“And for this you will pay my employees a start-up bonus of $100,000 each, and pay my company the going rate – at any given time – plus 1% of the gross revenue as calculated by the number of barrels extracted times the then-current market price, re-calculated bi-monthly.”
The man nodded.
“And you want us to begin as soon as we can; be ready to pack-up and leave within two months.”
Again the man nodded.
Tom asked, “All relocation costs provided at whatever rate I say, including buying my guys’ houses?”
The man nodded.
Tom thought about this as he sipped his coffee. “Well, I guess once you’ve made the decision, the rest is just wasting time, right?”
Again a nod.
“Annual four-week vacations to wherever the workers want to take their families – anywhere in the world – paid for by you?”
Nod.
“Housing will be Western-style?”
Nod.
“Education? Local K-12, in English, and paid tuition at any college in the world the kids can get into?”
“English and Mandarin, Mr. Palmer,” the Chinese man spoke finally. “We want them to be ready for the future, do we not?”
“English and Mandarin.” He thought about that. He nodded. “Classes for the parents and other adults, too?”
Nod.
“And we go on the payroll……”
“As soon as you and I agree on the deal.” He sipped from his cup. “Today, if you like.”
“What if some of the men don’t want to go, or some of the families decide they can’t move, or some of them get there and change their minds?”
“From the point you and I make the deal, everyone will be paid. If anyone decides it is not a good move for them, there will be no questions asked, no return of money; everyone keeps what they have been paid. For those who arrive and decide against staying, they will be paid until they return to America, and we will purchase a home for them wherever in America they decide to live.” He stopped and drank some coffee.
“Mr. Palmer, we want your people to be happy and contented. Happy workers are more productive workers and worth the cost in the long run. Besides,” he finished, “the costs that may be incurred for someone who ultimately changes their mind are so small as to make no sense to quarrel over.”
Tom thought about that for a long sip of coffee and then nodded his head. “Nope, you’re right. They don’t.”
Tom had never been to China. He’d traveled to many places to drill and pump oil, but never China. “What about freedom?” he asked.
The man nodded his head; an expected question.
“I mean, America is pretty free - will we be able to, well, to move about, go where we want or need to if we live there? Buy what we’d like?”
The man nodded again, responding, “You will not find, we do not think, a material difference in your freedoms as workers in remote Chinese territories from your freedoms here or in other locations in which you have worked. We are a very hardworking, people, intent on the freedom to get to our work, to buy what we need. Our Middle Class - the reason we need this additional energy and modernization - is pushing forward to gain access to what they want to buy, what they see in Hollywood movies, or what the young have experienced in schools in America. Our people are becoming more free.”
Tom nodded, thinking as he looked out the window of the diner at the mid-day sky. A cold west-Texas wind gusted across the parking lot. “It gonna be hot there?” he asked, not looking away from the window.
“Hot in the summer. Cold in the winter.”
“When would you like my answer?”
“I think you know your men very well, Mr. Palmer. I would like the answer now. I will accept it as late as noon, tomorrow, and then I must approach my second choice. One who, from all I have heard, is not as good as you and your team.”
Tom nodded again. He put down his coffee cup and looked at the man across the table.
“I normally do my work based on a handshake,” he said. “But I’m asking quite a bit of my people this time. Leaving family, friends, schools.” He looked through the window and down the street again, studying the distance and said, almost in melancholy, “Home.”
He always had liked distance. Their local surroundings were one of the things that kept his company here in what some considered the far end of civilization – the plains of west Texas. He returned his gaze to the Chinese man. “I’ll need a contract.”
The Chinese man turned to the briefcase sitting beside him on the cushioned bench of the booth. Opening it, he removed a short, but simple and complete agreement and passed it to Tom.
Tom studied the pages, reading them through. It took him all his cup of coffee and another. Completed, he looked out the window again, not really seeing the street this time, but men working, his men. Men who had trusted and followed him all over the planet.
In his mind’s eye he saw oil fields his men had drilled and made productive in sand, rock, desert and ice. Envisioning the future and more wells, more of the same hard work, but this time with a good home, good schools run for the benefit of his men and their families. Heck, the men home with their families. Vacations these families probably would not be willing or able to take otherwise. College for all his families’ kids.
Displacement? Yep. Could they handle that? Probably; the oilman’s life was where he worked – that’s what made him an oilman in the 21st Century. It wasn’t as though oil cared about national boundaries.
He looked back at the man across the table for a long moment. The man returned his gaze unblinkingly. Tom nodded and stuck out his hand.
“I’ll need to run this by my team and my lawyers,” he said, nodding at the contract, “but I think it’ll work for us.”
The Chinese man shook the offered hand.
The last man and his wife boarded the aircraft, following their children up the jetway. Tom watched and then looked at the Chinese man, who returned his gaze with a small, almost intimate smile on his face.
Tom raised an eyebrow at the man, who said, “I am glad, we are glad, you and your men and their families have joined us. Seriously, Tom.”
It was the first time in the weeks of close contact that the man had used his Christian name. “I will see you in China,” he said, and put out his hand.
Tom smiled back at him, nodded, and shook his hand. Then he turned and strode up the jetway and onto the airplane.
5
Chicago
Wednesday, 10 April, 20:00 hours GMT (15:00 Local)
Tim Lowe had been an Account Representative for Boeing for nearly his entire 30-year career in business, following graduation from the USAF Academy and a stint in the Air Force in the late-1970s as a cargo pilot. Young dreams of flying high-performance jets against adversaries had run up against an inability to really stick a hot landing and, of course, the end of the Vietnam War and no adversaries against whom to fly and fight. Consequently he had driven C-141 Lockheed Starlifters around the Pacific route for his five-year post-Academy commitment.
Based out of the now-closed Norton Air Force Base he had studied