He felt he was making little progress.
Most of his reports pointed toward the conclusion that the factory’s problems arose from the introduction of an industrial process in a country with a language and culture stuck in the Middle Ages. The absurd situations—like the fact that some extremely expensive presses imported from the United States were taken to be filler and used as reinforcement in the construction of a railway station, or that an entire set of punches had succumbed to rust because, not knowing how to work them, the Russians had simply left them outdoors—were an everyday occurrence. In his research, he’d learned that Ford had experienced similar difficulties when setting up its subsidiary in Berlin in 1926. However, the German character—organized, methodical, disciplined—along with a state of technological development similar to the Americans’, had ultimately led to success.
It was in stark contrast to what, in Jack’s view, was happening in Gorky, and not because the Soviets were less hardworking than the Germans. The problem was that, while the Germans had met the challenge like an army of bees, the Russians seemed to be doing it like a herd of goats.
He poked the brazier he’d bought to ward off the cold and continued to examine his papers.
If the reports were anything to go by, everything seemed to stem from the stubbornness of Stalin himself; after disregarding the advice of the experts, he had ordered a carbon copy of Ford’s gigantic complex in Dearborn, including factories, sewerage, schools, hospitals, social facilities, and accommodation, all to be built in one go, and on a site with very little preexisting infrastructure. What was more, the rushed opening, pushed through to mark the end of the five-year plan, meant that the construction of the Avtozavod was far from complete.
A simple figure confirmed his analysis: not a single Russian automobile had yet come off the Soviet production lines. The small number of units produced was from the stock of seventy-five thousand broken-down Model A Fords that Stalin had purchased in order to cannibalize them.
The other big problem was that 90 percent of the thirty thousand workers at the industrial complex were farmers and herders with no comparable experience. On several occasions, during his inspection rounds, Jack had caught workers lighting fires on the floor to cook food, or wearing bearskin while they handled machinery in which baggy clothing could easily get trapped, or leaving their stations to relieve themselves on the nearest piece of open ground, rather than use the latrines. Trying to make the workers from the steppes follow the rules on safety, cleanliness, and discipline was a thorny business, and it was no surprise that so many accidents happened. However, there were incidents that were difficult to classify as accidents.
Every night, Jack set aside the files related to errors or negligence, and focused on the more mysterious incidents that could have been caused by sabotage. The most curious thing to him was that they’d all taken place in the press shop.
The first incident was caused by a broken chain belt on the chassis line. In the maintenance reports, it was stated that the belt had been replaced by a qualified operative before the accident, so its deterioration was surprising. Though nobody was harmed, production was interrupted for two days. But the strange thing was not so much that a new belt had broken, but that it happened to be the only type of belt for which there was no replacement in the entire factory.
The second incident was a broken hook on one of the cranes used to move engines. The motor that was swinging in the air when it happened fell to the ground from a height of ten feet, crushing two workers. Jack was sad for the two men who died and their families. He knew those cranes, and knew that the case-hardened hooks with which they were equipped wouldn’t break under the weight of a steamroller. Also, the maintenance checks, according to the records in his possession, were satisfactory.
The final incident involved an acetylene canister that had exploded. Most events of this nature occurred when novices without welding experience left oxygen canisters open and lit a match, but that night, the person handling the equipment happened to be an operative with ten years’ experience in metalwork and mining. The woman died two days later from third-degree burns. Though Jack had no proof, the terrible way she died and her expertise made Jack include the file among the potential cases of sabotage.
Unfortunately, due to the slovenly Soviet bureaucracy, Jack found that there was little more he could do than read his reports. Wilbur Hewitt couldn’t provide all the information he needed, nor could Jack go around questioning those involved without arousing suspicion. This meant that there were days when all he could do was put the investigation on ice and devote his efforts to repairing the machines and solving more everyday problems.
Among these, the one that worried him most was Sue.
Because Walter’s fiancée worked in a cleaning gang, Jack and Sue rarely saw each other. However, the biggest problem for Jack was that they were still ostensibly married. Jack had confirmed that, as long as he was registered as married, he couldn’t request a single room. He coveted one, but if he admitted that the marriage certificate was false, he risked being uncovered and deported. That was why he’d persuaded Joe Brown that his marriage was a mess and that he needed the peace and quiet of a single room to reflect on things at night while the divorce was being processed. Joe Brown was especially understanding when Jack offered the amount of thirty rubles a month in exchange for the loan of his room. The Soviet regulations specifically forbade subletting, but fortunately, within the American village, some things still functioned as if they were in the United States. Joe Brown was happy to use half of Jack’s fee to fund a shared room with another factory colleague. From that moment on, Jack was able to sleep alone in a bedroom only a little bigger than a wardrobe that stank of horse dung.
When he asked the bunkhouse receptionist about the smell, she explained that, when the buildings were constructed, they filled the cavities between the wooden partition walls with a mixture of straw and excrement. Despite the smell, she said, it provided excellent insulation.
Once the issue of his accommodation had been resolved, all Jack had to do was wait for Walter’s arrival. The last they heard, he was still in Moscow, where he’d apparently found a role as an assistant to the OGPU.