Parkinson said, ‘Let’s have a cuppa!’ He beamed. ‘Our shout.’ I sighed in resignation. We headed back up the hill, in convoy, like a funeral cortège.
Waitiki Landing is a modest facility. There’s a petrol pump, a shop and cafeteria, and a single line of rather spartan motel-style units mostly used by backpackers. Across the road from the units lies a shaded area comprising a wooden awning and a few benches. Forster suggested we sit outside. He went to get the tea. Parkinson glanced at a notice board bearing a map and a description of the local attractions, the flora and fauna. He turned to me.
‘Nice place. Peaceful.’
‘It was.’
‘How’ve you been?’
‘I’m good.’
He held my gaze as if to verify that my self-appraisal was confirmed by my demeanour, and he gave a brief nod.
I said, ‘You haven’t come all this way just to enquire after my health.’
Parkinson said he would let the Major explain.
The tea came. We sat for a few minutes and talked about the weather. Despite myself, I couldn’t help but be curious about the nature of their journey. The last time I had encountered these two men, it had been under very different circumstances. It had been in the dead of winter, in the basement of an ancient Scottish Highland pile once visited, incidentally, by Dr Johnson. Had they really followed me halfway round the world? What on earth for? Was I in some kind of trouble? I had certainly left them all in a hell of a mess. Yet surely I was the only person in the whole sad affair who might be completely exonerated. My frequent warnings to them had been demonstrated to be so prescient, my position so vindicated, that, surely, if they had any reason at all for looking me up, it was to offer a grovelling apology. Yet I wasn’t going to hold my breath. One thing the establishment never does is grovel.
Then I was completely taken aback. Forster laid his mug down on the bench beside him. ‘Well. To the point. We’ve come to offer you a job.’
I stared at him. ‘A job?’
‘Ralph and I have put your name forward to be the next N-MASS.’
‘N-what?’
‘National Medical Adviser to the Security Services.’
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. I’d never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life. I could see Major Forster knit his eyebrows in some annoyance, but really I couldn’t have cared less. Dr Parkinson sipped his tea and stared into the middle distance. God knows what he was thinking.
I collected myself. I looked steadily at them for a few moments, and then said, in slow and muttered tones, ‘I can’t begin to imagine what sort of work you’re offering me. But I think you know where you can stuff your ruddy job. Believe me, nothing on earth would persuade me to go back to that godforsaken place and work for a bunch of stuck-up, snobby, poncy, smug, self-satisfied bastards …’
Forster held up a hand. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger! And before you make any hasty judgements, hear me out. Let me explain exactly what HMG has in mind. Ask any questions you like. At the end, if you don’t like it, it’s fine. We’ll walk away. You need never see us again.’
‘HMG?’
‘Her Majesty’s Government.’
I suppose that must have roused my curiosity, if in a sickly way. At any rate I let Forster make his pitch. I would let him get it all off his chest. I would hear him out and I would even seek to clarify some points. It would be like taking a cold call at six in the evening from somebody trying to sell you double-glazing or a new kitchen. I would sound interested up to the point when the vendor thinks he is about to get your credit card number. Then I would decline the offer. I didn’t believe Forster would care either way. I imagined he was just ticking a box and fulfilling an obligation to some superior in Whitehall. Let him put all his cards on the table. I wanted him to use up all his ammunition. So fire away.
‘Where to begin? How would you like to meet Phineas Fox?’
‘Phineas who?’
‘Fox.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘You don’t know who Phineas Fox is?’
‘Never heard of him. Should I have?’
‘Republican ticket front-runner?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Fourth richest man in the world?’
‘Third,’ Ralph Parkinson interjected.
‘I don’t read Forbes magazine.’
‘I dare say not, but this guy’s running for the US Presidency. What planet are you on?’
‘I’ve been preoccupied. Anyway, how is this guy so rich? Is his money old or new?’
‘New. Brand spanking new.’
‘What’s his line? IT? Social media? Oil? Arms?’
‘All of the above. And more besides. He’s an entrepreneur with wide business interests. A huge portfolio. He’s a billionaire tycoon.’
Forster sipped his tea ruminatively and paused to collect his thoughts.
‘Let me give you a little background about Mr Fox. Humble origins. His father was a German immigrant named Fuchs and his mother was Irish. They ran a hardware store in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. Phineas ran errands for them from age eight. Then he started developing his own interests, selling home-made toys to the other kids at school. He was good with his hands. And he had a huge capacity for hard work. It allowed him to break into the Ivy League. Engineering at Yale. After graduation he went to South America and started working for an obscure company in Brazil mining bauxite. With the world slump in aluminium in the 80s they nearly went to the wall but somehow Fox turned the company round and became its MD. Then he branched out and started to mine other minerals across the globe – gold, silver, diamonds, iron ore. Coal, of course. He sank an oil well or two. He created his company – Fox Holdings. Fox is basically a mining engineer. He’s a notorious climate change-denier. Absolutely no time for renewables. Can’t stand wind turbines. He’s always mocking the green lobby. Mining was the backbone of his enterprise but then he diversified. Real estate, transport – trains and aviation mainly, the automobile industry, hotels, restaurants, recreation, theme parks, entertainment, the arts. I could go on.’
‘What drives him?’
‘Power and wealth, I suppose.’
‘Hasn’t he got enough?’
‘My experience of people like Fox is that they can never have enough.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Just turned fifty-six.’
‘Does he have a life outside of his work? Married? Kids?’
‘He’s currently on Mrs Fox Mark 5. Elena Fox was Miss World two or three years ago. D’you really not know this stuff?’
‘I don’t read Hello. Nor OK neither.’
‘Seven kids at the last count. You might run into two of them. Saskia is eighteen. She’s on a gap year. Going up to Oxford in the fall. Tamsin’s sixteen. Goes to boarding school in Cheltenham. Fox is a great Anglophile.’
‘Really? I wonder if my sister-in-law knows her. Small world. Anyway I don’t think I’m likely to meet your Mr Fox. I don’t move in such circles.’
There was a momentary diversion as a couple of motor cycles zoomed round the bend from the Cape Reinga side and pulled in opposite us. The engines were cut and the guy bikers and their female pillion passengers dismounted and pulled off their crash helmets. They looked to be students on holiday. I could hear them talking to one another in German. They sounded happy and carefree. I wanted to join them and get away from this murky tale I was being forced to hear.
‘We would like you to meet Mr Fox. He’s coming to New Zealand tomorrow.’
‘He’s got business interests here? Don’t tell me he runs the New Zealand steel industry.’
‘No. It’s recreational. For him at least. He runs a reality TV show. Who Dares Wins International.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘You really are quite the eremite. Which particularly reclusive monastic order are you part of?’
‘The one that doesn’t have a telly. What do t
hey do on Who Dares Wins?’
‘It’s a kind of a boot camp for aspiring Special Forces recruits. Actually it’s just a bunch of stuck-up wannabe entrepreneurs playing a paintball game on a corporate retreat. You know the sort of thing. You start with twenty contenders. Each week they face some sort of ordeal. An assault course, a bit of orienteering, a mock interrogation. Each week somebody cracks and gets sent home. Fox is the adjudicator. He’s got two assistants. Special Forces types. Usually Fox’s contribution is by video link from whatever part of the world he happens to be in, but occasionally he drops by.’
‘Where’s the retreat?’
‘Great Barrier Island.’
‘The Barrier? Here? GBI? Our Barrier?’
‘The self-same. Fox is building himself a pile up at the north end of the island. Kind of a baronial folly surrounded by a golf course. Xanadu.’
‘Xanadu? You’re kidding. That’s impossible. There’s nothing up there but bush. It’s wilderness. No roads. No electricity.’
‘Not for much longer, if Fox has his way. He’s made no secret of the fact that he wants to buy Great Barrier Island and turn it into a theme park for the well-to-do. Sounds ridiculous, but make no mistake, Fox has got a nose for a business opportunity. He wants to harness the Kiwi fascination for extreme sport. He basically wants to turn Great Barrier Island into a huge bungee jump for the filthy rich. They exorcise their personal demons by imagining they’ve risked their necks, then go back to a nine-star hotel for a round of golf and the best food and drink on offer. Fox wants to buy the whole island and fill it with resorts featuring extreme sports in and out of the water, abseiling, assault courses, all of that. The hotels will all be top-bracket, the golf courses manicured. There’ll be marinas of course, with lots of room for the yachts. Non-stop twenty-minute QuickCat service from Auckland just in case you don’t own a yacht or a jet or a helicopter. There are the gorgeous beaches on the island’s east coast for the water-skiing and the paragliding. Beautiful women can get their bodies beach-ready for the summer. Then they can go back to the hotel for pampering and living it up. There’ll be plenty of parking space for the helicopters. As for the executive jets, at the moment the strips, one at Claris, the other at Okiwi, are a bit short. They’ll need to be lengthened and the surface improved, with full instrument landing facilities installed. The jet set can pop in on a Friday evening, have a rigorous workout over the weekend, and be off on Monday morning. Gym facilities and personal trainers. Nouvelle cuisine. The finest chefs.
‘The lack of electricity is a bit of a challenge. Most of the people on the island either do without, maybe keep a small generator for the occasional cold night, or get power from a windmill. Fox has no time for wind turbine technology. He thinks it’s time Great Barrier Island tapped into the national grid. He’ll subsidise that fully as part of the deal. He’s planned it all down to the finest detail. The business plan is currently under scrutiny at the Beehive down in Wellington.’
I took a sip of my tea and glanced all around at the splash of green of the kauri and rimu, the New Zealand honeysuckle, the totara and the tawiri. It is said that New Zealand greenery cannot be captured in paint. The quality of the green is so intense that it is darker than its shadow.
Mr Fox’s business plan sounded repulsive.
‘I say the Kiwis won’t buy it. Great Barrier Island occupies a special place in the nation’s psyche. It’s a place for trampers, beachcombers, and people who are tired of the rat race and want to rediscover how to live. He’ll never get it through.’
‘Don’t be so sure. Fox is offering employment to upwards of one thousand five-hundred people. That would make the Barrier self-sustaining overnight. Rather more than self-sustaining. He’s talking about an annual turnover in excess of a billion bucks.’
‘I still say the New Zealanders won’t buy it.’
‘Everyone has their price.’
‘No they don’t. I know people who can’t be bought.’
‘Everyone has their price. I bet you think you can’t be bought. But you too will come at a price. It might not be reckoned in dollars and cents, but there will be something out there for which you will surrender everything. I wonder what it is? Watch out for Mr Fox. He’s very astute. If anyone can figure out your price, it will be him.’
‘I still don’t think we’re likely to meet. So he swans in here tomorrow, chucks somebody else off his TV show, and goes back to Manhattan.’
‘Not quite. There’s been a glitch. The networks are minded to pull Who Dares Wins off air.’
‘Don’t tell me. The bungee rope broke. Somebody died.’
My tea was getting lukewarm.
‘You’re on to it.’
‘Careless.’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more. This is where you come in. You might suppose Fox would be happy to shut down this particular franchise and lie low for a bit. Not a bit of it. He went on air rather in the manner of President Reagan addressing the nation from the Oval Office after the Challenger disaster. My fellow Americans … We will honour the memory of Mr O’Driscoll by playing the game out. He’s already cast a golden goblet to be won. The O’Driscoll Cup. Everything is a business opportunity.’
‘Who is Mr O’Driscoll?’
Major Forster said, with some bitterness, ‘Shaun is – was – an ex-colleague of mine. Captain O’Driscoll. And a friend. He met with an accident.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He died.’
‘How did he die?’
‘He died on a yomp.’
‘Yomp?’
‘A forced march over rough terrain. Army fatigues. Thirty miles. Fifty-kilogram pack.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘Last Sunday.’
‘Where?’
‘On the Barrier.’
‘Then I guess he died of heat stroke.’
‘Apparently.’
‘You doubt it?’
‘There’s something not quite right about it. That’s why we’d like you to take a look at it. From the medical point of view. Review the case. Have a chat with the people involved. Let us know what you think.’
‘I think I can tell you what I think right now. I think your Captain O’Driscoll died of heat stroke. It happens from time to time. What do you expect? You put a man in uniform, put a fifty kilogram pack on his back, and get him to walk the length of Great Barrier on a summer’s day. What d’you think’s going to happen? He drops dead and you hold up your hands. Shock horror. The British army has a couple of cases like this every year. The army will never learn. You don’t need me to review the case. You’d be better off asking me to give Mr Fox’s people a good bollocking and a lecture on heat illness.’
Forster smiled and said, ‘I’d be happy to arrange that too if you’re offering. But I still think there’s something funny about it. Shaun wouldn’t die of heat exhaustion. He’s just not the type.’
‘Not heat exhaustion. Heat stroke.’
‘Whatever.’
‘But that’s the whole point. Heat exhaustion is reversible. Heat stroke isn’t. Maybe I should give that lecture after all. The thing about heat injury is that you can’t always predict who is vulnerable to it. It’s like all sorts of other environmental injuries. Take altitude sickness. I’ve known triathlete iron men collapse at 19,000 feet on Kilimanjaro with acute pulmonary oedema while their grandmothers on heart medication waltz up to the summit, no worries. Susceptibility to heat is the same. There’s no shame in it. Captain O’Driscoll should have been pulled from the event, whatever it was. The shame of it resides with his supervisors. What was he doing on a reality TV show anyway? Sounds like a busman’s holiday.’
‘He wasn’t on holiday. He was on active service.’
‘This is getting a bit spooky. What was his mission?’
‘Can’t tell you that, unless you come on board.’
‘I don’t need to come on board. Your Captain O’Driscoll died of heat stroke.’
�
�If that’s the conclusion of your report, then so be it. We wouldn’t wish you to pull your punches.’
‘Major Forster, there isn’t going to be a report. I’m not interested in this job. I’ve already made up my mind to go back to work in my old hospital in South Auckland, if they’ll have me. And I’m pretty sure they will.’
‘That wouldn’t be a problem. This is just a short-term contract. Call it a taster. You know the sort of thing. You take a look at us, we take a look at you. It’s a week’s work, if that, and sure, it can be a one-off, if you like. But we’d want you to do it now.’
‘Now? Well that’s out of the question. Not if you’re looking for a fully-fledged doctor. I haven’t re-registered with the New Zealand General Medical Council. I can’t. Not until I get my Certificate of Good Standing from the UK, and considering what we’ve all just been through, that could take weeks if not months.’
Major Forster took a buff envelope out of his inside jacket pocket and handed it over. I extracted a single sheet of thick paper with a heavily embossed letter heading. It was a UK GMC Certificate of Good Standing made out in my name. For the first time, I began to suspect that these people had real clout, serious grunt.
‘I don’t have medical indemnity.’
‘Yes you do. We spoke to David Walkerburn.’
Walkerburn – my lawyer in Edinburgh. These people were going behind my back.
Major Forster took the Certificate of Good Standing from me and put it back into its envelope. ‘Of course, all the green lights are predicated on your taking up the job offer. Otherwise, as you yourself say, your whole medical career gets kicked into the long grass.’
Major Forster was quite prepared to play hardball.
‘That’s fine. I’ll go work in a bar.’
‘Hang on a sec.’ Dr Parkinson laid a restraining hand on Forster’s sleeve. He made his first substantial contribution to the conversation: ‘We can’t blame you for the way you feel. It has to be said – we owe you an apology. We fouled up. We didn’t take you seriously. You proved us all wrong. We failed to avert harm. And in the process, we harmed you. For that, I apologise absolutely and unreservedly. However …’
I knew there would be a ‘however’.
The Seven Trials of Cameron-Strange Page 4