The release of the thirteen was accompanied by a chilling threat. Khomeini announced that the remaining Americans were going to be placed on trial “soon” as spies. It was precisely the scenario Carter most feared. He publicly ordered the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk to sail from waters near the Philippines to the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Iran. At a press conference in the East Room of the White House, an especially dour president said Iran had created an “unprecedented” situation. “For a government to applaud mob violence and terrorism,…to participate in the taking of hostages, ridicules the common ethical and religious heritage of humanity,” he said, and added that the United States would employ “every means available” to deal with it.
ABC reporter Sam Donaldson asked the president whether the United States would be willing to let such an outrage continue “indefinitely.”
“It would not be advisable for me to set a deadline,” said Carter, who added, “any excessive threat…might cause the deaths of the hostages, which we are determined to avoid.”
3. Only Whores Go Without Underwear
As winter settled over Tehran, a season of short days, rain, and occasional snow, the trappings of imprisonment began to feel more permanent. The students who had planned the takeover of the embassy receded from daily view, replaced by a rougher breed of guards, many from the ranks of Revolutionary Guards, who hadn’t been students since attending the shah’s secondary schools. Most of the male hostages were moved to a large rectangular room in the basement of the warehouse. It had once been used to house electronic equipment that analyzed data from the Tacksman sites but had been emptied months before. There was a row of pillars in the middle of the space, and because it was windowless and damp, perfect conditions for growing fungi, it was christened the Mushroom Inn. Its white acoustical ceiling tile was high, almost fifteen feet up, and the space was starkly lit day and night by recessed fluorescent bulbs. Diesel engines were used to generate power for electricity and the sickly sweet fumes hung perpetually in the air. Hostages were assigned places on the floor, and each had a thin foam mattress. In time the guards used empty bookshelves to divide the space into separate cubicles so that, unless he stood, a prisoner could see only the man directly opposite him.
There was some comfort in being surrounded by the others. Golacinski had Vice Consul Don Cooke to one side and marine Greg Persinger to the other. Directly across from him was the assistant defense attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Roeder. In a side room the guards rolled in a TV set and played some tapes of American shows, escorting small groups of hostages in on an irregular schedule. Golacinski’s group watched an episode of The Carol Burnett Show, and then an old baseball game. When the “Star-Spangled Banner” was played before the game he felt a powerful pride welling up and noticed that the others in the room were smiling and winking at each other. Because Golacinski was familiar to so many of his captors due to his role on the first day, he was one of the few to whom they would speak. One, a medical student, told him that President Carter was sending Ramsey Clark, the former attorney general, as an emissary to Tehran to negotiate for their release. Golacinski asked if he could tell the others. He was taken to a corner of the room and told that he could say that Clark was coming, but nothing else.
Golacinski stood and got everyone’s attention. He announced in a loud voice that Clark was coming to start discussions, which created a stir. “Are there any questions?” he said, and when he was promptly pulled from the chair the big room echoed with laughter.
Light moments like this were rare. All of the Americans had been threatened repeatedly with execution, and they took it seriously. Golacinski and Roeder had been handcuffed together one night and, with blankets thrown over their heads, taken upstairs and outside, where they were told to stand against the wall.
“Nothing will happen to you,” the guard told him reassuringly, and then added, less so, “It will be quick.”
The guard didn’t speak English well, so he probably meant that they would not be left standing there long, but the expression had chilling implications. Golacinski doubted that they would be shot, and the longer he stood there he doubted it more. It turned out that they were just being moved to a new spot.
Richard Queen, the gangly vice consul, felt himself slipping into depression. He knew the symptoms. Long hours of sleep, a general listlessness, a chronic sense of despair and hopelessness. Tehran was his first assignment as a foreign service officer. He had grown up in suburban New York and distinguished himself as a middle-distance runner on his high school track team, fast enough to be among the better runners in the state, but not fast enough to compete beyond that level. Running suited Queen because it was a solitary pursuit, and he was in all things a solitary, precise man with extraordinary patience for detail work. He loved, for instance, a Civil War board game that came with a set of instructions that totaled more than three hundred pages, and which took months to play. His interest in war and history prompted him to apply to West Point, where he had been accepted, only to be turned away because of poor eyesight, a disappointment that had led to what he considered the happiest four years of his life at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he had majored in history. He had gone on to earn a master’s degree at the University of Michigan and had been proceeding halfheartedly toward a Ph.D. when he had taken the foreign service exam and done surprisingly well. Making history, traveling to exotic places on a government payroll, sounded a lot more interesting and secure than teaching it at a community college somewhere, so when the job was offered Queen grabbed it. He liked Tehran, despite the hardships. The work itself didn’t appeal to him, but he enjoyed the informal, fraternal atmosphere, which he imagined was like soldiering together in a besieged fort. He also liked going to work in blue jeans.
Even before he was taken hostage, Queen had come to dislike Iranians. He fought against it, because he knew such a feeling was unfair, but in his visa work he had spent long parts of every workday interviewing applicants, who one after another lied to him. It was a desperate time for many Iranians trying to escape the ongoing political tumult and violence. His job was to avoid giving visas to those who were looking only for an excuse to get to the United States, who had no intention of coming back. So-called students would bring school records with them that were obviously forged—Queen would hold the paper up to the light and see through the smudges and erasures. He had begun to believe that cheating the American consulate was a national pastime. It seemed every Iranian he met, on or off the job, wanted him to help them get a visa, if not for themselves then for a family member or friend.
Once, returning from a small party in north Tehran, he and fellow vice consul Mark Lijek had been stopped at a roadblock manned by a motley crew of Revolutionary Guards. The diplomatic license plates on their car prompted questions, and their American citizenship earned them a trip to the guards’ local headquarters. Queen had been drinking enough that it showed, and the session there began with a pious official berating them for violating the “Islamic purity” of the nation. One of the guards in the room had sat spinning an automatic pistol around his finger. They were lectured about America’s sins and asked what their jobs were at the embassy. When Lijek said that they worked at the consulate, the tone of the session abruptly and dramatically changed.