Call Me Joe

by Martin Van Es

  “It’s not what we hope to achieve,” Joe corrected him. “It is what we have to achieve. We have to achieve many of the things that religious leaders have been trying to achieve for thousands of years, but which the secular world has been slow to accept. We need to eradicate war and poverty, which means doing away with all the armies and ending the expensive arms races immediately. Then we need to create true stability by forming one global government and doing away with all the squabbling and competing between nations. We also need to ensure there is equality for women and homosexuals in all things.”

  There were more low mutterings of disapproval amongst those seated furthest from Joe.

  “I am asking some of you to adjust your thinking in order to be effective in a world which has changed greatly since the majority of the holy texts were written, and to remember that they were written by people and not by Our Father.”

  “And if hundreds of religious leaders have not been able to achieve these goals in thousands of years” – the Pope verbalised what many of them were thinking – “how are you and just twelve apostles going to do it now?”

  “With your help,” Joe grinned, “and by using all the tools of modern communication which we now have at our disposal. We no longer have to wander through deserts converting people one at a time, as I did two thousand years ago. Now I can talk to every person on the planet simultaneously.”

  “We have been shown your miracles online,” the Archbishop wheezed, “they are very impressive.”

  “But people want more than that,” Joe said. “They want to ask me questions. They want me to suggest what they should do to save mankind and to live better lives. They are coming to New Zealand by their millions…” Several of the religious leaders exchanged glances, envious despite themselves at the idea of being able to attract millions of people to hear their words, “but it is not practical for New Zealand to accommodate them all. So that is why a television broadcast is being planned. It will go out worldwide and I am grateful for the opportunity to talk to all of you before I talk to your followers.”

  “Not all of our followers have access to televisions,” the Archbishop pointed out irritably.

  “I guess it will be online as well,” Joe said, “and people will be able to watch it on their phones, or on someone else’s phone. I still don’t fully understand how all this technology works.”

  His audience all mumbled their agreement at the difficulty of mastering the intricacies of the modern electronic world, relieved to find an area where Joe shared their ignorance.

  “So exactly what is it that you want us to do?” the Pope asked. “Do you just want us all to make announcements that we back what you are doing?”

  “That would certainly be great,” Joe said. “But we would also be grateful for your help in reaching the world leaders. The political leaders of the secular world seem to feel threatened by the idea of changing the way that the world is run. Understandably, they want to cling to the old ways of doing things because that way they maintain their power bases. But there is no room for factions and divisions if the world is going to be saved. Nation competing against nation, man against man, that has all helped to develop the world and to reach the point where mankind is today, but the future needs to be different and they need to understand that. They need to support the necessary changes, even if it is against their personal, short-term, national interests.

  “If you go to them as a united force then they will have to listen to you. You represent too many of their followers and citizens for them to be able to ignore you. If you tell them that you accept and will advocate the twelve guidelines and that you endorse the overall plan to create a better world together now, then they will have no choice but to do the same. However many millions of people might follow me on the internet or come to New Zealand in the hope of meeting me, I am still just one man to them. The American President calls me a ‘hippy healer’, and the others feel pretty much the same, even if they are too diplomatic to say it. They can’t say that about you if you are united.”

  “None of the national politicians are going to be willing to surrender their power to a global government without a fight,” the Grand Imam warned. “If you are asking for all the armies to be disbanded and all the weapons removed then many of the generals and other military leaders will be eager to support the status quo against you. They might be forced to listen to us if we stand together, but that doesn’t mean they won’t fight back against all these changes that you are asking for. They are the ones who have the bombs and the guns. We only have words.”

  “Have you considered your own personal safety?” the Chief Rabbi asked. “Once you have made all your plans known to the world your life will be in danger, if it isn’t already. There isn’t a political leader in the world who isn’t capable of ordering an assassination, particularly if the armies are on their sides. Do you have protection, or is this it?” He gestured towards Sophie, who looked a little startled by the suggestion that she was there as Joe’s minder.

  “Sophie is all the protection I need,” Joe laughed, “Sophie and my Father in Heaven.”

  A loud cry of surprise from one of the cardinals made them all turn in his direction. He was bending over the Archbishop of Canterbury who had slumped sideways in his seat, his eyes staring fixedly at the sand. The reactions of the group were a mixture of shock and panic, calls for medical assistance mingling with the sound of prayers being offered up. There were disagreements amongst those closest as to what to do for the best but those who said he should be laid down on the sand won the argument. The Chief Rabbi took charge of trying to restart the dead man’s heart while the others offered more advice and more prayers from the sidelines.

  Sophie, who had been trained in what to do in such circumstances, stood up to help but Joe caught her hand and gestured for her to sit back down beside him. She was about to protest but he held up his hand to quieten her and, for some reason she couldn’t explain, she knew she should do as he told her. The two of them sat for several minutes and watched as everyone else tried in vain to revive the Archbishop. The manager of the island appeared from the building with a portable defibrillator, having been summoned by a panic-stricken waiter.

  Ten minutes later the panic subsided and only the sounds of praying remained as the group accepted that the Archbishop had gone and the Chief Rabbi gently closed his lids. Several pairs of eyes were now turned onto Joe and Sophie as they sat watching impassively.

  “It was all too much strain for him,” an angry voice spoke from the crowd. “He should never have been made to travel all this way and come out in this heat. None of us should.”

  Several other voices murmured their agreement. After a few moments, Joe got to his feet and walked over to the Archbishop’s body, kneeling beside him. He looked slowly round the crowd, staring each one of them in the eye and holding their gaze until they blinked or looked away, then bent his head and closed his eyes, pressing the palms of his hands over the old man’s still heart. The others continued to offer up their prayers behind him, only falling silent when they saw the Archbishop’s eyelids flicker. As soon as he felt the beat of the heart restart, Joe lifted his hands and signalled Sophie to take the old man’s other arm. Together they helped him to his feet and he took several long, deep breaths, his body grateful for the oxygen and a smile returning to his puzzled face.

  The whole group fell silent for so long that Sophie wondered if they were ever going to speak again, then they started to debate quietly amongst themselves, sitting back down in the shade, many of them apparently overcome by shock and relief and by a sense of wonder at what they had just witnessed. The Archbishop listened in amazement as his assistant described to him what had occurred while he was unconscious. Sophie and Joe sat back down again on the sand and waited to see what would happen next.

  The Pope was deep in whispered conversation with his cardinals. After
what seemed like an eternity, he pulled himself back to his feet. He seemed suddenly exhausted from all the deliberating. He shuffled a few steps towards Joe and his entourage stood respectfully behind him, all looking puzzled and unsure what their pontiff was going to do next. Joe watched the old man approaching with calm eyes and Sophie stopped breathing for a moment. With some difficulty, the Pope got down onto his knees in the sand and bowed his head so low his brow was touching Joe’s bare feet.

  “You have convinced me of your divinity,” he said, “and I am humbled by your modesty. On behalf of all Catholics I accept that you are the Son of God and will advise everyone to follow the twelve guidelines as you request and to endorse your overall plan in the interest of all mankind.”

  Joe placed his hand on the Pope’s head. The Sunni Grand Imam watched through hooded eyes, the snap of the prayer beads as they rolled back and forth through his fingers the only sound apart from the insects in the trees and the waves on the sand.

  “Bless you, my beloved son and trusted servant,” Joe said.

  The cardinals followed their master’s lead and fell to their knees, bowing their heads low and then standing in order to assist the Pope back onto his feet. As he was helped to his seat, the Chief Rabbi knelt before Joe and bowed his head.

  “So,” he chuckled, as Joe gestured for him to stand, “we’ve been wrong about the Messiah all these years.”

  “Not wrong,” Joe grinned, “just mistaken.”

  The Rabbi gave a wry shrug of his shoulders and stepped back.

  Next came a Hindu high priest and then a Pentecostal Minister, both followed by their entourages, all of them kneeling in the sand and kissing Joe’s feet. In the background, the Sunni Grand Imam’s prayer beads continued to click like angry cicadas. Once the Archbishop and his Anglican party had shown their allegiance and their acceptance that Joe was indeed the Son of God, all eyes turned to the Grand Imam, apart from his followers, who kept their gaze firmly on the ground, hardly daring to breathe as they waited for him to show them the way.

  As if emerging from a trance, the Grand Imam leaned close to the representative Imam of the Shiites and the two men whispered for several minutes as they continued to play aggressively with their beads. Eventually the Grand Imam flexed his shoulders and stood up in one fluid movement, the beads now hanging silent in his hand. He embraced the Shiite Imam before taking two steps forward and looking down at Joe. The two men stared into each other’s eyes for what seemed like an eternity, Joe smiling and the Grand Imam stern. The Grand Imam took a long intake of breath, as if preparing for the deepest of dives, and then descended elegantly into the sand, bowing his head low and allowing his lips to linger on Joe’s feet.

  “Allah be praised,” he said when he finally lifted his head. “He has sent his servant to save us and show us the way into the future.”

  “We both serve him as faithfully as we are able,” Joe murmured gently.

  The representative Imam was the last to bow down and accept that Joe was who he claimed to be.

  “God help you, Joe, in the face of the fury to come,” the Chief Rabbi said, and the others murmured prayers of agreement.

  Thirty-Eight

  Virtually all the customs and security employees in New Zealand were working double shifts, and still the authorities were struggling to keep the crowds moving through the air and seaports. Anyone who was able to show a diplomatic passport would be rushed through with even more haste than in normal times; anything to get people through quickly and to speed all the processes up.

  The Ukrainian’s diplomatic documents were entirely convincing. He had used them before, but not for several years. He liked to rotate his different identities and had arrived with a thick beard and small, wire-framed glasses, wearing a non-descript brown suit and knitted tie.

  Just as if he were a genuine diplomat, a sleek black car was waiting with a uniformed driver to take him into the city centre, where an unassuming studio apartment had been rented for him. It was on the ground floor of a modern block. The walled courtyard at the back had a door to a street which could be locked, giving him another means of coming and going without bumping into any neighbours who might show an interest in who he was and what his business might be in Christchurch.

  An elegantly dressed woman was waiting in the apartment when he arrived. He noted with approval that she was startlingly beautiful as he had been promised. She stood up sharply when he came in and for a moment it looked as if she might salute.

  “Are you my lunch date?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t call me ‘sir’ again,” he instructed. “You are supposed to be my date not my junior.”

  “Yes…” she said, unable for a moment to think of an appropriate alternative, “… darling.”

  The Ukrainian gave a rare smile. “Better, but not terribly convincing. Try to relax. What time is the reservation?”

  “In two hours.”

  “Good. I will sleep. Wake me when it is time to go.”

  They were an impressive-looking couple when they reached the hotel but it was the woman that everyone was looking at, not the man escorting her. If anyone had been asked to describe them later, they would only have been able to give the very vaguest of descriptions of the Ukrainian. They might have remembered that he wore nondescript glasses, but he intended to throw those into the first bin he saw once the meal was over. The beard, which had grown in just over a week, would also be going as soon as they returned to the apartment and he did not intend to wear the brown suit again.

  Whoever had made the lunch reservation had done a good job at convincing the staff that they were people of importance who needed to be treated with discretion. There had been plenty of journalists trying to get tables in the restaurant in the hope of being able to find out some interesting titbit of gossip about the most famous couple in the world who were living upstairs in the royal suite. Because Joe and Sophie were away on the atoll, security was a little more relaxed than usual, so no one paid any attention to the distinguished couple beyond the staff who took them to their table and helped them to order.

  The woman made a great fuss about ordering, asking a lot of questions as if she were a gourmet. The Ukrainian was impressed by her performance. She obviously convinced them that she was genuinely interested in food because when she asked if she could meet the chef and see the kitchens at the end of the meal, in order to thank him and ask him more questions, the maitre d’ was delighted to arrange it, personally escorting the woman and her quiet, unremarkable partner down to the kitchens.

  As the star-struck staff showed the glamorous woman around their kingdom, basking in her oft repeated amazement and admiration for all she was shown, her partner wandered quietly around the outskirts, apparently less interested in what was being talked about and in reality checking out the security and the layout of the kitchen and service entrances and exits, making a note of the names of various staff members, knowing that it was going to be hard to get back into the premises through the front reception area when Joe was back in residence upstairs.

  Once back at the apartment, after the woman had been paid and disappeared and the beard had been removed, the Ukrainian brought some floor plans of the hotel up on the computer and studied them for an hour, like he was planning a military operation. He had to admit that the whole place had been well designed to provide security for the residents. While it was one possible location at which he could reach his target, it might not be the safest or the easiest. He was going to have to spend time familiarising himself with the target’s habits and come up with some alternative plans before deciding when and where to strike. He ignored the phone, which flashed repeatedly on the table beside him. He was a professional and as such he did not respond to pressure, whoever the client might be.

  Thirty-Nine

  The entire world knew about the plans
for the television broadcast because everyone had been asked if they had any questions for Joe and had been told that he would be answering the most popular ones. There had never before been an event which virtually every human on the planet knew about and which they were all talking about with such intensity. In every coffee shop and on every street corner from Manhattan, Moscow and Beijing to the smallest village in Africa or India, people were comparing notes on what they wanted to ask.

  To begin with, the New Zealand authorities tried to keep the location of the broadcast a secret but it grew obvious that that would be impossible. Too many people were involved in the planning, staging and distribution of the event for the information not to leak out. Plans had to evolve constantly, adapting to the ever-changing circumstances. No one had ever staged such a complex broadcast before; they were all learning on the job.

  The first idea had been to film it in a location with just Joe and the interviewer who would be asking the questions, but it soon became clear that would not work technically. They needed a fully staffed studio if it was to be broadcast simultaneously to the entire world and, once it was known that the Twelve wanted to be there for the recording, other people started to ask to be included on the guest list as well. It was hard to say “no” to people like the Prime Minister, who had been so helpful and hospitable and had even persuaded her cabinet to agree to underwrite the costs of staging the event with the promise of access for all of them and their families. Then other names started to appear on the list as everyone involved had pressure put on them by their friends and relatives.

  As the numbers continued to grow, the organisers needed to hire more people to handle the logistics and those people also found ways to invite their friends and loved ones. It was decided to scrap the idea of a closed studio and put up a stage at a venue where more people would be able to watch live. That increased the security needs and the number of people involved swelled exponentially. It was soon evident that tens of thousands of people, many of them already living in the campsites and townships which had sprung up to accommodate them, were planning to simply turn up in the hope of getting into the venue at the last minute or, failing that, of catching a glimpse of Joe. That meant that more police and private security firms had to be involved in order to get Joe and the invited guests in and out of the premises safely.