“Michael!” Ginger shouted. “We need you down here!”
A few moments later Michael came running down the stairs wearing only pants, no shoes, no socks, no shirt, and his hair was still dripping wet. He heard the choir singing from the loudspeakers, and without saying a word he sat down, and after a few mouse clicks and punching a couple of keys, the singing became a lot clearer, but it still sounded rather far away. After more mouse clicks and key punching, Michael pulled up a map of St Peter’s.
“It’s six o’clock in Rome,” he said. “Evening mass at St Peter’s. But wherever Julian is, he’s not in the same room as the choir.”
“If he’s still alive.”
Michael shot me a look. He clearly didn’t appreciate me reminding us of a worst case scenario that, for all I knew, was still possible.
He kept pulling up more maps of Vatican City and St Peter’s, trying to find detailed floor maps in order to come up with a more sophisticated theory as to where Julian might be. And then, all of a sudden we heard a noise that seemed to be all the more closer to Julian’s mobile than the choir was. It started as a faint moaning sound, and then somebody coughed and finally spoke.
“Hello?”
It was Julian.
“Is somebody there?”
I couldn’t hold back my excitement. I leaned towards the computer. “Oi, Julian! It’s us!”
Michael looked at me. “He can’t hear you, Tummy. This phone bug is a one way street.”
“Oh.”
“Pshhhh!” Ginger hissed. “Somebody’s coming.”
We heard a door open and close, and steps approaching.
“Why hello, young man,” an unfamiliar voice with an American accent said. “How are we feeling today?”
“Where am I?” Julian asked.
“You’re at the Vatican.”
“Why?”
“You’ve had an accident. Your coach crashed, don’t you remember? Would you like anything to eat or drink?”
“No, I would like to know why I’m here.”
“Don’t worry, Julian. Everything will be explained to you shortly. I shall now notify your mother that you’re awake, I’m sure you’ll want to see her.”
“My mum is here?”
“Why of course she is. She was worried about you. She’ll be very relieved to hear that you’re awake. She’s having dinner with your manager at the moment.”
“Peter is here?”
“Of course he is.”
“And who are you?” Julian asked.
“My name is Edward Pickle. You can call me Ed. I shall leave you alone now. You need to rest.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ed.”
There was a brief pause before Mr. Ed replied with a whiff of annoyance in his voice. “Just Ed.”
The door opened and closed again, and then there was silence.
“Holy shit,” Michael said. “No pun intended.”
Ginger looked at him. “What do you mean?”
Once again Michael punched some keys on his computer and pulled up a file on the man whose voice we’d just heard.
“Edward Pickle,” he said. “Former PR consultant and spokesperson for Robert Maddock. He took over as CEO of MMC when Maddock was elected Pope, although I’m inclined to think that Pickle is really just a straw man, and that Maddock is still calling the shots.”
“So what are we gonna do? We need to get him out of there, don’t we? I mean, he’s been kidnapped and being held against his will while the whole world still thinks he’s dead! We have to tell them. Shouldn’t we just get on Inside Momoko and tell people what happened?”
Michael raised his hand. “Hang on a second, something’s happening.”
There was a noise coming from Julian’s mobile. It sounded as if Julian was getting out of his bed and walking across the room, with bare feet on a wooden floor, approaching his mobile and picking it up. A few moments later Michael’s phone rang.
“You’d think he’d call his mum first,” he said and lowered the volume of the loudspeakers to avoid audio feedback. Then he answered the phone. “Jules! Talk to me.”
“What’s going on?” Julian asked.
“Well, you tell us. Tummy and Ginger are here with me. You’re on speakerphone.”
“Hi, Tummy and Ginger.”
“Hi, Julian.”
“Hey, Jules.”
“Listen, Julian,” Michael said, “we just overheard your conversation with Mr Ed. Do you know who he is?”
“I have no idea.”
“He used to be Robert Maddock’s right hand at MMC, and he took over the company when Maddock turned all popey.”
“What do they want from me?” Julian asked.
“I don’t know, but you’ve been pissing off a lot of religious folks recently, so don’t expect them to give you a medal. Now listen to me, Jules. I need you to stay calm and just play along with whatever is going to happen. Your mum is nearby so you’re probably not in any immediate danger.”
“Have you talked to my mum?”
“No, but Ginger saw her board a plane to Rome yesterday, so Mr Ed probably wasn’t lying when he said she’s there.”
“Right, okay.”
“Listen, Jules,” Michael continued. “Something really fishy is going on here. We’re on our way to get you out of there, okay? Just stay put and keep your eyes and ears open for now. Oh, and make sure to keep your mobile with you at all times so I know where you are, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good man! I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
“Hang on,” Julian said. “How are our downloads going? Are we still making money?”
Michael rolled his eyes. “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me! Is that really what’s on your mind right now?”
“Actually it’s the only reason I called.”
Michael shook his head, trying not to smile. “Don’t worry, Jules. You’re a millionaire. We all are. I have to go now. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
“Okay.”
Michael put down his phone and looked at Ginger and me. “That boy is driving me insane.”
Ginger shrugged. “What else is new?”
“So what are we going to do now?” I asked.
“You, Tummy, are going to call your girlfriend and offer her an exclusive news story. Tell her we need her. Cameraron and Audiomike as well. They’re going to Rome with us first thing tomorrow morning. I’m going to book our tickets, and then I’m off to bed. I haven’t slept in 40 hours.”
The Gospel According to Michael – 17
We arrived in Rome at around noon the next day. At the airport we rented a truck, because Cameraron and Audiomike had brought a ton of video and audio equipment that we needed for our top secret undercover mission. We checked into a hotel not far away from Vatican City and settled in.
In the evening we were sitting in our hotel room, having pizza and red wine, and we were looking at Julian on the screen of my laptop. He had joined us via Skype, because technically he was still missing—and presumed dead by many—so we didn’t think it would be a good idea for him to walk around the streets of Rome, a city where he was even better known than at most other places around the world. Not to mention the fact that the Swiss Guard probably wouldn’t have let him out of St Peter’s anyway.
After MINDY had checked Julian’s room for radio frequencies and found no bugs, and I had made sure that we were on a secure connection, Julian told us what had happened.
“We left Liverpool late at night. There were people of all ages on our coach, children, pensioners, and everything in between. Tholen and I took our seats near the back of the bus. Next to us, on the other side of the aisle, there was a couple in their late sixties. They recognized me right away. The woman asked me if I was Julian Monk. Tholen immediately tried to shield me from them. ‘No autographs,’ he said. He had picked up that nasty habit in America where people had been pestering me left, right and centre all the time. I pushed him back into his seat and told
him to shut up. They didn’t want my autograph. They just wanted to tell me that they were Christian but they hadn’t been to church in over twenty years. But if I were to open a church, the woman told me, they’d come to mass every Sunday. Now I wonder if they made it out alive.”
“I think they did,” I said. “There was this old lady on TV. They interviewed her in hospital after the accident. She told the exact same story. She and her husband got away with three broken limbs between them. But they’ll be fine.”
“Really?” Julian’s face lighted up with a smile. “That’s so good to know.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, our trip down the M1 was uneventful. It was the middle of the night, and most people were sleeping. I had been looking out of the window at cars passing us in the pouring rain for the first hundred miles until I dozed off as well. And then we veered off the road, apparently. It was horrendous. Just imagine it. You’re sitting there sound asleep, and then you suddenly wake up because something’s wrong. The people around you notice it too. You’re falling. You’re tumbling towards death, and the last thing that you will ever experience in your life is the screaming of other people. Do you guys have any idea what that felt like?”
Julian was looking in our direction but he wasn’t looking at us. His gaze was fixed on some imaginary point in some imaginary distance, which is quite a feat if you’re looking straight at a camera. It had been a rhetorical question, but I couldn’t help but say, “I’m not sure if I even want to know what it felt like.”
“Yeah,” Tummy said. “It must have been, like, awful.”
“It was wonderful,” Julian said. “It was the most intense experience of my entire life. Those few seconds when we were tumbling down that ravine felt like a relapse into pre-civilized times, to the very moment when animals first became humans. There were no rules, no social structures, and everyone who was able to articulate themselves did. Everyone was shouting over everyone else, which of course didn’t help anyone. It only made everybody even more scared and shouting even louder. It’s that kind of fear that sets us apart from the other animals, and that degrades us to a species of cowards, because we choose to give in to that fear instead of facing it, fighting it. Out of that fear, man was born. Back in the old days, before we became human, everyone could say and do whatever they wanted, and nobody gave a damn. The basis of our civilization crystallized out of that chaos of all voices shouting over each other, and from that, everything we know developed. For a few seconds, the people on that bus experienced that feeling of absolute pre-civilised freedom. Some of them had to pay with their lives for the realisation that whatever you say or do doesn’t matter because you can’t change anything. It’s a scary realisation, but if you’re willing to accept it, it will set you free. Only facing that primeval fear will ever let you experience that feeling of absolute freedom. It was … I think I know now what people are talking about when they’re yearning for paradise.”
There was a long moment of silence as we kept staring at Julian, and he was staring at the floor.
“You make it sound,” Ginger finally said, “as if almost dying was some kind of fun experience; as if you actually enjoyed it.”
Julian lifted his head, leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “I didn’t exactly enjoy the feeling of almost dying, because at the time I had no idea if I was only almost dying or if I was actually going to die. But I do enjoy being able to think about it and talk about it, because facing that fear of imminent death is such an intense experience that one doesn’t have very often.”
“All right, I get that,” Ginger said. “But next time just get on a roller coaster or go bungee jumping or something.” She laughed nervously.
“That is not the same, though. No matter how afraid of heights you are, when you jump off a bridge with a rubber band around your ankles, you only do it because deep down inside you know that you’re going to be fine; because you trust that rubber band and the people who strapped you to it. You may still be scared shitless, but that fear is still an order of magnitude away from the actual fear of death that you feel when you wake up and find yourself upside down on a bus that’s tumbling down a ravine, and you have no idea whether or not you will get out of this alive. It’s more like a bungee jump where you suddenly feel that rubber band snap, and you’re free falling.”
“Rock’n’roll,” Tummy chuckled.
There was something weird about Julian as he was sitting there and telling us about his near death experience. He seemed strangely subdued; a far cry from the boisterous, at times cocky media personality the world had come to know in recent weeks. Yet he was nothing like the old Julian either, the silent observer who was shy and timid all the time unless he was alone with us, his friends. Something had changed; something in his attitude towards everything.
“Don’t tell me you’ve met the Lord on your way down that ravine,” I said, “and you’re turning all religious now.”
The others laughed. The one who wasn’t laughing was Julian. He just stared at the camera, and this time it was as if he were looking directly into my eyes, looking for an answer to a question that he seemed to take more seriously than any one of us would have thought.
“Never mind,” I said, getting uncomfortable with the long silence. “How did you make it out of the wreck?”
Julian shook his head. “I don’t know. I only have one brief memory from after the crash. All I remember is that it was dark and cold. I was lying in the mud and raindrops were falling on my face. A few people nearby were crying or moaning, and then there was this huge bang, and suddenly it rained fire all around me. That’s when I passed out, and when I woke up, I found myself in a guest room at bloody St Peter’s.”
“Yeah, I still don’t get that,” Ginger said. “I mean how..., I mean who...”
Julian smiled. “The SSSS.”
“The what?”
“Sanctae Sedis Servitium Secretum.”
“Blimey!” Tummy said.
Ginger shook her head in disbelief. “Please tell me it doesn’t mean what I think it does.”
“It means exactly that. The Secret Service of the Holy See.” Julian took a moment to enjoy our baffled looks before he continued. “That’s actually less sophisticated and exciting than it sounds. Maddock created that institution when he became Pope. He figured that if the President of the United States has a secret service to protect him, then so should the Pope. The members of the SSSS are really just Maddock’s old bodyguards with new suits and sunglasses. He thought that the term ‘bodyguards’ lacked a certain gravitas that one would expect of the Vatican, hence the name change.”
“And you know all this because...?” Ginger asked.
“Mr Ed told me. After I met my mum, I had a very late night dinner with him last night, and it turns out that he gets rather talkative after a bottle of wine or two. He told me that the SSSS had been following me around to keep an eye on me ever since I set foot on U.S. soil. They even followed me back to Europe, and they were in a car right behind our coach when it crashed. So they stopped and rescued me and Tholen, and took us to Rome.”
“They basically kidnapped you.” Ginger said.
Julian shrugged. “If you want to put it like that.”
“But why?” I asked. “What do they want from you?”
“Well,” Julian said, “Mr Ed told me that as well, although I’m pretty sure the Pope would be a bit miffed if he knew that somebody spoiled his big surprise.”
“What’s the surprise?” I asked.
“The Pope, I am being told, is a big fan. Did you guys know that he even follows me on Twitter?”
“It was front page news when he started following you.”
“Right. Well anyway, apparently His Holiness is planning to offer me a job.”
We all exchanged bewildered looks.
“Rock’n’roll!”
“A job?” Ginger asked. “Like what, as a choir boy at St Peter’s?”
Julian chuckled. “No, I
think it’s going to be a bit more sophisticated and exciting than that. According to Mr Ed, the Pope is hell-bent on tapping into the youth market. The Church is in desperate need of new, young blood, and simply having a Twitter account and presenting the New Commandments on an iPad just doesn’t cut it. What they want is a young voice that young ears are willing to listen to.”
“They want to turn you into a poster boy for Christianity!” I said.
Julian shrugged. “If you want to call it that.”
I slapped my thighs in amusement. “That is so hilarious! So what would your job title be? Junior Pope Julian the First?”
Once again, Julian wasn’t laughing, and that’s when it slowly began to dawn on me.
“Julian,” I said, “you’re not seriously considering this, are you?”
He shrugged again. “They do have a big problem with getting the message of Jesus Christ across to young people.”
“Julian!”
I looked at Ginger and Tummy, at Momoko, Cameraron, and Audiomike. All their jaws had dropped to the floor.
“It would be such a great chance to make a difference,” Julian said.
I almost crawled into my laptop camera, trying to get through to him. “Julian, how many more differences do you need to make? Just look at what you’ve done already! Isn’t that enough?”
“Can there ever be enough messages of love and kindness?” Julian asked. “Can there ever be enough reason? Can there ever be enough truth?”
I looked at him. “Who are you? And what have you done to my best friend?!”
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” he said.
And then he winked.
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