“I’m listening,” Naresh said.
“Is this a good time to talk?”
“It doesn’t get much better.”
“There is a young woman named Jennifer Hernandez, whose grandmother passed away Monday night at the Queen Victoria Hospital of an unfortunate heart attack. Somehow CNN got ahold of the story and put it on the air as a way of questioning our record of safety.”
“That’s not good.”
“That is an understatement,” Ramesh said. He then went on to tell Naresh the entire problem, including the details of the second death. He then enumerated all the things that Jennifer had done and was doing to make herself persona non grata. “This affair is beginning to have a serious deleterious effect on our medical tourism ad campaign, which could then impact our ability to meet our goals. I don’t know if you have been kept completely up to date, but we have upped our estimates such that Indian medical tourism is to be a two-point-two-billion-dollar-a-year industry by 2010.”
Naresh whistled into his phone. He was duly impressed. “I hadn’t heard those figures. Are you people aiming to catch IT? The information technology people are going to be envious, as they believe they have become the hereditary kings of foreign exchange.”
“Unfortunately, this current problem could seriously impact our goal,” Ramesh said, ignoring Naresh’s question. “We need help.”
“That’s what we’re here for. What can we do?”
“There’s two parts. One part for your unit in general and one part for you in particular. Concerning your unit, we need an investigation to uncover who is supplying CNN International with confidential information. The CEO of Queen Victoria and his chief of the medical staff believe it to be a radical academic M.D. who also has admitting privileges. How many there are at the Victoria I don’t know, but I want them investigated now. I want to know who this person is.”
“That can easily be arranged. I will put my best men on it. What is my part?”
“The girl, Jennifer Hernandez. I want her taken care of. It shouldn’t be difficult. She’s staying at the Amal.”
“Why not call up one of your equals in immigration. Have her picked up and deported. Problem over!”
“My sense is that she is feisty, stubborn, and resourceful. If immigration picks her up, I’d worry that she’d make a fuss, and if the media associates her case with the death reported by CNN, there could be an even bigger story about a governmental cover-up. That could make everything decidedly worse.”
“Good point. What exactly do you mean ‘taken care of’? Let’s be specific.”
“I leave that to your well-earned reputation for creativity. I want her to stop being a potential thorn in our side. However you can accomplish that, I’m content. Actually, it’s better if I don’t know. Then if I’m asked at a later date, as one who was interested in her behavior, I don’t have to lie.”
“What if I can assure you she means no harm and her current apparent threat is bogus?”
“That would be satisfactory, of course. Particularly if your team can provide us with the physician mole. I need to attack this problem from both ends.”
“Can I assume my compensation will be the usual?”
“Let’s say comparable. Check things out. Follow her. Remember, we don’t want her to become the news, and we surely don’t want her to be any kind of martyr. As for the compensation, it should depend on degree of difficulty. You and I go back a ways. We can trust each other.”
“You’ll hear from me.”
“Good.”
Ramesh disconnected the call. Toward the end of the conversation with the industrial policeman, he’d had another idea about the Hernandez problem, a possible solution that would be easier, cheaper, and probably better, as it wouldn’t involve the government. All he had to do was get someone he knew angry enough, and it so happened that the individual Ramesh had in mind was easy to get angry when the issue involved money. Ramesh was surprised he’d not thought of Shashank Malhotra earlier. After all, the man regularly paid him off and had even taken him on a memorable trip to Dubai.
“Hello, my good friend,” Shashank enthused several octaves louder than necessary. “Wonderful to hear from you. How is the family?”
Ramesh could visually imagine Shashank in his palatial office overlooking the fashionable Connaught Place. Shashank was one of India’s new-style businessmen who were into a wide variety of pursuits, some legal, some less so. Of late he’d become particularly enamored of healthcare and saw medical tourism as the path to an easy second fortune. Over the last three years he’d invested a substantial sum and was the principal stockholder in a company that, appropriately enough in relation to the current problem, owned the Queen Victoria Hospitals in Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, and the Aesculapian Medical Centers in Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. It was also he who had recently contributed the lion’s share of the cost of the recent ad campaign in Europe and North America touting India as a twenty-first-century healthcare destination. Shashank Malhotra was a major player.
After an appropriate amount of niceties had been exchanged, Ramesh got down to business. “The reason for my call is a problem at Queen Victoria Hospital here in Delhi. Have you been briefed?”
“I heard there was some sort of minor problem,” Shashank said warily. He had heard the change in Ramesh’s voice and was famously sensitive to the word problem, as it usually meant the necessity of spending money. And he was particularly touchy about problems associated with both the Queen Victoria Hospital group and the Aesculapian Medical Centers, as they were the newest members of his financial empire and had yet to reach profitability.
“It’s more than a minor,” Ramesh said. “And I think you should know about it. Do you have a minute?”
“Are you kidding? Certainly I want to hear it.”
Ramesh told Shashank the story pretty much the same way he’d told it to Inspector Naresh Prasad but minus the optimistic government economic predictions for medical tourism, as Shashank was already well aware of those. As Ramesh progressed, he knew Shashank was appreciating both the importance and the urgency of the situation because of the pointed questions he posed as Ramesh continued.
When Ramesh finished and fell silent, Shashank remained silent as well. Ramesh let him stew, particularly about the part of erasing most of the gain from the ad campaign.
“I think you should have told me all this a little sooner,” Shashank growled. He sounded like a completely different person. His voice was low and menacing.
“I think that everything should be fine if this young woman will make up her mind about her grandmother’s body, and then she heads home. I’m sure you know someone qualified to make those suggestions, someone whom she might listen to.”
“Where is she staying?”
“At the Amal Palace.”
Ramesh found himself holding a dead line.
Chapter 17
October 17, 2007
Wednesday, 3:45 p.m.
New Delhi, India
Veena glanced at her watch. Report had never seemed to take so long. She was supposed to have been off at three-thirty, and it was already a quarter to four.
“That’s it, then,” Nurse Kumar said to the evening head nurse. “Any questions?”
“I don’t believe so,” the evening head nurse said. “Thank you.”
Everyone stood. Veena made a beeline to the elevator while the others erupted in casual conversation. Samira saw her and had to hurry to catch up.