Vishwanath Singh
Minister Han, who had said he would hear him out, wore a graver look than Ki-jo had ever seen on him. Then he put a question.
"President Lee, are you aware of the change in America's loan policy?"
Han Pyo-wook drew on his cigarette and laid it neatly across the ashtray.
"The United States, which used to hand aid to underdeveloped countries with no particular design, has turned instead to the Development Loan Fund," Ki-jo said.
Minister Han nodded.
"But the countries that gain most from the shift in loan policy are India and Pakistan."
The answer seemed to please him. Han granted it his approval.
"And do you know why aid to Korea has been cut so sharply?" he asked, taking up the cigarette again.
Ki-jo answered with what he knew.
"Because of the Korea-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty."
A light came into Han's eyes. Certain he had the right of it, Ki-jo went on.
"The United States decided it would no longer actively assist underdeveloped countries placed under the Mutual Security Act. America was already guaranteeing their security, so they slipped down the list of priorities."
The Mutual Defense Treaty Syngman Rhee had signed was a double-edged sword. It had made the country's security firm, and it had cost the economy dearly. Minister Han neither agreed nor disagreed. A serving official could not easily admit that American aid had dwindled because of Syngman Rhee's greatest achievement, and Ki-jo took the silence to mean that Han was withholding any open assent.
"And the other reason?"
"Because the Korean government asked the United States for technical cooperation aid."
Han flinched. Ki-jo took that, too, for a good sign.
"And why should that be a problem?"
He asked it almost as a challenge, but Ki-jo heard a test of what he knew.
"Because American technical-cooperation aid is carried out jointly by the United States government and private firms."
"And so?"
Minister Han asked, and Ki-jo saw that the cigarette between his fingers had burned nearly to the end. It was proof the man was fixed on every word.
"The American government only draws up a list of technologies eligible for cooperation. The practical work is left to private companies. And those companies, as a matter of course, are answering India, which has the people and the market."
Ki-jo finished. Han stubbed what remained of the cigarette and cleared his throat two or three times.
"I've heard you out."
His manner grew still more serious.
"Tell me how you mean to persuade the World Bank."
Ki-jo laid the strategy out as simply as he could.
"I'll go in by piggybacking."
"Piggybacking?"
"Yes."
He explained. When the United States launched a technical-assistance program for India, Korea would ask to be written in beside it. A portion of the technical-cooperation loans bound for India would be turned toward Korea, so that Korea received a benefit comparable to India's.
"Hm. It sounds like a sound idea."
The strategy must have carried, for Minister Han agreed.
"Have you, by any chance, thought of a project you might propose?"
"I have. Something India and Korea could pursue at the same time."
"Have you? What sort of project?"
"Tractors."
"Tractors? That's a large undertaking. It would take a high level of technology, surely."
"But it's also a project both India and Korea want, agricultural countries that they are. And..."
Ki-jo took a napkin from the restaurant table and began to draw with a ballpoint pen. Minister Han watched the lines take shape. Ki-jo kept explaining as he drew.
"What I have in mind is a tractor of very simple construction, easy to build, and cheap."
As the outline emerged, Han let out a wondering breath.
"Oh. Well now."
"A machine of extremely simple design, fitted with a single-cylinder diesel. In America they would call it a rotary tiller, or a cultivator."
What he had drawn was a power tiller. The machine had first been developed in Australia in 1920, a kind of walking tractor that tilled paddy and dry field in place of the hoe and the plow. Ki-jo slid the napkin across to Minister Han. Han studied the drawing, openly curious at the shape of the thing.
"You mean a farmer could take hold of these handles and plow a paddy, the way he works with an ox in the harness?"
"That's right."
"Nothing like the house-sized tractors the Americans use."
"An American tractor doesn't suit Korea, where the paddies are many and the paths narrow and winding. They cost a great deal to keep, and they take skilled hands to maintain. This machine will hardly need maintenance at all."
Han stroked his chin.
"Could you bring the price of this machine below the price of an ox?"
"If we go in with India, and if the road to export opens, mass production ought to bring the price down."
The first cost of a single tiller, he added, might run higher than the purchase of an ox. But once you reckoned the years an ox lasted, and the labor and expense of keeping one, the tractor could come out the cheaper of the two.
"Besides, India has cattle in plenty and may use them neither for meat nor even for farming. A machine to take the ox's place ought to be welcome there as well."
He drew out a second napkin and sketched a trailer, a cargo bed, then laid the new drawing against the one in front of Han so the two joined.
"Couple the mini-tractor to a trailer like this, and it becomes a truck that can haul the harvested grain."
"I see!"
Han was delighted, full of wonder.
"What engine did you say it used?"
"A single-cylinder diesel. The fuel economy is good, and I've heard it's simple enough to run even on cooking oil."
Living in the countryside, he had seen a tiller turn over on whatever oil was poured into it. Even an engine thirty years old had run hale and strong. Minister Han seemed to have fallen into the explanation. His face had brightened, and he kept asking how the tiller was put together. Ki-jo answered, within the limits of what he knew, as earnestly as he could.
After a long while of it, Han said, "I'll do what I can on my side. Your project looks as if it has a real chance of being realized."
Ki-jo felt that the man truly wanted to help. Minister Han seemed to turn something over in his mind, and then he asked, "Have you mentioned this mini-tractor business to Ambassador Yang as well?"
"I haven't."
Relief crossed Han's face.
"And a lobbyist? How have you handled that? Did you ask someone?"
Ki-jo answered, unruffled. "Would there be any need? Isn't Ambassador Yang a lobbyist in his own right? But I expect he would name a very large commission, so I couldn't quite bring myself to ask."
The moment Ki-jo put his finger on what the ambassador really was, Minister Han, serious all this while, broke into laughter.
"Well done. Truly well done. Ha ha ha."
They looked at each other and laughed for a good while. Something passed between them without needing to be said. Over coffee, they talked on.
Through the cafeteria window, two Asians deep in conversation must have been an unfamiliar sight. Americans going by on the street stared openly as they passed. Neither man minded the looks. They kept to the World Bank loans and nothing else.
After another hour or so, Han gazed out at the pitch-dark street. A rueful look came over him.
"I was one of the lucky ones. Even during the war, I was able to stay in America and never go back to Korea."
He drew the last cigarette from the pack, set it between his lips, took in a breath of smoke, and went on.
"I mean to think of this as paying a debt I ran up then. I'll help you."
He held out his hand. Ki-jo shook it and rose.
A few days later, word came from Minister Han. He had found an Indian lobbyist, and they were to meet the man together. His name was Vishwanath Singh. He had gone to Harvard, and at the World Bank he was nothing less than a working officer who handled the loans themselves.
Ki-jo met him at a plain little eatery near the hotel. Introduced by Minister Han, he came away with the impression that this was no ordinary Indian. The speech, first of all, was different: not an Indian lilt, but a proper British accent. Not only the voice. The face and the clothes were English, too. The skin stood out as well. It was a light brown. In India, the higher the caste, the lighter the skin. High caste, then. Schooled in Britain. Ki-jo set what he knew of Singh in order.
"How do you do. Singh."
"A pleasure. Lee Ki-jo."
They shook hands.
"Minister Han has given me the general picture. I find the venture rather intriguing myself. Might I hear more of it?"
Ki-jo could have handed him the business plan. The bag he had carried since leaving Korea held the plan for the power tiller. But he did not show Singh the papers. No—he had not even brought them. He was not certain he could trust an Indian. From India's side, it would be simple enough to take the tiller project and leave him out of it. India had already drawn three hundred million dollars in loans from West Germany alone, and far more than that by way of the United States. With a budget of that size already secured, they had only to take the scheme he had conceived and carry it out. He did not want the fate of the business placed in the hands of a stranger named Singh. And yet he had to draw the man's help out of him all the same.
"Mr. Singh, might I make that case before the president of the World Bank, or the vice president?"
Singh considered for a moment.
"You don't trust me, I see."
He smiled, just slightly.
"It isn't that I don't trust you."
Ki-jo headed off the turn toward suspicion.
"Only this. I worry the president or the vice president will say my project should be pursued in India alone—and that they will say it because you would be helping me so keenly."
At that, Singh laughed.
"And why do you suppose I would help you?"
"Because the business would be of considerable benefit to Punjab."
Singh grinned.
"How did you know I was from Punjab?"
It was the name. Singh meant the man was a Sikh, and Sikhs, nearly all of them, came from the state of Punjab. Punjab grew wheat, and a great deal of rice besides—indica, not the japonica Koreans ate, but rice all the same, and that was the common ground. So Ki-jo had judged he would care about a power tiller. A man might labor for India and still try harder when the work was for his own home.
"I guessed it from your name. And the machine I mean to build is made for rice and for wheat."
"It did strike me as rather small, though. The tractor, I mean."
As he said it, Singh glanced at Minister Han, who had already told him about the tiller.
"Isn't smaller better? Punjab is highland country, as I understand it, with a great many smallholders. My machine is a solution suited to people like that. Korea, too, is full of small farmers."
Singh nodded. He thought Ki-jo a clever man, and clever enough that going into the business together would help India, and help his own Punjab as well.
He knew how hard it was to raise industry inside India. The people on the ground were the sort for whom ten years to put up a single factory would not seem strange. State governments invented every pretext to demand more money, and the laborers on a worksite were impossible to tell from spectators. Money drawn from the World Bank was being poured into his homeland, and still the results barely showed. If a sharp Korean built the farm machinery in Korea and brought it to India, he would not mind. That might even be the faster road to developing India.
"Very well. Mr. Lee, Minister Han has recommended you, so I shall trust you. Only you must not put a foot wrong in front of the Bank's senior men."
"Thank you for understanding."
Ki-jo offered him his thanks.
With Minister Han beside them, he and Singh talked of the world as it stood. Singh's home, Punjab, shared borders with Pakistan and with China, a place that knew no quiet day, fighting Islam on one side and communism on the other. In that, it had much in common with Korea. Each man spoke of his own country's circumstances, and still each could feel the other's words as if they were the story of his own land.