The Seven Trials of Cameron-Strange

by James Calum Campbell

  I just let the question hang in the air.

  ‘Ah yes, yes, I see. Quite. Quite.’ She wrote furiously. Maybe silence is consent.

  ‘You remain on good terms with Ms Hodgson?’

  ‘Yes. I believe so.’

  ‘You intend to see her again?’

  ‘If she would like to. Do you think I should?’ I always try to fire a direct question at a lawyer, in the vain hope of getting a direct answer. Of course it was a stupid question. The young girl on Ms Cardwell’s right leaned in and whispered something. They had a hurried conference, sotto voce. I think they were discussing some obscure piece of case law from the nineteenth century.

  ‘Jamieson.’

  ‘Jamieson. Ah yes, Jamieson.’

  Shortly after that, the Skype call came to an end. Jamieson clearly settled the matter. At least Hester Cardwell tried to reassure me.

  ‘Professor Girdwood’s advice is sound. You need to lie low.’

  ‘You think I’ve done something wrong.’

  ‘You would need to test the case.’ And I remembered her colleague David Walkerburn had said exactly that to me before, on another matter. You would need to test the case. This is all about public perception. ‘But I think it unlikely it will come to that. I suspect the public will be on your side. If the New Zealand GMC stay quiet, and Ms Hodgson stays quiet, all will be well. So you must stay quiet too. Take a holiday!’ She gave me a smile and suddenly looked quite human, even warm. It must be difficult to be a judge. (I thought of her as a judge rather than a lawyer.) The professional detachment of a doctor is one thing, but that of a judge quite another. How did they do it? How did they separate their private from their public persona? Could a judge possibly go to the pub with some friends and have a few pints and a bit of a laugh? Maybe that was why judges wore wigs. It was a disguise.

  I ventured, ‘If I’m taking time out, how long for?’

  She shrugged. ‘Two weeks? Give it that and then give Prof Girdwood a call. Bet you get your old job back.’ It was as if she’d retired to chambers and taken the wig and gown off. I pressed her again, perhaps a little mischievously.

  ‘Do you think I should see Ms Hodgson again?’

  Thus far and no further. ‘You may well have an opinion on that. I couldn’t possibly say.’

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Good night.’

  The screen went blank.

  I glanced at my watch. 10.30pm. Too late to make a call? I decided to risk it. I fished the heavily embossed card out of my wallet, glanced at the handwritten contact details, lifted the phone, and tapped out the number.

  ‘Esplanade.’

  So, he was staying in Devonport, on Auckland’s North Shore. I asked for Major Forster. There was only a brief delay.

  ‘Forster.’

  ‘It’s Dr Cameron-Strange.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was almost as if he’d been sitting by the phone, waiting for my call.

  ‘Look, I’ve been thinking things over. The way things have turned out, I’ve got a bit of time on my hands. That job you offered me, the one that would take about a week, is it still up for grabs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’m available. Just the taster bit, mind. Not the long haul. I’d like to be clear about that. But if the offer still stands, I’m in.’

  SCOOP AND RUN

  I

  There is an ancient Maori tale concerning the kakapo, or parrot, and the albatross. They vied with one another to be the leader of all the birds in Aotearoa. They played a game of hide and seek. Whoever found the other would be made the leader. First the albatross hid by lying quite still and pretending to be a stone. But the kakapo saw the albatross’s feathers blowing in the wind, and found him. Then the kakapo hid in some ferns. The albatross could not find him because he was perfectly camouflaged. Thus it was that the kakapo became leader of all the birds of Aotearoa.

  But the albatross was declared not fit to live on land. He was banished to lead a lonely life flying over the ocean for ever. What sleep he was granted could only be snatched on the wing.

  Was I destined to be an albatross?

  I glanced round my remand cell. More like a budgie stuck in a cage. Thirty-six hours to go.

  * * *

  There had been a fractional pause on the other end of the line. ‘That’s extraordinary. Providential. As a matter of fact we have a job, but you need to do it right now. Are you sober?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘You know “Trans-Global Assistance”?’

  ‘Retrieval service. I’ve done some work for them.’

  ‘Good. That’ll make it easier. Can you do a retrieval for them now?’

  ‘Sure. Be glad to. But that’s not what was on offer the other day up at Waitiki Landing. What is this? Mission creep? I’m only in this for the short haul. Just the taster.’

  I could hear Forster chuckling on the other end of the line. ‘Call it tumbleweeding.’

  ‘Tumbleweeding? Where do you get off with all this managerial mumbo-jumbo? What’s the retrieval? Has it got something to do with the Fox business?’

  ‘Let’s just say this will give you an “in”.’ Forster said mysteriously that Trans-Global would explain. ‘Can you get back down to the airport? Make yourself known at International Departures and you’ll be escorted through. Take your passport.’

  ‘Where am I going?’

  ‘Vanuatu.’

  Fair enough. Why ever not? I found myself once more wondering about these people’s reach: first with the British General Medical Council, now with Trans-Global Assistance.

  ‘Just to be clear, Major Forster. This thing called N-MASS. I’m still not interested. I don’t want any misunderstandings.’

  ‘You don’t need to make your mind up about that now. Plenty of time.’

  ‘I have made my mind up, and I won’t change it.’

  ‘All right. Oh! Nearly forgot. You’re invited to dinner. The Captain Cook. She’s berthed at the Devonport Naval Base, courtesy of the New Zealand Navy. 7pm, day after tomorrow. Major General Civil’s putting on a Burns supper for the Governor-General. You’ll feel right at home. Don’t get held up. Got a place to stay when you get back?’

  I hadn’t. I was back in my Ihumatao Travel Lodge, stuck in airport land. Since entering the country my feet hadn’t touched the ground. I was of no fixed abode. I had a horrible premonition that I would remain thus.

  ‘I’ll get a room for you at the Esplanade. On the house. That’ll be handy for the Cook. Five minutes’ walk.’

  I thought of the pleasant frontage of the old-fashioned hotel just across the road from the Devonport ferry, of the shops and restaurants and cafes on Victoria Road, the kids playing on the magnificent Moreton Bay fig tree (Ficus Macrophylla), fondly known as Albert, out in the sunshine on Windsor Reserve. I took the offer.

  I guess I’d done half a dozen jobs for Trans-Global in the past. I always enjoyed their unpredictability, the fact that at one moment you were in the midst of a humdrum emergency department shift, the next you were off on an exotic assignment to an unknown location. I was amused by the cloak-and-dagger atmosphere I think Trans-Global liked to work in. They would say, ‘You’re booked into Indonesian Airlines flight such-and-such. DC 10. You and the patient have got upfront to yourselves on the way back. Pick up your tickets at the first-class priority stand and go straight through. At the other end, a man named Da Silva will meet you. He has organised the oxygen …’ And so on.

  I took the precaution of packing an overnight bag, just in case, and was back down at the airport before midnight. Upstairs in the terminal I explained my business at International Departures. An official gazed at my passport and then processed me and my bag through security and led me past duty-free down a very long wide carpeted corridor past various gates that were still busy with outgoing traffic. We got to the last gate and I entered a deserted lounge.

  Almost deserted. A representative from Trans-Global was in conversation with a member
of the airport ground staff, huddled over some medical equipment. I knew him: Darren Blacklock, a warm and friendly Kiwi with honest, clear eyes and a happy smile. We shook hands. I glanced behind him at the equipment. In addition to the usual doctor’s bag, medicines supply, crash kit, and defib, there were half a dozen full-size oxygen cylinders each about five feet tall. They looked like torpedoes. I said, ‘That’s a tonne of oxygen. Let me guess. Vanuatu … diver with the bends?’

  ‘Got it in one. Female. Eighteen years old. Doesn’t sound too bad. Bit of right arm tingling and numbness. But the doctor on Espiritu Santo has been in touch with the Devonport Naval Base and they want to dive her. I gather she’s a bit reluctant. Wants to stay put. But she knows if she doesn’t comply it’ll affect her diver’s ticket. Can you go get her? Sounds basically like a hand-holding exercise.’

  ‘That’s fine, Darren. How am I travelling?’

  ‘Private jet. Commodore 200. It’s in transit from Wellington right now.’

  ‘Charter?’

  ‘Not exactly. The jet belongs to the patient’s father.’

  I had a sneaking suspicion. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Saskia Fox. You’ll have heard of her dad.’

  ‘Oh. That guy.’

  ‘There’s another complication. There’s some very bad weather coming in from the east. If you leave here at two you’ll reach Santo by dawn and you should be able to stay ahead of it. But it’s going to be a “scoop and run” job. Load and go. The local hospital will organise to have the patient on the runway. Refuel for a quick turnaround and be home by lunchtime tomorrow.’

  ‘Funny she wants to stay put if there’s a cyclone coming in.’

  ‘I gather that’s her hobby.’

  ‘Diving?’

  ‘No. Chasing extreme weather events.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just for the hell of it.’

  Saskia Fox sounded to me to be a nutcase. I remarked to Blacklock that that sounded like the sport of a rich uptown girl and a spoiled brat. Looking for trouble, putting herself in harm’s way, then putting somebody else – her rescuer – in harm’s way. Blacklock didn’t disagree.

  The Commodore 200 drew up to the air bridge so silently that I didn’t notice. One minute the gate was empty and the next the sleek contours were parked outside the terminal window. When the pilots came through the air bridge the captain was on his mobile.

  ‘Yes, Mr Fox. No, Mr Fox. Yes of course, sir. I’ll check on that.’

  Then the captain listened long and hard to some lecture he was getting from the other end of the line. I thought, Mr Fox is a control freak. He’s a micromanager. I don’t think I want to work for him. Too late now. The captain offered me his mobile.

  ‘Mr Fox would like a word.’

  I took the phone.

  ‘Hello, Mr Fox.’

  ‘That you, Strange?’

  ‘It’s Dr Cameron-Strange. Yes.’

  I was then subjected to the rudest harangue I’ve ever received, professionally, in my life.

  ‘Where were you educated, Strange? What medical school did you graduate from?’

  ‘Edinburgh.’

  ‘Edinburrow in England?’

  ‘No. Edinburgh in Scotland.’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, Strange.’ Then, to some aide at his elbow, ‘Gimme that resumé.’ There was a shuffling of papers. I could hear him muttering.

  ‘Magna cum laude, huh?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Well let’s just find out how magna your laude turns out to be, mister. Since we’re talking in a dead language, just remember you’re in loco parentis. ‘’kay? That means you’re acting for me, fella. You get her back here ASAP, and you get her back safe and sound. Hear?’

  This time last year I’d have told Mr Fox where to go. But what would be the point? I must be mellowing. Still, I couldn’t let it pass altogether.

  ‘How old is your daughter, Mr Fox?’

  ‘Eighteen years, eighteen precious years, last time I looked. Don’t you forget that.’

  ‘I’m not acting for you, Mr Fox. I’m acting for my patient. I’ll do my best for her. Good night.’

  I handed the phone back to the captain, walked away to the other end of the departures lounge and took a few breaths.

  We boarded just before two. The cabin was very luxurious. I found it reminiscent of the Edinburgh Suite in the Sheraton Towers at Singapore. The two American pilots were helpful in a standoffish way. The captain was a parody of a US airline pilot, middle-aged, tall, slim, and fit, with grey hair and moustache. Elmer G. Fassbinder. He reminded me of that extraordinary guy who got a bird strike coming out of JFK and ditched his plane in the Hudson, just before he retired. The co-pilot looked much the same except he was thirty years younger, with black hair and no moustache. Randy Sloan. They assisted me in getting the oxygen cylinders on board. They were very polite but there was none of the joshing and banter that’s almost universal amongst the world’s aviators. I checked the cylinders out, made them secure, and went over the crash kit and the drug inventory while they got on with the cockpit pre-flight.

  I sat on the jump seat between the pilots for the take-off. There’s something deeply hypnotic about taxiing into a pitch-black night, following the crescent of emerald green cat’s eyes to the holding point. We hurled ourselves down the long corridor of converging lights and out into the night.

  Once we were established in the cruise I went back to the cabin. Not a bad perk of the job, to have a Commodore 200 to yourself. I wanted to catch a few hours’ sleep if I could, but I’d noticed a desktop computer and I fired it up. I was curious to learn a little more about Phineas. The wonders of Wi-Fi. I Googled him.

  There was no shortage of material. Most of it was congruent with Forster’s description. If anything, the range of his enterprises seemed even vaster. Pharmaceuticals (FoxPharm), Aviation (FokkerFox), some sort of terpsichorean reality TV show (FoxTrot) that sounded like Strictly but without the charm … So it went on. I looked up Wilbur Phineas Fox on Wikipedia. There was a substantial entry – about fifty pages. I printed them off; I can’t stand reading things off computer screens. I suppose I wasn’t doing much service on behalf of the earth’s forests; the last ten pages were references. There was in fact a Fox literature.

  His portfolio was, to say the least, disparate. Mining engineer who had diversified. The bedrock of his wealth was a compound of coal, oil, bauxite, tin, copper, diamonds, gold, platinum, rare earths, even uranium. There was hardly an element on the periodic table that wasn’t represented. Wherever the element was to be found in the world, Fox Holdings had a presence. I began to think of Fox as an animal programmed to carry out a task – like a beaver who will build dams, or a pig snuffling for truffles. Fox was a digger. Put him down anywhere on the planet and he would dig, remorselessly. Dig, dig, dig, pole to pole. He wanted to sink wells under the Arctic Ocean and he wanted to start mining Antarctica.

  The diversification was even more extraordinary. Real estate, news media, television and film, the arts, food and drink, aviation, trains … I think it was Aldous Huxley who said that being interested in everything is the same as being interested in nothing. At the end of the day, Fox’s big interest was Money. He had a great deal of it. He hardly knew how much. Forbes estimated his personal fortune at 70 billion US dollars. Money begets money. The pot just got larger and larger. During the crash, by some alchemical sleight, he doubled his wealth. Don’t ask me how. I haven’t the first clue about money. I hardly know what it is.

  Anyway, I skim-read the Wikipedia entry. Early life … born Newark, New Jersey. There was a bit about humble origins and being a message boy from age eight, developing entrepreneurial skills in the tough precinct of the school yard, ploughing the first hundred bucks he’d scraped together into the first venture, and even before he’d escaped adolescence, tasting the first hint of success. It came across to me as a piece of sanitised cosmesis. He wanted to be seen as the offspring of some hick, redneck
trailer trash but I had a notion he was concealing a comfortable middle-class upbringing. Then came the Ivy League. Engineering at Yale. A brief dalliance with Harvard Business School, followed by the tough years down in Brazil. The acquisition of the first millions, the development of a global reach, and the relentless diversification of interests. His most recent foray was into the world of entertainment. Fox was box-office. I gathered that his reality show, Who Dares Wins International, went out to ninety countries worldwide. It was possibly, at least for the moment, his highest-profile enterprise, yet it only represented a fraction of Fox Holdings’ overall concerns.

  Once you’ve accrued the first billion, why go on? How many mansions, limousines, and private jets do you need? Always one more than you have.

  Inevitably there were the lawsuits, the bankruptcies, the allegations of links with organised crime. You’ve got to marvel both at the energy and the sheer nerve of a man like Fox. How could he sleep at night? Yet I bet he thrived on it all. A gambler and a risk-taker, somebody who has to live on the edge.

  Personal life … five wives to date. Seven children, fourteen grandchildren. He was undoubtedly what biologists call ‘successful’.

  I had a look at Fox’s political ambitions. Republican ticket. He had absolutely no political experience. He wasn’t a governor, he wasn’t a senator. He had never held office. It didn’t seem to hold him back. What were his political beliefs? They seemed to be painted in fairly broad brush strokes. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the American dream. The need for America to assert herself, to be free again. America will change her way of life for nobody. America will defend her values, if necessary, to the death. America will challenge anybody, anywhere across the globe, who threatens the American way.

  I gathered that when he had started out on his campaign he was regarded as something of a joke. But his opponents were no longer laughing. He was televisual. In a sickening, vertiginous way, the camera loved him. He was cultivating the art of the gaffe. People called his gaffes ‘Foxisms’. (Or, in less polite society, ‘Fuxisms’.) They were quite deliberate. There is no such thing as climate change. We are in an interglacial age. We need to heat the place up by burning as much fossil fuel as possible. We need to rediscover our old-fashioned family values. Mothers shouldn’t have to go out to work. A woman’s place is in the kitchen, and on her back. Uncle Sam has a moral duty to defend her, God, and the right. If that means policing the world, then so be it. We must increase our defences. Both as an individual, and as a nation. Get gunned up. Don’t merely maintain the nuclear deterrent, increase it. It’s as American as mom and apple pie.