A Quiver Full of Arrows (19 page)

Only when the slope of the profits graph
started taking on the look of a downhill slalom did Sir Hamish become worried.
One night, while brooding over the company’s profitand-loss account for the
previous three years, and realising that he was losing contracts even in his
native Scotland, Sir Hamish reluctantly came to the conclusion that he must
tender for less established work, and perhaps even consider the odd gamble.

His brightest young executive, David Heath,
a stocky, middle-aged bachelor, whom he did not entirely trust – after all, the
man had been educated south of the border and worse, some extraordinary place
in the United States called the Wharton Business School – wanted Sir Hamish to
put a toe into Mexican waters. Mexico, as Heath was not slow to point out, had
discovered vast reserves of oil off their eastern coast and had overnight
become rich with American dollars. The construction business in Mexico was
suddenly proving most lucrative and contracts were coming up for tender with
figures as high as thirty to forty million dollars attached to them. Heath
urged Sir Hamish to go after one such contract that had recently been announced
in a full-page advertisement in The Economist. The Mexican Government were
issuing tender documents for a proposed ring road around their capital, Mexico
City. In an article in the business section of the Observer, detailed arguments
were put forward as to why established British companies should try to fulfill
the ring road tender. Heath had offered shrewd advice on overseas contracts in
the past that Sir Hamish had subsequently let slip through his fingers.

The next morning, Sir Hamish sat at his desk
listening attentively to David Heath, who felt that as Graham Construction had
already built the Glasgow and Edinburgh ring roads any application they made to
the Mexican Government had to be taken seriously.

To Heath’s surprise, Sir Hamish agreed with
his project manager and allowed a team of six men to travel to Mexico to obtain
the tender documents and research the project.

The research team was led by David Heath,
and consisted of three other engineers, a geologist and an accountant When the
team arrived in Mexico they obtained the tender documents from the Minister of
Works and settled down to study them minutely. Having pinpointed the major
problems they walked around Mexico City with their ears open and their mouths
shut and made a list of the problems they were clearly going to encounter: the
impossibility of unloading anything at Vera Cruz and then transporting the
cargo to Mexico City without half of the original assignment being stolen, the
lack of communications between ministries, and worst of all the attitude of the
Mexicans to work. But David Heath’s most positive contribution to the list was
the discovery that each minister had his own outside man, and that man had
better be well disposed to Graham Construction if the firm were to be even
considered for the short list.

Heath immediately sought out the Minister of
Works’ man, one Victor Perez, and took him to an extravagant lunch at the Fonda
el Refugio where both of them nearly ended up drunk, although Heath remained
sober enough to agree all of the necessary terms, conditional upon Sir Hamish’s
approval.

Having taken every possible precaution,
Heath agreed on a tender figure with Perez which was to include the minister’s
percentage. Once he had completed the report for his chairman, he flew back to
England with his team.

On the evening of David Heath’s return, Sir
Hamish retired to bed early to study his project manager’s conclu-sions. He
read the report through the night as others might read a spy story, and was
left in no doubt that this was the opportunity he had been looking for to
overcome the temporary setbacks Graham Construction was now suffering.

Although Sir Hamish would be up against
Costains, Sunleys, andJohn Brown, as well as many international companies, he
still felt confident that any application he made must have a “fair chance”. On
arrival at his office the next morning Sir Hamish sent for David Heath, who was
delighted by the chairman’s initial response to his report.

Sir Hamish started speaking as soon as his
burly project manager entered the room, not even inviting him to take a seat.

“You must contact our Embassy in Mexico City
immediately and inform them of our intentions,” pronounced Sir Hamish. “I may
speak to the Ambassador myself,” he said, intending that to be the concluding
remark of the interview.

“Useless,” said David Heath.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t wish to appear rude, sir, but it
doesn’t work like that any more. Britain is no longer a great power dispensing
largesse to all far flung and grateful recipients.”

“More’s the pity,” said Sir Hamish.

The project manager continued as though he
had not heard the remark.

“The Mexicans now have vast wealth of their
own and the United States, Japan, France and Germany keep massive embassies in
Mexico City with highly professional trade delegations trying to influence
every ministry.”

“But surely history counts for something,”
said Sir Hamish. “Wouldn’t they rather deal with an established British company
than some upstarts from – ?”

“Perhaps, sir, but in the end all that
really matters is which minister is in charge of what contract and who is his
outside representative.”

Sir Hamish looked puzzled. “Your meaning is
obscure to me, Mr. Heath.”

“Allow me to explain, sir. Under the present
system in Mexico, each ministry has an allocation of money to spend on projects
agreed to by the government. Every Secretary of State is acutely aware that his
tenure of office may be very short, so he picks out a major contract for
himself from the many available. It’s the one way to ensure a pension for life
if the government is changed overnight or the minister simply loses his job.”

“Don’t bandy words with me, Mr. Heath. What
you are suggesting is that I should bribe a government official, I have never
been involved in that sort of thing in thirty years of business.”

“And I wouldn’t want you to start now,”
replied Heath. “The Mexican is far too experienced in business etiquette for
anything as clumsy as that to be suggested, but while the law requires that you
appoint a Mexican agent, it must make sense to try and sign up the minister’s
man, who in the end is the one person who can ensure that you will be awarded
the contract.

The system seems to work well, and as long
as a minister deals only with reputable international firms and doesn’t become
greedy, no one complains. Fail to observe either of those two golden rules and
the whole house of cards collapses. The minister ends up in Le Cumberri for
thirty years and the company concerned has all its assets expropriated and is
banned from any future business dealings in Mexico.”

“I really cannot become involved in such
shenanigans,” said Sir Hamish. “I still have my shareholders to consider.”

“You don’t have to become involved,”

Heath rejoined. “After we have tendered for
the contract you wait and see if the company has been shortlisted and then, if
we have, you wait again to find out if the minister’s man approaches Us. I know
the man, so if he does make contact we have a deal. After all, Graham
Construction is a respectable international company.”

“Precisely, and that’s why it’s against my
principles,” said Sir Hamish with hauteur.

“I do hope, Sir Hamish, it’s also against
your principles to allow the Germans and the Americans to steal the contract
from under our noses.”

Sir Hamish glared back at his project
manager but remained silent.

“And I feel I must add, sir,” said David
Heath moving restlessly from foot to foot, “that the pickings in Scotland
haven’t exactly yielded a harvest lately.”

“All right, all right, go ahead,” said Sir
Hamish reluctantly. “Put in a tender figure for the Mexico City ring road and
be warned if I find bribery is involved, on your head be it,” he added, banging
his closed fist on the table.

“What tender figure have you settled on,
sir?” asked the project manager.

“I believe, as I stressed in my report that
we should keep the amount under forty million dollars.”

“Agreed,” said Sir Hamish who paused for a
moment and smiled to himself before saying: “Make it $39,121,110.”

“Why that particular figure, sir?”

“Sentimental reasons,” said Sir Hamish,
without further explanation.

David Heath left, pleased that he had
convinced his boss to go ahead but he feared it might in the end prove harder
to overcome Sir Hamish’s principles than the entire Mexican government.
Nevertheless he filled in the bottom line of the tender as instructed and then
had the document signed by three directors including his chairman, as required
by Mexican law. He sent the tender by special messenger to be delivered at the
Ministry of Buildings in Paseo de la Reforma: when tendering for a contract for
over thirty-nine million dollars, one does not send the document by first-class
post.

Several weeks passed before the Mexican
Embassy in London contacted Sir Hamish, requesting that he travel to Mexico
City for a meeting with Manuel Unichurtu, the minister concerned with the
city’s ring road project. Sir Hamish remained sceptical, but David Heath was jubilant,
because he had already learned through another source that Graham Construction
was the only tender being seriously considered at that moment, although there
were one or two outstanding items still to be agreed on. David Heath knew
exactly what that meant.

A week later Sir Hamish, travelling first
class, and David Heath, travelling economy, flew out of Heathrow bound for
Mexico International airport. On arrival they took an hour to clear customs and
another thirty minutes to find a taxi to take them to the city, and then only
after the driver had bargained with them for an outrageous fare. They covered
the fifteen-mile journey from the airport to their hotel in just over an hour
and Sir Hamish was able to observe at first hand why the Mexicans were so
desperate to build a ring road. Even with the windows down the ten-year-old car
was like an oven that had been left on high all night, but during the journey
Sir Hamish never once loosened his collar or tie. The two men checked into
their rooms, phoned the minister’s secretary to inform her of their arrival,
and then waited.

For two days, nothing happened.

David Heath assured his chairman that such a
hold up was not an unusual course of events in Mexico as the minister was
undoubtedly in meetings most of the day, and after all wasn’t “Havana” the one
Spanish word every foreigner understood?

On the afternoon of the third day, only just
before Sir Hamish was threatening to return home, David Heath received a call
from the minister’s man, who accepted an invitation to join them both for
dinner in Sir Hamish’s suite that evening.

Sir Hamish put on evening dress for the
occasion, despite David Heath’s counselling against the idea. He even had a
bottle of Fina La /na sherry sent up in case the minister’s man required some
refreshment. The dinner table was set and the hosts were ready for
seven-thirty. The minister’s man did not appear at seven-thirty, or seven-forty-five,
or eight o’clock or eight-fifteen, or eight-thirty. At eight-forty-nine there
was a loud rap on the door, and Sir Hamish muttered an inaudible reproach as
David Heath went to open it and find his contact standing there.

“Good evening, Mr. Heath, I’m sorry to be
late. Held up with the minister, you understand.”

“Yes, of course,” said David Heath.

“How good of you to come, Senor Perez.

May I introduce my chairman, Sir Hamish
Graham?”

 
“How
do you do, Sir Hamish? Victor Perez at your service.”

Sir Hamish was dumbfounded. He simply stood
and stared at the little middle-aged Mexican who had arrived for dinner dressed
in a grubby white tee-shirt and Western jeans. Perez looked as if he hadn’t
shaved for three days and reminded Sir Hamish of those bandits he had seen in
B-Movies when he was a schoolboy. He wore a heavy gold bracelet around his
wrist that could have come from Cartier’s and a tiger’s tooth on a platinum
chain around his neck that looked as if it had come from Woolworth’s. Perez
grinned from ear to ear, pleased with the effect he was causing.

“Good evening,” replied Sir Hamish stiffly,
taking a step backwards.

“Would you care for a sherry?”

“No, thank you, Sir Hamish. I’ve grown into
the habit of liking your whisky, on the rocks with a little soda.”

“I’m sorry, I only have...”

“Don’t worry, sir, I have some in my room,”
said David Heath, and rushed away to retrieve a bottle of Johnnie Walker he had
hidden under the shirts in his top drawer. Despite this Scottish aid, the
conversation before dinner among the three men was somewhat stilted, but David
Heath had not come five thousand miles for an inferior hotel meal with Victor
Perez, and Victor Perez in any other circumstances would not have crossed the
road to meet Sir Hamish Graham even if he’d built it. Their conversation ranged
from the recent visit to Mexico of Her Majesty The Queen – as Sir Hamish
referred to her- to the proposed return trip of President Portillo to Britain.
Dinner might have gone more smoothly if Mr.