Behind, in front, left, right. Gallio looks up, sometimes down, making sure he’s alone. Baruch knew Gallio had arrived at the airport, and Valeria would have known that too. Yet still they went through the routines for a secret meetup. She must be worried that someone, other than Baruch and his people, is watching. Whoever it is, they must be good.
Gallio takes random lefts and rights through the evening city, and he’s amazed at the number of tourists. Jerusalem wasn’t like this in the old days, and without making a decision he ends up not at his apartment, where Judith and Alma still live, but at another street he recognizes. It has a new name, the Via Dolorosa. Cassius Gallio follows in Jesus’s footsteps, like so many others, and tries to get a feel for what once happened here. Much has changed, yet somehow the place is the same. An atmosphere, an indent. No event is ever entirely lost.
At Golgotha, where the execution itself took place, little of the original site remains. Since Gallio was last here the developers have moved in—construction work and safety barriers erasing what he remembers as a crime scene. The tourist board are building some kind of memorial, and a falafel stall sells canned drinks to a queue of visitors when they’re not being pestered by beggars.
For Gallio’s purposes, and Valeria has reminded Cassius Gallio of his purpose in life, any usable evidence from the scene has long been removed or corrupted. He briefly wonders who made it their business to tidy the truth away, though he can understand how that happened. Easier to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary took place here, at least before the tourists started insisting that it did. And now they keep on coming, even without any evidence. The new Golgotha is teeming with souvenir hunters, women, believers, unbelievers. There’s a handcart selling crucifixes, authentic rubble, icons.
Cassius Gallio thinks he sees Peter.
A beard, beige clothing, long brown hair. If the man is Peter, he immediately has luck on his side. A group of teenage boys blocks Cassius Gallio. They jostle him, wanting to know if he’s Inglese or Arab. He doesn’t know which answer is safest, so he guesses Arab, and they throw a Coke bottle at his head.
By the time Gallio scatters them, Peter the disciple has gone.
Valeria drinks mint tea from a glass cup that she replaces with care on a glass saucer. At this time of the evening Cassius Gallio fancies a vodka and tonic, a blister pack of ephedrine sulphate, showgirls. Not to touch, because he’d expect to be punished, but nothing wrong with looking. He orders the same tea as Valeria, giving her nothing of himself, not even his menu preferences. I’ll have what she’s having. Easy on the mint.
They drink tea on the terrace of the American Colony Hotel, where Allenby and Blair take rooms whenever they’re mediating the region. Both are on holiday. The two men are famous for being on holiday, leaving the region forever unmediated. A diplomat’s son swims laps in the pool. He has a hard and fast body, worth watching.
‘No trace of Peter,’ Valeria says. ‘Nothing apart from your possible sighting at Golgotha. They’re smart.’
‘Always were. I told you that years ago. Nobody listened.’
‘We’re listening now.’ Valeria is making an effort: five-star hotel, terrace, drinks on the section tab. ‘The case has been passed to Complex Casework mainly because the cult survives and is growing. No one understands why. We’ve gone over the events that led to your tribunal, and considering the various loose ends we’ve decided to reopen the investigation. I’ve recommended your involvement.’
‘You have other Speculators. Most of them undemoted and undisgraced.’
‘No one with experience is volunteering to investigate provincial cults.’
‘Ah, I see. What do you want from me, apart from assuming I’m available and desperate to get back in?’
Valeria watches the long-armed backstroke of the boy in the pool, examines her nails, acts like someone who could change her mind. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think you were capable. I fished out the psychiatric assessment from the tribunal.’
‘Get to the point.’
‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t think you’re unstable. Didn’t think it at the time and don’t now. We all missed something, way back then. Let’s not make the same mistakes again.’
‘Please tell me what you want. In plain language.’
‘We can offer you a viaticum. Double pay for every day on the road. In euros.’
‘I want my rank back, the right to call myself a Speculator.’
‘It’s not the title that counts, but the state of mind. This is a tiny job in an obscure region.’
‘So why should I take it?’
‘The money and a fresh start. I’m guessing that’s enough. That and your pride, which had you running for the plane in Munich.’
She knows him too well. Gallio feels the long waste of sleepless nights under army blankets, sifting through memories for the piece he missed, the clue as to how they tricked him. Cassius Gallio is convinced he’d have found the answer, if only Judas hadn’t been killed. The disciples had cut off his enquiry just as he was getting close.
‘You were a witness,’ Valeria says. ‘You saw the death of Jesus, and how the disciples acted after the event. We’ve respected official policy, tolerated this cult, waited for their beliefs to fade. Except in this instance their beliefs aren’t fading. Something strange is going on, and I’ve decided that bringing you back is worth the risk to my reputation. You were there. That counts for something, and I’m giving you a chance to clear your name.’
‘I have nothing to prove.’
‘I think you do, Cassius. You were publicly humiliated. Hard for anyone, let alone a Speculator. You did your work but reason did not triumph, which is what in training they taught us would happen. But reason will triumph, in the long run. That’s why we rule the world and in Israel they have goats.’
‘Do I get a team? I’ll need researchers, analysts, forensics. Maybe some feet on the ground.’
‘You’ll work with Baruch. Politics. They’re backward but we need to keep them sweet, for the sake of stability. Also the Israelis are as keen to wrap this up as we are.’
Cassius Gallio bites the skin at the side of his thumbnail, watches the swimmer splash back and forth. Backstroke, the full twenty-five meters, tumble turn, crawl. Gallio peels off a thumbnail with his teeth, spits it from his lower lip. It sticks. He blows it off.
‘Baruch is a contract killer. A nobody.’
‘We all used to be something. You’ll need to control him, but if there’s trouble you’re deniable. It’s important you understand that, Cassius. As far as our reasonable and non-believing superiors are concerned, this operation does not exist.’
‘So where am I expected to start?’
Valeria looks away. This mission is rotten with absurdities that stick in her throat, but they have to start somewhere.
‘I’ve seen the pictorial evidence of the crucifixion, every angle, the different styles,’ she says. ‘I know how dead Jesus looks in the images, but I want you to search for him as if he’s alive. You’re to find out if Jesus survived, if somewhere out there he’s among us.’
III
Jude
“SHOT WITH ARROWS”
Baruch doesn’t like the car. Cassius Gallio insists on following Valeria’s briefing, to the letter, which means they stay inconspicuous. At the Hertz concession he turns down models that proclaim either the wonder or the futility of existence. He needs the camouflage of the middle ground, where people learn to cope, less splendid than a 3-liter BMW 6 Series but not as miserable as an entry-level Chevy Aveo.
They end up driving north out of Jerusalem in a family class Toyota Corolla. Gallio respects the speed limit and keeps his distance from the vehicle in front. He slows for camels, for carts pulled by donkeys. Mirror, signal, maneuver.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Baruch says, one foot on the dash. He can’t even smoke, because those days are gone. ‘You know, Cassius, happy as I am to be working with you again, I�
�m surprised Valeria called you back.’
Baruch blows his nose, disposes of the tissue out of the open window. Checks the palms of his hands. ‘I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t only your soldiers who were under suspicion. I mean if I’m looking for a reasonable explanation for how the body left the tomb, after all this time. If Jesus is alive, someone patched him up and let him out. You were the man in charge.’
‘I was cleared at the tribunal.’
‘Of that particular act. Not of much else. The sentencing document is a classic, and I like the paragraph that declares you unstable and incompetent. I believe those are the words they used.’ Cassius Gallio keeps his eyes on the road. ‘Incompetent. Strong stuff.’
‘But not guilty of receiving illegitimate payments to allow the removal of the body. The tribunal had no evidence of that, no witnesses.’
‘They fired you once, they could do it again. That must worry you. Dereliction of Duty. Professional Negligence. And one other, I think, yes, I remember now, suspended Gross Misconduct for sexual harassment of a junior colleague. I looked up the charge sheet.’
‘It wasn’t harassment. Nothing happened.’
Baruch is joshing, and he is not. Gallio can’t blame him, because anyone who wanted to steal the body would think first of corrupting the senior officer. That would be a logical approach to take, so the question needs to be asked.
‘All we know for sure is the body was gone,’ Gallio says. ‘Why are you picking my daughter up from school?’
Baruch flips his foot off the dash, and as the city thins he gazes at the street-side storefronts. Driving out the slow way, dentists and driving schools give way to car dealerships and furniture outlets.
‘Where’d you hide the money, Cassius?’
‘How’s my wife? Been seeing her long?’
‘Intelligent man like you. Offshore, I guess. Your family—I mean the wife and child you abandoned—they could use some extra income.’
‘I never intended to abandon them. First, I don’t have money because no one bribed me. Second, if I’d let the disciples steal the body I’d know too much. I could undermine their resurrection story at any time, and they’d shut me up like they shut up Judas.’
Baruch turns in his seat, sizes up Cassius Gallio as if for a coffin. ‘Does that prospect frighten you?’
‘No, because I don’t know too much.’
‘They didn’t kill Judas. Suicide. Investigated thoroughly, with official stamps on the verdict. You were getting a lot wrong back then, weren’t you, Cassius? I’ve heard the details from Judith, your ex-wife. You were wrong at work and wrong at home. Someone had to repair the damage and it wasn’t going to be you.’
‘It could have been me, except they sent me to fucking Moldova.’
‘You’re deluded. Says so in the tribunal report. Stubborn, isolated, unreasonable, prone to fantasy. You could no longer function professionally, not even at procedural tasks like locating a corpse. Or keeping a marriage alive. She’d never take you back now, not after what you did. And poor little Alma with her leg, she’s grateful for a real-life father figure.’
Gallio stamps on the accelerator. Not much happens, the car’s a Toyota Corolla. He backs off, calms down. His family is someone else’s business, and he can hide in the here and now, in the mission that Valeria has given him. He’s driving to Beirut, to find a man who looks like Jesus.
At first, after hearing Valeria’s proposal, Cassius Gallio had said no. Valeria didn’t accept his decision, told him he should think it over.
‘No, really no. Jesus is dead. I’m not going to look for him.’
‘Sleep on it. I think you’ll take this on, because what else would you be doing?’
Barracks near Stuttgart, barbarians at the gates, a single bunk, long sleepless nights and a routine designed to use up the time before he dies. At best, Cassius Gallio will look for his socks in the morning. He will look for the cheapest item on the canteen menu, and for an almost entertaining program on evening TV. Otherwise he’ll look for nothing.
In Jerusalem, with or without his rank as Speculator, Valeria was offering him a goose chase he could drag out for months. Jesus was dead. He was killed years ago, and the trail was cold. If Valeria and the CCU had decided to speculate otherwise, then truly this was a complex case. One they wanted to pursue, and if so then who was Cassius Gallio to object?
‘We’ll give you a desk in the Antonia,’ Valeria said. ‘Security clearance for the files and archives. That’s the most we can offer. We’re going on a hunch as it is.’
The next day Cassius Gallio sat at his allocated computer on an upper floor of the Antonia Fortress, swinging in a swivel chair pinched from Human Resources. It felt good to be back, and the open-plan Antonia operations room was in a familiar state of distress. Desks pushed together, files everywhere, computer screens glowing the colour of bad rice. Someone had polished their football boots and left them in a corner, stuffed with newspaper, on a plastic bag from Hamashbir.
For the first hour or so Gallio watched the junior intelligence officers of an occupying army, who kept themselves busy by sifting standard police reports for incidents of obscure significance. Stolen official cars, ABH against a minor civil servant, graffiti at the TV station. Usually these crimes were not significant, not even obscurely so. The youngsters in the office avoided Gallio because he was attached to the CCU. Also because his sole and slightly shameful responsibility was to hunt a man who was dead. For the second hour he mulled over his mission, steepled his fingers to his chin, swivelled his chair this way and that.
The story was baffling, from beginning to end, but Gallio was in no special hurry to return to barracks. He decided on an approach: not optimistic but conscientious. Either he would solve the Jesus mystery or he would not, and when he eventually set to work he started with the events the disciples claimed to have seen: Jesus, so they said, had risen into a cloud above the Mount of Olives. Gallio found this hard to believe. He’d kept the disciples under surveillance, yet they claimed to have seen this ascension with their own eyes, the same eyes that once witnessed Jesus walking on water.
People passed by Gallio’s desk. He looked busy, wrote himself a memo: Miracles/hallucinations. Galilee connection? Check lake for cadmium/mercury trace. Industrial pollution/poisoning? Would explain a lot.
He found a report Valeria had commissioned in the previous month. On the relevant dates there had been no heavy industry operational near Lake Galilee, no processes at work to leak toxins into the water supply.
Cassius Gallio binned his memo and started again from the only fact they knew for certain: someone was dead. Between then and now Gallio had seen hundreds of pictures of Jesus on the cross, because he was interested and provincial museums and churches were full of them. Paintings, carvings, sculptures. No other death in history had been so exhaustively recorded. Jesus was dead.
At the same time, and Gallio finally confronted the truth of this, he had never stopped experimenting with the idea that Jesus had survived. Jesus only appeared to be dead on the cross, and had entered some kind of trance. Gallio’s soldiers (what happened to that sergeant?) neglected to break the bones in Jesus’s legs, meaning that severe physical trauma was confined to feet and hands, giving him a shot at survival.
Gallio called up files from the archive and stacked them beside his desk. He went through the dossiers one by one, relived the familiar story. From the newer material he learned that Valeria had investigated lung capacity. Jesus had form as a public speaker, and for three years he projected his voice to large crowds in open-air spaces without amplification. If orators developed abnormal lung efficiency, then Jesus’s oversized lungs might have delayed asphyxiation, a common cause of death when chest muscles and lungs were hyper-expanded. Even then, considering his other injuries, Gallio didn’t see how Jesus could have survived for more than a few weeks afterward. A month at the outside, with expert medical attention.
There was always another file to open.
Gallio respected the assignment, such as it was. He treated Jesus as a missing person and pulled relevant information from Valeria’s Complex Casework networks. He reviewed every theory. The rational approach was to keep an open mind until the evidence convinced one way or another, and the Speculator protocols came back to Gallio like riding a bike. He contacted Israeli banks and had them search for an account in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. He was meticulous, accessing the benefits register to see if any likely Jesus was claiming, and if so how he collected his money. Neither initiative generated a result.
Cassius Gallio swung on his chair, this way, that way. He chewed the end of his propelling pencil. Why not? If you’ve lost something, as his stepfather liked to say, look again in the obvious place. He spent a morning checking police and hospital records for unidentified bodies. He respected the assignment but he was a realist. If Jesus didn’t die on the cross he might have died since, and the alleged resurrection hadn’t put a stop to violent assaults in Jerusalem, nor vagrants dying alone. The worst of life continued, here and now as everywhere and always, and the official records contained a separate category for unclaimed corpses.
Some of the dead bodies, not many, had mutilated fingers where prints had been removed by sanding or slicing. Gang crimes, scores settled and souls lost. Not one of the unclaimed corpses had extremity damage compatible with crucifixion. And even if a likely candidate did emerge, Gallio didn’t have a DNA profile to confirm the match with Jesus.
The burial clothes, those left behind at the tomb, had long gone missing. There were no body fluids to sequence or physical remains to analyze. The cross, pretty much any remnant of it, would provide blood spots for a DNA sample, but no one could locate the cross. Valeria had tracked down fragments across the ancient world, but the provenance was never certain. And in any case, so many hands had touched these suspect relics that the DNA was unusable. The contemporary evidence was lost.
Acts of the Assassins Page 6