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After the hostages had been reunited on Sunday, the four confirmed that they had been removed from the aircraft on its second visit to Beirut and were not part of the group that had been taken into custody by the Amal militia. The hostages said that they had been detained for the first nine days in what they called "a bunker" in the Bekaa Valley. The first time they had seen the other hostages was last Tuesday night when they were brought to Beirut for a visit by Red Cross officials. "We were pretty frightened," admitted Robert Trautmann, Jr., one of the four. "But they didn't maltreat us, and the food was kind of O.K." After nine days they were moved to what Trautmann called "a better place, which had proper toilets."
Confirmation of the rumor that four Americans had been kept apart from the other hostages took place in a dramatic on-camera television scene that was carried to the U.S. by satellite. It happened on Saturday morning in the schoolyard near the Beirut airport, where the hostages and their luggage were assembled for what was expected to be an imminent trip to Damascus. It looked like a rather shaggy adult-education class being called to order, except for the gun-toting Amal guards watching from rooftops. In his now familiar crisp tones, Allyn Conwell called out the names of his 38 fellow American hostages, only 31 of whom answered "here" or "present." Three of those absent were not a cause of alarm. They were the crewmen of the TWA jet, who had been kept in the aircraft most of the time and were known to be in the hands of the Amal militia. But the other four should have been at the school. After the roll call, the hostages sat next to their bags and waited. And waited.
Meanwhile, a vigil had been in progress roughly 50 miles southeast, at the Lebanese-Syrian frontier. U.S. Ambassador to Syria William Eagleton, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh and other officials of both nations had gathered at noon on Saturday to greet the hostage convoy. They also waited. And waited.
The hostage roll call and the border vigil by the diplomats were repeated on Sunday. This time all 39 Americans were together. After a quick calculation to make sure no one was missing, Conwell shouted, "Do you all want to go home?" In unison they replied, "Yeah!" Added Conwell: "O.K., fellows. I think we made it." This time the convoy did roll, and the patience of all of the negotiating parties in the strange deal that no one wanted to admit was a deal had finally been rewarded.
In the end, the key to the release seemed to be a most unlikely liberator, Syria's Assad. Though he is an ironfisted dictator and a Soviet ally, Assad has carefully nurtured a reputation as a man who can be relied on to deliver on any deal to which he puts his name (see box). It was his involvement and coordination with Washington that produced Sunday's success.