Dick was woken from his thoughts as the car screeched to a stop to avoid an auto-rickshaw and a scooter carrying a family of four which had cut across the crowded road outside the High Court buildings. Dick's mind came back to the present. For anyone with strong nerves, travelling in India is a constant source of interest and surprise.

His driver Gopal inched his way forward, successfully winning a few feet from a bus cutting in on one side and a water-tanker on the other, each puffing out clouds of billowing, black diesel fumes. The road widened as they passed Fort St George. Gopal speeded up and they were soon leaving the elegant but neglected university buildings behind. They drove the length of the Marina, the sea on the left and a succession of historic buildings on the right. Even at this hour a few people were strolling along the beach taking the early evening air. Soon there would be crowds, all escaping the oven heat of the city for the cooling evening sea breeze.

It was five-thirty before they reached the tree-lined shade of Boat Club Road and the calm of Dick's company house, set well back from the road in its own garden. The chowkidar opened the gate and the car slid gratefully into the cool shade of the porch.

There was a note on the kitchen table from Dick's wife, Sally, to say she was out to tea with one of the awful society women who seemed to form a permanent part of their social life. She reminded him that they were to attend a drinks party at the Jussawallahs, a Parsee couple they had met at the club the previous week. He groaned, then made his way to the bathroom for a shower.

Later, as he sat drinking a cool beer on the terrace overlooking the garden, Dicks thoughts returned to his present problems. He was forty-eight years old; no longer young but still young enough to rise in the company. He was in good shape physically - six feet tall, slim and muscular, even if his hair was prematurely grey. He had worked for Trakton since leaving university. They had sent him to some pretty hard countries when he was young - Papua New Guinea, Ecuador, Iran, Saudi Arabia. He had always managed to do well, even in the most difficult conditions.