英文读物He Knows Too Much.doc

Main characters in this book:
Dick Sterling: general manager in Madras, India of Trakton, a multinational company.
Sally Sterling: Dick’s wife.
Keith Lennox: Dick’s boss at Trakton. Works in Delhi.
Barbara Lennox: Keith’s wife.
Vish : office manager at Trakton.
Molly: Vish’s wife. She also works at Trakton.
Ramu : Dick’s personal assistant at Trakton.
Nag: in Accounts at Trakton.
Lakshmi: Nag’s daughter.
Ned: a former employee at Trakton.
Sir Percy Hancock: former chief executive of Trakton, once head of the Delhi office.
Sir Jeremy Jackson (Jacko): retired professor of comparative philology at Cambridge.
Chapter 1 Madras 1986
‘He knows too much. I must ask you to do nothing.’
‘But this time I caught him in the act. I have proof, witnesses, everything. There is no possible doubt. Surely…’
‘I said he knows too much! The company can’t afford to have any problems. Our position is very sensitive in this country. We can’t afford to take risks. I am telling you once again -- you will do nothing. And if there is any trouble, I’m afraid I shall have to hold you personally responsible. So be sensible for once in your life.’
‘I see. So you are telling me to close my eyes to corruption and behave as if nothing has happened. Is that right?’
‘I didn’t put it quite like that. But, if you insist, yes. What Vish does or doesn’t do is a minor matter compared with the company’s global strategy. Just try to get things in perspective. After all, you won’t be struck in Madras for ever--I’ll make sure that you’re not. So just go with the flow for a bit longer. When you’re in your next post this will all seem a very long way away, I can assure you. But meantime, no trouble. I hope I’ve made myself clear. Oh, and, by the way, I advise you to forget that we have had this conversation. Goodbye.’
Dick Sterling put the phone down. His hands were trembling. He was furious with himself for failing to persuade his boss in Delhi, Keith Lennox, to support him, and was disgusted at the mixture of veiled threats and vague promises Lennox had made. ‘He knows too much’-- the words still rang in his ears. He wondered, not for the last time, just what it was that Vish, the office manager of the factory, knew. How could it be so important that the company’s position in India could be threatened by it? It simply didn’t make sense.
Dick glanced at his watch. Four o’clock. He called for his driver, Gopal, and asked to be driven home. He’d had enough for the day. On his way out he passed Vish in the corridor. Vish was a small, fat man who waddled slightly when he walked. His ugly smile revealed two large teeth and his small eyes reminded Dick of a snake. Was it his imagination, or was the man smiling to himself? His snake eyes glinted with self satisfaction, almost as if he knew he was safe, protected.
Dick’s car left the Trakton office and made its way slowly along the dusty, bumpy road leading south into the center of Madras, towards his home. Even though Dick passed these buildings every day, they never lost their fascination for him. No one style dominated this city of contrasts where majestic but neglected colonial buildings stood next to modern glass and concrete banks, slum huts built from mud and roofed with coconut palms, ramshackle groups of shops selling everything from used car tyres to India-made foreign liquor… And where the traffic was a chaos of competing anarchically for the few overcrowded space on the roads. The journey home would take a long time. vehicles
Dick sat gloomily in the back of the car, going over in his mind the events which had led up to the present crisis. How had he got himself into this impossible situation? It should never have happened, yet somehow, looking back, it seemed inevitable. Perhaps he was beginning to believe in fate?
He had arrived three years earlier to take over as general manager of Trakton's factory in Madras. Trakton had been in India since before Independence. It had started out manufacturing military vehicles during the war and switched to commercial vehicles and earth-moving equipment when the war ended. Because of its key importance in helping to build the country's industrial base, it had not been completely taken over following Independence.
Though the Indian operation was technically independent, Trakton's corporate headquarters in London still had overall control. India was, of course, only one of the many countries in which Trakton operated. Dick had been transferred to Madras from Nigeria in fact, after a series of other overseas appointments. Each of the overseas factories had a general manager appointed from headquarters to oversee the management of the local workforce. In India this had worked particularly well. The Indian staff was highly-trained and efficient. They were also generally easy to work with; the company's enlightened industrial relations policy had made sure of that. Salaries were higher than the average; there was a good pension scheme and generous health insurance benefits. Trakton boasted that it had not lost a day in strikes for over fifteen years.
Dick had found his senior Indian colleagues particularly good to work with. They knew their jobs inside out and were clearly committed to the company. Many of them had been with Trakton for the whole of their working lives, starting in the factory and working their way up to become managers. They were a good team.
The only exceptions had been Vish, the office manager, and his wife Molly. Molly was in charge of the Personnel Department. For reasons Dick had only gradually understood, Vish and Molly were regarded by the rest of senior staff as somehow ‘special’. They behaved as if they had special privileges and expected other staff to defer to them. Dick slowly realised that they controlled other staff members through a combination of threats and promises. Given their positions, they could make life very difficult for anyone who opposed them. Likewise, they could make life easy for those who did what they wanted.
Dick knew that this sort of behaviour happened to varying degrees in every culture and didn't think much of it. Indeed, in the first few weeks after his arrival, both Vish and Molly had been all smiles and helpfulness.
‘You’ll need a driving licence. Don’t worry. I know someone in the police. We’ll fix it for you. There’s no need for you to worry about any of these things. Just let me know and I’ll take care of it,’ Vish had said.
They had invited Dick and his wife Sally to dinner too. Their newly-built house was fashionable, close to the sea. Dick had been suitably impressed by the expensively-furnished house, which was full of the most modern household equipment. He had half-wondered, innocently, whether Vish had had to borrow money to pay for it all. Molly was justifiably proud of her collection of Indian temple carvings, southern Indian bronze statues and contemporary paintings.
They had invited a selection of their ‘closest friends’: a High Court judge, a police inspector, an IAS officer, an architect, an ex-Minister of Finance in the State Government, the owner of a shipping company, a couple from the British High Commission, a famous film director and a well-known local painter. Dick felt slightly uneasily, that these people had been invited to prove to him how well-connected the Vishs were. It had been a pleasant evening nonetheless. It was only later that Dick recalled seeing two members of the office staff helping to serve the meal. He also noted that there had been no shortage of genuine Scotch whisky, a drink not easily available on the local market.
It was not long, however, before Dick began experiencing another side to the Vishs. One morning he had gone into Vish’s office unexpectedly for an informal chat. He found his office manager stamping his feet with rage, screaming abuse at one of the junior drivers. Papers and files had been thrown on the floor. Dick asked Vish to follow him to his office. There he had suggested that perhaps less dramatic personnel management techniques should be used in future. Vish had not liked the criticism. His small snake-like eyes had almost disappeared in the fat folds of his face. He had continued to clench and unclench his hands throughout the brief interview. Sweat ran in streams down his neck. He had left the office soon after the interview and remained away on ‘sick leave’ for two more days.
Soon afterwards, Molly went to see Dick about the promotion of a senior driver to a supervisor’s position in the Stores. She recommended the man’s attitude and suitability for the job. Dick had therefore promoted the man. It was only several weeks later that Dick discovered that another equally well-qualified staff member had also applied for the promotion. ‘Unfortunately’ his papers had been ‘mislaid’ by the Personnel Department and had never reached Dick. When Dick had questioned her about it, Molly had raised her eyes to the ceiling and sighed.
‘Now you can see what I have to put up with, Dick,’ she cooed. ‘They’re all so unreliable. The papers were under a pile of files on Shivkumar’s desk. I’ve told him so many times. I really think we should consider transferring him. What do you think?’
‘I think you should deal with all applications in person from now on,’ Dick had gently suggested.
‘I suppose you’re right. But my workload is already so heavy. And isn’t it a good thing for us to train the juniors to take more responsibility?’ She gazed at him quite shamelessly with her liquid black eyes. She had more charm than her husband and Dick could see that some people would think she was attractive. He realized, looking at her, that there was nothing much he could do, unless he wanted a major row.
Chapter 2 Family life
Dick was woken from his thoughts as the car screeched to a stop to avoid an auto-rickshaw carrying a family of four which had cut across the crowded road outside the High Court buildings. Dick’s mind came back to the present. For anyone with strong nerves, traveling in India is a constant source of interest and surprise.
His driver Gopal inched his way forward, successfully winning a few feet from a bus cutting in on one side and a water-tanker on the other, each puffing out clouds of billowing, black diesel fumes. The road widened as they passed Fort St George. Gopal speeded up and they were soon leaving the elegant but neglected university buildings behind. They drove the length of the Marina, the sea on the left and a succession of historic buildings on the right. Even at this hour a few people were strolling along the beach taking the early evening air. Soon there would be crowds, all escaping the oven heat of the city for the cooling evening sea breeze.
It was five-thirty before they reached the tree-lined shade of Boat Club Road and the calm of Dick’s company house, set well back from the road in its own garden. The chowkidar opened the gate and the car slid gratefully into the cool shade of the porch.
There was a note on the kitchen table from Dick’s wife, Sally, to say she was out to tea with one of the awful society women who seemed to form a permanent part of their social life. She reminded him that they were to attend a drinks party at the Jussawallahs, a Parsee couple they had met at the club the previous week. He groaned, then made his way to the bathroom for a shower.
Later, as he sat drinking a cool beer on the terrace overlooking the garden, Dick’s thoughts returned to his present problems. He was forty-eight years old; no longer young but still young enough to rise in the company. He was in good shape physically--six feet tall, slim and muscular, even if his hair was prematurely grey. He had worked for Trakton since leaving university. They had sent him to some pretty hard countries when he was young--Papua New Guinea, Ecuador, Iran, Saudi Arabia. He had always managed to do well, even in the most difficult conditions.
And he had paid the price; his first wife, Sarah, had died of malaria in Papua New Guinea. At twenty-four he had found himself a widower and father of a baby daughter, Angie. She was grown-up now but he still recalled the desperation of those weeks and months following Sarah’s death. For a time he had gone to pieces, drinking heavily and moving from one unsuitable woman to another.
It was only when he returned briefly to London, between jobs, that he met Sally. They had both been invited to a drinks party at the Ecuadorian Embassy. He was to leave for Quito a month later. She was working as a secretary at the Foreign Office. On the surface, they had nothing in common. She was from an upper-class family with a town house in Knightsbridge and a place in the country near Bath. She had no need to work, but her father, an ex-ambassador himself, had arranged for her to work at the Foreign Office, partly at least, in the hope that she would find ‘someone suitable’ to marry. Instead she fell hopelessly in love with Dick; a men without money, with a dubious reputation, and with a baby daughter to bring up into the bargain. It would have been difficult to find anyone less ‘suitable’. But when they woke together the next morning in Dick’s Bayswater flat, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. Sally’s family had disapproved of their relationship, but she left for Quito with Dick after a brief and quiet civil marriage in Kensington Registry Office. No-one from Slly’s family had attended.
Their life together had been a great success, though not without its ups and downs. Sally had been a wonderful mother to Angie, and they had had Simon a year after their marriage. They still enjoyed each other’s company, even if they were respectively very much absorbed in their own concerns: Dick with Trakton, Sally with raising funds for a children’s charity she was involved with. There were many days when they scarcely saw each other.
Dick thought about Vish again. He had long suspected that the man was dishonest but he had never been able to prove it before. Dick’s suspicions centered on the way the company awarded contracts for various kinds of building and maintenance work. It seemed to Dick that the costs for this kind of work were higher than they should be. Contracts also seemed to be always awarded to the same few companies, many of them owned by personal friends of Vish. He suspected that Vish was taking a percentage from the contractors in exchange for giving them the contract. But for a long time Dick had never been able to prove this. When questioned, Vish had always had very clever reasons for selecting one contractor rather than another, cheaper, one.
It was only when the building contractor Haridas Enterprises came directly to Dick to complain they had not been awarded a contract for building Trakton’s new factory at Hosur that Dick had found real evidence. Haridas Enterprises had complained that the twenty per