Still, in the profit column was a small reputation that had been invisibly earned, and that caused the Ayrshire Council to invite him to build the school at the end of the new road. This contract made Graham Construction a profit of £420 and added still further to his reputation. From that moment Graham Construction went from strength to strength, and as early as his third year in business, Graham was able to declare a small pre-tax profit, and this grew steadily over the next five years. When Graham Construction was floated on the London Stock Exchange, the demand for the shares was oversubscribed ten times and the newly quoted company was soon considered a blue-chip institution, a considerable achievement for Graham to have pulled off in his own lifetime. But then, the City likes men who grow slowly and can be relied on not to involve themselves in unnecessary risks.
In the sixties Graham Construction built highways, hospitals, factories, and even a power station, but the achievement the chairman took most pride in was Edinburgh’s newly completed art gallery, which was the only contract that showed a deficit in the annual general report. The invisible earnings column, however, recorded the award of knight bachelor for the chairman.
Sir Hamish decided that the time had come for Graham Construction to expand into new fields, and looked, as generations of Scots had before him, toward the natural market of the British Empire. He built in Australia and Canada with his own finances, and in India and Africa with a subsidy from the British government. In 1963 he was named “Businessman of the Year” by The Times and three years later “Chairman of the Year” by The Economist. Sir Hamish never once altered his methods to keep pace with the changing times and, if anything, grew more stubborn in the belief that his ideas of doing business were correct whatever anyone else thought; and he had a long credit column to prove he was right.
In the early seventies, when the slump hit the construction-business, Graham Construction suffered the same cut in budgets and lost contracts as its major competitors. Sir Hamish reacted in a predictable way, by tightening his belt and paring his estimates while at the same time refusing to compromise his business principles one jot. The company therefore grew leaner, and many of his more enterprising young executives left Graham Construction for firms that still believed in taking on the occasional risky contract.
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 profit-and-loss account for the previous three years, and realizing 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 its 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 was 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 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 consignment 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 even to be considered for the shortlist. 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 settle all the necessary terms, conditional upon Sir Hamish’s approval. Having taken every possible precaution, Heath agreed on a tender figure with Perez that 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 returns, Sir Hamish retired to bed early to study his project manager’s conclusions. 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, and John 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 anymore. 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 thi
ng 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, but be warned, if I find bribery is involved, on your head be it!” he added, banging his 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 persuaded his boss to go ahead, although 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 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 mail.
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 skeptical, 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, traveling first class, and David Heath, traveling 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 firsthand 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 holdup 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 mañana the one Spanish word every foreigner understood?
On the afternoon of the third day, just as 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 counseling against the idea. He even had a bottle of Fin La Ina sherry sent up in case the minister’s man required some refreshment. The dinner table was set, and the hosts were ready for 7:30. The minister’s man did not appear at 7:30 or 7:45, or 8:00, or 8:15, or 8:30. At 8:49 there was a loud rap on the door, and Sir Hamish muttered an inaudible reproach as David Heath went to open it. He found 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, Señor 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 middle-aged little Mexican who had arrived for dinner dressed in a grubby white T-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 making.
“Good evening,” replied Sir Hamish stiffly, taking a step backward. “Would you care for a sherry?”
“No, thank you, Sir Hamish. I’ve grown into the habit of liking your whiskey, 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. Perez hadn’t eaten most of the food with his hands and then proceeded to wipe his fingers on his jeans. The more Sir Hamish stared at him in disbelief, the more the little Mexican would grin from ear to ear. After dinner David Heath thought the time had come to steer the conversation toward the real purpose of the meeting, but not before Sir Hamish had reluctantly had to call for a bottle of brandy and a box of cigars.
“We are looking for an agent to represent the Graham Construction Company in Mexico, Mr. Perez, and you have been highly recommended,” said Sir Hamish, sounding unconvinced by his own statement.
“Do call me Victor.”
Sir Hamish bowed silently and shuddered. There was no way this man was going to be allowed to call him Hamish.
“I’d be pleased to represent you, Hamish,” continued Perez, “provided that you find my terms acceptable.”
“Perhaps you could enlighten us as to what those—hm, terms—might be,” said Sir Hamish stiffly.
“Certainly,” said the little Mexican cheerfully. “I require ten percent of the agreed tender figure, five percent to be paid on
the day you are awarded the contract and five percent whenever you present your completion certificates. Not a penny to be paid until you have received your fee, all my payments deposited in an account at Crédit Suisse in Geneva within seven days of the National Bank of Mexico clearing your check.”
David Heath drew in his breath sharply and stared down at the stone floor.
“But under those terms you would make nearly four million dollars,” protested Sir Hamish, now red in the face. “That’s over half our projected profit.”
“That, as I believe you say in England, Hamish, is your problem. You fixed the tender price,” said Perez, “not me. In any case, there’s still enough in the deal for both of us to make a handsome profit, which is surely fair, as we bring half the equation to the table.”
Sir Hamish was speechless as he fiddled with his bow tie. David Heath examined his fingernails attentively.
“Think the whole thing over, Hamish,” said Victor Perez, sounding unperturbed, “and let me know your decision by midday tomorrow. The outcome makes little difference to me.” The Mexican rose, shook hands with Sir Hamish, and left. David Heath, sweating slightly, accompanied him down in the lift. In the foyer he clasped hands damply with the Mexican.
“Good night, Victor. I’m sure everything will be all right—by midday tomorrow.”
“I hope so,” replied the Mexican, “for your sake.” He strolled out of the foyer whistling.
Sir Hamish, a glass of water in his hand, was still seated at the dinner table when his project manager returned.
Collected Short Stories Page 44