‘Ruthless, ambitious, highly capable. We liked the look of him. Saul was the kind of driven local agent who didn’t need our help.’
Valeria walks on. Gallio lets her go, watches her hips sway left and right, her buttocks, then catches up. ‘Saul targeted Peter in Damascus,’ she says. ‘A trained international agent against a lake fisherman in a major world city. Should have been a mismatch.’
‘Peter turned him. Saul became one of them.’
‘Well done. I’m glad not everything passed you by, but the truth is we didn’t have a back-up plan. We kept to our civilized policy of not intervening in religious affairs. Saul was converted, but even then we expected the Jesus cult to fold.’
‘But it didn’t. It hasn’t.’
‘It hasn’t followed the usual pattern of Judaean self-hatred and implosion, no. Every year the number of Jesus believers increases, and across a wider geographical spread. We underestimated them.’
‘You don’t say.’
The disciples of Jesus had negated a crucifixion and rigged a burial. They could break in and out of a sealed and guarded tomb, leaving no trace, and managed to hide a body in a city under martial law. Simple upcountry peasants? Cassius Gallio didn’t think so.
‘They could organize a fire,’ he says.
‘Possibly. What’s certain is the disciples have a history. Whatever they’ve become will depend on what happened in the past. We need people who were there at the beginning and who appreciate the specific difficulties.’
They walk into a cavalry exercise ground, separated from the housing scheme behind it by a high link fence. On the far side of the fence, the public side, about fifteen to twenty gawpers—including children, an Asian family—cling to each other and cry out. Yellow crime-scene tape flutters across the door of a stable, the centre stall in a block of five.
Gallio is first to duck under the tape. Old habits.
Inside, a free-standing aluminum spotlamp heats up the base note of rotting straw and horseshit. Two objects on the ground. The first looks like a hessian sack, but closer up the lump is beige clothing silted with blood. Gallio holds his hand across his nose. Get closer, right up close, because closeness comes with the job, and a nub of tendon glistens in the half-light, where the head should be. Blackflies rise from the severed neck, settle on the top of the spine.
Above the lamp, Gallio notices, looking away and up, and further up, anywhere but down, afternoon sunshine pierces the knotholes in the roof slats, light coming through in pinpoint beams. He looks back down. The second object is the head. Valeria finds a riding crop on a nail in the wall. She asks Gallio for a handkerchief. She takes his handkerchief and uses it to handle the whip, which she unhooks and pokes at the severed head. It lies stubbornly on one side on a patch of straw. She levers the head upright, it pauses, seems for a moment to be the head of Jesus (long brown hair, beard) then topples back onto a blood-caked ear.
‘You were there. You saw the twelve of them together. Is this Jesus?’
In Benghazi, staring at a pathway of moonlight across the water of the bay, Gallio had allowed the killers of Romulus a change of clothing and rolls of plastic bags. He could speculate about their actions but couldn’t unmake the world he knew: with minor improvements their murderous scheme looked plausible. The senators would need odorless floor-cleaning materials, concealable in a toga. He gave them some water, or sand. A brush, a mop.
Gallio spent night after night picturing eleven Galileans in a sealed tomb lit by flickering lamp-flames. Busy, each and every one of them, as they carved away flesh from the bones of Jesus. The disciples sawed through ligaments and tendons, then broke the skeleton, bone by bone. The tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, private property, and he could have stored cleavers and a hacksaw in advance, along with other useful supplies: fresh clothing, rolls of plastic bags, cleaning materials (water, sand, brush, mop). On an earlier visit Joseph could have left a commercial pestle and mortar. The disciples, most of them with a background in manual labour, silently grind the skull of Jesus into powder, non-stop in shifts for seventy-two hours. Three days and the labour of eleven men to annihilate a human body.
These were the same men who hanged Judas and made it look like suicide. The disciples could have made Jesus disappear, and Gallio knows there are people who can do such things to others they once fully loved. He reads the newspapers. He keeps up to date with human atrocity.
Logistically, eleven adults (one with basic medical training) could have dismantled the body of Jesus in three days. The disciples were absent from the crucifixion, but not because they were scared of being arrested. While the authorities were distracted by the death of Jesus the disciples hid inside the tomb. When Jesus was carried in they were already concealed inside, waiting with their knives and buckets, their plastic aprons and gloves.
The tomb was sealed, which would have muffled any noise, and the soldiers on watch heard nothing. To be fair, they weren’t making an effort to listen, even though Gallio had ordered them to guard the dead man as if alive. He used those exact words and signed the order himself, and at the military tribunal his signature was used against him. ‘Unhinged,’ they said, because dead men don’t need a guard. ‘Not in his right mind,’ because tombs remain closed without a seal.
Night after night, as the months and years of his exile passed, Cassius Gallio would lie awake denying the resurrection. Life after death meant the end of the world as he knew it, but if Jesus were a fraud and never actually died then his later appearances weren’t the end of the world.
Gallio would put his head beneath his army-issue blanket and concentrate on his breathing. In, out. Feel the biological processes of being alive, oxygen in his lungs, blood in his veins and his brain. Make the bad supernatural thoughts go away.
He regretted not staying at the burial site, in person, for all three days. But at the time he’d made his point and he was the winner: Jesus was dead. The Lazarus story became instantly irrelevant, and Gallio worried that Valeria would despise him for watching a corpse so closely. He didn’t want to appear tentative about life after death, and by killing Jesus he had solved that problem. Whatever the story with Lazarus, Jesus now was dead.
In any case, he couldn’t have known the disciples were planning a breakout on the Sunday. How long should he have stayed? A week, a month, until the end of time? Gallio would still be there now, and no one would understand why, not even the army psychiatrists.
Cassius Gallio saw his first statue of a disciple on a transit through Belgium: a life-size piece in white marble, Simon leaning casually on a two-handled saw outside the Church of our Lady in Bruges. On the same trip he was surprised by a painted Jude in a roadside shrine near Avignon.
The cult was growing, and Cassius sometimes felt nostalgic for Jerusalem and his one big idea. He’d wanted to control the Jesus movement by setting up Lazarus as a client Messiah. Together he and Lazarus, taking the place of Jesus, would have preached a god of compromise amenable to the values of civilization. Pay taxes, respect the rule of law, be reasonable.
His plan hadn’t worked, which left the disciples with their unreasonable lies that encouraged the poor and feckless. Cassius Gallio was occasionally angry, but the military life inhibited sustained feeling. Thankfully. His legion was posted east, where he supervised building works and assembled collections of coins. For months on end he’d forget to wonder what the story of Jesus could mean, obsessed with blisters and his next appointment with the booze. He consciously refused to look for Jesus, in the bottle and once in the arms of a shop girl. And soon after that, Gallio didn’t look for Jesus in the waiting room of a sexual health clinic. He didn’t look for him and he wasn’t there.
While a doctor swabbed him and asked how much he drank, Gallio did think briefly about Jesus and how to get his life back on track. He wasn’t without virtue: he refused to pay for sex and every month his wages were deducted at source and half sent to his wife and child in Jerusalem. Not that he had much choi
ce. He was a grunt in the civilized army from the civilized world, and obligations were expected to be honored.
If he was ever homesick, and he thinks he sometimes was, it wasn’t a sickness for Judith and Alma or for any of the homes he could remember. He longed for a kind of unnamed absence, with a tearfulness he found unsettling. Sentiment, self-pity: he wiped his eyes and dismissed these useless emotions that brought him no relief. He was not the person he’d wanted to be. The world was not decipherable as promised, with a reason for everything if only he could see what it was.
An unamused nurse burned off his genital warts, smoke rebounding from the ceiling. Gallio remembered Valeria, but whatever his problem Valeria wasn’t the solution, and antibiotics with beer and loneliness felt like a punishment that had finally arrived. Only he didn’t believe in cosmic justice, so he preferred not to think at all.
‘How can you tell it isn’t Jesus?’
‘I just know.’
The dismembered head belongs to a disciple, though Cassius Gallio can’t say for sure which one. He has been a long time away, and the eleven survivors always looked similar to him: they look like Jesus. Ten. Judas gone, now this one too. Ten survivors left, and anyway Jesus is dead. Why had Valeria asked if the dead man in the stable was Jesus?
Observation, reason. The dark horseshit in the stable contains pieces of yellow straw. No, beyond that. The shit is lightly cracked, days old.
‘How could it be Jesus when Jesus is dead?’
‘You tell me. I asked the Israelis to wait for our experts, meaning you. As the representative of a global power I made an official recommendation to a tiny security service. Hopeless. They couldn’t follow a simple instruction.’
‘Who couldn’t?’
‘Baruch. Not an easy man, but on their side he deals with everything Jesus. Always has.’
Gallio knows who Baruch is. He tried to kill Lazarus after the incomprehensible events at Bethany, when Lazarus appeared to come back to life. He killed the son of the widow of Nain, a teenage boy who Jesus also allegedly resurrected. A military patrol found the boy in a wood outside his pathetic little village, his throat cut from ear to ear. That’s Baruch, who picked Cassius Gallio’s daughter up from school. The involvement of Baruch feels like further punishment, but Gallio doesn’t know for what.
‘I think this head belongs to a James.’
Gallio squats down and looks closely at the half a dead face he can see. Memories flood back, and he warms to the idea of becoming an expert, of knowing what few other people can know. ‘I’m fairly sure. Who was the other one they captured?’
‘They say it was Peter. Unconfirmed. He escaped.’
James and Peter, but Valeria has let herself speculate that one of the captives was Jesus. This is the more interesting information that Gallio now has in his possession. If the CCU are prepared to reconsider, and conclude that Jesus may be alive, it would explain their decision to reopen the case.
Some kind of commotion starts up outside, which gives Cassius Gallio an excuse to stop speculating and stoop under the tape and out into the fresher air. The sun is hot and the flies loud. A woman in a POLICE anti-stab jacket is photographing faces through the fence. Beside her, pointing out anyone she misses, is an unshaven man in a dark suit. He turns round, open-neck white shirt, sees Cassius Gallio and taps the photographer’s shoulder. Gallio watches the zoom lengthen as she takes her shot. Baruch, hands on hips like the man in charge, laughs at his funny joke.
Baruch is Gallio’s age, a little older, but he moves better. He shoots his cuffs and dances over, soft leather shoes avoiding small rocks and the obvious piles of horse dung.
‘Cassius Gallio! You should have phoned from the airport! We’d have sent a car.’
They’re about the same height. Baruch offers his hand at a slight downward angle. To take it, Gallio would have to expose his palm like a white belly, like a dog rolling over. He offers his hand at the same angle, palm facing down. Their fingers barely touch.
‘Yet somehow you knew I was here.’
‘Boys,’ Valeria says. She swishes the riding crop at a couple of flies.
‘Congratulations on killing an unarmed disciple,’ Gallio says. ‘Keeping yourself busy, I see.’
‘Not guilty. I’m helping to clean up the mess, and making sure the press stay away. Let the press in on something like this and it’s pictures, words and before you know it they’ve written the opera and everyone’s crying. Completely misrepresent the facts.’
‘Try me with the facts.’
Baruch smiles. ‘My men were overenthusiastic, which isn’t the end of the world. And no need to look so miserable—ten more where this one came from. The disciples of Jesus come to Jerusalem at their own risk. The founder of their cult is a convicted terrorist, so what kind of welcome do they expect?’
Baruch bends under the police tape and Gallio follows him into the stable. Police work develops muscular thighs.
‘Say hello to James,’ Baruch says, poking the head upright with the toe of his shoe. This time it doesn’t fall over. ‘The other one was Peter.’
Gallio can’t see why Baruch would lie about this, though clearly Valeria doesn’t trust him. She’d wanted to check with an expert from her own side, so she called in Cassius Gallio even after the prisoner was dead. Gallio had been in Jerusalem with Jesus, and there aren’t many of the original players left.
‘Where’s Peter now? Is he in the city?’
‘Probably,’ Baruch says. ‘We lost him, but it’s only a matter of time.’
A chain of errors, but each link toward the death of James has its own logic. Baruch’s excitable jailers had the bright idea of taunting the captured disciples with a salami. An Italian salami, imported from Milan, and clearly labelled as a percent pork product. James ate several slices with apparent pleasure, because he was hungry. His captors decided to take offence and felt compelled, on behalf of their god, to be appalled at James for eating an unclean food.
James refused to repent. The argument escalated, to the point where James eating the salami was a contemptuous attack on Jewish law in general and the beliefs of their parents in particular. Their mothers. James was laughing at how their beloved mothers had brought them up. He was spitting in the faces of innocent women. He was striking them to the ground.
Before the salami, neither of the disciples had been questioned in a methodical way. No demands were made: Tell us the truth about Jesus and we’ll let you live. Tell us where the body is buried and we’ll feed you. These were the same questions Cassius Gallio had once asked of Judas, but the Israelis had squandered an opportunity to acquire significant new information. A primary Jesus witness was dead and another had been allowed to escape.
‘You’ve forgotten how the world turns,’ Baruch says. ‘Especially here in Jerusalem. Plan ahead if you like, but accidents will happen.’
Gallio remembers Baruch at Alma’s school, offering to hand his daughter into the Range Rover. He’s had a big day for remembering how the world turns.
‘The guards dragged James onto the exercise ground,’ Baruch says. ‘They haven’t seen a beheading for months, and none of them wanted to miss the action. While they enjoyed the spectacle Peter walked away.’
‘He walked away.’
Cassius Gallio requests an interview with the two militiamen responsible for the salami and hastening the execution. One of them is short, the other tall and they haven’t washed in a week. But what’s done is done, and for Gallio these men represent an opportunity. He treats them like intelligent human beings.
‘How did the two disciples behave, while you had them locked up? I want to hear what you made of them. As people, what were they like?’
The guards look at each other. ‘Not very funny.’
The shorter one nods, crushes his hands into his armpits. ‘Neither of them had much of a sense of humour. No real banter.’
‘Two older brothers in a room,’ the tall one says, pleased with his observation.
He excavates an ear with his little finger, assesses the gunge that comes out. ‘Serious types.’
‘Did you hear specific conversations?’
‘Death.’ The guards nod at each other, agreed. ‘The Galileans talked about death, their favourite subject. Both of them said they were happy to die, but neither wanted to go first.’
‘Naturally.’ Baruch straightens the crease in his trouser, insists on being present at the interview, but he’s leaning against a wall and he’s bored. ‘Who in their right mind would want to die first?’
‘They both did. It was weird. Both the disciples volunteered. They argued about it.’
‘You said the opposite, that neither of them wanted to go first.’
‘That’s how it started. They both wanted to go first, which meant going first was unkind to the other, because that’s what the other one wanted.’
‘So it was kinder to go second,’ the taller one says, scratching his head. He leaves the residue from his ear in his hair. ‘They both wanted to die after the other. Out of kindness.’
They look puzzled. ‘If that makes sense.’
‘Which ends up being completely normal,’ Cassius Gallio says. ‘I’d want to go second too, if it were me.’
Their brains continue to grind as Baruch hovers behind them. ‘Who actually did the deed, took his head off?’
The men don’t want to say, in case there’s a punishment. But they do want to say, in case there’s a reward. Gallio pities them their inner struggle so he speaks up—with Baruch in the room he can save them from a fatal mistake. ‘If you remember anything else, you let us know.’
‘Via the usual channels,’ Baruch adds.
Cassius Gallio yawns. ‘Jet lag. I’m sure you have an Attempt To Locate out for Peter. I’m going back to the hotel. This isn’t my case.’
‘I know,’ Baruch says. ‘I let you talk to the guards as a favour, for old times’ sake. Reckon they’re telling the truth?’
‘No idea. I don’t have the clearance to risk an opinion.’ A thin-shouldered man in a blue tracksuit follows Cassius Gallio through Jerusalem, settles himself in the hotel lobby while Gallio checks in and drops his bag with the concierge. Gallio takes the lift to his floor, walks past his room, finds the stairwell and leaves through the basement parking garage.
Acts of the Assassins Page 5