Not accustomed to wide-brimmed champagne glasses, Commissar Ivan Denisovich Slobbovski knocked his drink back as he was used to doing with vodka and spilt the champagne all over his shirt front. Commissar Vladimir Vissarionovich Vatskukin, the chairman of the committee, looked at him disapprovingly.
“Comrade Ivan Denisovich,” he said sternly, “how many times must I remind you that champagne must be sipped in a genteel manner and not downed in one gulp like that rot-gut vodka you are addicted to.
Here, let me show you.” Commissar Vatskukin filled his glass and took a sip from it with a loud slurping noise.
The third member of the committee, Commissar Yuri Efremovich Ripsemoff, winced and cleared his throat noisily.
“Comrades,” he said, “we are wasting time, Comrade Chairman, please bring tne meeting to order and let us discuss the first item on the agenda.”
The Chairman looked at Yuri’ Efremovich suspiciously. He didn’t like eager beavers and would have bumped him off the committee a long time ago if he hadn’t known that Ripsemoff’s wife was the favourite niece of a high-ranking member of the Politburo and that his appointment to the committee had been recommended by none other than the Secretary-General himself.
“All right,” he said, pouring out the rest of the champagne, “let’s get down to business. The first phase of Operation Britannia has been crowned with complete success. For that, we are indebted to Comrade Slobbovski here, whose idea it was in the first place. I must admit I never thought it would work out but it would seem that his assessment of the psychological state of mind of Miss Onassis and his choice of Sergei Kauzov as our Sovfracht agent in Paris were correct in every respect. Good work, Comrade. I shall recommend you for the Order of the Red Flag.”
“I’ve already got the Order of the Red Flag!” Comrade Slobbovski protested.
“All right. The Order of the Red Star, then.”
“I’ve got that one too!”
The Chairman sighed. “With oak-leaf clusters?” he asked tentatively.
“Not with oak-leaf clusters,” Slob-bovski admitted.
“All right. You’ll get the oak-leaf clusters. Now don’t make life too difficult for me and don’t get a swelled head or I’ll be giving you another order you won’t like very much.”
“What’s that?” Slobbovski asked.
“The Order of the Red Boot, that’s what,” Vatskukin said, glaring at him.
“Comrades, please let’s get on with the agenda,” Commissar Ripsemoff broke in.
The Chairman’s face reddened and he turned his glare towards the third member of the committee. Then he remembered the niece, the Politburo, and the Secretary-General and pulled himself together.
“All right. Now the next step is to man the Onassis fleet with Russian crews. What is the situation on that, Comrade Slobbovski? What have you to report?”
“As you say, Comrade Chairman, that is the next step. It will not be easy, though,” Slobbovski replied. “The general idea is that by employing Russian crews and buying cheap fuel from us, the Onassis ships can be run at half their present cost. They can then undercut the competition in the same way as our Soviet ships are doing on the world freight market.”
“And what is the advantage to us?” the Chairman asked.
“We increase our merchant fleet by the total.number of ships controlled by the Onassis interests at one stroke without having to build them or buy them,” Slobbovski replied.
“But the profits will still be earned by the Onassis companies—” the Chairman began.
“Which profits will ultimately be collected by Mrs. Kauzov, the wife of a Soviet citizen residing in Moscow. I need not remind you of the regulations governing the earnings of Soviet citizens abroad,” Slobbovski broke in.
‘Perfect, perfect,” the Chairman beamed.
“Not so perfect,” Slobbovski interrupted again. “There is such a thing as the International Transport Federation, which has been waging a campaign against what are known as ‘flags of convenience’. The Liberian flag, which is used mainly by Onassis ships, is such a flag. The ITF is campaigning to raise the wages of crews working on such ships. It is managing to enforce this by getting the dockers’ unions and tugboatmen in world ports to boycott ships that fly flags of convenience and underpay their crews, and it has been successful in many cases. Dock workers refuse to handle a ship blacklisted by the ITF and the owner can either go to court and obtain a ruling that the boycott is illegal and unjustified or accept to pay the ITF wage scale. As court action is slow and delays are expensive, he generally pays up.”
“But the ITF has never interfered with Soviet crews,” the Chairman protested.
“Not on Soviet ships, no,” Slobbovski admitted, “but I don’t know what they might do in the case of Russians working on Liberian-flag ships.”
The Chairman looked nonplussed. “Surely we must solve this problem before we proceed with the next phase. Comrade Ripsemoff, what have you to say? How are your agents progressing?”
Ripsemoff had been itching to make his report and he rustled his notes gleefully as he read from them:
“We have ten female and four male Sovfracht agents in the field and they are now working on the scions and scionesses of fourteen prominent Greek shipping families. If they are all successful, we estimate we shall have under our control within the next year a total of one hundred and sixty-five tankers, ninety-six bulk carriers, and forty-eight cargo liners, not to mention two cruise ships and one dredger.”
“Very good, very good,” the Chairman said. “At this rate, and with our own building program, we shall eventually control a sufficiently high percentage of world tonnage to put the rest out of business and then Project Britannia will be fulfilled in all its phases — we shall indeed rule the waves.”
Carried away by his enthusiasm, the Chairman opened a bottle of vodka, poured some into his champagne glass, knocked it back and spilled most of it down his shirt front.
Commissar Slobbovski hid a smirk behind his hand and quickly bent to tie his shoelace as the Chairman glared at him.
“Ivan Denisovich,” he said menacingly, “the Order of the Red Boot will very soon make contact with your nether regions if you do not stop smirking and come up with an answer to union action in foreign ports against Liberian-flag ships with Russian crews.”
Slobbovski shrugged. “We can only wait and see,” he said.
“What about these union bosses. Can’t we influence them in any way? What about getting some of Comrade Ripsemoff’s agents to work on them? What do you think, Comrade Yuri Efremovich?”
Ripsemoff shook his head sadly. “Most of them are leftists and some are even communists,” he said, “and I know for sure nothing would ever persuade them to come and live in Moscow.”
