Expediter Part 3

When the security guard responded to the summons, he gestured curtly with his head at the newcomer. "Throw this fool out, Petar," he rapped.

Josip Pekic shook his head, almost sadly. "No," he said. "Throw _this_ man out." He pointed at the secretary-receptionist.

The guard called Petar blinked at each of them in turn.

Josip brought forth his wallet, fidgeted a moment with the contents, then flashed his credentials. "State expediter," he said nervously.

"Under direct authority of Comrade Zoran Jankez." He looked at the suddenly terrified receptionist. "I don't know what alternative work we can find to fit your talents. However, if I ever again hear of you holding down a position in which you meet the public, I will ... will, ah, see you imprisoned."

The other scurried from the room before Josip thought of more to say.

Josip Pekic looked at the guard for a long moment. He said finally, unhappy still, "What are you needed for around here?"

"Why yes, Comrade. I am the security guard."

Petar, obviously no brain at the best, was taken aback.

"You didn't answer my question." Josip's hands were jittering so he jammed them into his pockets.

Petar had to think back to remember the wording of the question in question. Finally he came up triumphantly with, "Yes, Comrade. I guard Comrade Broz and the others from a.s.sa.s.sins. I am armed." He proudly displayed the Mikoyan Noiseless which he had holstered under his left shoulder.

Josip said, "Go back to your superior and inform him that I say you are superfluous on this a.s.signment. No longer are commissars automatically to be guarded. Only under special circ.u.mstances. If ...

well, if our people dislike individual commissars sufficiently to wish to a.s.sa.s.sinate them, maybe they need a.s.sa.s.sination."

Petar stared at him.

"Oh, get out," Josip said, with attempted sharpness. But then, "What door leads to Comrade Broz's office?"

Petar pointed, then got out. At least he knew how to obey orders, Josip decided. What was there about the police mentality? Were they like that before they became police, and the job sought them out? Or did the job make them all that way?

He pushed his way through the indicated door. The office beyond held but one inhabitant who stood, hands clasped behind his back, while he stared in obvious satisfaction at a wall of charts, maps and graphs.

The average young man looked at some of the lettering on the charts and shook his head. He said, his voice hesitant, "Commissar Broz?"

The other turned, frowning, not recognizing his caller and surprised to find him here without announcement. He said, "Yes, young man?"

Josip presented his credentials again.

Broz had heard of him. He hurried forth a chair, became expansive in manner. A cigar? A drink? A great pleasure to meet the Comrade Expediter. He had heard a great deal about the new experiment initiated by Comrade Jankez and ably a.s.sisted by Aleksander Kardelj.

Happily, an expediter was not needed in the Transbalkanian Steel Complex. It was expanding in such wise as to be the astonishment of the world, both East and West.

"Yes," Josip began glumly, "but--"

Broz was back on his feet and to his wall of charts and graphs. "See here," he beamed expansively. "This curve is steel production. See how it zooms? A veritable Sputnik, eh? Our statistics show that we are rapidly surpa.s.sing even the most foremost of the Western powers."

Josip Pekic said, almost apologetically in view of the other's enthusiasm. "That's what I came to discuss with you, Comrade. You see, I've been sitting around, ah, in the local wineshops, talking it over with the younger engineers and the men on the job."

The other frowned at him. "Talking what over?"

"This new policy of yours." Josip's voice was diffident.

"You mean overtaking the steel production of the West, by utilizing _all_ methods of production?" The commissar's voice dropped. "I warn you Comrade, the germ of this idea originated with Zoran Jankez himself. We are old comrades and friends from back before the revolution."

"I'm sure you are," Josip said pessimistically, and suppressing an urge to bite at the skin of his thumb. "However ... well, I'm not so sure Number One will admit your program originated with him. At least, it hasn't worked out that way in the recent past when something soured."

The other bug-eyed. He whispered, "That approaches cynical treason, Comrade."

Josip half nodded, said discouragedly, "You forget. By Comrade Jankez's own orders I ... I can do no wrong. But so much for that.

Now, well, this steel program. I'm afraid it's going to have to be sc.r.a.pped."

"Sc.r.a.pped!" the Commissar of the Transbalkanian Steel Complex stared at his visitor as though the other was rabid. "You fool! Our steel progress is the astonishment of the world! Why, not only are our ultramodern plants, built largely with foreign a.s.sistance, working on a twenty-four hour a day basis, but thousands of secondary smelters, some so small as to be operated by a handful of comrade citizens, in backyard establishments, by schoolchildren, working smelters of but a few tons monthly capacity in the schoolyard, by--"

The newly created State Expediter held up a hand dispiritedly. "I know. I know. Thousands of these backyard smelters exist ... uh ...

especially in parts of the country where there is neither ore nor fuel available."

The commissar looked at him.

The younger man said, his voice seemingly deprecating his words, "The schoolchildren, taking time off from their studies, of course, bring sc.r.a.p iron to be smelted. And they bring whatever fuel they can find, often pilfered from railway yards. And the more sc.r.a.p and fuel they bring, the more praise they get. Unfortunately, the so-called sc.r.a.p often turns out to be kitchen utensils, farm tools, even, on at least on occasion, some railroad tracks, from a narrow gauge line running up to a lumbering project, not in use that time of the year. Sooner or later, Comrade Broz, the nation is going to have to replace those kitchen utensils and farm tools and all the rest of the sc.r.a.p that isn't really quite sc.r.a.p."

The commissar began to protest heatedly, but Josip Pekic shook his head and tried to firm his less than dominating voice. "But even that's not the worst of it. Taking citizens away from their real occupations, or studies, and putting them to smelting steel where no ore exists. The worst of it is, so my young engineer friends tell me, that while the steel thus produced might have been a marvel back in the days of the Hitt.i.tes, it hardly reaches specifications today.

Perhaps it might be used ultimately to make simple farm tools such as hoes and rakes; if so, it would make quite an endless circle, because that is largely the source of the so-called steel to begin with--tools, utensils and such. But it hardly seems usable in modern industry."

The commissar had gone pale with anger by now. He put his two fists on his desk and leaned upon them, staring down at his seated visitor.

"Comrade," he bit out, "I warn you. Comrade Jankez is enthusiastic about my successes. Beyond that, not only is he an old comrade, but my brother-in-law as well."

Josip Pekic nodded, unenthusiastically, and his voice continued to quiver. "So the trained engineers under you, have already warned me.

However, Comrade Broz, you are ... well, no longer Commissar of the Steel Complex. My report has already gone in to Comrades Jankez and Kardelj."

The knock came at the door in the middle of the night as Aleksander Kardelj had always thought it would.

From those early days of his Party career, when his ambitions had sent him climbing, pushing, tripping up others, on his way to the top, he had expected it eventually.

Oh, his had been a different approach, on the surface, an easygoing, laughing, gentler approach than one usually connected with members of the Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Party, but it made very little difference in the very long view. When one fell from the heights, he fell just as hard, whether or not he was noted for his sympathetic easy humor.

The fact was, Aleksander Kardelj was not asleep when the fist pounded at his door shortly after midnight. He had but recently turned off, with a shaking hand, the Telly-Phone, after a less than pleasant conversation with President of the United Balkan Soviet Republics, Zoran Jankez.

For the past ten years, Kardelj had been able to placate Zoran Jankez, even though Number One be at the peak of one of his surly rages, rages which seemed to be coming with increasing frequency of late. As the socio-economic system of the People's Democratic Dictatorship became increasingly complicated, as industrialization with its modern automation mushroomed in a geometric progression, the comparative simplicity of governing which applied in the past, was strictly of yesteryear. It had been one thing, rifle and grenades in hand, to seize the government, after a devastating war in which the nation had been leveled, and even to maintain it for a time, over illiterate peasants and unskilled proletarians. But industrialization calls for a highly educated element of scientists and technicians, nor does it stop there. One of sub-mentality can operate a shovel in a field, or even do a simple operation on an endless a.s.sembly line in a factory.

But practically all workers must be highly skilled workers in the age of automation, and there is little room for the illiterate. The populace of the People's Dictatorship was no longer a dumb, driven herd, and their problems were no longer simple ones.

Yes, Number One was increasingly subject to his rages these days. It was Aleksander Kardelj's deepest belief that Jankez was finding himself out of his depth. He no longer was capable of understanding the problems which his planning bodies brought to his attention. And he who is confused, be he ditchdigger or dictator, is a man emotionally upset.

Zoran Jankez's face had come onto the Telly-Phone screen already enraged. He had snapped to his right-hand man, "Kardelj! Do you realize what that ... that idiot of yours has been up to now?"

Inwardly, Kardelj had winced. His superior had been mountingly difficult of late, and particularly these past few days. He said now, cajolingly, "Zoran, I--"