Call Me Joe

by Martin Van Es

  Police men and women who had been surreptitiously patrolling amongst the campers were startled into action by the sudden burst of noise and activity. Their radios crackled into life, the voices soon drowned out by the roar of the helicopters as they came in lower for their aerial shots. Sophie couldn’t work out which were police cameras and which were the media. She strained her eyes against the sun, trying to see if there were any guns showing but couldn’t be sure. She had been on enough protests over the years to know that despite the carnival atmosphere in this camp the situation was charged with potential danger.

  Passions were inevitably running high since everyone was there because they cared about the future of the world and wanted things to change. These were people who felt strongly enough to travel across the world and to live in considerable discomfort in order to make things happen. Some of them would undoubtedly be willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve whatever their personal goals for mankind might be. That had to open up possibilities for clashes between different ideologies and different agendas. There were simply too many people in this camp, which stretched as far as the eye could see, for the numbers of police and soldiers in evidence to be able to keep control if people started to fight. The driver was still in the car, talking on his phone, no doubt reporting this alarming change of plan to Yung and the Twelve.

  Apparently oblivious to everyone else’s anxieties, Joe was walking forward with his arms outstretched, shaking hands with anyone who came up, his smile demonstrating how welcome everyone was to come to him and embrace him. Word ripped through the camp like a forest fire in a gale and people came running from every direction, shouting out the news of his arrival in their midst. Some of the police tried to move on the increasing numbers of cars which were now stopping wherever they could on the road, while at the same time attempting to form a ring of protection around Joe as the crowd grew. Their voices were drowned by the helicopter engines, the wind from the blades roaring through the camps and making the tents flap and the dust clouds rise as if they were all trapped in a desert storm.

  Joe did not attempt to compete with the noise but simply waded deeper and deeper into the sea of people, placing his hands on their heads, submitting to their physical requests for handshakes and kisses. Sophie felt a rising panic as she watched his head bobbing ever further away from her, unsure how she would ever get him back into the car and onto the road. It felt like watching a man deliberately choosing to swim in an ocean of hope and adoration, blissfully unaware of the dangerous undercurrents swirling beneath the surface, threatening to pull him under.

  A call must have gone out for more assistance and within half an hour a battalion of riot police had been delivered in buses with cages across the windows. Sophie, having given up trying to stay close to Joe, had returned to the road to stand with the driver at the car, apparently invisible to all the eyes which were focused on one person only. She watched as the police sliced into the crowd with their batons, forming a black ribbon of body armour around Joe and providing a path back out towards them. The cordon of police bodies held firm despite the hundreds of arms and beseeching fingers that forced their way through in the hope of touching Joe as he strolled back, smiling and nodding from side to side, mouthing the words “thank you” to everyone who was there for him.

  After what seemed like an age they persuaded him back into the car. As they pulled out they were now surrounded by vehicles, many of them seeming to want to push them off the road as they swerved close enough to get a good picture of the couple together. Some of the journalists continued to shout questions at them from moving cars, their words carried away on the wind as their granite-faced driver pressed the accelerator to the floor as hard as he dared.

  “It’s okay,” Joe assured him, “stay slow and steady. We are not trying to escape anything. We are not afraid of anyone here.”

  Sophie was about to suggest that perhaps he would be wise to be a little more aware of the dangers in his surroundings, but when she saw the gentle smile of pleasure on his face as he looked out at the waving crowds, she changed her mind and told herself to breathe as deeply and slowly as Joe, waiting for her heart rate to settle down.

  “Is it my imagination,” Joe said as they drew closer to Yung’s house, “or are there fewer guards in evidence?”

  Sophie peered past him and scanned the mountains around them. “Well, you did tell them they needed to get out of their ivory towers and be less distrustful of the outside world.”

  “Well, that’s a step in the right direction then.”

  As they reached the tunnel and gates the following cars dropped back, aware that they were in danger of trespassing on private land. As they waited for the gates to open, a few of the more intrepid reporters ran from their vehicles and shouted a few final questions through the car window. Joe smiled and waved cheerfully to the cameras and then the gates swallowed up the car, leaving the noise of the rest of the world outside.

  There might have been fewer guards surrounding the property, but the terrace was crammed with people in suits talking into radios. It was as if Yung had pulled her forces back inside the fortress walls in order to protect her stronghold more tightly. The doors of the car were opened for them the moment it drew to a stop as if their guardians wanted them undercover in the house as quickly as possible.

  “That’s the Prime Minister’s official car,” Sophie said as they were hurried towards the door and into the main reception area. “Why would she be here?”

  Twenty-Seven

  The Prime Minister rose from the table where she was taking coffee with Yung and Simon and extended her hand.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Joe,” she said with genuine warmth, showing no irritation at how long she might have had to wait for him to arrive, “and you Sophie. I have been hearing so much good stuff about both of you. I hope you don’t mind me barging into your meeting like this.”

  “This is the Prime Minister,” Yung prompted him.

  “Of course,” Joe beamed, “I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about you too, Prime Minister. Thank you for being so understanding about taking me in without any papers.”

  “Have you heard of manaakitanga, Joe?” the Prime Minister asked. “It is a traditional value of Maori culture, all about being hospitable, looking after visitors and caring how others are treated, no matter what their standing in society. It has had a positive influence on Kiwi hospitality down the generations.”

  “It is a lovely concept,” Joe replied as other members of the Twelve and their families came over to say hello.

  “It seems you have disrupted all our lives, Joe,” the professor’s wife said as he bent down to kiss her cheek like an old friend.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he laughed. “What is it they say about having to break some eggs in order to make an omelette?”

  “It seems we are all going to be living here for the foreseeable future while you and the rest of them change the future of mankind.” May held onto his hand a little longer than was strictly necessary for a handshake.

  “We will do whatever we can to make your time here comfortable, May,” Yung assured her.

  “I have no complaints about the facilities,” May sniffed. “It would just be nice to know how long we are likely to be here. Some of us have busy lives of our own to lead.”

  Joe squeezed May’s hand with genuine affection. “It will all be worth it, May,” he said. “I promise.”

  “If you don’t end up getting the lot of us murdered in our beds,” May giggled girlishly as her husband led her gently away.

  “I’m so glad to get this chance to chat,” the Prime Minster said as May and the professor rejoined another group. “You have done a great deal for my popularity around the world.”

  “I have?”

  “You have indeed. A few weeks ago it was hard to get any other world leaders to answer my
phone calls, now they are lining up to talk to me. It seems I have the trump card in my hand.” She smiled with a genuine sweetness.

  “You have?” Joe was unsure what she was talking about.

  “You, Joe,” she laughed. “You are the trump card in the pack at the moment. Everyone now wants to know exactly what is going on in little old New Zealand. No longer are we just famous for being the location for The Lord of the Rings. There is, however, a downside to our new-found popularity in the world – or rather your popularity.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Joe said.

  “When all is said and done we are only a bunch of smallish islands in the middle of the ocean with less than five million people living on them. That’s less than a third of the combined populations of New York and London. At the moment we have nearly double that number of people here, and there are many more heading this way as we speak.”

  “So I have heard.”

  “A number of cruise lines have commissioned ships to carry people here from Australia because every flight is booked up for weeks to come and there are literally millions of people wanting to get here because you are here, and because they believe you are going to solve all their problems from climate change and world peace to unexplained headaches and nasty little rashes.”

  “I don’t think I am going to be able to do all that,” Joe admitted with a chuckle, “and I really don’t think I will have time to talk to all of them individually.”

  “Quite,” the Prime Minister laughed, “but people are willing to take a chance. I suppose it is the same thinking that makes millions of people buy lottery tickets every week, even though they know the odds of winning are millions to one. The point is, they are coming, for whatever reason, and we don’t have the infrastructure to handle this many people. There are already tented cities rising up all round Christchurch. People are actually willing to give up their comfortable homes and live like refugees just to be near you.”

  “Yes,” he nodded, his face now serious as he thought through what she was telling him. “We stopped at one on the way here.”

  “Then you saw the problem. We are having trouble even getting enough drinking water and toilets to these places. There is a limit to the numbers we can handle, and yet we pride ourselves on being an open and welcoming country. Do you see my problem? We do not want to have to close our borders to visitors, but we also don’t want to run out of food to give them, not to mention healthcare and everything else they are likely to need while they are here. We need your help, Joe, to stem the tide before it overwhelms us.”

  Twenty-Eight

  “The Prime Minister is meeting with him? Is she kicking him out of her country?” The President of America appeared confused. It was nearly midnight and he wanted to go to bed. “She must be kicking him out, right? I mean he’s a troublemaker and he has no papers to be there in the first place, does he?”

  “As far as we can tell he has no papers at all, sir. It is a little hard to ascertain what he does have,” the Director of National Intelligence replied. He was trying to limit as much as possible the information he shared with his leader at this stage. He was under pressure from the diplomats to keep things calm on the international stage. The financial markets were already reacting badly to what looked like was turning into some sort of global revolution and he was finding it increasingly hard to get the generals to talk to him at all. If the President started sounding off with ill-informed sound bites, ill feeling between a number of nations, where mutual suspicion was already an established norm, could escalate dangerously fast.

  “I’ll tell you what he has; he has a hell of a nerve.” The President was sounding like an exasperated parent discussing an unruly child. “The guy is a hippy and now he’s turning the whole of her country into some sort of festival of peace and love. It’s a beautiful country, New Zealand. I’ve heard that it is. Have you seen The Lord of the Rings?”

  “I haven’t, sir. I did read the books as a child.”

  “Dumb film, full of pixies and elves and God knows what else, but beautiful scenery. That’s New Zealand. It’s a beautiful country. God’s own country and she’s letting this guy and his followers mess the whole thing up with their tented cities or whatever. Have you seen the piles of garbage and the queues for the bathrooms on the news? People are living like rats, like cockroaches. Why do so many people want to put themselves through that just to be in the same country as him?”

  “Might it be an idea to invite him here?” the Director suggested tentatively. “Better to have him inside the tent pissing out rather than…”

  “He’s not coming near my country!” The President slammed his fist on the top of the desk, making the phone jump. “But we can offer help to the government down there to deal with him. Find out what they need. Get her on the phone.”

  “The Prime Minister is out of reach at the moment…” the Director started to say.

  “Okay, I get it!” The President stood up, not wanting to hear that his calls were not being accepted. “I’m going to bed. I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

  With that he was gone and the Director felt his whole body relax. He pulled out his phone and punched a button as he followed his leader out of the Oval Office. “The President has retired for the night,” he informed his next in command. “Keep trying to get hold of this woman so he can talk to her tomorrow.”

  *****

  The President of Russia was just waking up and already talking on his phone as he climbed out of bed, pulling on a T-shirt.

  “The Prime Minister is meeting him personally?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “At the Chinese woman’s house?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is our informant still in place?”

  “Yes, sir, but they are unable to communicate. The group of Twelve have all cancelled their plans to leave at the end of the week. It looks like they are going to use New Zealand as their headquarters for whatever they plan to do next.”

  “They are all staying in the house together, with their families?”

  “It’s a big house, sir.”

  “I know it’s a big house. I’ve seen the pictures!” he snapped. “And we can make no contact with our informant?”

  “Not until they are away from the house. The American President is trying to reach the Prime Minister personally. We think he favours the idea of removing this healer permanently.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’s an idiot,” the President grumbled, “but he may prove useful to us in this. We don’t want it to appear that we feel threatened by this man and his followers, but it would be better if he was gone. It would also be better if the Americans were to take the blame for removing him. Let’s explore some of the possibilities for making that happen.”

  *****

  The Chinese President was having an early lunch as he took the briefing from his security adviser.

  “The Prime Minister is now inside the house with Yung Zhang and the man with no past. Both the Americans and the Russians are worried at the levels of support that are building up for him. They think this could lead to large scale unrest and eventual instability everywhere.”

  “Do we know what they are talking about inside the house?”

  “Not at the moment, sir. The technical departments are working on that.”

  “Do the Americans or the Russians know more than we do?”

  “The Russians still have their informant in place but they have had no information from them.”

  “Would they be willing to share information with us, or anyone else, when they have it?”

  “They might say that they would be willing, but I don’t know if we could trust the information they chose to share. They have lied to us before.”

  The President nodded his under
standing as he chewed thoughtfully.

  “Does Liang Zhang know anything about the man with no past? Does he know why his wife is so interested in him?”

  “We are pretty certain that he knows nothing about this man, sir. We have been very persistent with our questions and he has been very consistent with his answers.”

  The President nodded his understanding again and closed his eyes to concentrate on his food and to let his security advisor know that the conversation was at an end for the moment. The security advisor bowed his way out of the room backwards, even though he knew his leader could not see him through lowered lids, fearful that they might spring open to catch him unawares.

  Twenty-Nine

  The Prime Minister was standing beside Joe, looking out at the view from Yung’s picture window. The Twelve were all sitting behind them, listening intently to their quiet words.

  “I wouldn’t want to tell anyone that they can’t come to see me,” Joe said.

  “I understand, but the laws of physics are working against us,” the Prime Minister pointed out. “Unless you can come up with a particularly clever miracle I don’t see how you can be seen in the flesh by five million people, plus however many million more are already setting out from their homelands as we speak in order to get here. Correct me if I have misunderstood the nature of your appearance amongst us, but you currently seem to be only one man, with the same limitations of time and space as the rest of us.”

  Joe returned her smile and nodded. “No,” he sighed, “you have not misunderstood, Prime Minister.”

  “Perhaps we could make use of the man-made miracle of modern communications,” Simon suggested and they both turned to look at him as he continued. “Would it be an idea to set up a live global television interview, beaming it out simultaneously all over the world, allowing people in every country to ask whatever questions they want without having to make the trip to New Zealand?”