“There’s one other way that the Hernandez girl is causing mischief. She had seemingly sought out the Benfatti woman this morning and convinced her to delay giving us permission to dispose properly of her husband’s body in the same way she is denying us access to her grandmother’s.”

“No!” Ramesh exclaimed with disbelief.

“I’m afraid so. I’m beginning to think as I hear from my case manager that she is deliberately trying to cause trouble. I’m even beginning to believe she’s starting to become paranoid and hold us accountable, as if we have caused this tragedy deliberately.”

“That’s it, then,” Ramesh said. “We cannot let this go on.”

“Is there something you can do, sir?” Rajish asked hopefully.

“Perhaps,” Ramesh said. “We cannot sit passively and let this woman have free rein until her paranoia is somehow satisfied.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Keep me informed of any and all developments,” Ramesh said.

“Absolutely,” Rajish answered.

Ramesh hung up the receiver and turned to the keyboard at his workstation. Going into his address book, he found the mobile number of Inspector Naresh Prasad of the New Delhi police, who headed up the small, clandestine Industrial Security Unit. Picking the phone receiver back up, he placed the call. Since the men hadn’t spoken in almost six months, they traded some personal information before Ramesh got around to the reason for the call. “We here at the department of medical tourism have a problem that needs your expertise.”

“I’m listening,” Naresh said.

“Is this a good time to talk?”

“It doesn’t get much better.”

“There is a young woman named Jennifer Hernandez, whose grandmother passed away Monday night at the Queen Victoria Hospital of an unfortunate heart attack. Somehow CNN got ahold of the story and put it on the air as a way of questioning our record of safety.”

“That’s not good.”

“That is an understatement,” Ramesh said. He then went on to tell Naresh the entire problem, including the details of the second death. He then enumerated all the things that Jennifer had done and was doing to make herself persona non grata. “This affair is beginning to have a serious deleterious effect on our medical tourism ad campaign, which could then impact our ability to meet our goals. I don’t know if you have been kept completely up to date, but we have upped our estimates such that Indian medical tourism is to be a two-point-two-billion-dollar-a-year industry by 2010.”

Naresh whistled into his phone. He was duly impressed. “I hadn’t heard those figures. Are you people aiming to catch IT? The information technology people are going to be envious, as they believe they have become the hereditary kings of foreign exchange.”

“Unfortunately, this current problem could seriously impact our goal,” Ramesh said, ignoring Naresh’s question. “We need help.”

“That’s what we’re here for. What can we do?”