He was restless — it felt like there were tiny creatures crawling around underneath his skin eating away at his mind bit by bit. His bones were jittery and he could do nothing about it. So there he was, waiting, sitting on the dark-yellow covers, covered with crumbs, staring at the door, and when the man finally arrived he could barely get up to shake his hand.
“I screwed it up,” he said before even being asked.
The man looked at him. At first he did not want to sit down. He merely shoved all the plastic bags and cracker boxes to the side with a foot and looked at him. But in the end he had to sit down. “What do you mean?” he asked, and Marvin told him about his conversation with John.
After Marvin had finished talking to John, he thought it had maybe been a mistake to tell him about the UFOs and the cities on Mars; these were details that Bleeker hadn’t mentioned, and it was solely Marvin’s idea to add them. After all, he had read a couple of books and heard a thing or two, so to him it was obvious what’s happening on Mars and all that. It simply was too much for John. But he decided not to tell Bleeker about such details; Marvin had made a decision that it was better not to let everyone know how much he knew.
“What exactly does that mean?” Bleeker asked again after Marvin told him more or less what happened.
Marvin looked at him and waited, afraid to tell Bleeker what he had found out. But then he finally said, “They have control over him … somehow, maybe through hypnosis, I don’t know. But he … he blocks everything out when you try to explain the situation to him … totally. There’s no chance of getting through.”
Bleeker turned pale as a dead man at those words and stared at Marvin with eyes as big as saucers. “Then the fate of humanity is sealed,” he said.
He said it again, over and over like an incantation and his voice was as low as a Chinese gong reverberating in the deepest parts of his soul.
On Friday, June 26, 1998, at midnight EST, the ten-week deadline for nominations for world speaker ended. A total of 167,411 applications had been submitted, of which only 251 met the required criteria. Most did not have enough signatures and some had none whatsoever. Many lists did not meet the prerequisite that the names had to be verifiable and 12 lists that did have the required number of signatures were discovered to be forgeries, which led to the exclusion of the candidates. Nevertheless, the ballot in the first round would be impressively long. There were only 12 women among the candidates, which was lamented by many. But, nothing could be done to change that according to ballot administrator Lionel Hillman. He said, "It probably says something about the state of the world." In addition to applications from several former heads of state, there were also famous actors on the ballot, successful entrepreneurs, renowned writers, and famous athletes, including a South American soccer idol (whose chances, at least according to the bookies, were astonishingly good), the leader of a controversial sect, a former porn actress, a real king (from an African tribe) and an amazing number of unknown people, which was puzzling as to how they had amassed the required number of supporters. Only 34 candidates were younger than sixty and none was younger than forty. The statistics of the candidates were published, listing them by home countries; there were no other categories on the list.
On Saturday, June 27, a ceremony was to be held in the General Assembly of the United Nations to mark the start of the vote. Secretary-General Kofi Annan would speak for the occasion. Further, his guest, top election official Lionel Hillman, would also speak explaining once again the by-now familiar rules of the voting procedure. And the cameras, which broadcast the event around the world, would pivot over to John Fontanelli, invited primarily as spectator. The ceremonial occasion and the location had been highly controversial, but the members of the General Assembly had voted for it by a narrow margin, and since they were the ones responsible for determining what happened on the eighteen-acre UN compound on the east side of Manhattan, their governments could rant over their decision as much they wanted. (In personal interviews with the delegates, it was said that the secretary-general had made no secret to them of his belief that the United Nations would be wise to at least unofficially consider the world speaker as a future leader, since otherwise one day it might be likely that a world parliament could be formed elsewhere, thus making the UN redundant.)
On the eve of the Global Plebiscite Opening Ceremony, John Fontanelli and his staff traveled to New York. During the flight the results of the latest opinion polls were announced, and this time they were not amateurish efforts by unprofessional interviews with passers-by on the streets around the world, but had been commissioned by The New York Times with a renowned research institute doing the polling. The methods used were state of the art, the selection of respondents representative of the general population, and the numbers were validated.
And the result was devastating.
“It’s going down the drain, John,” Paul said, worriedly. He held the fax in his hands studying it as if he could still do something to change the facts printed in black on white. “If only fifteen percent vote, then you can forget the world speaker — then he is a joke.”
John took the papers from him, read them and returned them without comment. “No,” he said, stopping Paul from speaking as he opened his mouth to say something, “this is not up for debate. We will go through with it, regardless what anyone says about it.”
Even the hotel’s largest assembly hall was not large enough for the press conference held in the evening after their arrival in New York. There must have been thousands of journalists holding out their microphones and flashing their cameras, and they all, every one of them, had read the latest polls.
“A poll is not a vote,” John Fontanelli told the crowd. “It is merely a small snapshot. We still have a twenty-week voting period ahead of us, in which the candidates for world speaker will vie for our votes. In November, after the votes have been counted we will know more.”
A general shouting and tumult ensued, which made it impossible to hear individual questions. John just kept talking and told them whatever he could think of. He was tired. The possibility of the project failing upset him more than he wanted to admit.
“We’re not only confronted with a decision to vote for one of the two hundred and fifty-one candidates,” he said, “but the establishment of the foundation for a new form of democracy, or for a new age of feudalism, and this time it will be a feudalism run by corporations.”
How they scribbled down those words, absorbed the new term, carried it onward, imagined seeing it in the headlines in big letters!
John felt drained. A voice deep inside him warned him to stop talking now rather than saying something he might regret later on. But he could not stop, for whatever reason the desire to talk was stronger than any arguments against it and the wisdom of public relations. “If it was indeed God who put me in this place and accorded me this task,” John Salvatore Fontanelli said, making his staff gasp and the crowd to be delighted, “then he indisputably will want me to do what I think and believe to be the right thing. And I believe that what is about to happen is the right thing. We are facing great challenges, and if we cannot solve them the best way imaginable then we no longer deserve to exist.”
It had sounded like the talk of a depressed patient with his therapist, Paul Siegel told him afterwards, after abruptly interrupting the press conference at this point.
During the afternoon, at two o’clock local time, the participants in the ceremony were asked to attend a dress rehearsal of the exact ceremony procedures; who was to come in when, from where, and to where they should exit. This also helped the lighting technicians adjust the lights optimally. John arrived in his limousine, after a difficult night and a quiet morning, this time alone, accompanied only by Marco and two other bodyguards because Paul would spend the day talking with representatives of American corporations. It looked like the first company they had bought would be the first one to be sold. The Mobil Corporation was interested in acquiring Exxon.
>
He almost missed him. John got out when the car door was opened for him, walked down the red carpet as he had done countless times before around the world, went past guards and other personnel as he watched for other VIPs, when suddenly a voice in his ear said: "Hello, brother."
John spun around, searched the faces in the line of people along his path, and then he saw him. “Lino?”
“Surprise,” Lino said with a crooked grin. He simply stood there with other security guards, wearing the same UN security uniform.
“Lino …? What are you going here?”
Lino slapped the leather holster hanging on his belt. “They thought I should keep an eye on you,” he joked.
“You?” John shook his head. “But why?”
“Orders are orders. I was still freezing my butt off at the Bering Sea last month and didn’t know what luck I would have.”
"And where did you leave your fighter jet?"
With tight lips Lino faced the projecting roof high above them and to the row of flagpoles with the flags of all the UN member nations. "Well," he said, "it might be a bit tight flying it around here." He looked older, as if the cold air of the far north had dug wrinkles in his face and caused his once so dark, thick hair to form strands of icy white. Pain gleamed in his eyes.
John grabbed his sleeve and pulled him away, into the entrance hall where they found a quiet corner. “Lino, I'm so sorry," he said with a lump in his throat, "for everything that had happened back then…”
Lino shook his head. “You don’t have to be sorry, John. It was my own fault. I …, well … I thought I was so damn smart. But I was a total idiot.”
“You aren’t allowed to fly anymore, right?”
“Not because of you. It can be damned lonely where I was stationed and sometimes you need a lot of whisky…” Lino chewed his lip; at least that had not changed. “I let myself go pretty much after Vera married that real estate agent. They were close to throwing me out … real close. But I guess they thought it was a better punishment to send me guard the polar circle.”
“And because you screwed up again they threw you out.”
Lino grinned thankfully. “Yeah … I guess I hit the commander a bit too hard.”
They laughed and then embraced clumsily for a brief moment because they were children the last time they had done so
“It was really strange,” Lino said wiping his moist eyes discreetly. “I mean how I ended up here. After I finished with the Air Force I came back to the lower forty-eight. Since I knew someone who works in a senior job at the UN I decided to call her and bang, here I am in uniform again and after my training I was put on duty here and now … just in time to see you arrive. I guess fate wanted us to bury the hatchet — I don’t know.”
“Could be,” John said nodding. He looked at his brother. “Have you been home lately?”
Lino nodded gravely. “For their fortieth anniversary. Mother was very disappointed that you thought a Bulgarian factory more important than their celebration.”
“Hmm,” John said. “I think it’s their forty-second anniversary next Friday, isn’t it? I could go and stay with them for a week when all this…”
At this moment a delicate looking woman with Asian features approached John. “Mr. Fontanelli? Excuse me please, but you are expected inside.”
John looked at Lino with an apologetic expression. “It’s not over yet, as you see.”
“Orders are orders,” Lino said and saluted John jokingly. “Go ahead, I’ll watch things out here.”
“Thanks.”
The hall of the General Assembly of the United Nations is probably the most impressive parliament building ever built. It is the only meeting room on the UN premises that contains the emblem of the United Nations — a stylized globe wreathed by olive branches. Highly visible, it is emblazoned on the shimmering gold front wall of the cavernous room, surrounded by architecture that guides the viewer's eye in a unique way and offers an image that reflects perfectly the spirit of the statutes. Two huge, slanting, dark wall projections boldly sweep around the floor. Behind narrow windows you can see the interpreters who are indispensable to the work done here. The eyes are inexorably drawn forward to the podium and down at the lectern and whoever stands there, at the architectural focal point of the chamber, can’t be overlooked but is still small, just another human being relying on the community and cooperation of others.
The hall has room for eighteen hundred delegates. They sit behind long, curved tables, lime-green and lined with yellow and each seat has a microphone on the table. A large dome arches overhead with spotlights shining down like stars. Those who enter this hall for the first time gasp at the majestic sight, and those who have not completely fallen prey to cynicism suspect that this is the forum for great deeds to be done in the name of all humanity.
During the afternoon of June 27, this majestic room was almost empty. Before the podium stood a handful of people talking, two of them had television cameras shouldered and high above them spotlights flicked on and off. Someone with a clipboard in one hand and a squawking walkie-talkie in the other waved around and gave commands. Men in overalls laid thick cables and fastened them on the floor with black tape. The secretary-general stood behind the lectern and patiently endured having someone fiddle around in front of his face with a light meter. Lionel Hillman waited at some distance, his arms crossed, listening attentively to what another man also with a clipboard was saying.
John Fontanelli, however, had nothing to do except sit in the chair he was instructed to sit in and to wait for the moment the cameras would be focused on him, and then to look dignified, or at least not pick his nose. The only thing he had to remember was when to enter the auditorium through which door, and this was made clear very fast. Now he sat there, happy at unexpectedly making peace with his brother. He watched the others do their jobs and let the atmosphere of the place and the occasion impress him.
There seemed to be a reassuring sense of confidence in the room, a tolerant, hardy, almost stubborn confidence, as if the souls of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., were at home here. “Nevertheless,” these walls seemed to say, and “one day” whispered the empty benches. “It is only a matter of time”. One day there would be a world parliament, a government for the whole earth, and that would be completely natural to people by then. Children would learn in history classes that the continents had once been divided into nations, that the countries had had their own governments, their own armies and their own money, and that will sound as absurd to them as it seems absurd now that there was a time when North America had been an English colony and had traded slaves like cattle.
John lifted up his eyes and looked up at the dome. Perhaps this would one day be the assembly hall of the World Parliament, with its historic tradition steeped in folklore. He could almost physically feel such a possible future. He saw Mr. World President — or Madame World President — in his mind, making a policy statement. He heard the invisible, unrest in the ranks of a parliament of those yet unborn, because there still were different parties, different viewpoints, disputes over money and influence, and different ways to solve these imaginary problems. Those were things, he suddenly saw with lucid clarity, that would remain so for as long as there were people on this planet, because it was part of human nature. And he sensed the world beyond those walls and beyond the present, which would be a large, wild, complicated world full of strange fashions, bizarre technologies, people, thoughts and still unthought-of ideas; a pulsating cosmos of differing ways of life, held together by a stunningly complex web of dependencies and mutual relationships, leaving no room for separation. He imagined a world that had no desire to waste resources on separate solutions, and he liked it. Yes, he thought. Yes.
He came eventually drifted back to reality and looked around, blinking to see the man with the walkie-talkie point at him and say: “Are you ready, Mr. Fontanelli? We’re going to play it all through now.”
The anteroom was u
nexpectedly light and busy. The media were holding their own rehearsals, light flooded out from dozens of huge spotlights, people busy working walked around crisscrossing each other’s paths, plugs inserted into outlets, cameras mounted on tripods, props adjusted.
John looked around and saw the car waiting outside. He was keeping a look out for Lino, who was nowhere to be seen. He waved at Marco, coming through the crowd towards him. "Someone wants to speak to you," he said, pointing over John's head.
John turned to feel a jolt go through his body, accompanied by hot pain. His legs collapsed. Suddenly people were running and shouting everywhere — a mixed chorus of voices and movement. He looked down and saw blood on his chest and hands pressing against the wound. The blood was bright red, virtually squirting out, and all of a sudden he remembered that he had forgotten something, something he had overlooked the whole time.
The testament, he wanted to shout out to those around him, but they were screaming, yelling, running about, and didn’t pay any attention to him. Somehow he felt that he couldn’t get a sound out of his own lips. There was the taste of iron in his mouth and a warm liquid running down his throat, drowning his vocal chords.
Now the whole world was starting to revolve around him, like a slow ballet; he understood everything now. Why didn’t they understand him? The last will and testament. That was the key. The great mistake. There was blood pouring from him but nobody would listen.
Someone leaned over him; it was Marco, with tears in his eyes. The last will and testament! He had to tell someone. He could not allow himself to sink into merciful darkness — no matter how attractive, peaceful, and quiet it might seem. He had to tell them what he had just remembered, what may be too late …
The testament. McCaine still has my testament. I had forgotten to write a new one. If I die, McCaine will inherit everything …
One Trillion Dollars Page 74
