‘No room left at the UN clinics, but there’s a limit to what I can do without medicines.’
The most extreme cases reach out, desperate to touch the hand that has touched the hand of Jesus. Even at a distance, they believe that Jesus through Jude has the power to heal.
‘I can’t save them, not all of them.’ Jude touches everyone, no exceptions. Every hand that reaches, he holds. ‘The nurses we have are wonderful, but some of our patients die, some don’t. It makes us sad.’
‘I brought antibiotics.’
‘We can use antibiotics.’
Jude has not offered Cassius Gallio his hand. He suggests Gallio distribute some of the sample pills, which is hardly fair, as Gallio is neither a medical professional nor even very caring. He can do this. Gallio holds his breath and picks out those who look the furthest gone, with neck glands so swollen they can barely breathe. He expects some kind of approval or gratitude, but is disappointed.
‘How many boxes like this can you get me?’
The whites of Jude’s eyes, Gallio now sees, are yellow and veined. He notices how Jude licks his dry lips, and how his frail hands tremble when he attends to the sick. Jude’s method of healthcare combines basic hygiene with prayer, but together they’re not enough.
Gallio reminds himself why he’s here. The disciples can be harried into mistakes, like the story they invented about the ascension. Without being immodest, the sudden absurdity of the ascension reflected well on Gallio’s earlier efforts. The ascension of Jesus reeked of panic, as if the pressure were beginning to tell. For forty days Gallio had crowded the disciples, crawling all over them until finally they had to add to their story. It couldn’t be a coincidence that only the closest followers saw Jesus ascend, the men who’d be punished most severely if he or his body were discovered.
The ascension story meant no body, no physical remains to unearth, dead or alive. Investigation over. Or so they hoped.
Cassius Gallio had rattled Jesus, though he hadn’t recognized his victory at the time. The ascension was an interference strategy, designed to confuse and divert resources from the search for a physical body. Unfortunately for Gallio, when he should have been reacting to this new development he was halfway to Odessa on a troopship. Now he finds the ascension a reassuringly ludicrous event, proof that Jesus and/or the disciples can lose their discipline. They will contrive implausible fictions and excuses. This is a weakness to exploit.
‘Can we go somewhere quieter?’ Gallio means away from the smell, from the sick.
Jude leads him out of the ward to sit on the stairs, midway between the top floor and the landing for the empty wards below. From the stairwell they hear the zing of makeshift arrows as they scrape off walls and into doors. Jude rests the box of pharmaceuticals across his knees, and sorts through the various packets and tubes.
‘Feel free,’ Gallio says.
Along with doxycycline Jude turns up eye ointments containing azithromycin for restoring sight to the blind. He reads the advice leaflets for samples of anticonvulsants to use against demons, and the dosage of antidepressants for milder cases of possession. Gallio has brought him divine intervention in easy-to-use blister packs, miracles from the civilized world.
There are no drugs in this or any other box that will bring a patient back to life.
‘You’ve delivered almost exactly what we prayed for. Thank you.’
‘We need to discuss terms.’
Jude looks blank. Perhaps he doesn’t understand how business works, whereas Gallio has arrived with a range of possible deals. He’ll send for more drugs in exchange for information leading to the arrest of Jesus. If Jude wants to do this nicely. If he doesn’t, Gallio can harass him on suspicion of the murder of Judas. Gallio is ready to invoke Interpol, confiscate Jude’s papers, close his beloved hospital, make his life a misery, but sitting beside him on the stairs Gallio doesn’t believe that Jude is the murderer of Judas. Nor is he Jesus in disguise.
Jude places his hand on Cassius Gallio’s hand. At last Jude touches him, flesh to flesh, and looks him squarely in the eye. Gallio wonders what he wants.
‘You’re not a pharmaceutical salesman, are you?’
The stairwell lights clunk out. Beirut power outage. The two men sit in the darkness, holding hands. A not unpleasant experience, Gallio thinks. In fact he finds himself strangely comforted.
‘I can organize a delivery of medicines,’ he says. ‘But you have to tell me about Jesus. Is he still alive?’
‘He is.’ Jude squeezes Gallio’s hand. His palm is dry, waxy. ‘I am the least of the disciples but this much I know. Jesus is alive. Very much so.’
‘Where can I find him?’
‘At the right hand of the father.’
‘He’s not in Nazareth. We checked. Do you have proof, some evidence you could show me?’
‘In my heart I do.’
As his eyesight adjusts, Cassius Gallio thinks he sees Jude smile. He withdraws his hand, and wonders if Jude is mocking him. The stairwell is too dark to be sure.
‘Wherever we spread the message we gain new converts,’ Jude says. ‘Take that as the proof. We tell people the good news that Jesus is alive, and they believe us because it’s true.’
‘Your former associate James is dead. I don’t know if bad news ever gets through to you, but he was publicly beheaded in Jerusalem.’
‘I remember you now.’ Jude leans away, as if in the almost dark he’ll see Gallio better from a distance. ‘You’re coming back to me. You used to dress differently, and you were younger, but you led the original search for the body of Jesus, didn’t you? You used to hang around in the lobby of our hotel.’
‘Are you in touch with the others?’
‘I pray for them. I’m confident they also pray for me.’
‘I mean in the real world.’
‘I did hear about James. He was beheaded in Jerusalem in front of a crowd, but was so courageous he never flinched. His executioner was deeply moved, and he converted to Jesus instantly.’
‘That’s what you heard about James?’
‘We have more followers now than ever.’
Cassius Gallio would like to be gentle, as he would with anyone who isn’t all there. He feels for his phone to show Jude some images of Jesus, to confirm the most accurate likeness. Gallio doesn’t have his phone.
‘Jude. I know certain things about you.’
He reminds himself that along with eleven others Jude is implicated in theft, murder, terrorism and a lifetime of religious deception.
‘You’ve used at least three alias names at border controls, including Jude Thaddeus, Judas Thaddaeus and Lebbaeus. You’ve created a bureaucratic mess for Customs that on its own could get you deported. You also have a murky past in Jerusalem as an associate of a convicted criminal.’
‘He was innocent.’
‘They always are.’
‘My turn to ask a question. Are you truly looking for Jesus?’
Jude sounds tetchy, which is good. Gallio wants to harry him, to push him to his breaking point, ascension level.
‘Jesus is dead,’ Gallio says.
‘Jesus is coming back.’
Cassius Gallio sits forward in the dark, elbows on his knees, and does the thing with his fingers. In the dark he can’t get the pads of the little fingers to line up properly, or not as neatly as he’d like. Now he can. He is fully in control.
‘What does that actually mean?’
‘He’s coming back to judge the quick and the dead.’
Gallio’s fingers slip. ‘Where should I go to see this?’
‘He didn’t mention a place.’ The tone of Jude’s voice is difficult to gauge, and Gallio can’t tell if he’s disappointed or evasive. He’s a very practiced liar. ‘Jesus will come down from the clouds, and the world will end.’
In a nearby street an Arab wedding bursts with music then stops as suddenly. A sound-test for the amplifiers.
‘Show some pity for the sick and dyi
ng upstairs,’ Gallio says. ‘Be more precise, and I’ll give you every drug you need. You can save every patient in your care.’
The twitch near Gallio’s eye is back. He lets it hammer, and the nerve doesn’t tire until he pinches the skin between his fingers, squeezes until his face hurts. ‘When is the second coming due to happen? When you last saw Jesus, how much detail did he give you?’
Jude inhales deeply through his nose, extra oxygen pulled into his brain for a big decision. He holds his breath. The drugs will alleviate suffering, and whatever Jesus is planning no one can stop him, not if Jesus is the person Jude believes he is. He exhales.
‘He’ll come back while at least one of us is alive. That’s what he said.’
‘One of who?’
‘His disciples. He made that promise quite clearly.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one he loved.’
Gallio rocks back and whistles through his teeth. Now he has something, a clue, a first sense of how long Jesus plans to stay in hiding. It’s a start, and yet he worries that progress like this is too good to be true. ‘I thought he loved you disciples equally, loved everybody?’
‘He does,’ Jude says, ‘even you, if you give him a chance. Give him a chance to love you. Otherwise I doubt you’re going to find him.’
‘Don’t change the subject. He loves one of you more than the others. Is that right?’
‘If you want to find him, be serious about looking for him.’
Cassius Gallio can’t place Jude in a category. He knows from the files about Jude’s rural upbringing in a family of Galilean farmers, and Gallio respects him for the distance travelled between Nazareth and here. Jude wasn’t born with the same advantages as Gallio, but Gallio is prepared to believe that a former peasant from upcountry Israel should have information worth procuring. What he can’t understand, if god doesn’t exist, is what kind of person believes he’s called by god.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Gallio asks. ‘What do you expect to gain?’
Jude gave up a steady living to tell anyone who’d listen that the last would be first and the first last. He is confident that the meek and the peacemakers will be blessed, along with those who accept they’re spiritually weak. The humble will be rewarded, as will the merciful and the pure of heart.
‘None of your wish list is going to happen, Jude. Believe me. I’ve seen the world, and you’re asking too much.’
‘Jesus will be back within a lifetime. He promised.’
‘Is that a threat?’
Cassius Gallio wants to make a stand, as he had the first time round in Jerusalem by insisting on the human truth that somewhere in the city the disciples had hidden a body. He could kill Jude now, here in the dark, in the stairwell of a quarantined hospital. Except the CCU are not assassins. This enquiry, entrusted to him by Valeria of the Complex Casework Unit, will proceed on a civilized and rational basis. Jude can pass on a warning about this meeting. Let the surviving disciples know that Cassius Gallio the former Speculator is back, and he’s seriously looking for Jesus.
The electricity clunks back on, and they shield their eyes from the light. Jude’s hands tremble, and his face is pale and bloodless. He’s dying, but Gallio will not be distracted. Jesus is alive or Jesus is dead. Only one of these statements can be true.
‘Is Jesus injured? How will I recognize him?’
‘I’ve told you what I know.’
‘The drugs, Jude. I’m thinking you want to save the little children.’
Jude rests his hand on Gallio’s shoulder, then pushes himself back to his feet. He has work to do. ‘You’re talking to the wrong disciple, my friend. Try Thomas. Take your doubts to doubting Thomas. He can tell you the truth.’
IV
Thomas
“STONED AND SPEARED”
The Babylon morgue is on the far side of the Euphrates bridge, next to police headquarters, a long hour’s drive from the airport. Baruch is silent, recovering from his second flight in two days, this time deep into the saddle of land between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Not a good flyer, Baruch. Gallio looks the other way, out of the reinforced window of the commandeered UN Land Cruiser.
Babylon never stops. The streets are crammed with bicycles weaving through cows and goats, the animals grazing at middens of household waste. Everyone in this city has something to do, somewhere to go, and if they could get there faster they would, to the exchange and markets, to the roadside traders with nimble hands who sort through car parts and electrical innards. There are so many people here, so many Babylonians, that Cassius Gallio finds it hard to believe in the sanctity of every life. Millions have come before him and millions will come after.
In his own way Cassius Gallio is a believer, not in divine oversight but in medical investment and the rule of law. The work of civilization is rarely spontaneous, like a miracle, but it is solid and worth pursuing. The disciples with their superstitions threaten the status of civilized progress, because reason and observation insist that death is death. If the CCU let the Jesus mystery slide, along with the myth of his continued existence, they’re committing cultural suicide. Gallio feels he’s providing a genuine service by tracking down the truth about Jesus.
The Babylon police chief was at the airport to meet them, and on this occasion Cassius presented genuine CCU ID, issued to him by Valeria to establish his authority in Babylon. The embossed eagle to the side of his photo is a guarantee that he comes from the arrowhead of human evolution. Not just now but always. He has access to education and information that the citizens of Babylon can barely imagine.
The chief has pitch-dark eyebrows and sad green eyes. He knows the reality of international politics, where every lesser power owes allegiance to the dominant culture. He sighs, and from the front of the car he asks where first. ‘Morgue is closer than the crime scene. As instructed, we’ve sealed his apartment.’
‘Idiots,’ Baruch says. In the back seat of the Land Cruiser he fails to click his seat belt, tries again, fails again, lets the belt recoil across his shoulder. ‘They’ve already moved him.’
Up front the chief shrugs, an elegant and foreign gesture. He doesn’t expect the advanced West to understand every nuance of the Old World. ‘We wanted to avoid hysteria. Thomas has built up quite a following.’
‘Morgue,’ Gallio decides. His instinct with the Jesus followers is to check they’re really dead. ‘Let’s see what’s left of the body.’
The morgue is underground to hide from temperatures that in summer can reach 40 degrees Celsius. The broad lift is reserved for the dead (going down), but for the living the attendants burn incense in the spiral iron stairwell. Not quite enough of it. In the main underground autopsy room the overhead fan is stuck on slow, and stains watermark the ceiling above the walk-in fridges. In the centre of the room, a corpse on a steel trolley is covered in a green sheet. The sheet is too narrow and a male arm, naked, pale, sparsely haired, sticks out to the side.
Cassius Gallio approaches the trolley, while Baruch hangs back. They can’t be sure, not yet, that this isn’t a case of mistaken identity. It seems a grim coincidence for a second disciple to die so soon after James, and as at the Veronica souvenir shop Gallio senses other forces taking an interest. He hopes this isn’t so.
He stares at the thin exposed fingers. Thomas is the disciple who doubted the resurrection, which meant he helped convince the others it was true. According to Jude, Thomas put one or all of these fingers into the various wounds suffered by Jesus, who was crucified and came back from the dead.
Jude was probably lying.
Nevertheless, Gallio uses his imagination. Thomas would most likely have used his index finger, one of the fingers Gallio can see, and he supposedly placed it inside a five-day-old wound. Thomas would have had to go deep, to be sure of the severity of the injury, as far as the second knuckle at least, curving his finger past bones, inside the flesh. Waggle it from side to side, to make absolutely certain. Dead, alive
. Dead and alive.
‘I could have made the bastard talk.’ With his feet back on solid ground, the memory of the aeroplane fading, Baruch is livening up. Poor Thomas, who for Baruch has let himself down by getting himself killed. Careless of him. Instead of lying here in the morgue he should have waited for Baruch, and been tortured before he died.
‘You’re seconded to CCU,’ Gallio reminds him. ‘We can’t be having any torture.’
‘Too real for you?’
‘Something like that.’
The murder of Thomas isn’t ideal. This is the disciple who persuaded the others that Jesus had come back to life. He was heavily complicit in the original lie. Peter and John were first into the tomb, but Thomas authenticated the wounds. Three or four disciples in this story were dominant, and they could have been used by Jesus to bully the others into believing, Thomas acting as a kind of insurance for anyone outside the loop who had doubts: Jesus died, Thomas assured them, and Jesus returned from the dead. For those disciples who weren’t in on the switch, and maybe not all of them were trusted, no one but Jesus had been crucified. No one but Jesus came back.
If Thomas was telling the truth, that is. Cassius Gallio will never know for sure, not now, not from the man himself. He takes the top seam of the sheet, stamped Babylon City Morgue, between his finger and thumb. Gallio is gentle with it, as if the green polyester were itself a living thing. He peels back the sheet.
It is him. It is Thomas. Gallio has no doubt about it, even though he looks like Jesus.
They could have arrived earlier, and Cassius Gallio could have saved the life of doubting Thomas, only Baruch had won the battle of the Jude debrief.
Back in Jerusalem their case room had been cleared of mops and buckets. An electrician was shooed away so they could talk, sitting on folding chairs round a trestle table. Pictures of Jesus had been pinned to the walls. Gallio squinted: images of Jesus, of disciples, hard at a glance to tell one from the other. Between two long windows a map of the ancient world was dotted with plastic pins for each confirmed sighting: eight so far.
Acts of the Assassins Page 9