Chapter 49

It still took two weeks to hammer out the contract so that I would be at least minimally protected. Even if Leonid was speaking in good faith, he could be forced to do something else or he could get a severe case of lead poisoning and I would not have any recourse with his successor.

The road network would parallel the pipelines and I traced it to the Lower Siberian Basin and to the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. It went north then west to link up with the countries I listed.

The Siberian basin had eight super giant fields and a multitude of ones that would only be a bit less important. The development of oil and natural gas from what would soon be the Tengiz, Temir and Kasashyganak fields was on its way. They were much more than just icing on the cake. The fields were much closer to markets and the return would come correspondingly quicker.

The Tengiz oil field is one of the largest in the world. It contains 24 billion barrels of high quality oil and six to nine billion barrels of recoverable oil. It is deep, having a target depth of 4,500 metres. It also contains significant gas reserves of 18,000 billion cubic metres.

To start all this off, Leonid made a sharp change in policy. It sounded trivial but in reality it was a very significant move. Every family was entitled to a hundred square metres of land to raise crops to sell that did not have to be taxed. This was as close as a communist nation could come to letting a private individual own land. Through bureaucracy and poor planning, the lost wheat harvest in the early 70s might now be negated, because a family would be able to feed itself.

Three of our ships, preceded by a Soviet ice breaker, made their way through the Barents Sea around the island of Novaya Zemlya, that was the scene of many Soviet nuclear tests and then through the Kara Sea to Siberia. The pace was as quick as possible, because the work was much more hazardous and costly during the cold Russian winter above the Arctic Circle.

Quite a bit to the south were other Soviet oil and gas wells but the pipelines they fed were not adequate for the job I foresaw.

More of my oil exploration crews arrived over land but this time they went to Kazakhstan. I stayed in the Soviet Union for four months, with only an occasional jaunt to see family and conduct business. Sonia was worried that I would find a new Russian mistress and usually stayed with me to make sure I didn't. The other wives were more than just a little put out and vowed to stay with me in her place when I returned.

The field at Tengiz was plotted out with roughly six working wells. It was much bigger but this small test would do all that was needed. Russia was able to go to the market place and borrow money to develop the field. I would be paid for what I had done so far. I still needed the money to continue my efforts on reworking the seventeen reactors.

Conditions were not good in Siberia when the muskeg partially thawed and the insects came out to feast. My own men were working to drill the holes but they were teaching Russian drillers what we were doing differently. I saw by videophone how happy this group was when we struck oil in each of our eight holes. Soon, Russian crews would be sent here to drill their own wells and then test for flow.

The pipeline was already in progress, for we needed three hundred thousand twelve-metre lengths of very large two-metre pipe. Everybody thought me a fool for going so large when the full potential of the field was not known. Since it was, again, my money being risked, at least for a while I did what I wanted. There would be a considerable savings in cost if the larger pipe were to be used. They knew that I wanted eight such pipes in the future and this seemed to be a great waste to them.

One plant would convert the gas, liquefied under pressure, to a form that would be liquid at standard pressure. One of the large pipes would carry the volume of four regular one-metre pipes and be more than adequate for the task. The oil would go out at a rate of a million barrels per day but this would only happen when the field was more developed and more pipe was laid. The two-thousand-mile pipeline would get a dozen large pumping stations. They would increase the pressure enough to even pump the petroleum over the 9,000-feet-high mountain passes that sometimes reached -40. The ground though would keep it warmer at only -5 degrees Celsius.

The line would need a total of 430 block valve stations, weighting fifty tons each. This would isolate the pipe sections if there ever was a break. The pump and block valve stations would also provide power for the cathodic protection system, which would be used to prevent corrosion along the line. The sections would also be coated with a three-layer system of fusion-bonded epoxy adhesive and polythene. This was something that only I was using and I figured that the pipes would last considerably longer than what was used elsewhere.

The pipeline would also have a new invention that would ride the interior of a pipe and stop at all the welded joints to perform an x-ray inspection of every weld at least three times. The welding was for the most part going to be automated, anyway and the operators had to be well trained. The two metre diameter allowed most people to stand up inside.

The parts for the refineries were built all over the world and shipped to the Soviet Union. This was the quickest way to get this mammoth project going, for this phase took the most time and money.

The natural gas was purified to remove sulphur, inert gases and especially Helium. This last gas was purified again to extract all the helium III I could get. My contract said I got all of this as well as the other inert gasses. The United States was stockpiling helium but they were getting only my already purified product. I kept my own reserves of this and it was not kept in sandstone but in metal containers. At a future price of a billion dollars a tonne it was prudent to save all I could get now.

The West was pissed off at me for many reasons. They would gladly purchase the Russian products but the producers were angry at the expected drop in prices. They didn't want to have radioactive fallout from a reactor that was unsafe and they didn't want the Soviets helped. All this was over a difference in ideology and it also was a way of keeping the western military from being mothballed when it was no longer needed.

To be truthful, the West did not really know about all the millions of Soviet citizens that had to die because they did not believe in the system, or did not want to do what was required of them. Many of the countries that made up the Soviet Union, were as backward as they were a thousand years before. With no education, there was no way they could ever understand the forces that could be brought against them. Only long after the fact did the West learn about Stalin. Then the west used this information to justify what they had been doing all along.

I wanted the Soviets to be seen as less of a threat and I had done much. The Berlin Wall had never been constructed. Our space race was muted because it was now a partially cooperative effort. Wheat purchases did occur but not as much as what would be the case if everyone did not have their personal garden. Leonid was even shown working in his own garden to show that he was taking advantage of the new rulings.

'Ivan the Terrible' was now on television. He was an expatriate Russian chef that I had found who could make a good actor if given the chance. I gave him the chance and he was a flamboyant chef that most of the world knew from his show. Many famous celebrities came onto the show and did their own little display of domesticity.

Ivan usually sampled the food that others made and gave his own comments and they were scathing if not up to his standards. It was not like the old 'Springer' show but sometimes it was close. The celebrities soon found a way of emulating him and judged his food. The audiences usually howled at the antics of both. His Russian accent sometimes lapsed into actual Russian and, surprisingly, some people started to learn some of his quaint pidgin Russian phrases.

Part of the deal I made with Russia gave me the use of a great many workers. Another part was that the political commissars stayed away from them and my other projects. For the most part this worked. I could not own property but I did have a warrant saying that I was entitled to all help possible. The signatures at the bottom were Leonid's and some of the others on the Central Committee.

I paid for all my purchases within one month and did so in western currency. I could not pay the Soviet workers but they got many perks that they would not get elsewhere. Bonuses for productivity and innovation were some of the things I gave. These went as high as self-contained computer systems and clothes or luxury goods.

In December of 1967, I had a private meeting with the Secretary. "Hello, Leonid, how was your trip to Beijing?"

"Not bad. The Chinese have their own version of what Communism should be and it is different from ours."

"If I remember right, Communism in the Soviet Union is not quite the same as it was two years ago."

"You are right, Alex and I think it is mostly your doing. I don't know why I ever let you in to do this work for us."

"If you didn't, friend, you would have to live with the prospect of killing your country with a faulty reactor. The West does not see you as the Great Satan, like your country once was and I think your country has seen many of the benefits of capitalism."

"I don't know what I am going to do with those people after you are gone. Stalin would have them shot."

I countered, "He may have done so but only after they stopped producing, for we both know that they are very productive. Speaking of productive, I want to have you look at something."

On a large table I had spread out some prints and some colour pictures of two pieces of mining equipment. Leonid looked at both pictures and said, "The 'loader' you have here is ugly, for some reason and the truck looks odd too."

"The ugly truck can carry 360 tons and go forty kilometres an hour. The loader weights 1,000 tons and can fill the truck with just three passes because of the size of its bucket."

"That is unbelievable. Why are you showing me these pictures?"

"I want the Soviet Union to make these and export them to the world. You get to test them in the many open-pit mines your country has and the seven new ones you do not know about."

"What new ones?"

"The ones in Kazakhstan that I am going to trade to you."

"Tell me about this, Alex."

Another map came out and I used a pencil to mark in the copper fields and other heavy metals that I knew about. My men had even done some drilling with small rigs to find the extent of the fields. Again, I surprised him by mentioning the value of the field and comparing it to the cost of extracting and refining the metal.

"What do you want for this Alex?"

"I want two things. The area around the Aral Sea is used for irrigating the cotton fields in Kazakstan and many fields to the south. I want the crops changed and the area turned into a park for the Soviet citizens to enjoy. The way things are going, the lake will shrink in coming years. It will kill the fishing and then the irrigated land around it will be lost. If we don't do anything about it now, it will be lost for generations to come. We may already be late."

"That is it?" He asked incredulously. "You just want the water to be used less."

"Yes, basically that is it for my first condition. A lot of families will have to find alternative employment but the mines will be close. The problem is that they are farmers and now they will have to operate million-dollar pieces of equipment. Only a few would be able to do this."

Leonid looked exasperated and said, "And the other condition?"

"I want to have your country build a much better train system. I want it even better than what the Japanese now use. Trains are cheaper to make and run than aircraft. That is one of the failings that both Marx and Lenin had. If there are no effective ways of getting goods moved, your system will suffer."

"I thought you wanted Communism to suffer, Alex."

"I want you to allow more capitalism in your country. I don't want anybody to suffer. The few that move ahead will pull the rest of the country with them. Socialism I can live with in moderation but it is man's natural greed that will move us all forward. The train system can be studied and you can get my ideas on altering the Japanese system to fit the Soviet conditions."

He said, "You will have to talk to our engineers. I suppose the money from the minerals is a way of paying for his?"

"It sure does, with lots of profit left over for your people."

We talked for another ten minutes, talking about the cost of producing a truck or loader. This was done enthusiastically when he found out how much he could sell them for. The cost of the train and improved track was very high but the figures I gave him for the value of the minerals more than compensated for the cost.

The ore deposits I gave away would soon be found by the Soviets, anyway and I just got some mileage that would benefit everyone of us out of my information. The brackish lake would shrink from 25,500 square miles to just a third in the next thirty years. It was a necessary part of the local ecosystem and it was being raped till it would die by the turn of the century. Public transportation would benefit the world, not just the Soviet Union.

The trucks and the loaders would show a Soviet presence in the world and make the area look less foreign. It would bring in valuable export dollars for the country to evolve.

The request to move all the people from around the lake was not an easy thing to achieve. The people would resist the move and needed to be compensated and the Soviets did not like doing this.

The train, though, would start a new race that would get the West to copy the Soviets in train technology. This was a much better race to enter into, because it would directly benefit more people than the space shots.

Before Leonid left, I presented him with more of my ideas that would help his country. Wages were quite low and I wanted to use the Soviets the way the Indians were used to answer telephones when people called for help. Already the employees in the West were being swamped and this would only grow, as more and more people needed assistance in getting certain things done on their computer.

On the way home I stopped off at Prague to talk to Alexander Dubcek, the leader of Czechoslovakia. The two countries of Czech and Slovakia were one country that would only split much later and basically on good terms. We had talked many times before and he was one of the more liberal Communists. He called his plans 'Socialism with human face'.

Even though the Soviet Union had liberalized some, it would still react if someone went too fast and too far. The reactionaries would step in and I would loose ground that I had gained in the last three years. It would be very bad for my own plans if these reactionaries emerged from their bottle, for it would be very difficult to get them back in.

Warsaw Pact tanks would come in as they had to Hungary and stop the movement dead in its tracts. "Prague Spring" was a very trying time and I had no wish to lose all my gains.

"Alexander, you have to work harder to slow down this liberalization. I told you before what would happen and you have not done enough."

"My good friend, you are mistaken. I have done as much as I could. It is out of my hands now and I cannot legislate how the country feels."

"I know that but you can talk to the people as I have and try more to control their exuberance. Russia is now very worried about your country and Brezhnev will have no choice but to send troops in. The West will not even put up too much of a fuss, for they see a humane and democratic socialist country as more to be dreaded than one that is ruled by fear and oppression. Your countrymen are throwing away all my gains and their own too. Moderation is all I am talking about and if you don't try harder your country will suffer much more than you think. Hungary was just a few years ago and you know what happened then."

He paused and looked at his hand. "Yes, I know, Alex."

"Straighten the situation out now and be hated by your countrymen or watch them being killed by the Soviets. The choices are not good but history will know what personal sacrifices you made."

The reforms he had instituted were what was giving us problems. Two years ago I had seen this happening and tried to get it slowed down but it looked like it wasn't enough. I had an alternate plan that was only half, bad but I knew that I was playing much more than just the devil's advocate.

On another topic, I had done a lot of thinking about the upcoming six-day war. There was a lot of politics involved there and I was at odds with myself to let it continue or not. The Arab states were goaded into some military exercises as a show of force. Israel had used the pretext to say that they were being attacked. Their forces had been primed for a long time and attacked the Arabs and occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights.

The Arabs had been doing their best to get the Israelis out of what they considered their land and were using terrorist activities to do so. They would bomb peaceful homes and even schools but it was the Israelis that were constantly taking more land from the backward Arabs. I could see a great similarity to how the American Indian had been treated.

If it were up to me I would give them clubs and let them fight each other to the end. There would not be any loser around then to fight. In the end I just ignored what was going to happen and got all of my people out of the area. When the war did happen, it was a four-day war, because the Israelis had used or altered their own forces to try to emulate what I had done in Cuba.

President Charles de Gaulle in the other time had come to Québec and inflamed the French Canadian population by saying "Viva Québec Libra." This was in response to how the French-speaking portion of the province was discriminated against by the English-speaking company owners. My efforts in stopping segregation of the blacks were working. My companies and the ones I had some influence in, had put forward similar efforts. There was still discrimination but not as much as I remembered.

The old French President and I stood by the railing but this time he only said that the population could do more if they demanded it. This was still stirring up the population but it was fairly said. Before the man flew home, I found that he had been put up to the comment by some of the Québécois leaders.

I spent Christmas with the family and friends. The circle of people to see and even send cards too was getting very large. We didn't want to slight old friends just because they were not as rich or influential as the newer ones.

I now had eight of my own children around me and they liked to have stories read to them or played with. This was no chore at all and I tried to get home as much as possible. We used the videophone extensively when I had to be away. With the various homes in the United States, Europe, Japan and the Soviet Union, I wanted to bring them with me when I travelled.

Aron and Mineko wanted to get married and were old enough to do so. He was now 25 and had completed some of his university education. The service was planned for April and my wives and his mother were all excited about the planning.

Aron ran an assortment of companies with his sister and the remainder of my wives. The jobs shifted on occasion and this allowed everybody to work on their weaknesses. At present, Aron was working on getting existing roadbeds upgraded to handle the engines and railway cars we made. On his own he started a study to see about manufacturing subway cars, as this seemed to be a possible way of expanding. He would one day manage all non-military companies in Canada but he had to take the load a bit at a time.