as he picked up the phone. “What’s new?”
“Our oil field up north,” the president of Atlantic Richfield replied.
“Good news?”
“You might say that. Our field people say the find is about fifty percent bigger than our initial estimates.”
“How solid is that information?”
“About as reliable as one of your T-bills, George. My head field guy is Ernie Beach. He’s as good at finding oil as you used to be playing up on The Street.” Maybe even better , Sam Sherman didn’t add. Winston was known to have something of an ego on the subject of his own worth. The addendum got through anyway.
“So, summarize that for me,” the Secretary of the Treasury commanded.
“So, when this field comes on line, the Russians will be in a position to purchase Saudi Arabia outright, plus Kuwait and maybe half of Iran. It makes east Texas look like a fart in a tornado. It’s huge, George.”
“Hard to get out?”
“It won’t be easy, and it won’t be inexpensive, but from an engineering point of view it’s pretty straightforward. If you want to buy a hot stock, pick a Russian company that makes cold-weather gear. They’re going to be real busy for the next ten years or so,” Sherman advised.
“Okay, and what can you tell me of the implications for Russia in economic terms?”
“Hard to say. It will take eight to twelve years to bring this field fully on line, and the amount of crude this will dump on the market will distort market conditions quite a bit. We haven’t modeled all that out—but it’s going to be huge, like in the neighborhood of one hundred billion dollars per year, current-year dollars, that is.”
“For how long?” Winston could almost hear the shrug that followed.
“Twenty years, maybe more. Our friends in Moscow still want us to sit on this, but word’s perking out in our company, like trying to hide a sunrise, y’know? I give it a month before it breaks out into the news media. Maybe a little longer’n that, but not much.”
“What about the gold strike?”
“Hell, George, they’re not telling me anything about that, but my guy in Moscow says the cat’s gobbled down some kind of canary, or that’s how it appears to him. That will probably depress the world price of gold about five, maybe ten percent, but our models say it’ll rebound before Ivan starts selling the stuff he pulls out of the ground. Our Russian friends—well, their rich uncle just bit the big one and left them the whole estate, y’know?”
“And no adverse effects on us,” Winston thought aloud.
“Hell, no. They’ll have to buy all sorts of hardware from our people, and they’ll need a lot of expertise that only we have, and after that’s over, the world price of oil goes down, and that won’t hurt us either. You know, George, I like the Russians. They’ve been unlucky sonsabitches for a long time, but maybe this’ll change that for’em.”
“No objections here or next door, Sam,” TRADER assured his friend. “Thanks for the information.”
“Well, you guys still collect my taxes.” You bastards, he didn’t add, but Winston heard it anyway, including the chuckle. “See you around, George.”
“Right, have a good one, Sam, and thanks.” Winston killed one button on his phone, selected another line, and hit his number nine speed-dial line.
“Yeah?” a familiar voice responded. Only ten people had access to this number.
“Jack, it’s George, just had a call from Sam Sherman, Atlantic Richfield.”
“Russia?”
“Yeah. The field is fifty percent bigger than they initially thought. That makes it pretty damned big, biggest oil strike ever, as a matter of fact, bigger than the whole Persian Gulf combined. Getting the oil out will be a little expensive, but Sam says it’s all cookbook stuff—hard, but they know how it’s done, no new technology to invent, just a matter of spending the money—and not even all that much, ’cause labor is a lot cheaper there than it is here. The Russians are going to get rich.”
“How rich?” the President asked.
“On the order of a hundred billion dollars per year once the field is fully on line, and that’s good for twenty years, maybe more.”
Jack had to whistle at that. “Two trillion dollars. That’s real money, George.”
“That’s what we call it on The Street, Mr. President,” Winston agreed. “Sure as hell, that’s real money.”
“And what effect will it have on the Russian economy?”
“It won’t hurt them very much,” SecTreas assured him. “It gets them a ton of hard currency. With that money they can buy the things