absolutely essential that you get Laingen on the phone for me.”
From the speaker on his radio in the Iranian’s hand he could hear Williams—the systems were linked—talking to someone at the Foreign Ministry, trying in vain to track down the chargé. The consulate was still holding on. Someone grabbed Golacinski by the arm and steered him in that direction. As he was being pulled out, he caught the gaze of the Iranian police captain, who was sitting with his men, watching. The captain looked at Golacinski apologetically and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, What can I do?
Inside the consulate, Sergeant Lopez had gotten a similar response from the local police. His contact at headquarters listened politely as the marine described what was going on and responded with a simple, “Thank you.” No help was coming from that front. The battery on his radio was going dead, and he was no longer getting a response from the guard post in the chancery. The bulk of the crowd outside the building had left with Golacinski, but there were still protesters beating on the windows with sticks and some had come in through the open second-floor bathroom window again and were trying to break through the cords he had used to secure them. Morefield ordered the visa plates destroyed. Vice consul Don Cooke and Richard Queen got them out of a safe and began whacking them to bits with a steel bar.
“Well, no matter what happens, we won’t have any work to do now for five or six weeks,” said Morefield. “It will take that long to get new plates, and we can’t issue new visas without them.”
Lopez collected embassy ID cards from the Iranian employees, which they handed over readily—none of them wanted to be caught on the streets and identified as American collaborators. Morefield and Lopez decided they would let the visa applicants go first, and then the American staffers would walk together over to the chancery. The women were told to walk together.
“Be prepared for a mob,” said Lopez. “If anyone grabs for your purse, let them have it. Let them take whatever they want.”
As they prepared to leave they noticed that the demonstrators outside the consulate had suddenly vanished. Lopez heard on the radio that the chancery had been breached again. Apparently all the protesters had rushed off in that direction, so instead of going that way themselves, Morefield decided they would all leave in the opposite direction, out the consulate’s front door and into the side street. From there maybe they could melt into the city.
One of the marines at the chancery radioed, “You’re on your own. Good luck.”
Lopez destroyed his shotgun and pistol. Then he, Morefield, Queen, and the other American staff waited until the east-side alley looked clear before peeking out of the garage door. Traffic barred by the mob on Takht-e-Jamshid Avenue was trying to get around the embassy on their side, so it was jammed with cars. Outside were two pasdoran, but they seemed to have their hands full with the traffic. Morefield let the Iranian visa applicants go first. One embassy worker stood at the door, looking out, and another at the top of the stairs. When the street was clear, the door would open and ten of the Iranians would be let down the stairs and out the door. They did this until all sixty or so of them, including the young American woman, had gotten away. Bob Ode came down the steps holding the arm of a terrified, elderly Iranian man who was nearly blind. “God bless you, my son,” the man kept saying, patting Ode on the wrist. “God bless you, God bless you.” Ode led him out the door into the side street alongside the embassy, which was fairly quiet. A car was waiting there to pick up the old man, and Ode helped him into the car and saw him safely off.
Then the first of the American workers walked out, accompanied by the Iranian staff.
Cora and Mark Lijek, Joe and Kathy Stafford, Bob Anders, and Kim King, a tourist who had stopped by the consulate that morning, walked across the street and proceeded at a brisk pace down a road that paralleled Takht-e-Jamshid. They went straight ahead for four blocks, then turned left toward the British embassy. Mark Lijek felt odd walking in a three-piece suit in the light rain with no coat or umbrella. He was getting soaked. King separated from them and headed for a local police station; he was trying to work out a passport problem prior to his scheduled departure. The Americans offered to bring the Iranian employees with them to the British embassy, still a few blocks away, but all but one of them decided to melt off on their own. So the Lijeks and Staffords proceeded with Anders and the remaining Iranian staffer, who said she would show them the way—they were not used to walking the streets in Tehran.
They came upon a square crowded with demonstrators, so the Iranian woman offered to take them to her house. They thanked her but decided it was a bad idea, that it might place her in a dangerous position. But they agreed that they needed to get off the street. People were beginning to stare at them. Anders suggested they go to his apartment. They turned around and headed back in the direction from which they’d come. They made their way circuitously, searching out streets that were relatively quiet, and crossing them in staggers, two at a time. About an hour after leaving the consulate they arrived safely. Anders cooked chicken curry for a late lunch.
After helping the old man, Ode had not followed the Lijek group but had gone back to the remaining staffers. He was carrying a briefcase that Mark Lijek had handed him for some reason, no doubt expecting him to come with them. As he made his way back toward the door, one of the armed pasdoran grabbed at the briefcase. Ode didn’t know what was in it but he wasn’t going to give it up that easily, and even though the Iranian was armed Ode shoved him backward and pulled the briefcase out of his grasp.