Call Me Joe

by Martin Van Es

  Rows and rows of nameless people in different government bunkers around the world stared at screens, their fingers flickering over keyboards, headphones covering their ears and shielding them from the real world around them as they searched for answers twenty-four hours a day, continually monitoring everything that was being written or said until interesting trends finally started to emerge from the online noise and confusion and turned into patterns which could actually be studied.

  “What is it with Christchurch?” one American operative asked another at a neighbouring screen. “Where is it anyway?”

  “New Zealand,” came the reply. “It’s where that guy shot up the mosque, remember?”

  “They got that guy though, didn’t they? Caught him the same day?”

  “I think so.”

  “So why is there so much internet activity coming out from there now? And why are the Chinese paying it so much attention?”

  “The Chinese are watching that activist woman, the one who’s getting this group of high-profile thinkers together; the sort of people who get millions of kids to follow them. They are looking for answers to climate change and extinction and Christ knows what else. Potential rabble rousers and troublemakers, perhaps even terrorists.”

  The operative flicked a few more keys. “Do you mean Yung Zhang?”

  “That’s the one. The Chinese already have her husband in a cell and they are watching her. Apparently biding their time before pouncing.”

  “Why aren’t we watching her? Should we be?”

  “We’re trying. She’s some kind of technology genius; it’s hard to get close.”

  “But the Chinese are close?”

  “Yep. Apparently the Russians have someone inside her house too.”

  “Do we know who?”

  “No idea.”

  “Jesus Christ. Do we know anything any more?”

  His colleague shrugged her shoulders. “We know there is some other guy in the area drawing a lot of attention to himself. People are posting videos of him that are going instantly viral. He seems to be performing healing miracles. He’s pretty hot too.”

  “Is that relevant?”

  “I suppose not,” she laughed. “I just happened to notice, that’s all.”

  “What’s he doing, apart from getting you hot and bothered?”

  “He seems to be some sort of charismatic, drawing crowds and healing people, that sort of thing.”

  “Is that relevant to anything?”

  “It just seems like a coincidence that he would be there at the same time as the Chinese are watching Yung Zhang and her followers. I mean, like you said, who had heard of Christchurch ten minutes ago?”

  “What do we know about this guy’s background?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Let’s find out more about him.”

  “Already onto it.”

  Others noticed that the Americans were trying to find background information on a man apparently performing miracles in Christchurch, pictures of which were seeping across the internet.

  “Why are the Americans interested in this guy?” a young Russian agent asked at a department meeting a few hours later. “What do they know about him?”

  “They aren’t finding out anything,” another assured him. “No one can. The Chinese are afraid he’s connected to Yung Zhang so they’re putting a lot of hours into researching him and drawing a complete blank. It’s like he didn’t exist until that moment when the sun went out.”

  “Well he exists now,” their boss snapped. “We can see him in the videos, unless they’re faked.”

  “I don’t see how they can be,” another chipped in. “They are coming up all the time from different cameras at different angles.”

  “Do we have anyone on the ground in New Zealand?”

  “Stop asking questions,” a senior voice overruled the meeting. “We don’t know who is listening.”

  However much misinformation the different security forces were feeding to one another, they could all agree that the emergence of this unknown man at the same time as the freak weather conditions and just a few miles from where an infamous Chinese dissident was living could be nothing, but it still seemed like a strange coincidence to people who were suspicious by profession.

  By the time Joe and Sophie got outside the shopping mall most of the world’s security networks were watching the videos being uploaded in real time, as were the Christchurch police force.

  Considering the number of people jostling to get close to Joe it was surprising that the young carer was able to get to the front with her charges, all of whom were even younger than her. It was obvious to all the people watching, either with their own eyes or via the internet, that the group had special needs and that the crush of the crowds was aggravating their conditions. There were three of them, all clinging tightly to one another, fearful that they would be torn apart by the crowd and would become lost. All of them appeared to be panicking but the carer was determined to keep pushing them forward towards Joe.

  When she got to the front the carer threw herself at Joe’s feet and begged him to help her three troubled charges. Joe opened his arms wide and enveloped the three teenagers. Slowly, in front of at least a hundred phones and surveillance cameras, their panic subsided. Screams and wild convulsions were replaced with calm smiles and the crowd around them started to applaud.

  “Could be a set-up,” the watching American operative suggested. “They could be actors.”

  “Do you think so?” his colleague asked. “Maybe he’s some sort of exorcist.”

  “What, like the movie?”

  “I don’t know what to think any more,” he admitted. “Could be the Chinese or the Russians winding us up.”

  Almost identical conversations were taking place in both Chinese and Russian security bunkers.

  The applause was turning into cheers and dozens of voices were shouting out to Joe, asking him to talk to them, to smile at their cameras, to lay his hands on them.

  Every national security body now believed there was a possibility that this man had been planted by one of their rivals to cause trouble or create a distraction from something else that might be going on, but none of them could work out who would do that or why they would do it or how they had managed to remove all other traces of the man from the records. They were all so used to lying to people who they perceived to be their enemies, and being lied to by those same people in return, they could no longer work out where the truth might really lie. Highly trained operatives who usually enjoyed the complexity of their work were starting to experience a tide of panic rising around them as they felt the possibilities for exercising any sort of control on proceedings slipping through their fingers.

  Fifteen

  The black Tesla had tinted windows and paintwork that shone like a slab of mirrored granite as it hummed quietly away from the school with Hugo and his two weekend guests in the back. The driver of the car looked more like a bodyguard than a chauffeur and, with the help of Ray-Bans and an earpiece, kept a respectful distance from his passengers. Once they were on the road he gave no indication that he was hearing anything they were saying.

  “I wish you hadn’t cut your hair and beard,” Hugo said, staring quizzically at Joe’s new image.

  “Why?” Sophie asked. “I think he looks cool.”

  “He looks okay, but he was more interesting looking when he was dressed as a hermit.”

  They both laughed. “I think your mother will feel more comfortable with me looking like this around the house,” Joe said.

  “I don’t know,” Hugo sighed, “she has some really strange people to stay sometimes. I described you to her and she didn’t seem bothered. I told her you were really weird, like some mad monk from Middle Earth.”

  “Thanks,
mate,” Joe winked, “appreciate it.”

  “Your mother is a remarkable woman,” Sophie said. “You must be very proud of her.”

  Hugo thought for a moment. “I sometimes wonder,” he said eventually, “if my dad would still be with us if my mother wasn’t so remarkable. I don’t think they like remarkable people in China very much.”

  Joe stretched round Sophie, the warmth of his arm making her catch her breath, and placed a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder. Hugo pushed a tear away from the corner of his eye with the tip of his finger.

  “What’s your dad like?” Sophie asked as she casually rested her head back onto Joe’s outstretched arm.

  “He’s great,” Hugo said, his eyes shining for a moment and then glistening again with more tears. “I miss him a lot. We used to talk all the time. Mum doesn’t have so much time to talk, at least not with me.”

  “I’m sure she would like to,” Sophie said, “if she could.”

  “So am I,” Hugo agreed. “But she can’t.” He was silent for a moment, lost in his memories. “I saw him being taken away. My dad.”

  “You did?” Sophie was shocked that he had suddenly opened this door in his mind to them.

  “It was very fast. No one else saw. I never told anyone, not even Mum. He was leaving the house to go to work and I was watching from the window. I always did that. He always turned and waved before he went round the corner. I would wait there to see him come home at night too. We had a normal house then in Beijing, not one surrounded by guards. We used to come here for holidays then. A car was parked outside. The door opened as Dad walked past and two men got out and pushed him into the back seat. We never saw him again. I have dreams sometimes and see him being tortured.”

  “Why have you never told anyone this before?” Sophie asked.

  “Because if they knew that I saw them then they would take me away too, and my mum and maybe everyone else in the family. Dad wouldn’t want that to happen. I know that. He would do anything to protect us.”

  “Your father will be home with you soon,” Joe said, and Sophie put an arm round the boy’s shoulders. Hugo snuggled into the soft material of her new shirt, getting out his phone and flicking through his social media apps as if to distract himself from his memories of that morning and his fears for the future.

  “Is it true,” he asked after a few minutes, “that you are the Son of God?”

  “Who says that?” Joe laughed.

  “Lots of people. It’s because of the videos.”

  “What videos?”

  Hugo held up his phone for Joe to watch pictures of himself healing the girl in the mall and then calming the troubled youths outside.

  “Ah, I see,” he said, as if that explained everything. “What do you think?”

  “Joe always answers questions with more questions,” Sophie said.

  “I don’t know,” Hugo said. “We don’t really have gods in China. I know a bit about Christianity and Jesus and all that, and I’ve read about Islam, and I know about the Greek myths…”

  “My days, Hugo,” Sophie sighed, “if only all my pupils knew as much as you.”

  “I get a lot of time on my own and I like reading and researching,” Hugo said. “People said Jesus would come back, didn’t they?”

  “I believe they did,” Sophie said, leaning into Joe on the other side. “So maybe that’s who Joe is.”

  Hugo stared up at Joe, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “Well it would be very cool but it would blow Mum’s mind, and her friends’.”

  “Why’s that?” Sophie asked.

  “Well, they are all scientists and things. They don’t believe in God, apart from Haki, I think he’s a Christian and maybe Doctor Amelia too. She’s great, like the grandmother I never had.”

  “Tell me about Haki?” Joe said.

  “He’s a young Rwandan who survived the genocide as a child and works for peace and reconciliation now,” Sophie told him. “He’s written the most amazing book. People call him the new Mandela.”

  “He’s fun,” Hugo announced. “He plays football with me even though I’m rubbish at it. He’s not nearly as old as some of the others. He lost all the members of his family, his mum, his dad, everyone; saw them being killed and everything, so he understands how I feel about Dad. He says he gets nightmares too.”

  Joe took Hugo’s phone from him and examined the video more carefully.

  “They’ve gone viral,” Hugo said. “Do you even own a smartphone?”

  “No,” Joe said. “I don’t own anything really, Hugo. And I think I’ve got enough on my mind as it is.”

  All three of them fell silent and thoughtful for a few minutes.

  “So what does God look like?” Hugo piped up eventually.

  “Is that what you’ve been thinking about?” Sophie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think he looks like?” Joe asked.

  Hugo thought for a moment, screwing up his nose. “A bit like Santa Claus, maybe. Very old with a long grey beard. That sort of thing.”

  “Do you think maybe he doesn’t look like any sort of person you have ever met?” Joe suggested. “Is it possible that he is more like a stream of energy, a force of nature that is everywhere at once?”

  “Maybe,” Hugo said, trying to imagine such a thing. “You mean like radio waves or something?”

  “Don’t worry if you can’t imagine that,” Sophie said. “There are some things which are simply too difficult for us humans to comprehend yet. Imagine, for instance, trying to explain to an ant why men go to war with one another.”

  “I don’t think the ant would get it,” Hugo giggled, “because I don’t get it either.”

  “Well, there you go then,” Joe said. “We may have to accept that some things are beyond our understanding and be content with that. Just have faith that there is a God. Do you think that is possible?”

  “I need to think about it,” Hugo said, and went back to googling on his phone.

  “If you are the Son of God,” Sophie said, “why have you returned to Earth now?”

  “It’s nearly the end for mankind,” Joe said matter-of-factly, “you know that. But it’s still not too late to change things and avert disaster. Mankind could still create paradise on Earth. I want to try to guide them in that direction before it is too late. I want to help reduce suffering by creating a more peaceful, harmonious society, with everyone in the world working together instead of working against one another.”

  “What can we do to help?” Sophie asked, more than happy to go along with anything Joe wanted to do, regardless of whether or not she was totally convinced by the ‘son-of-god’ story. All she wanted at that moment was to be at his side wherever he went, listening to everything he said.

  “What would you like to do?” Joe replied.

  “You’re right, Miss,” Hugo said.

  “About what?”

  “He does always answer questions with more questions.”

  Sixteen

  “There’s a link,” the Chinese agent informed her superior as she passed by. The girl was hardly able to suppress her excitement at having made a breakthrough where everyone else seemed to be failing.

  “Please explain further,” her superior replied, sitting beside the younger woman at her screen, polishing her glasses before replacing them and leaning in to look at the screen.

  “The boy’s phone…”

  “Yung Zhang’s son?”

  “Yes, madam. These are the viral videos of the miracle worker, which the Americans and the Russians are so interested in – the boy is linked to this man. He is staying at the boy’s school.”

  “This is the man who has no past?”

  “That is correct. We have found nothing about him but we know from
the boy’s phone that the man is on his way to Yung Zhang’s home with the teacher. It seems that Liang Zhang is a subject of interest to him.”

  “They have talked about him?”

  “Yes, madam. The boy believes that he saw his father being arrested on his way to work.”

  “That is impossible,” her superior said, staring at the screen without blinking. “Nothing is known about this man. He has simply disappeared.”

  “Of course,” the young girl said quickly, worried she had spoken out of turn. “I am just reporting what the boy is saying.”

  “He is just a boy, so we must make allowances for imagination.”

  “I understand, madam.”

  “Anything else?”

  “All the members of the group of twelve are also on their way to the same house, including the British lawyer who was recently asking questions in Beijing.”

  “So the man with no past is part of the same group of revolutionaries?”

  “It is a possibility. Or perhaps they are planning to recruit him.”

  “Do we have any access into the house itself?”

  “Very limited, madam. The only phones that are making it all the way inside the house belong to Yung Zhang herself and they are being swept for bugs every few hours, which limits what we can listen to.”

  *****

  The connection between Joe and the other high-profile people on their way to Yung’s house was being made simultaneously in Washington and it was decided that it was time for the Director of National Intelligence to brief the President fully on what was happening.

  “The President has already received briefings on the situation regarding Liang and Yung Zhang,” he was informed, “but he does not know about this new connection.”