Death of a Financier

by John Francis Kinsella

  'I'm a journalist - television,' she replied, as if to say what about that then?

  'Interesting.'

  'I've just come back from Bali, the world climate conference.'

  'Is it as bad as they say?'

  She described the well predicted catastrophe that was about to hit the planet, obviously more concerned about the fate of the world than the risks she and her family ran from the germs lurking in the Kovalam subsoil.

  'The centre we're going to is very good, I'll bring you a brochure, you should try it.'

  'You've been here before?'

  'Yes, a couple of years ago.'

  'And your family?'

  'No, it's their first time. We were wondering where to take our year end break and I suggested Kovalam.'

  'They like it?'

  'Yes, very much.'

  'So, have a nice day, enjoy yourselves,' Ryan said excusing himself, wondering what she would think if she knew that the town was facing a cholera outbreak and that perhaps her father, who was she said was showing signs of stomach problems, would soon be fighting for his life.

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  Chapter 73

  The Kovalam authorities, faced with so many hotels calling for medical doctors and the local dispensary overflowing with sick tourists, appealed to the Trivandrum Health Department for help.

  The Kovalam Beach holiday resort lay at the end of a short valley facing the sea and two beaches: Lighthouse Beach and Hawah Beach. There were only two roads into Kovalam Beach, both very steep, the main one, open to all traffic, led down to the centre of the town and a taxi station by the Hindu temple, the other, accessible to cars and two wheelers only, lay on the south side of the town and led down to the Lighthouse Beach area. A third, though much smaller road, too narrow for motor vehicles, led down to the north end of Hawah Beach from the bus stop outside the entrance of the Maharaja Palace.

  In the early hours of the morning the town was cordoned off and the Health Department set up sanitary control check points on the three roads into town manned by police and army units.

  Ryan was awoken by the noise of vehicles and voices. He looked at his watch, it was just after five thirty in the morning, got out of bed and went out onto the balcony, below, on the narrow road separating the Rainbow from the Moonlight Hotel, was an surrealist scene, a group of police officers and people clad in white coats were showing groups of sleepy people - some in pyjamas - into a coach. Amongst them he recognised the bewildered Swedish family he had seen at breakfast in the Rainbow. He quickly dressed and hurried downstairs where he found Johnny and his staff watching the strange sight.

  'What's going on?' Ryan asked Johnny.

  'They're evacuating the Moonlight.'

  'Why?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Where are they taking them?'

  'One of the boys said to the Sagara Hotel.'

  'Where's that?'

  'Up the hill.'

  'But why?'

  'Because it's bigger I suppose, they've got empty rooms there.'

  Ryan went outside to discover what was going on.

  There were a few bystanders including a taxi driver he recognised who lived in a house further along the road.

  'What's happening?' he asked the driver.

  'They've cordoned of the town, they're transforming the Moonlight into a medical centre.'

  'Why?'

  'Just a precaution Sir, they said some people are sick with enteritis.'

  'Enteritis?'

  'That's what we've been told Sir. There's a dispensary at the Jasmine,' he replied pointing to down the road.

  Ryan looked to the right and saw a group of men unloading materials into the hotel. Precaution was an understatement, as a doctor he had seen medical teams in Africa at work and from the scale of the operation it was much more than a 'precaution'. It was urgent to find out if the world outside knew of the precautions and the exact nature of the epidemic.

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  Chapter 74

  The quarantine measures were a clear confirmation that the authorities had recognised the existence of a cholera outbreak of epidemic proportions. After what Ryan had seen over the past three days he had little confidence in the authorities handling of the situation, and even worse the outside world was unaware of what was happening.

  His greatest fear was that inaction would result in the death of many innocent people. He had seen how Swami and the clinic in Trivandrum had tried to play down the situation. The unveiled threat from the police superintendent had been a clear indication that a cover-up was a distinct possibility.

  That was now transformed into the fear that the Indian authorities, out of misplaced national pride and fear for their tourist industry, would prevent outside help from coming in.

  Ryan quickly returned to his room and plugged his laptop into the telephone line. There was an occupied signal. He ran downstairs and told Johnny the phone was not working only to be told that the lines had been cut.

  Francis was his only hope, he had a satellite link, the only means of circumventing the local authorities and getting outside help, contacting the British Embassy and his friends at University College Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

  Decided, Ryan quickly headed off in the direction of the back alleys to find Francis. It was still dark, to the east there were the first signs of day with a dull rose colour to the sky, barely enough to make his way forward along the narrow alleys. He avoided the beach knowing that he could reach the lighthouse hill by the alleys.

  At the other end of the town, he had difficulty in distinguishing one house from the other in the dark and to make matters worse the sound of his footsteps seemed to have woken every dog in town. Finally he recognised the outline of the huge old knarled tree that overhung the writers house and then spotted his motorbike leaning against the trunk.

  The gate was open and he found his way to the door and knocked. A light came on after some moments.

  'Who's there?'

  He recognised the voice of John Francis.

  'It's me Ryan?Doctor Kavanagh.'

  The door opened.

  'There's something wrong?'

  'Yes.'

  'Come in.'

  'Thank God you're here.'

  'What's the problem then?'

  'The town has been cut off, quarantined.'

  'Quarantined?'

  Francis like all those in Kovalam was unaware of the health crisis, comfortable in his house he rarely ventured down to the beach area and even if he had he would have known nothing of the pending epidemic.

  Once Ryan filled him in on the situation they set to work, first informing the British Embassy in Delhi followed by the media in London and finally University College Hospital.

  It was not until much later in the morning that a reply came in from the news desk of SkyNews, then from one of their reporters. Once Ryan's identity was confirmed he informed the news channel of the urgency of the situation and demanded that the Home Office or Foreign Office be informed immediately of the situation as well as the embassy in Delhi, from which he still had no reply, no doubt because it was a Saturday.

  It was another couple of hours before contact was made with the British Embassy who announced a representative would be on the spot the same evening and that an emergency medical team was being put together.

  With the arrival of Barton the house was transformed into an information centre, the three men trying to handle the continuous flow of questions that poured in, questions relating to the number of foreigners present, their nationalities, the number of people infected, on the spot resources, sanitary conditions and a multitude of other details. The most difficult however was providing information pertaining to the Kerala authorities handling the crisis, the little information that Francis possessed was at the very best extremely scant.

  The British Embassy had already been informed of Stephen Parkly's death, though they had no precise information as to the exact causes. With the information from Ryan
their first priority was to British citizens in the region and only then they alerted the embassies of other countries known to have large numbers of tourists in the Kerala.

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  Chapter 75

  Explanations describing cholera were flashed across the television screens of the world and the front pages of newspapers. Specialists invited for the occasion announced scientists had only recently discovered Cholerae vibrio was one of the normal denizens of estuary and river waters.

  Surprisingly vibrios were one of the most common organisms in surface waters of the world, occurring in both marine and fresh water. Some vibrio species lived in association with fish and other marine life, while others could cause disease in fish and frogs as well as other vertebrates and invertebrates, which meant that even if the disease could be eliminated in humans, vibrios would continue to live in the environment.

  The Medical College Hospital pathology department isolated a mutated strain of highly virulent Cholerae vibrio O139 having a high resistance to antibiotics, which had first appeared in Bangladesh in 1992 then spread to several other Asian countries.

  Cholerae vibrio produced a toxin, which attacked the walls of the intestines and produced the characteristic diarrhoea associated with cholera. In its extreme forms, cholera was one of the fastest acting fatal illnesses known to man. A normal healthy person could die within two to three hours from the onset of symptoms if urgent treatment was not at hand. In most cases the disease progressed from the first signs of diarrhoea to shock in a period of four to twelve hours followed by death in a few days or less.

  Most antibiotics and chemotherapeutic agents had little value in the treatment of the disease, however tetracyclines, which could shorten the duration of diarrhoea and reduce fluid loss, were effective in spite of a growing resistance to antibiotics.

  In the vast majority of cases glucose enriched rehydration, either oral or intravenous, could cure the disease and complete recovery of most infected persons could be expected within a few days.

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  Chapter 76

  The news hit West Mercian with devastating effects, in the middle of the gravest crises ever to have hit the bank, their CEO was dead and already cremated in far away India. It was a shock of staggering proportions and provoked a panic with investors and savers rushing to withdraw their money from the firm's property funds and savings accounts. The shares finally collapsed to the level of junk bonds and this time government intervention was not forthcoming.

  Without realising it Emma Parkly's inheritance, most of which was locked into her dead husband's shares and stock options in West Mercian melted like a popsicle on a Kerala beach. Their house in Chelsea and their country home had been heavily mortgaged with low interest loans - Parkly's privilege as CEO.

  It was a field day for the press that only recently had so loudly acclaimed Parkly as one of the City's most shrewd CEOs. West Mercian's available cash was reduced to a chagrin and all withdrawals frozen to the ire of small investors who clamoured to no avail before the solid bronze doors of the bank's office in Fenchurch Street.

  Pensioners like Mike Ryman were caught in the whirlwind, though Mike was oblivious to the crisis, bedridden with an intravenous drip in his arm in the Moonlight as his wife Kate sobbed alone in her room in the garden wing of the Jasmine Palace, forcibly separated from her sick husband.

  Countless millions were wiped off company valuations as the price of commercial property fell and investment fund cash reserves dwindled to a level far below the recommended percentage of total liquid assets necessary to face up to the crisis.

  They were between the 'devil and the deep blue sea' as one tabloid columnist put it, sell properties and seeing the market plunge further or risk collapse with an onslaught of withdrawals.

  The Times reported a banking executive had thrown himself under a train on the Liverpool Street line the previous day. He was said to be a director of West Mercian Finance, the mortgage and investment firm in grave difficulties, perhaps confronted by a hostile takeover or even worse liquidation. West Mercian had billions in mortgage loans on its books and employed thousands of people.

  In recent years, both small and large investors had become used to double digit returns on commercial property funds, which outperformed shares and made ordinary savings accounts sickly.

  The flow of money into commercial property had dried up like a desert wadi and credit looked like it was headed in the same direction. The fabulous deals that had made headlines in the financial press were forgotten as predators moved in for a killing with prices falling twenty to thirty percent as cash-strapped funds were forced sell their properties.

  There was no end to the bad news. The question was what else lay hidden in the books of banks and investment funds and what effect would it have on the economy.

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  Chapter 77

  A SkyNews team was despatched from Mumbai to cover the news. They held all India press and television permits issued by the Union Government authority and had been initially in the country to cover an official visit of the British Prime Minister to Delhi. However, following the banning of one of India's top cricket stars during the ongoing Test series with Australia, accused of racist remarks, their stay was prolonged to cover the violent and jingoistic reactions of the country's politicians playing up to the howls of rage from Indian cricket fans and the news media.

  Cricket was obsession of the Indian middle class, part of their the need to see their country as a success, and when their cricketers lost to nations with populations less than that of Mumbai and Delhi put together it was a form of humiliation for them. It did not match the highly publicized success of Indian business takeovers, such as the Tata group taking control of Tetley or Corus, and setting its sights on Jaguar and Land Rover.

  The SkyNews lead reporter had returned home, leaving Bruce Davies his second string in charge, since cricket insults were not rated as prime news. It was the Davies' first visit to the subcontinent as it was for his small team that consisted of a cameraman with a sound and lighting technician. Though Davies had carried out reports in the third world, the cameraman, Collin Williams, was older and more experienced.

  The SkyNews desk in London, alerted to a potentially sensational scoop by a British doctor in Kovalam and having received confirmation from a contact at the British Embassy in New Delhi that a story was indeed breaking, Davies and his team were ordered to drop everything and grab the next flight down to Trivandrum.

  The newsmen booked into a hotel in the city centre and the next morning set off for Kovalam in a hired Toyota Fortuner with a fluent English speaking driver who could also act as their translator.

  The entry to the town was sealed off and they were turned away with a point blank refusal by the police. The situation was identical at the Lighthouse end of the town. Davies like most reporters was not one to be put off, any good pressman worth his salt knew such barriers were indicative of a news worthy event in the making. After few words with their enterprising driver, a local man, he drove them to a spot where a dirt path led down the steep hill to Kovalam Beach.

  It was strangely calm in the small resort, nothing like the scenes of misery and disaster the reporters had expected. The tourists were stoic, they had rooms, the restaurants were operating though few customers dared to visit them. Many of the Indian workers had disappeared, especially the locals, where to, it was difficult to say, though most probably home, up through the coconut plantations avoiding the check points. Those that remained either lived in the town or had no where else to go.

  Kovalam had almost become a ghost town, the beaches were empty as were the souvenir shops and bars. The strollers had been replaced by paramedical teams in white coats questioning the few tourists out and about, handing out information leaflets, whilst army personnel, wearing surgical masks, made their rounds delivering bottled water.

  Davies like all reporters needed more dramatic images, he knew the golden rule of news reporting,
images that could not grab the viewers' attention in the first five seconds would never make the headlines. After questioning locals with the help of the driver they turned their attention to the small fishing port of Vizhinjam, just two or three kilometres to the south of Kovalam.

  Vizhinjam had once been the capital of the Ay Kingdom, but was now a small and dirty third world fishing port, one of the busiest in the Thiruvananthapuram District, with its population eking a living from the still generous Arabian Sea.

  Apart from the occasional cruise ship that anchored at a recently built dock in the port, relatively few tourists seemed to make the effort to visit the town, which was not without some attractions, including Christian churches and chapels, and the huge, almost outlandish, pink coloured Juma Mosque that dominated the skyline to the north-east side of the natural harbour and its large fleet of small fishing boats roasting under the heat of the ever fierce sun.

  The newsmen discovered the town had been hard hit by the epidemic. However, life went on as normal, there was no social security services to pay sickness benefits or put food into the mouths of the towns' inhabitants. Fishing boats arrived with their catch all through the day with crowds swarming into the water around them as they were beached: boatmen, porters, fishwives carrying their large basins, beggars and onlookers. They shouted and pushed, the women insulting each other as they angrily vied for the meagre catch.

  To onlookers not used to the daily scene it was looked like a desperate fight for food and made good footage for Davies. The SkyNews team then made their way along the shore where old boats lay beached, hulls up, between the low miserable shacks of platted palm leaves, less than shoulder high, which served as homes for the most wretched. Here and there they stopped to film women cooking over small fires surrounded by their small naked children.

  The huts continued spilling over onto the edge of the road, a couple of stretcher bearers wearing surgical masks were attending to a woman before her miserable dwelling, there was a terrible stench of human excrement in the air and fat black flies swarmed around them. Williams pointed the camera at the woman, she looked dead, excrement dripped from her as she was placed on the stretcher, she then weakly opened her eyes, just a few feet away in another hut a woman fatalistically ignoring the drama being enacted before her eyes crouched eating from a small bowl with her fingers.