Call Me Joe

by Martin Van Es

  “How do we know about it?”

  “We overheard the Chinese talking about it.”

  “The Chinese knew about this before us?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Goddammit! That will make him really angry.”

  “Perhaps it is a detail which is not relevant to the briefing,” the agent suggested.

  The Director nodded grimly and left for the White House. Inside the Oval Office the President was already puzzling over the report.

  “Who are these damn people in New Zealand?” he demanded, before the Director had even made it all the way into the room.

  “It is the group we mentioned to you before, sir. They are all highly regarded activists and experts in their various fields and they have formed a sort of think-tank…”

  “Are these the climate change and meditation, re-forest the world and to hell with the economy bunch?”

  “I think probably they are a little more than that, sir, but…”

  “Don’t you start trying to sell me all that bull about ‘creating a better world’,” the President barked. “We are doing a damn fine job with the one we’ve got. These guys are communists, liberals and anarchists, right?”

  “It depends on your point of view, sir…”

  “That is my point of view.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is it a Chinese plot?” the President asked, slamming the report down on the desk. “Are they behind it? They sound like Chinese names to me.”

  “Yung Zhang is Chinese but she has had to flee the country. Her husband has ‘disappeared’. The Chinese are just as concerned about what this group may be up to as we are.”

  “So we are concerned?” the President interrupted triumphantly. “We damn well should be. These people are trying to undermine international law and order and looking for ways to overthrow legitimate governments.”

  “Perhaps not exactly ‘concerned’, but we are aware of them and we know they all have big followings among the younger generations who are concerned with the way things are going. All they have done so far is meet and talk.”

  “We need to nip these socialist ideas in the bud, before the general public becomes any more infected by them. And this man who is doing all these healing tricks online; he’s joining this group as well?”

  “It’s possible, sir.”

  “Tell the New Zealanders to close them down. They’re potential terrorists. Lord knows what they are plotting down there. Didn’t they have a shooting there in a mosque which hit the headlines?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well that’s a good enough reason to close them down. Send in the troops. Do we have any troops down there?”

  “I’m not aware of any in the area, sir.”

  “And you’re head of our National Intelligence Service? My God, sort this mess out!”

  The Director could see there was no point trying to explain anything in a logical fashion and withdrew to allow the President time to calm down and become distracted by something less vexing for him.

  *****

  The Russian President was also being informed that Joe was on his way to Yung Zhang’s house.

  “We still have someone inside the house?” he asked, although it sounded from his tone as if he already knew that fact and was merely requiring confirmation.

  “We do, sir.”

  “And they are well placed to inform us of anything that happens there?”

  “They are, sir.”

  “Then let’s wait and see what happens.”

  *****

  The Chinese President listened carefully to the briefing from his nervous advisors.

  “We need to understand much more about this group and their intentions,” he said eventually. “Has Liang Zhang given us any information about what his wife and her co-conspirators are planning?”

  “Nothing yet, Mr President.”

  “Then let’s talk to him some more.”

  *****

  Liang heard the sound of approaching footsteps and knew that they were coming for him. In a way he was grateful for a distraction from the endless hours of silence in the brightly lit cell, where he had nothing to do but sit on his chair and wait, all the time thinking about Yung and Hugo and wondering if they were safe or even still alive. But he still shivered and let out an involuntary whimper at the thought of the pain that the footsteps would inevitably bring with them.

  It was the first time he had heard of a man called Joe. He was unable to answer any of the questions that his interrogator was putting to him and was therefore unable to stop the pain which was simultaneously being inflicted on bones that had been broken in previous interrogations. By the end of several hours of intense questioning he was able to ascertain that this man had a connection with his family. If the authorities were trying to find out more about that connection it suggested that Yung and Hugo were still out of their reach. Liang took considerable comfort from that thought once he had been dragged back to his cell and thrown onto the floor.

  Seventeen

  Sophie and Joe noticed the armed guards even before they reached the tunnel and the gate inside the mountain. The uniformed figures were sitting at various vantage points along the mountain road, watching them through binoculars and apparently reporting on their approach into radios.

  “Is there always this much security around your mother?” Sophie asked Hugo.

  Looking up from his phone for a moment Hugo absorbed the scene and nodded, as if he took such matters for granted.

  “Ever since Dad was arrested,” he said. “Some of them have guns and everything. They are like mercenaries. It’s quite cool, like a video game. I haven’t seen them kill anyone yet, but I think they are trained to do it if they have to.”

  Sophie opened her mouth to say something but closed it again as Joe gave her hand a warning squeeze. He was right; this was not a good time to get into a philosophical discussion about the merits of violent video games. She would talk to Hugo later, once they were back at school.

  As the car drove through the gates of Yung’s house the increased levels of security were even more obvious now that more of the valuable guests were inside. The guards were still immaculately polite, but they insisted on searching both Joe and Sophie and their bags, and even Hugo had to relinquish his phone like all the others, although not without putting up a struggle. Once the security measures were complete and they were inside the mighty mountain structure, Sophie and Joe followed Hugo like sheep, with no idea where he was leading them.

  The glass entrance hall contained a tropical garden, complete with full grown palm trees and groups of people strolling around or sitting amongst the foliage, talking and drinking coffee. It felt more like walking into a recess period during a conference in a very luxurious Middle Eastern hotel than being in someone’s home.

  “That’s Haki,” Hugo said, waving happily to an elegant young African man, who immediately broke off from the two earnest-looking women he had been talking to, and opened his arms to receive Hugo in a hug.

  “Hugo, my man,” he said, “how good to see you. Who are your friends?”

  “This is my teacher, Miss Sophie.”

  “How do you do Miss Sophie.” Haki shook her hand with a dazzling smile.

  “Just ‘Sophie’ is fine,” Sophie said. “This is my friend, Joe.”

  Haki shook hands with Joe, obviously assuming they were a couple, and returned his attention to Hugo.

  “We are going to be spending some quality time together this weekend, my man,” he said. “If your mother lets me out to play. I’ll catch you later.”

  “That is Tanzeel Gemayel,” Sophie whispered to Joe as they moved on past another group. “I’ve read all his books on the brain and meditation. He’s a genius. And that is Dr Amelia Muloni w
ho has created a chain of free healthcare centres all across Africa. I heard her speak once at a conference on world health. People say she is responsible for saving more lives than any other individual in history. She is awesome.”

  “She’s the one Hugo looks on as an honorary grandmother?” Joe asked.

  “That’s her.”

  “These are all your heroes then?” Joe asked with a grin. “It looks like you are going to be having a wonderful weekend.”

  “It feels like a dream,” Sophie replied.

  Hugo ran across the room as his mother emerged from a door at the far end. Just as Sophie had imagined, Yung looked immaculate in the simplest but most expensive grey silk outfit she had ever seen. As her son skidded to a halt in front of her Yung bent elegantly from the waist, placing a beautifully manicured hand on his shoulder, and kissed him on both cheeks.

  “This is Miss Sophie and Joe,” he said as the others caught him up.

  “Hello Sophie.” Yung shook their hands. “We spoke, and I believe we met at the school. Hello Joe, welcome. It’s a pleasure to see you both. Hugo has told me a lot about you. You seem to have made quite an impression.”

  She was obviously taken aback by how glamorous Joe was as she focused her attention on him. He was not at all how Hugo had described him but she could imagine how her son could be attracted to a man with such obvious charisma. It was more mysterious to her as to why such a man would want to spend the weekend at the home of a small boy he had just met, or why he would be with a simple schoolteacher, however nice she might be. She dismissed the thought from her head, having too many other, more urgent things to think about.

  “I’m so sorry that I am not going to be able to spend much time with you this weekend,” she said, “but I did warn Hugo that there would be a lot of people here. Hopefully you will find plenty of things to entertain you. Hugo will give you a tour and show you where the pool and the gym and the cinema are. There are also some fabulous mountain walks around here.” She turned back to Hugo. “Introduce them to the kitchen staff, darling, so that they know who to ask if they feel they need anything.” She turned back to Joe. “You are both very welcome to join us in here for meals but I would ask that you treat anything you might hear in the strictest confidence.”

  “Of course,” Sophie replied, before Joe could say anything. “We completely understand.”

  “Settle them into the Blue Room, Hugo. They will enjoy the views from there.”

  Several people were standing a little way back now, waiting for a chance to speak to Yung. Sophie and Joe backed away, aware that their time with her was up.

  “Your mother is so beautiful, Hugo,” Sophie said as they left the hall.

  “I know,” Hugo said. “I take after her.”

  Sophie and Joe exchanged smiles above his head.

  “You are indeed a beautiful soul, Hugo,” Joe said as they walked down a seemingly endless corridor, the walls lined with carefully lit modern paintings.

  The staff working in the quiet hum of the kitchen welcomed Hugo as fulsomely as Haki had done, despite the fact that they were obviously under pressure. Sophie guessed that he had probably spent more time with them over the years than with his preoccupied mother.

  The recreation areas, including the swimming pool, were eerily deserted as Hugo continued the tour, ending in the deep blue bedroom that had been allocated to them, where the personal contents of their modest luggage had already been neatly laid out on the king-sized bed.

  “This is one of the nicest rooms,” Hugo announced, gesturing at the panoramic mountain views and then round the blue walls which were hung with North African paintings. “Mum says she saw this colour in Yves St Laurent’s garden in Marrakech. Whoever that is.”

  “He was a famous fashion designer,” Sophie said, absent-mindedly.

  She felt herself blushing as she stared at the bed. Glancing at Joe she saw that he was watching her with an amused look. He winked, forcing her blush to darken still further and she walked quickly over to join Hugo who was gazing out at the mountains, her heart pounding in her chest.

  “I didn’t realise that your mother was friends with all these famous people,” she said, eager to distract attention from the bed.

  “Her ‘group of twelve’, do you mean?” Hugo replied, apparently not finding the subject particularly interesting. “That’s what she calls them. Her ‘group of twelve’ or sometimes even ‘The Twelve’. They often meet, but not usually all of them at one time. Mum says they are trying to work out ways to make the world a better place for everyone to live in, so it is important that I don’t complain when she has long phone calls with them, or stays away for a meeting somewhere. Some of them are a bit boring but I like Haki.”

  “Do you mind her being so busy?” Sophie asked.

  Hugo shrugged. “It would be nice to see more of her, but if they are going to make the world a better place then that is important too, isn’t it, so sacrifices have to be made. That’s what my dad would have told me.”

  “You are a wise young thing,” Sophie said, putting her arm round his skinny shoulders and squeezing fondly.

  “Shall we go for a swim?” Hugo asked, wriggling free and making for the door, unsure how to respond to physical shows of affection.

  Half an hour later all three of them were in the pool, where they were joined by a slight man in his forties who dived straight in, causing barely a ripple, and swam ten fast lengths of immaculate crawl before surfacing, lifting his goggles and introducing himself.

  “Hi,” he said, with a dazzlingly white Californian smile. “My name is Lalit Wadia.”

  They talked for a while, exchanging admiring remarks about the house and the location and then Hugo became bored and persuaded Sophie to swim away with him in an underwater race.

  “I’m told you are a very successful businessman,” Joe said as the two men climbed into the Jacuzzi and laid back to enjoy the streams of warm bubbles.

  “I have been very lucky,” Lalit laughed. “So much of success is luck, don’t you think?”

  “It has a role to play,” Joe replied doubtfully.

  “I have a feeling you disagree. Are you humouring me, Joe?”

  “Well, I would say you have to work hard too. The harder you work, the more likely you will come across opportunities which you might then classify as luck.”

  Joe lay back, closing his eyes and savouring the warmth of the water jets.

  “So, what is it you do?” Lalit asked after a few moments.

  “I try to help,” Joe said without opening his eyes.

  “Help who?”

  “Whoever needs it.”

  “Help in what way?”

  “Any way I can.”

  Sensing he wasn’t going to get any more information than that, Lalit returned to the subject of himself, assuming that if Joe knew who he was, he might be feeling inadequate in his presence and was feigning ignorance to cover his discomfort.

  “I am an investor, so I help people too. I help people who have good ideas to make them a reality.”

  “What sort of good ideas?”

  “Alternative energy sources, energy conservation schemes, anything that will assist us to clean up the air or the oceans, stop the degradation of forests, that sort of thing. There are a lot of people with very good ideas and in the past they have been crushed by the traditional investors who were too heavily in debt to the oil companies and other polluters. Electric cars, for instance, should have become the norm years ago, along with solar power and wind power. But we are beginning to turn the tide. Electric cars will be the norm soon, and solar panels and wind turbines are already playing a major role…”

  “And you make a lot of money from these investments?”

  “I do now because there is an appetite for clean products and sustainability
, but it took a few years to convince people. We still have a long way to go. Too many companies pay lip service to sustainability but actually do whatever they have to do in order to keep growing their companies and paying their shareholders bigger dividends, regardless of the impact on the environment, or even the impact on their employees. It’s pure greenwashing.”

  “Is that why you are here? To find ways to help more effectively?”

  “Absolutely; and to exchange ideas with other people at the top of their fields. Yung is a powerhouse. It is her who has brought us all together.”

  “I was sorry to hear about her husband.”

  “That is what I admire most about her,” Lalit said. “However hard it has been for her personally she has not allowed Liang’s disappearance to deflect her from fighting for the causes she believes in. She is also a great believer in the potential of the Chinese way of doing things, once they have caught up with the rest of the world on the human rights issues.” He was sitting forward now, warming to his theme. “You have to remember where the Chinese are coming from before you rush to judge them. Fifty to sixty years ago, when everything was booming in the West with the ‘swinging sixties’ and all that, China was back in the Dark Ages with millions of people dying of starvation and maybe even resorting to cannibalism to survive. They have had to take some draconian steps to catch up, which makes them look very authoritarian to liberals in the West.”

  “People in the West know about the cannibalism?” Joe was obviously surprised.

  “Not many people. The Chinese don’t exactly go around shouting about it. They were bad times and when people are hungry enough they do desperate things. I have heard from reliable sources that they used to hang the bodies of people who had been found guilty of holding the wrong ideologies or beliefs on hooks outside the restaurants before butchering them and eating them inside.”

  “Every nation has times in its history that it would rather forget,” Joe said. “What is it that they want to achieve ultimately, do you think?”