The Seven Trials of Cameron-Strange

by James Calum Campbell

  To the rear of the living area another corridor led to a bathroom, a spare bedroom, a kitchen, and a fully stocked bar. There was also a spiral stairway. I ascended. Here was the master bedroom, with an en suite bathroom and spa, and a dressing room. There was a king-size bed. The bathroom was tumultuously bedecked with soaps, fragrances, and the other accoutrements of male grooming. In the dressing room my black Alpine Lowe holdall had already been deposited. The key to Myrtle sat on the dresser.

  I looked round at all this opulence, and felt distinctly uncomfortable. How long did I have to endure this for? Only till tomorrow morning. And besides, I was on a mission. Fact-finding. Get on with it. I went back downstairs.

  In the escritoire I found a jogger’s map with suggested runs about Xanadu’s hundred hectares. I wanted to have a look round and get my bearings. I chose a 10k run, stripped off, and put on shorts, running vest, and Nikes. On the map, I’d noticed some topographical features of interest. I went to the window and gazed out across the lawns, meadows, and waterways of the magnificent park, marrying the view to the information on the map. On the north side of the house, beyond the ha-ha which terminated the formal gardens, there was a diamond-shaped copse of native New Zealand trees. It was a dark green smudge of impenetrable woodland flanked on either side by landscaped park. On its right was an area of lovely down studded with a mix of evergreen and deciduous trees. It was labelled on the map: ‘the Arboretum’. To the left lay a flatter area in the shape of a long crooked finger of lush grassland; it might have been a par five golfing fairway with a dog-leg. Its length was littered with paraphernalia. I screwed up my eyes against the sun. What was it? Had the area been given over to equestrian pursuits? Three-day eventing, or show jumping? No. It was an array of trenches and parapets, a series of hazards. It was a military assault course. On the map it had been labelled, enigmatically, ‘the Big Push’. I looked at it and pulled a face. In the brochure the layout of the Big Push was detailed. The various hazards had been given names based on the First World War. The Somme, High Wood, Verdun, Passchendaele, etc. I found it all a bit distasteful. There was a great deal of hype about danger. Apparently the course could be ‘activated’. That is, it could be turned into a minefield to make its traverse all the more hazardous. It sounded like Russian roulette. That struck me as just a bit of hysterical hype for the television networks. You sometimes heard of the military using live ammunition on training exercises to add a little extra frisson to the occasion, but surely this was going a little too far. I looked back out across the parkland. I could see that the hype in the brochure was replicated at the southern end of the Big Push. Heavy gates, padlocks, Jolly Roger flags, skull and crossbones. A large white flag predominated, fluttering in the breeze. Maybe the course was, for the moment, deactivated. I suppose some people would have found it all compulsive viewing. I decided to keep well away from it. Both the arboretum and the assault course terminated at the northern apex of the dense bush. There, a gaily decorated circular bandstand in coconut blue and pink wrought iron was clearly discernible. On the map it was labelled ‘gazebo’. I memorised the details of my 10k route.

  I ignored the lift and walked down the main stairway. There was opulence on every floor. Above the ground floor there was a mezzanine with – I smiled at the inevitability of it – a ballroom, conference facilities, and, towards the rear, a gym, an indoor swimming pool, and a sauna. Not bad for a pied-à-terre in the country.

  Outside in the blazing afternoon sun I turned east and headed out of the gardens into the broader reaches of the parkland. Just beyond the formal garden area Rumpelstiltskin had built a bonfire and was burning old foliage. What had Fox called him? Abel. Abel was looking into the flames with intense concentration. He ignored me completely. I climbed a stile and found myself on a broad track bordering a stream running through bush. Four-minute kilometres. No need to overdo it. I crossed the stream over a Japanese-style vaulted wooden bridge and ascended about three hundred feet. The bush thinned out and there was a glimpse of the ocean. A grassy pathway cut a swathe through meadowland and finally to the robust granite rampart bordering the property. The path allowed me to track the perimeter.

  I fell to thinking about Xanadu’s gargoyles. Cadbury the anorectic retainer and general factotum. The awesome housekeeper Duck somebody. Duckmajor? Duckmanton. That was it. And then the huge Tongan with the absurd, outsized-diminutive name. And Abel, the forest gnome. The German, Kramer. From whence on earth had Fox recruited him?

  And Nikki. A beauty among the beasts.

  I’d tracked the periphery of the north-east segment of the property and was now heading towards its northernmost point. Here, the granite wall almost reached the cliff edge. One nautical mile out to sea I recognised the familiar and elegant pristine white lines of a cruising vessel. The Captain Cook, for whatever reason, was shadowing me. I found her presence reassuring.

  Ahead of me, I could hear raised voices. Parade-ground barks. I paused at a gate leading out on to a narrow ribbon of grass. It was occupied by half a dozen individuals in dark green camouflaged army gear. They were in blazing sunshine but even so the illumination had been augmented by two giant super-trooper searchlights bouncing off a white screen. I’d stumbled on an outside broadcast on a film set. The crew were operating two cameras, focused on an apparatus at the cliff edge that looked like a cross between a well-head and a gibbet. A man with shackled ankles stood on the scaffold with his back to me, looking out over a 200-foot drop to the ocean. The man was trying to psyche himself up. His legs were shaking. To his left, just out of camera shot, stood the tall, slim, fit-looking man with the very short fair hair and the bullet-shaped head. He looked like the Kommandant of a concentration camp. He was gazing dispassionately at the back of the head of the man on the scaffold, absently tapping the ground with a walking cane. Abruptly he muttered an order under his breath to a lieutenant, who stepped forward and gave the man on the scaffold a push. He dropped over the cliff edge with a blood-curdling scream which died away in a rapid diminuendo and then came to an abrupt halt.

  Bungee jump.

  I turned away and headed on to another path heading south back towards the house. Here was the bandstand, the gazebo; I was approaching it from its far side. It stood at the centre of a well-cropped circular grass lawn and as I stepped on to it, the Victorian wrought iron of the stand illuminated itself in a radiant multi-coloured glow. It was a jolly scene. There was Abel, with his broom. I hailed him.

  ‘Afternoon, Abel.’ He looked up and gave me a toothless grin. I skirted the bandstand and found myself at the northern apex of the diamond of dense woodland. Right or left? The route to my right was closed by high fencing and a series of garish notices were not encouraging. ‘Verboten! Sens interdit! Wrong way – go back!’ I retreated in the direction of the gazebo.

  The ambush came from behind and was so sudden that I barely had time to take a breath before the rough canvas bag was pushed over my head, my arms were pinned to my side, and I was frogmarched maybe 200 metres. I was in complete darkness. I felt the ground beneath change from grass to cinder, then to paving. I tripped on a kerb but my assailants held me upright. Now I could sense a threshold and we moved indoors. There was a great deal of yelling. My arms were forced behind my back and my wrists tied together by what felt like stout tape. How many people? Three, maybe four of them? I was pushed into a seated position with my back against a cold bare wall. There was nothing to sit on. It was a stress position. I tried to slide down the wall. A rough voice at my ear yelled a stream of abuse. Effing this and effing that. I retained the position.

  Silence. Complete darkness. I gave it five minutes. My quads were beginning to ache. I slid down the wall and sat down.

  ‘Get your fuckin’ arse off the floor!’ The voice on my left side was so close it almost shattered my eardrum. I was hauled back up into the stress position.

  Silence. I gave it another five minutes. The atmosphere of the room had changed. I couldn’t see a thing but I
could sense I’d been left on my own. I risked taking the strain out of my thigh muscles, slid down the wall again, and manoeuvred my legs forward so that I was now seated on the floor with my back to the wall and my legs extended in front of me. Now my bound hands were crumpled into the small of my back and my shoulders began to ache.

  No more shouting. Absolute quiet. What a blessed relief. Underneath my cowl I was in total darkness. Absolutely black.

  I sat quite still and tried to control that little flutter of panic. Odd, how quickly the boundaries between pretence and reality become blurred. Was this Who Dares Wins? Fox had said I could take pot luck. Was it a game, or was it for real? I no longer felt sure. At any time I could signal to the umpire that I’d had enough and I’d be withdrawn from the process. Yet I was reluctant to do so. I needed to explore this world a little further, and my own reaction to it.

  You would have thought, rationally, that the knowledge that this was merely role play would extend your ability to cope almost without limit. Is it not the fear of the unknown that is the worst burden? I’d often marvelled at the resilience of hostages held in bad conditions for months, for years. It wasn’t so much the squalor, the deprivation. It was the not-knowing. And even now a dark fear had taken shape at the back of my mind. What if it wasn’t a game? What if I signalled to the umpire but the umpire was not there? It became a paradoxical situation. So long as I didn’t call for the umpire, I could continue to believe in his existence.

  How long did I sit there? Five minutes? An hour? With the sensory deprivation, impossible to know.

  The door crashed and I was jerked to my feet by two pairs of hands and half-dragged, half-carried back out of my prison and back outside, and across what my imagination told me was a courtyard, and into another hut.

  This time I was pushed into a seat. My knees were jammed up against a table in front of me. There was a pause. Then the cowl was removed.

  I blinked, and let my eyes adjust to the half-light. We were in an entirely featureless log cabin with no furniture except a rough wooden table and three chairs. There were four of them. Two big men in army fatigues stood guard behind the table at each corner of the room. My two interrogators sat across the table straight ahead of me. One of them was a woman. Combat gear, indistinguishable from the men’s. Middle thirties, black hair cut short. Rather a friendly face. I’d need to be on my guard. Her weapon would not be overt torture; it would be seductive charm. The other one of course was Klaus Kramer, the Aryan youth who’d presided over the bungee, the bullet-head who kept making brief cameo appearances in my life. I began to suspect that Herr Kramer was going to turn out to be some sort of nemesis for me, a ‘Bad Thing’ that I would not be able to bypass, sidestep, or ignore. Sooner or later there would be a confrontation. Not this one. This would be a rehearsal. A dry run.

  Incongruously, he was dressed – immaculately so – in the black uniform of the Schutzstaffel. There were SS runes on his lapels and his black tie bore centrally a small insignia of a skull, the totenkopf or death’s head. On his left arm was a black swastika on a red armband. The whole rig-out should have reassured me that this was a piece of role play. But it didn’t.

  The woman said, ‘You okay?’

  ‘Never better.’

  She said to the soldier behind her on her left, without looking round, ‘Corporal, untie his hands.’

  It was a relief to feel the tape fall off my wrists. I brought my hands forward, flexed my fingers, and clasped them on the table.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What brings you to Great Barrier?’ She sounded genuinely interested.

  ‘I’m very fond of the outdoors.’

  ‘What’s the agenda?’

  ‘Get a bit fitter, lose a pound or two.’

  ‘You’re fit.’ I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. ‘What’s the hidden agenda?’

  ‘Should I have one?’

  ‘Everyone has a hidden agenda.’

  Stay silent. Just speak when asked a question.

  ‘Maybe it’s in the subconscious.’

  Don’t tell her the expression is ‘unconscious’, not ‘subconscious’. Don’t tell her that if my hidden agenda is unconscious, then I cannot be aware of what it is. Don’t be a smartarse.

  ‘You’ve been sent, haven’t you?’

  ‘Sent?’

  ‘What’s the mission?’

  ‘Get a bit fitter, lose a pound or two.’

  ‘Are you acting alone? Perhaps in tandem? Or one of a wider group?’

  ‘Group?’

  It was like the ‘yes-no interlude’ in an ancient quiz game. No affirmations, no denials, stick with bewilderment.

  ‘Does the name Shaun O’Driscoll mean anything to you?’

  ‘Should it?’

  ‘Thought you might have seen his name in the papers.’

  Pause.

  ‘You are conducting an investigation. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Investigation?’

  ‘Are you just going to parrot everything I say?’

  ‘Parrot?’

  She laughed, as if genuinely amused. ‘Brew?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Cuppa tea?’

  ‘Milk, no sugar.’ I gave her a smile.

  ‘What is “sheer plod”?’

  I gazed levelly at her. I intoned:

  ‘Sheer plod makes plough down sillion

  Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins. “The Windhover. To Christ our Lord”.’

  ‘What is “sheer plod”?’

  ‘I should say it represents perseverance and tenacity in any task. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘And Operation Sheer Plod?’

  ‘Must be some sort of project. Something to do with Who Dares Wins?’

  ‘Where does Nikki fit into the jigsaw?’

  ‘D’you know, I’ve never done a jigsaw in my life.’

  ‘Lovely girl, Ms Hodgson. Captain Hodgson. Drop-dead gorgeous. I quite fancy her myself. She’s doing very well on the Big Push. But then, training helps.’

  The tea had appeared by my right elbow, in a wide, white tin mug. Stewed, with a bit too much milk, but restorative. I took a few sips and collected my thoughts.

  ‘Still, she’s a bit too girlie for the army, surely. Short-term commission. Now there’s a hidden agenda. Ordnance. She’s obsessed with land mines. Did she tell you that she lost her kid brother to a land mine? She was twelve years old at the time, Richard was ten. They were living in Ho Chi Minh City. Their father worked for BP. Nikki and Dickie were walking across a field one day and he stepped on something left a long time ago by the Viet Cong. That was that. Nikki didn’t have a scratch. That’s why she’s obsessed. Does it surprise you?’

  ‘Everyone has their aboriginal catastrophe. No wonder she’s passionate.’

  ‘It’s not a passion. It’s a phobia. You know what drives Captain Hodgson?’

  ‘I have an idea you are going to tell me.’

  ‘It’s the struggle with her personal demons. Nikki is terrified of being maimed.’

  I took another mouthful of stewed tea.

  ‘What’s your private funk, doctor?’

  ‘Must be sitting in my subconscious with my hidden agenda. What’s yours?’

  She suddenly lost her friendly look. I realised I had made a mistake. The last thing you want to do under interrogation is let your interlocutors suspect you are taking the piss. The man in the black uniform spoke for the first time.

  ‘If you answer another question with a question, we will have to move to a more robust form of interrogation.’ It was spoken in a quiet Teutonic whisper. He then entered a crescendo which culminated in a scream. ‘You think this is just a game. You think this is role play. But you are mistaken. This is completely real. You are here on a mission. You are a spy. One last time: for whom do you work?’

  ‘Weren’t all the s
pies made redundant when the Berlin Wall came down?’

  The woman spoke again. ‘That’s it. Corporal,’ – again, she never looked round – ‘set up for the next level of interrogation. Doctor, how do you suppose you would cope with water-boarding?’

  ‘I don’t suppose I’d last two minutes. Enough.’ I raised my hand. She stared at me across the table, expressionless. ‘Oh, Doctor, the umpire went home hours ago.’

  * * *

  Back at Xanadu I slipped up to Myrtle, put on my swimming togs and a luxurious white dressing gown, and took the lift down to the mezzanine floor. But first I tapped on the door of Lotus, Nikki’s room. She’d put on a dressing gown as well. She was a bit quiet, and a bit pale. She was going to take a nap. I wondered if she’d been shaken up a bit by the Big Push, just as I had been by my mock interrogation. In retrospect I think that was the general idea. We were being given a caution. At any rate Nikki had decided to skip dinner and would I please pass on her apologies? I offered to stay with her but she shook her head and reminded me I was here on business. So I was. It occurred to me that maybe I did after all have a hidden agenda. I didn’t care for Mr Fox’s Xanadu set-up one little bit. I fancied having a go at arguing him out of his Great Barrier project. Why not? Nothing to lose.

  I bypassed the conference facilities and entered the health club. It was the sort of place you would find in any smart hotel. A gym with weights, treadmills, cross-trainers and so on, and a 25-metre pool with a jacuzzi, a steam room, and a sauna.