Then as president he would turn to his chief of staff and the chairman of the joint chiefs and order them to take the Iranian attaché to the tank in the Pentagon and let him monitor the B-52s’ flight so that he could see them taking off and moving out over the ocean. Daugherty imagined the Iranian general watching the bombers reach Europe and then close in on Iranian airspace. He would know that it was not a bluff. Sometimes in Daugherty’s mind the general would rush to a phone and convey the importance of immediately releasing the hostages, and other times he would have him sit and watch as the B-52s dropped their devastating loads on the country’s cities. Daugherty would play through the scenarios in his mind. The one thing he considered too far-fetched for serious consideration was a rescue attempt. He had heard, of course, about the Israeli raid at Entebbe, and figured if commandos stormed the building he would sit with his hands in the air. But Iran was a landlocked country, and the distance from Tehran to any nonhostile border was probably four hundred to five hundred miles. He knew there were no helicopters for a mission like that. Even if they had such choppers, in-flight refueling over enemy territory was generally considered too risky. Rescue was, he thought, practically impossible.
Sometimes in the afternoons he would nap. On the days when they let him take a shower he would step into the water fully clothed, soap up his shirt and pants, peel them off, wring them out, do the same with his underwear, and then wash himself. He had the yellow Brooks Brothers shirt he had been wearing on the day of the takeover and a pair of brown polyester pants, and the guards had brought him jeans, a sweatshirt, and several changes of underwear from his apartment. When he was finished showering he would don the dry set of clothes and carry the wet ones back to his room, where he would stretch them out to dry. After dinner he walked again. It helped tire him out enough to sleep.
Daugherty got along reasonably well with his guards. They tended to be very young men, in their teens or early twenties, and were educated far better in math and the sciences than in history or politics and had absorbed from their religious leaders strong opinions about people, places, and events about which they knew next to nothing. They had wild fantasies about the United States and the CIA. Most spoke little or no English, so even if he had wanted to converse with them he could not. There was little point anyway, he thought. Anything out of the mouth of an American was automatically suspect, and none of the guards he met showed the slightest propensity for critical thinking. Their minds traveled on fixed rails. To think for themselves or critically examine their own paths was nothing less than sinful, a temptation to stray from the One True Path. How do you converse with people like that? For a time, a guard was posted in the room with him twenty-four hours a day. Daugherty would do his best to make the poor young man’s life miserable, offending his sense of modesty by wearing only boxer shorts, breaking wind, or coughing on him. Once, suffering a cold, he went out of his way to spread infection and was pleased to hear some days later that his guard had succumbed to the virus. Mostly, he minded his own business and tried to avoid trouble.
He wasn’t always successful. The room where he spent the most time that winter was on the ground floor of the chancery’s back side; its windows faced the embassy grounds. It had ceilings that were at least fifteen feet high and the windows were accordingly very tall. The bottom of his window was about four feet from the floor. On mild days he managed to open the window a few inches to let in some fresh air. At night he would sit beneath it enjoying the slight breeze and listening to the guards outside laughing, talking, and toying incessantly with the bolts on their rifles. Occasionally someone fired a shot, but given the way they handled their weapons Daugherty assumed that most often it was an accident.
One night, as he lay beneath the window reading, a breeze from the cracked window was bothering him so he shifted the curtain in an effort to block it. From outside, it looked as though he were sneaking a peek outside, which was strictly forbidden. As he resumed reading the door to his room flung open and five or six armed guards stomped in, expecting to catch him in the act.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“You are looking out,” said one of the guards in his tentative English.
Daugherty looked up at the window, three feet over his head.
“I am not. I’m reading.” He laughed.
The men pulled him to his feet and approached him with handcuffs and a blindfold. He knew the drill. When a rule was broken he would be cuffed, blindfolded, and left to sit that way for hours. This time, innocent, Daugherty fought back. He pulled the lead guard over to the window and showed him how the breeze moved the curtain.
“I didn’t do this,” he shouted, trying to batter his way through the language barrier. “You just saw the wind blow the curtain.”
He decided that if he was going to be punished this time, he would earn it. He squared off to resist them and just then a gust of wind moved the curtain. The lead guard, looking disgusted, waved the others away from Daugherty and they left the room. He was so pumped up with adrenaline from that encounter that he walked back and forth for hours trying to let off steam.
Once his imaginary games got him in trouble. He was given a pencil and paper by Sheikh-ol-eslam so that he could write a letter home, and after he finished the letter he played with the pencil, sketching out plans on large sheets of paper for an imaginary airport, the terminal, runways, the concourses, the tower, parking lots, garages, the firehouse, and maintenance hangars for three or four airlines. It was something to occupy his mind, and when he was finished he balled the papers up and later threw them in the trash can in the bathroom.
He didn’t think about them again until a suspicious and angry delegation of guards showed up in his room. They accused him of drawing some kind of coded diagram. It took a moment for him to figure out what they were talking about, and when it occurred to him Daugherty laughed.
“Let’s look at this logically,” he said. “First of all, if I’m going to leave messages for the other guys, I’m not going to do it on paper this size and sort of halfway wad it up and stick it in a trash can in a bathroom that you guys use. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
The looks on their faces told him yes, because in their eyes this is precisely what he had done. He realized that part of the problem was that these young Iranians had never traveled, so they were not familiar with airports. His drawings made no sense to their eyes. Daugherty explained and answered their questions until they were satisfied. They gathered up the drawings and left the room. He heard no more about it.
When he was staying in this first-floor chancery room, Daugherty was visited by a representative of the Red Cross, a slender, clean-cut young man about his age, either Swiss or French, who seemed angry when he entered the room. Daugherty was surprised. Having been trained to expect the conditions American POWs experienced in North Vietnam, he had no severe complaints about his own treatment, but this Red Cross man was appalled. He asked how long Daugherty had been isolated.
“Since the first days of the takeover.”