Chapter 39

When the election results in November were known, President Truman and the President-elect Adlai Stevenson patted me on the back. Eisenhower was an older man of 61 and a real hero. His running mate was 'Tricky Dick' Nixon. He had an illegal slush fund but this was already known. I knew enough from what came out at Watergate to supply the Democrats with enough dirty secrets to let the voters know whom they might be electing as a Vice President. The Republicans' other 'hatchet man' was Dewey. McCarthy was one as well but he was conveniently dead.

In the first election there was a lot of talk about Stevenson being divorced and not a family man. With recent allegations against McCarthy, the family was not mentioned.

I remembered from some advertising that Adlai Stevenson had usurped a half-hour of prime time television to tell the voters what he wanted to do. This never happened but he did like Eisenhower and used twenty and thirty second segments instead. 'I Love Lucy' was very important to the nation and was not to be trifled with.

Women were for the first time actively courted in the election. Eleanor Roosevelt was only one of Stevenson's supporters. When Stevenson gave his word that he would assist in getting my contraceptive available to many more women, Margaret Sanger and Katherine McCormick started to campaign for him in earnest. Katherine McCormick's newspapers talked to women directly and not through male reporters. This and McCarthy's sexual preferences, is what I think won the race.

There were a lot of parties that I was invited to and I tried to go to the more influential ones. It was very evident that everybody knew I was a Democratic supporter. I did say before witnesses that I was fighting for a cause and not for any political party.

Four weeks after the vote, American troops were in Vietnam and American goods and war materiel were sold cheaply to the French. Eisenhower was sent over to see what he could do as a good soldier and a national hero. This dramatically raised the troops' spirits.

Hugh Hefner was now publishing his magazine through a small firm. The Picture of Marilyn Monroe was what sold the initial release. We had talked a few times over the phone and my donation of twenty thousand dollars could have made me a partner but I didn't want that. He did follow my advice and had many features that he would later find to be what the public wanted.

He had a forum on birth control and had some influential people contribute their opinions. Off-colour jokes and penthouse letters made me laugh at the theft of the idea from what would be Penthouse Magazine. Important and outspoken women told how they though women were unfairly treated. Segregation and racial intolerance were very common and the magazine was one of the ways it could be exposed and allowed to die before all the riots occurred in later years. All this was to educate a new generation of young males who would one day vote the way they should.

I personally ordered ten thousand of the original first issue and had them shipped to the men fighting for us.

In six months the British, the Australians and the Canadians were fighting in Vietnam as well as in Korea. Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation, through their ArmaLite Division, sold twenty-five thousand newly made and vastly improved LAW M-72s. I had the production stepped up dramatically, because I knew the five-pound launcher would find a lot of use in the two wars. After only two months the orders really started to come in. We had to even import the explosive and rocket fuel from my company in West Germany.

The M16 had not become standard issue but some groups were using it as a test. Our stockpile of rifles, ammunition and rockets would soon be seriously depleted and I was considering getting other manufacturers to assist.

Many of the wartime weapons that were used in Vietnam were conceived on my drawing board. We did not have the high tech necessary for some things but we did have many of the simpler articles.

I was very productive and very highly valued in the military. I soon had 'Puff the Magic Dragon' but the song had not come out yet. I wrote that, too and both made it to the front lines at the same time. The AC-47 was the military equivalent of the DC-3. I knew how effective the plane was and used as many of the old planes as I could get my hands on.

I could not use .50 caliber machine guns because of the way the floor was constructed but I could use smaller NATO rounds in a smaller barrel.

I went for the big bang and started the development of many fuel/air bombs but the only one that got used was the one with diethyl ether. Another cluster bomb with thousands of small bomblets with antipersonnel or with armour piercing rounds, took out many tanks and trucks that could not accurately be hit otherwise. The bomblets had a good proportion that did not work and killed innocents years after a battle. My bomblets were designed to degrade after six months in normal wet conditions. These certainly were the conditions in South East Asia.

The smart bomb was developed and I sold three lots to NATO. France bought the most and I gave them a deal on some considerations at a later date.

During this time I was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine and shared one in Physics with William. I had planned on these awards for years and when the time came I pushed even harder for the world I wanted. The intellectuals heard me but I had to use other means for the man or the woman on the street to understand what I wanted.

Bell was still working on the lasers and I got the company to work on improved night vision equipment. Night vision was already in use even during the latter portion of WW2. It relied on a power-hungry infrared emitter to illuminate the target. The Soviets were already making a device to find the emitter and shoot the soldier using it.

I did not take the role of a REMF and went to the front many times to watch the tests of our equipment or innovations. I had been hit twice but they were mostly grazes. All were from shrapnel and not bullets, although many of the latter had come close.

My helicopters had not only made an appearance but were assisting in getting the war shortened. The Black Hawk and Apache were not ready yet but the Huey was. Before the funding ran out, I started working on a second generation of Huey using two large sets of blades.

At the negotiation table, it was now our turn to put things off. The Communists had always thought that given more time they could wring more concessions from us. This was a dramatic turn around and left the opposing diplomats a bit flustered.

The French did not get caught at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The American military came in and destroyed almost all of the Viet Minh forces arrayed against the French. Puff crews were the major factor in making the battle change the way it did. In my previous life, this was the turning point where the French left Vietnam for good; most only got to be buried.

France had been encouraged to send in many more troops to the area in previous months. After the battle they mopped up what once would have been their victors.

Since I was in a good bargaining position with my weapons manufacturing, I negotiated with the United States and did a lot of negotiating as the main NATO representative. I tried not only for an armistice but tried to get a peaceful separation of the country. There was a lot of resentment about this, because we were now doing so well. The way some were talking, they could just keep going and take China, too. Cooler heads did prevail.

By the end of 1954 both wars came to and end and a truce was called. There was no threat of using atomic weapons this time, although the Communists knew they could be used and they were not ready, yet, for an all-out nuclear war.

The sheer number of casualties ended it for the Communists. We allowed a North Vietnam to be formed above the 20th parallel not the 17th as it was before. This would give much better logistics if and when, the Communists headed south at a later date. The mountainous region of what was the Ho Chi Minh trail in the northern area would funnel any insurgents into some easy killing fields. The new country, in itself, also gave a buffer area for China, which was why the war was first fought.

The trail had not seen that much use because of our efforts. France soon found uses for all the lumber taken off the land and helped finance farmers to turn the cleared acreage into flat farmland. Good roads were built and eventually sensors would be put all along it to find Communist activity.

There were a lot of mysterious deaths of politicians in the south. A much more representative government was set up and graft was punishable by death. I figured that as long as this was the case, the south would stay free and the people themselves would not want the Communists to come like they had the first time.

Japan and South Korea had gained a great amount of financial clout with the help of the United States. I pushed for the same thing in South Vietnam.

Sabin came back and we made the live vaccine three months after his return. His name as well as the rest of the multinational team was on the list of people working on this project. The news was not as exciting as for the first, mainly because I had already told it would happen at approximately this time. The public was learning to trust my word. I knew that I would need this in the future, not only to bring about what I wanted but simply to stay alive.

A year and a half after the peace accord I was called back to Oslo and gained a third award for my furtherance of the peace process. Quite an accomplishment, considering how much money I made selling weapons to the NATO forces. I had rationalised that by killing so many enemies so quickly, the sheer casualty figures would keep any aggressor from crossing out paths. Our own casualties had been much lighter. Only some of the decrease was from Kevlar vests and helmets, because the numbers that were produced were low.

My extended family went with me for a second time and now it seemed like old hat to dad and grandpa. He complained of the seats and then the food and finally his sore butt. I was again his true grandson because I heard him tell so to one of the stewardesses. I was quite sure he told the rest, too. He didn't know that this was a special charter flight I had arranged.

My own people had gone over the plane inch by inch. Everybody onboard was either an employee, or an influential person who was sympathetic to what I wanted to do. The Communists had not come to get me to see their way of thinking but that did not mean that they would not go to the final step and try to get me removed. Back in 'The Bay', many people who didn't appear on my list of employees were there for security reasons. This included the group I hired to protect the first production facility for my vaccine. Security had grown but did not rival Pinkerton because they only guarded things I had an interest in. This would change, for the men were actually the first members of my military.

There were a lot of people, during and after the war, who were shot down by their allies to remove them from the game board. I had not necessarily made too many enemies but I did have a lot of people that would rather see me dead so they could advance.

At every opportunity, NATO jets parallelled our flight. This was unknown to everybody but the flight crew, security and myself.

In the last year I had gone through a growth spurt and gained much of my adult size. I could not grow a decent beard or mustache yet, so I had to remain clean-shaven. The girls liked how certain parts of me grew, too.

My love life had been fairly tame. Seiko had assumed the post of number three wife and I didn't dispute it. With no legal contract, any of the women could leave if and when, they wished. They were all rich women, because I took what money they would have received working for me and put it into the businesses that showed the most chance of expanding.

Valerie had already married, had one child she called Alex and was expecting another. Linda had stayed with us for quite a while, till I finally found a man that would treat her the way she needed. In two months I would be at their wedding.

Yasuko and Akuro were now taking charge of one of my newest companies. They had close to a hundred and forty employees who were teaching various languages to my employees. Both had turned into career women and only dated the men they liked. I wanted them to succeed but I wanted them to be happy, too.

In between, I found some girls to keep me company in Vietnam and Korea. The wives knew about it and even talked to the girls on the phone. They all knew that they would not be coming with me when I left.

I was bored on the long trip to Oslo and I enticed one wife at a time into the small washroom. I didn't know if the mile high club had been invented yet and considered my wives and I being the charter members. This had actually happened last year, though, when we made our first flight to Oslo. I was going to make sure Hugh Hefner heard about the idea. He was already promoting my record company and the artists I had under contract. Elvis had not even graduated from high school but he got a contract after joining a local talent show.

He was now in Toronto or Memphis putting out some of the songs I provided him. Many other artists had come to sign up with me. Remembering about my inability to be where I was needed, I hired the best publicists and promoters I could. Sam Phillips was one of the men I was able to hire. It took a bit of money and my promise to develop the industry more to get him on board. Television, radio and even the movies did not impress the man but music videos did. In my company there would not be any shenanigans. If an artist was promised something, he would get it.

This time around, I was going to take the Japanese business model as my own. Artists were not given million-dollar contracts but then again I did not give that kind of money to me. A president of a company got twenty to twenty-five times the wages of the man on the floor.

If everybody accepted this, then musicians, sports figures and actors would not get multimillion-dollar contracts and the spectators would be able to afford to go and see the people they loved. The high cost of Hockey and Baseball tickets in Toronto still burned me from my previous life.

The only ones to make more money were the shareholders and my wives, who were shareholders. The companies, though, made a fantastic amount of money and used much of the funds to plough back into production and R&D. My dividends went in there too, for I knew that they could only grow.

As we landed, we heard one of Roy Orbison's songs that I had written for him. I sometimes sang it to my wives as I played the guitar at night. 'Oh, Pretty Woman' never failed in getting them more than just becoming sentimental before taking me to bed.

We took up three floors of a local hotel. The family went off to shop or to do some sightseeing. I brushed up on my speech and talked to my security people. In an hour I was talking to the same people I had spoken to last year and we discussed what arrangements had been changed. I left the arrangements with my people and had a short nap, because I knew the girls would be hyper and not able to sleep later.

The presentation was the next day and I was worn out. I was right about the girls and they made sure I was not able to sleep, either. More people could not sleep but for other reasons. Aron was in the next suite playing some Beatles music with dad. When the song ended, Aron sang 'La Bamba' with a Spanish accent. Richard Valenzuela or better known as Ritchie Valens was only a child, not much older than Aron was now. The song would not go public till I found a good Latino singer to be the first to break into Rock 'n' Roll.

When the time came for the presentation, everybody walked down a long line of sensors as if they were at a very modern airport. Six people were pulled aside just before they got to the door and asked about their guns. Five turned out to be security, while the local police took one away.

I may not have been his target and perhaps the man just liked carrying a gun. He happened to be Romanian and his consulate was quick to try to get him released.

The meal and the presentation was lower key than previously and I was able to enjoy it more. Even with a large room of very important people, I found the looks in my family's eyes to be what I needed to continue.

After the actual presentation I shook hands with many distinguished people. Some had come to me with ideas from others who had asked for favours or paid for the service. It reminded me of being in Mexico and all the vendors coming up with different things to sell. At least the people here were very polite.

My acceptance speech was next and I had come prepared. I spoke for almost half an hour on ways to keep people off one another's throats. I listed all the various reasons for fighting in the first place and did not leave out our basic instinct to fight and prove ourselves.

Like last year, I talked about oil, clean water and many different minerals being in short supply, no matter what governments wanted to say to the opposite point of view. "The day will come, when all our economies come crashing down when the price of fuel goes too high. Nobody can afford an automobile, if the price of copper is so high that wiring is too costly to put in. Unrestricted development and unmonitored industries are now poisoning our waters. What are future generations going to do to get water that is not polluted with industrial wastes or chemicals from farm runoff?"

I accused everyone sitting before me of being lax in what they did to stop or curtail all the despoliation and waste about us.

The reporters and photographers, though, were not as nice after the award ceremony. Film was shot as I was asked pertinent, then foolish questions. Outside, I found that many more photographers were around and very aggressive. Security had a difficult time making a corridor for us to travel. In a moment our limousines pulled up and we started to get in. When the three were full, we left for the official reception. Here, too, there were photographers. Seiko got angry with one and used some karate she had been teaching the girls on the persistent photographer. He suddenly fell to the concrete and nobody quite knew how it had happened, or almost nobody knew.

Grandma was close by and I saw her think before she put her foot down. This time it was beside the man. She had a Polish temper and I knew she would have liked to walk over his face.

There were quite a few people there even before we arrived. I shook hands with them and then they shook hands with my family. Before even ten minutes had passed more guests came to congratulate me. The Norwegian government, which had a hand in the selection of the Nobel Prize, came over and introduced their wives and even their children.

I was happy to try out my language skills with some representatives of other countries. They spoke slowly once they heard my accent in most cases but I could get along with most languages in Europe now.

When the Russian ambassador came over, I was pleased to talk to him in his own language. It was a Slavic language and if you knew Polish, the others are fairly easy to pick up. With him was a young woman of phenomenal beauty. She seemed to be Helen's age or perhaps a bit younger. Her eyes were green and her hair was platinum blond and went far down her back. Her dress was not something that somebody in her collective would wear. It was very expensive and exposed as much flesh as she could get away with.

The ambassador said, "Congratulations on your well deserved award. I believe you saved many lives by seeing what both parties needed and by working toward that goal." He looked at his companion and said, "Let me introduce Sonia. She is a relative of mine and has come to Oslo to learn about how their government works."

He turned to the girl and said in English, "Sonia, this is Alex Kramer. I believe he is the only man to ever win the prestigious Nobel prize three times."

The girl stepped forward easily and put out her hand to be shaken. I clasped hers and she said, "I am very honoured to meet you, Mr Kramer. Your speech was very inspiring and I wish the Capitalists took it to heart. I had no idea when I came to this city that I would ever meet somebody as important and as handsome as you. It is so lonely here in Oslo with all the older people doing everything."