Disclaimer: Chapter is unedited. Apologies for errors in advance.
Chapter 14:
"Maan. That's what he said his name was," a man not older than twenty five, his hands tied to poles and on knees with bleeding temple and mouth uttered hoarsely. The butcher smiled mirthlessly at the young man's confession. He derived great pleasure in retrieving information with a bit of torture which yielded in lots of blood. It was strangely arousing, he thought. Maybe that's why he had ended up being a butcher.
"I wouldn't have turned your pretty face black and blue had you told me the name three hours ago," he said removing his gloves. He nodded at the two men who were standing behind the injured man.
"Drop him at the hospital," he said. They nodded without meeting the butcher's eyes.
"You heard the name sir?" He asked walking towards a man who was watching the proceedings from the shadows. They were in an abandoned factory which was quite common sight in the old industrial area.
"That son of a bitch. I am going to kill him," the man growled.
"Don't be dramatic Vikram. This isn't the time for violence," the woman said coming out of shadows.
"He cost us a lot Mitalee; actually more for me than you," Vikram said. Mitalee shrugged.
"Let's get back. What our little brother needs is a lesson ' lesson about how he needs to play in his own sandbox and not soil adult's lawns," she said and walked away from the shed.
"Spook him," Vikram said in hushed whisper to the butcher who needed serenely.
-- o00o --
"We have a problem," Satya said coming into Maan's cabin along with Emily. Maan was preparing for the annual shareholder meeting which was scheduled for the next day which was a Friday. Varun was flying in that evening from whichever country he was visiting with his actress mistress to address the board and the major stakeholders about the new strategic partner they were going to sign with.
He had approached Vaidehi's father Deshmukh, the petrochemical giant, to be a primary vendor of heavy transport in their supply chain. Deshmukh, a veteran in the heavy industry had called Maan nave and had asked him to rework on the proposal. The initial one hundred and forty two pages proposal slowly grew to three hundred pages without covering the commercial aspects. In less than six weeks Maan had felt that he had actually learned something about the trade for the first time. The experts from Khurana Heavy Transport had interacted with him on a daily basis updating him about the proposal. He met Deshmukh every Friday after sending him over a copy of the proposal the night before. And like clockwork Deshmukh rejected it citing at least three dozen reasons. Maan was getting tired of the continual rejection but he didn't want to let it go.
By the end of fourth week, Deshmukh had struggled to give more than a dozen reasons for rejection. It was also the first time when Deshmukh invited Maan to play a round of billiards over weekend in one of his resorts. Maan had politely refused citing a picnic with his girlfriend as his reason. Maan hadn't used Vaidehi's name in the conversation even if it was the intent the whole time. Something had stopped him from introducing himself to Deshmukh as his daughter's boyfriend.
"Make us the strategic partner," Deshmukh had put in his negotiation condition.
"I have to get an approval from CEO and the board," Maan replied. He wasn't sure the reason for Deshmukh's condition.
Maan had posed the same question to Emily as soon as he got out of the meeting with Deshmukh.
"It's his way of dealing things. Strategic partner also means that he gets all the good services at lower cost from us because he gives us the business while our other customers get services at normal rates." Emily had explained the condition.
"What do we lose from this?" Maan questioned. "It sounds good to me," he added.
"Yes, it is good. But by looking at it from other customers' perspective, they might feel alienated and maybe even ignored by the management. Everyone in this industry knows this game but that doesn't mean that they are going to like it. They will want to revisit our contracts, service guidelines, quality parameters, SLAs et al. This may not be true for all the customers but definitely those who are currently working with us for longer duration. It's their way of a rebellion and saying 'f**k you' subtly," Emily replied.
"Will there be any problems legally?" Maan asked both Satya and Emily.
"There will be lot of data sharing between the two companies. At one point we could be even in a complete vulnerable position but that is going to be only temporary; it could be during the definition of our processes and establishing a business model. After that we should be back on our toes and work in our own turfs." Satya said. Emily looked thoughtful.
"What is it Emily?" Satya asked looking at her a moment later. He knew her enough to read her facial expression.
"Why is he doing this?" Maan and Satya looked at each other. She asked pacing the room. "Deshmukh could have started his own company given the resources and financial stability he has. But he chased Maan to get a detailed proposal and demanded copious amount of paperwork and tens of variants of commercials. Why?" Emily asked.
"Why not Emily? He saw a good business deal us and he negotiated with us a deal which will help both of us; him immediately and us in the long run. The amount of initial investment both in terms of knowledge and infrastructure that goes in to establish a company like this is extremely high. And then we are talking about adhering to standards and undergoing various quality audits to be in a position that we are today. Even if Deshmukh started his own company, to achieve our standards he would need at least six to eight years. But having a strategic partner makes everything easier." Satya replied.
"Satya, we reworked the commercial aspects of the proposal dozens of times. He has seen a part of financial structure and knows a part of our vulnerability too. I am worried how he is going to make use of this knowledge against us." Emily said.
"Isn't that a common disadvantage in negotiations like this?" Maan asked.
"It is. But I can't get myself to trust Deshmukh Maan. He is with us for something else entirely with a fully planned agenda." Emily said, still pacing.
"Your paranoia is cute when it comes to driving next to truck assuming that it will simply topple beating all the principles of structural engineering but this paranoia about Deshmukh is frankly making nervous." Satya said. Emily stopped pacing and pinched his cheeks as if he was a five year old scared of the monsters under his bed. He rolled his eyes when she turned her back on him.
After that the team had delved into work on contract constantly interacting with Deshmukh's team. They had less than a fortnight to finalize. Unofficially Maan had gotten a go ahead from the board and the stakeholders so he knew that the Friday event was just a formal way of closing in the deal. It was a common practice in the industry to get an unofficial sign-off from the stakeholders after laborious discussion with everyone involved which generally occurred much before any strategic meeting. It always avoided any sort of last minute embarrassments.
"What is it Satya?"
"One of our mercenaries is caught," Satya said collapsing on the chair opposite to Maan.
"How?" Maan was shocked. "I thought everyone went underground." He added.
"Everyone did. The bounty hunter they hired isn't someone ordinary. We have pulled of stunts like these in much larger scales but no one ever found out even the aliases of the mercenaries behind those events. And here the man has managed to actually nab one of them." Satya sounded angry.
"Did he say anything?" Maan asked after a moment.
"In fact, he did. He actually said your name." Satya said narrowing his eyes. Maan sighed. He now realized the anger that he felt Satya was brewing.
"Satya I know why you sound angry'" He started.
"The f**k you don't Maan!" Satya exploded. Maan was taken aback with the sharpness in his voice. Emily rested a hand on his shoulder. Satya looked up and breathed heavily as she simply nodded at him.
"Why did you do it?" Emily asked.
As a contingency plan the mercenary team was told that it was Satya who was the man behind all the operations which were illegal and potentially dangerous. Since they were people for hire, they would be punished of course but not be held accountable by various parties involved. Satya had made it very clear that it would be him who would take the fall if at all a time comes. Their conversation had cut short before Satya could justify his reason. Maan assumed that it was along the lines of company loyalty and protect the management which could protect him eventually. But once he had seen how delicate the entire situation was becoming including Satya being watched and followed all the time, he made a drastic decision.
"I didn't want Satya to be responsible for something he wasn't. I cannot let any of my employees take the fall for decisions I make. When I realized that Satya could be in danger because of his association with me, I decided to tell that team that the responsibility had shifted from Satya to me. I think that's why that man took my name when asked." Maan said slowly. Satya sighed and rubbed his temple.
"I can't believe I am explaining this." Emily said harshly. "You think Satya was doing this for fun or something that was emotionally triggered? He did so because he knew that if he was caught, it would be an employee of Khuranas who was playing illegally in Dalal Street. The worse that can happen in that scenario is that he would be charged with fraud for which Satya has already prepared a bail. Following the arrest he would post his bail, go home with a suspension order from you and probably could have gone underground to escape the press. Do you see Khurana Heavy Transport being maligned in the picture? No. But since it's not Satya but you in the picture, what happens to this scenario? COO of a company is caught in illegal trading, you are removed from the board and your brother and sister will never allow you to enter Khurana Group ever again." She finished.
"I have an anticipatory bail drawn up," Emily said moments later.
"That will not be necessary." Maan said looking at the two of them. Emily looked confused.
"You are forgetting something basic Emily. We are not in business. We are in war. If Vikram found out that it was Satya who was dealing with this, he wouldn't have gotten him arrested. He would have killed him without thinking twice about it. Do you know what his favorite method is? A freak car accident where the person dies on spot or gets seriously injured. You think this hasn't happened before? " Maan said his voice flat and hard. Emily looked at him in surprise, slack jawed.
"He boasted about it once during our weekly meeting with our father three years ago. How a freak accident killed a man who played him. Moving Satya out of the line of fire was the only way I could protect all of us. Vikram cannot harm me directly. He and Mitalee will of course pull all the filthy tricks they know and it will be thrown at us from all the directions. But he will never hurt me physically. It is too risky and it is possible that he might lose being a candidate for being an heir of the Khurana Group. He cannot prejudice that even if it means letting go of the person who screwed him over." Maan finished.
Satya and Emily stared at Maan for several moments.
"You are not so stupid, after all," Emily said. Maan burst out laughing with Satya joining him a moment later.
To be continued.
Music Companion for the day: Bang Bang by Nancy Sinatra
And: Run by Rex Goudie
Edited by -Sookie- - 13 years ago
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