He slowly slid the door to the roof shut and sat alone, perplexed. Should he give himself up? He looked around him on the roof and saw the shotguns alongside him and those piled next to the shed. Kupke didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to be discovered on the roof with weapons; they would probably assume he had been preparing to open fire. He looked across the compound and saw people in the windows of the tall building across the street. Surely they could see him. It was only a matter of time before they alerted someone.
He cracked open the door to the vault again and listened. If there’s gunfire, he thought, I’m staying put. It was quiet. He reluctantly and slowly descended.
The burn room was empty so he stood there alone for a moment. He tiptoed over to peer into the adjacent room. At the far end were two Iranian men in green army jackets sitting with their backs to him before the destroyed radio equipment. He raised his hands and walked up behind them.
“Excuse me,” he said.
The two jumped up when they heard him and began shouting at him in Farsi.
“Americano,” he said.
One of the two smashed his fist into Kupke’s glasses, right between the eyes. There’s got to be an easier way to surrender, Kupke thought. He dropped to one knee and reached for his glasses, which had broken and scratched him under the eye. He shoved the pieces into his pocket, an instinctive move for which he would later be very glad. Suddenly the small room was filled with irate Iranians. They surrounded him, pulled him to his feet, and began pushing him back and forth. Some took swings at him, hitting him in the back and face. Kupke covered his head and ducked, trying to remember the protective moves he had learned in tae kwon do class. One of the men in the circle was leaning back on one leg and had the other elevated, trying to aim a kick. He was taking up so much space that it allowed Kupke room to dive into a corner with his back to the wall, fending off blows. He was pulled to his feet and dragged back out into the middle of the room, where the beating resumed until somebody slammed him hard from behind, probably with the same two-by-four he had used on the incinerator. It struck him more in the neck than in the head, but the force of the blow momentarily blacked him out. He came to with everything around him swirling in slow motion. He felt no pain.
He could hear the men speaking in Farsi. Most were young, although a few looked middle-aged. With their beards it was hard to tell. Most had guns. Kupke immediately doubted that they would shoot him. There were too many people in the room, for one thing, and they might hit each other. One of the men leveled a handgun at his head and asked, in English, “Where were you? Do you work for the CIA?”
“No, no,” Kupke said. “I was over by the burn machine.”
“No, you weren’t. Tell us who you work for. If you don’t tell us right, I’m going to shoot you.”
He told them the truth. “I work for the State Department,” he said.
The man pulled the trigger and the hammer snapped on an empty chamber. Kupke’s legs gave way. He was pulled back to his feet.
“Open the safe,” the English-speaker demanded.
“I don’t know the combination.”
The Iranian spun the chamber of the revolver and pressed the muzzle to his captive’s left temple. Kupke’s eyes were rolled so far to the left he was afraid they would lock in that position as he strained to see if there were rounds in the chamber. The trigger was pulled and the hammer snapped. The blow to the head had dazed him, so the sound reached him in a slow-motion haze. He was not consciously afraid. He was more worried about being put back into the circle and being kicked and beaten again. But what happened next did scare him, knock on the head and all.
Kupke was thrown to the floor and one of the older Iranians, a short fat man, sat on his stomach. Others grabbed his feet and pinned his arms. Kupke could smell the man sitting on him as he leaned close with a knife.
“I’m going to cut your eyes out,” he said. “I’m going to ask you some questions.” He tapped the flat of the blade against Kupke’s left eye. “I want you to open these safes, and if you don’t open them I’m going to cut out this eye first. Then, I’m going to cut out this eye,” he said, tapping Kupke’s right eye.
“You’ve got to believe me,” said Kupke, pleading now. “I work here in the coms center. I send and receive messages for the embassy! If I knew the combination to the safe, I would open it right now. I don’t want my eyes cut out!”
The man got up and led Kupke into the hallway where Jones was standing blindfolded against the wall, looking disheveled, with his hands tied behind his back.
“Charles,” Kupke blurted. “If you know how to open the safe, open it.”
Jones knew the combinations. The Iranians grabbed him by the necktie and choked him, but he refused to help. He was terrified but something in him balked at the threats, and he was convinced beyond reason that this wasn’t real, that it would all be over soon and things would be back to normal. He was more concerned about protecting his jewelry, which he kept in a drawer in one of the vault’s safes, figuring it was the safest place on the compound. When they had begun emptying the safes earlier, Jones decided to put on all his valuables—he had heard that in the February embassy invasion none of the Iranians had patted down the embassy personnel—so he had put it all on, three chains, seven rings, three watches. Before Ahern opened the vault door, he had reached under his collar and removed one of the chains, which held a golden Star of David, a gift from the years he had spent assigned to Israel. Figuring it was a symbol that might provoke his captors, he had hidden it under one of the counters.
Mostly, Jones was angry about getting roughed up. When they had first taken him, he had been blindfolded and led out into the corridor.
“Hey, who’s next to me?” asked the man next to him, who was Ahern.
“It’s me, Charles,” said Jones, at which point an Iranian had slammed his head against the wall. The man had snatched a chain off Jones’s neck, and then knocked him to the floor and kicked him. In the process he had stepped on his hand, which hurt.
Now, as he was being choked by his necktie, Jones was angry and determined to be unhelpful.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kupke pleaded. “Man, they’re bouncing me off the walls in the other room, Charles.”
Jones was pushed to the ground, beaten and kicked again.
Englemann was ordered to open the safes, which he did not know how to do. Instead he led some of his captors out of the vault and down the hall to his own office. He had already emptied his safes of anything sensitive and fed his files into the disintegrator, so in a great show of helpfulness he spun the combination locks and opened them. Inside were unimportant files and a pile of picture books. They seemed pleased.
Hermening was pulled to his feet and led back into the vault. One of the Iranians now pressed the barrel of a pistol hard into his temple, right beside his eye.
“Open the safe!” he demanded.
“I don’t know the combination,” Hermening protested. He was shaking.
“Open the safe!” the man shouted again.
“I don’t know the combination. I don’t even work in this office.”
“Sure,” the Iranian said. “Then what were you doing in here?”
Hermening had never been so scared. He didn’t know the combination, and he was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to convince the man with the gun that he was telling the truth.
“If I did know it, what good is it going to do for you to shoot me?” he said. “Then you’ll never get the combination.”