SANTOSH HAD NOT waited to be discharged from the hospital. He was well recovered, although the encounter with MGT had left him slightly unnerved. He hadn’t wanted to have a nurse bandage the gash on his forearm so he’d helped himself to antiseptic and bandages from the supply closet he had passed. He’d then gone back to his room, changed out of the hospital clothes, and walked out through the service entrance a little after midnight. He had spent the night on Neel’s couch.
In the morning, Jack and Nisha had come over and the four of them had dropped in for breakfast at a cafe in Khan Market.
Santosh was exceptionally fidgety without his walking stick.
“You don’t need it anymore,” Jack told him.
But Santosh was convinced he did. “It is my only constant companion,” he said. “It saved my life at the Tower of Silence in Mumbai. Moreover, it helps me think.”
“Well, at least you have a new phone now,” said Nisha. She had picked up a replacement unit after getting the old SIM deactivated and a new SIM initialized.
“Thanks,” mumbled Santosh.
“The little run-in you had with MGT,” began Jack. “Could he be mentally disturbed? Killing people while saving others?”
“Unlikely,” said Santosh. “I could have caught him had I not trusted him in that final instant. I guess there was a part of me that felt guilty for his situation…I felt guilty.”
“Why?” asked Jack.
“We treated him rather shabbily in college,” admitted Santosh. “He was an outlier. Almost an outcast. A—”
“I have tracked down the registration number of his car,” interjected Neel. “Passed it on to Ash. He’ll get the cops to find him.”
“I’m convinced they’re all in it together,” said Santosh.
“Who?” asked Jack.
“Patel and Thakkar. One man’s company gets lucrative contracts to modernize hospitals. The other one drives American patients to the newly modernized hospitals and makes a killing on the insurance,” said Santosh. “I call it having one’s cake and eating it too.”
“But Kumar was supposedly the partner of Patel,” said Nisha. “In fact, my friend at the Indian Times says that Patel had promised Kumar extra equity for his help in managing the regulatory environment and that this extra stock was to come out of Patel’s own shareholding.”
“That makes him the third partner of this unholy alliance,” said Santosh. “Both these businessmen would have needed Delhi’s Health Ministry on their side. Solution? Make the minister your partner…your partner.”
“But these men would have needed a godfather, someone who had vast amounts of capital to deploy,” said Jack. “I called up Denny—the CEO of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners—and asked him to find out about the key investors in ResQ. It turns out that the major equity of ResQ is held by the same entity that is the major equity owner of Surgiquip. It’s a company in the Bahamas.”
“They’re affiliated?” said Santosh disbelievingly.
“Santosh,” said Jack, “they’re practically the same company.”
Chapter 93
IQBAL IBRAHIM ADDED milk and sugar into his tea and stirred it. He stared at the man who sat across from him. He had introduced himself as Dr. Khan. Ibrahim was not sure about what was being offered but knew it could mean freedom from Arora.
“We are well aware that you are the engine that drives ResQ’s profitability,” said Khan. “We have had you under surveillance for weeks. We know how you operate. We believe that your abilities and resourcefulness are not being appreciated at the moment.”
He was right. Ibrahim busted his ass procuring the right material only to be reprimanded by Arora repeatedly.
“What are you suggesting?” asked Ibrahim.
“Our business model is different to that of ResQ,” said Khan, avoiding staring at Ibrahim’s hooked nose. “In fact we are not even competing with them. But we believe that our business will become far bigger than theirs in a few years.”
“Please explain.”
“Unlike ResQ, which sells insurance policies to American clients and charges them low premiums to have their medical issues attended in India,” said Khan, “our company operates differently. For starters, we’re not an insurance company. We’re transplant specialists.”
“Transplant specialists for American clients?” asked Ibrahim.
“No. Our key market is the Middle East. Our patients belong to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. Our medical infrastructure is entirely centralized at a spanking-new facility that we have established in Gurgaon. Patients from all over the Arab world come here for their procedures.”
“Why?”
“Most of these customers have no option but to travel abroad,” said Khan. “For example, transplants in the United Arab Emirates were legalized in 1993 but the law failed to include a medical definition of death, thus making it impossible to use organs from dead patients. The result was that no transplant operations could actually take place. Organ transplant infrastructure is virtually nonexistent in those markets.”
“Why should I consider it?” said Ibrahim, rearranging the skullcap on his head ever so slightly. “I’m making good money where I am. Inshallah, the money may also increase.”
“These are rich Arabs and hence we are dealing with a much more lucrative segment of customers—those who will pay high prices for these procedures. This also means that we can pay you double what ResQ pays.”
Ibrahim sipped his tea. In his mind, he was totting up the numbers and figuring out what double the rates would mean for him. And what it would mean to be finally free of that Nazi Arora.
“The ResQ network is a strong one,” he said. “They may come after me once they know I am working against them.”
“Not if you destroy them first,” said Khan.
Chapter 94
JUDGES AT THE Delhi High Court usually heard matters between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon. Weekends were off. But the high-powered appellants in this particular case had forced the bench to conduct a special sitting outside of normal working hours, that too on a weekend.
The appellants were a group calling themselves the Coalition for Freedom of Speech. They were worried that information had been received by DETV. DETV had already started airing commercials on the channel indicating that a major disclosure was on the way.
“What do you want?” asked the irritated judge. He had been forced to forego his Saturday bridge game in order to hear this matter, hence the annoyance.