Gallio opened the meeting by reporting on the intelligence he’d gained from Beirut. Essentially, though without being able to say when or how, Jude was convinced that Jesus was coming back.
‘What does that mean?’ Valeria had her hands flat on the table, a signal everywhere in the world of straightforward honesty.
‘Don’t know,’ Gallio had to admit, ‘but it sounds dramatic. Jude told me Jesus is coming back while at least one of his disciples is alive, so that’s our best idea of the timescale. Also that Thomas is operating out of Babylon. Our next step should be a visit to Thomas, interview him about the switch theory. Thomas has privileged information about the health status of Jesus in the period after the crucifixion.’
‘Any other way he’s special?’
‘He was allowed to doubt the resurrection. Then he confirmed it, so Thomas was picked out to spread the significant lie. True or false, he knows more than some of the others.’
Cassius Gallio was pleased with the progress he’d made, but Baruch had not been idle in Damascus. While Gallio was questioning Jude in Beirut, Baruch had convened meetings of his own in Damascus about Paul. Not all his encounters had been consensual, and occasionally he sucked at the grazed lower knuckles of his scuffed right hand.
According to Baruch, there were features of Paul’s story relevant to this investigation that failed to compute. Many years ago Paul had set off on an Israeli-sponsored mission to infiltrate and assassinate the disciples. On the Damascus road, up in the mountain passes, some unexplained event had interrupted his journey and he arrived in Damascus blind and incapacitated. The Jesus sect knew who he was, after earlier persecutions in Jerusalem. They should have taken advantage and killed their most vicious public oppressor. At the very least they should have fled from him. Instead they stayed and cared for him and made him welcome in the city.
Baruch still couldn’t understand, even after his ruthless day and night in Damascus, how the disciples had turned Paul from oppressor to believer. At first—and Baruch accepted some of the responsibility for this—the Israeli home security forces had refused to believe in Paul’s dramatic conversion. Stand back, Baruch had advised them, wait for the pay-off. He’d assumed that Paul was running his own interference, an ingenious solo mission of his own devising. Paul was a high-flyer capable of coldly orchestrating the fatal stoning of a Christian called Stephen in a public Jerusalem street. He’d have worked out a plan for Damascus.
‘I remember that time like yesterday,’ Baruch said. ‘We sent Paul into Syria with instructions to find and eliminate Peter, who was leading the spread of the lie about the resurrection of Jesus. But Paul, Paul was always ambitious. We could imagine him lining up all twelve disciples, and he’d have thought deeply about how to do it. He’d have worried that by starting with Peter he’d scare the others into hiding, and have to spend the rest of his life finding them one by one.’
Baruch had admired Paul’s talent, his energy, so he wasn’t fooled by the first emergency encryption from the Damascus bureau. Paul ambushed in mountains. In the following days the bureau stopped bothering with encryption. Paul’s plight was more shocking than that, arriving in the city blind, delirious, not the cool and ruthless agent they’d been briefed to expect.
His sight returned first, if not his sense of reality.
‘Claimed to have been struck by lightning,’ Baruch said. ‘Also to have spoken with Jesus. This last time in Damascus I had to remind several people that Paul was a liar, because by then Jesus was dead or in heaven. Either way, he wasn’t on the road through the mountains.’
‘They only had Paul’s word for it,’ Valeria said. ‘He must have been convincing.’
‘Something else I checked out in Damascus. In a full and frank exchange with a witness who was there at the time. He confirmed that when Paul arrived in the city he was in bits.’
The first time Baruch heard Paul’s version of events he’d burst out laughing. Lightning, a speaking appearance by Jesus, the whole bold performance was transparently a wonderfully conceived plan. Paul’s instant enlightenment was a brazen invention, a faked event perfectly targeted at believers in the miracles of Jesus. In his own life Baruch had never experienced revelation, and it seemed reasonable to assume that neither had anyone else, including Saul of Tarsus. Paul had set out to infiltrate the disciple network in Syria, and his first move, in an isolated spot on the Damascus road, was to strike himself down in a storm. He comes out the other side a Jesus believer, changes his name, the full defector’s charade.
Baruch had remained convinced for years that Saul as Paul was faking it. It would be only a matter of time before Paul filed the inside line on every mystery and miracle, trapping the disciples and rolling up the network. But so far, right up until now, there had been no pay-off and no big reveal. Baruch and the Israeli hierarchy were still waiting, and in Damascus Baruch had failed to uncover any telling inconsistencies. Paul might truly have gone over to the other side.
‘This has gone on too long,’ Baruch said. ‘We need to talk to Paul himself, find out what really happened on the Damascus road. If Paul was confronted by Jesus, as he claims, then Jesus must have made some kind of offer he couldn’t refuse. That’s also the most recent sighting, the freshest lead we have. On the road to Damascus Paul was the last person to see Jesus alive. He’s the only member of the cult to have seen Jesus after the ascension, by which time Jesus was supposed to have disappeared. This fact has to be significant. Paul made Jesus break cover, and he deserves our attention.’
‘Paul is unrelated to the immediate investigation,’ Gallio said. He remembered his hours of work on the dossiers, the risks he took in Beirut. ‘We’re looking into the switch theory, a plot the experienced disciples were hatching while Saul was a boy tentmaker in Tarsus. Paul had no personal connection with Jesus. And don’t forget that he’s one of us.’
‘He is,’ Valeria said. ‘He has the full protection of the law.’
‘That’s something else that needs clearing up,’ Baruch said. ‘Once Paul went over to Jesus, why didn’t Rome revoke his citizenship?’
‘He’s one of your lot too,’ Valeria said. ‘A Jew.’
Baruch pulled a finger across his throat. ‘He’s in this up to his neck.’
Gallio had heard enough. As far as he was concerned Paul was a latecomer, a hanger-on who’d missed the main event. ‘My recommendation is that we follow the lead from Jude that points us toward Thomas.’
‘We should lean on Paul.’ Baruch sucked at a knuckle, made some progress on a scab with his teeth. ‘Jude threw us a few scraps, no more than that. We’re not any closer to Jesus after talking to him, so why should Thomas be different?’
‘You didn’t even bring Jude in,’ Valeria said. ‘You can’t think the disciples have every answer or you’d have brought Jude in.’
‘I doubt he’d have lasted the journey. He’s not in the best of health. I got some solid information, more than we’d hoped for.’
‘Paul,’ Baruch said. ‘Paul’s the man.’
‘Thomas.’ Cassius Gallio hated to see his speculations go to waste. From Jude’s suggestion he’d projected a specific and important role for Thomas in the creation of the Jesus legend. They should follow the path as indicated. ‘Thomas. It has to be Thomas. We should pay a visit to Babylon.’
Valeria held up her hands. ‘We can’t go after both, not at the same time.’ She stood up and looked at the map with its scattered pinheads, then more closely at the headshots on the walls.
‘If the switch theory is correct,’ Gallio said, ‘one of those disciples out there is Jesus.’
‘Paul was the last person to see him alive,’ Baruch said. ‘That has to count for something.’
Valeria sat down and clasped her hands together on the tabletop, a sign of decisiveness not yet matched by a decision. ‘We need to make some progress, see if it’s worth allocating staff to the casework. Not everyone takes Jesus seriously, but you two saw him in action and that’s
why we need you involved. You know better than anyone that the weekend of his crucifixion leaves certain questions unresolved. So we have to decide: Thomas or Paul. I’m the boss. My decision.’
Gallio and Baruch spoke over each other but Valeria held up her hands for silence. ‘Look. We’ve been asked, discreetly through diplomatic channels, to move Thomas on from Babylon. He’s upsetting the wrong type of people, and he’s an incident waiting to happen.’
‘Thomas is a peasant a long way from home,’ Baruch said.
Valeria closed her eyes until he stopped. She waited. Opened her eyes on the silence.
‘On the other hand, Paul draws crowds wherever he goes. He gets invited to speak at conventions. Last week Athens, this week Antioch. It’s Paul. That’s my decision. Talk to Paul, but a word of warning. Remember he’s not a disciple. He may be more dangerous than that.’
Valeria and Cassius Gallio sat opposite each other in the Antonia canteen, Gallio toying with a tubbed salad he didn’t really want. Valeria had her green tea, the square tag hanging outside the takeaway cup.
‘Why did you listen to Baruch?’
Gallio had asked Valeria for a quiet word, just the two of them, alone. She agreed, but this time she didn’t propose the American Colony Hotel. ‘You brought me back to lead this investigation, and I gave you sound reasons for going after Thomas.’
‘Don’t take it personally,’ Valeria said. ‘I have to keep Baruch sweet, as if we’re equal partners. Politics.’
Gallio remembered hearing this evasion somewhere before. ‘My call was Thomas. You went with Baruch.’
‘Stop being childish. This isn’t about you. In case you missed it we had a fire in Rome that lasted six days and devastated ten out of fourteen districts. Thousands were killed or made homeless. Jesus may have been involved, and I haven’t sent you to find him on a whim. I hired lexicographers to study transcripts of his speeches, and those of his followers. The word “fire” comes up big and bold in every word map.’
Gallio had seen the printouts, and it was true the Jesus followers were obsessed with fire. The unquenchable fire, the hell of fire, the eternal fire; cast, thrown, fallen into fire; tested and refined and scorched by fire; fire in tongues and pillars and lakes. The fury of fire and revealed by fire. Fire will be coming down.
‘If we discover they’re connected to the fire of Rome,’ Valeria said, ‘they will be punished.’
Cassius Gallio should have been pleased. Valeria had changed her mind about the disciples, and about Jesus. Their talent for deception was at last being taken seriously, and he almost sensed an apology—as he alone had insisted at the time, the disciples weren’t as blunt as they seemed. Gallio felt a momentary nerve spasm in his jaw, but quelled it by biting his cheek. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘Listen. Thomas may be about as useful as Jude, another earnest man in sandals who’s self-righteous about the poor.’
‘There’s no reason all twelve of them should know everything. A subgroup of disciples may have stolen the body, and only a favoured few are in on the details, like where Jesus is hiding. That would be standard procedure in a terrorist cell.’
‘Jude is surviving Beirut, so Thomas can be left to his own devices for a while longer in Babylon. At the very least we eliminate Paul from our enquiries, and if on reflection Paul denies meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus then we make progress. We can ignore an awkward sighting. Look, let’s not fall out over this. I’ve been impressed by your work so far.’
Valeria pulled the teabag from her cup, let it swing like a pendulum, then dropped it into Gallio’s salad. It leaked tea across his lettuce, which they both knew he wasn’t eating. Not now, anyway.
‘I think it’s personal,’ Gallio said, ‘because you once thought we had a future together.’
‘We did. Here we are. I don’t want to revisit that.’
‘A future with a different past.’
‘No such thing.’
‘I told you from the beginning I’d never leave my family.’
‘And I hope you enjoyed your reward. You didn’t go to heaven, and you’re not going to heaven. You went to Moldova, and all points east.’
‘We can’t turn back the clock.’
‘It’s ancient history, forget it. Your problem was you didn’t know how to change your mind. That’s a weakness, Cassius. They called you on it at the tribunal.’
‘No one stood up for me, or believed the disciples were highly trained. Remember the tomb. These people plan in advance, and their following keeps growing, so their long-term strategy must be working. That’s why we need to question Thomas right now.’
‘You lost a corpse, Cassius.’ Valeria zipped her bag and stood up, looked down her nose at him. ‘I expect you and Baruch to work together, which means having a chat with Paul. Cooperate, and you’ll be fine. You two have more in common than you think.’
She could say the words but that didn’t make them true. Gallio didn’t reply. She was wrong and her error didn’t deserve a response, as wrong as that.
‘You don’t believe Jesus is alive, do you?’ he said. ‘You’re pretending.’
‘I’m doing the job that Complex Casework asked me to do.’
Gallio had spent his first viaticum pay cheque on a shipment of medicines for Beirut. Jude could save himself, and his patients shouldn’t have to suffer because their hospital was run by a man who believed in Jesus.
Valeria put the bag over her shoulder, checked her watch. ‘You lost a corpse and you should have left your wife. You lost her anyway. Your judgement is fallible, Cassius. That’s why it’s Paul, not Thomas.’
At the Babylon crime scene Gallio keeps his ID open for his own benefit, to remind himself he knows what he’s doing. The plastic wallet hangs limp in his hand. Thomas was murdered at a construction site, on a concrete slab foundation about ten meters by ten, with two plastic utility pipes raised at one corner.
‘Speared,’ the police chief says, not looking so dapper since the passing of midnight, since the detailed examination of the body in the morgue, since this journey into the Babylon badlands. The dawn is not a sight he usually sees. ‘You’ve been over the body with the coroner. Thomas was stoned first, then finished off with a length of iron foundation rod. Through the heart.’
The sun breaks over a building. Gallio folds away his ID, puts on his sunglasses, and the Polaroid lenses turn blood on concrete into rust. He hunkers down on his heels. Must have picked up some tinnitus from the air travel, or the hum of fridges in the morgue, sound in his ears at a frequency his brain can’t decipher.
‘Time of death?’
‘Hard to say. Three in the morning, maybe four. One of those holes in the night where we’re unlikely to find a witness. He used to work late, hold his meetings late, make his speeches. Not usually this late.’
‘Suspects?’
Gallio is growing tired of the police chief’s eloquent shoulders. They rise, they hold the position, they fall. In foreign lands, especially those with a history, people are born to not care less. ‘Anyone with respect for common sense. Or it could be a political killing. In Babylon we have a fragile economy, and the deputy minister of finance was a conversion risk, or his wife was. A big fan of Thomas, the minister’s wife, when any top-level defection to the cult of Jesus would likely slow the figures for economic growth.’
‘How’s that?’
‘He did insist on social justice.’
‘Which is not right now a priority, here or anywhere else.’
The police chief holds out his hands. Sadly, it is so. Thomas had failed to understand the capitalist priorities of the age. He was a disruptive influence.
‘Stoning suggests a group.’ Baruch is back from exploring the wider area while Gallio is yet to move from where the body came to rest. Hands on his hips, he gazes at the surrounding high-rises. Not Babylonian architecture at its finest.
‘At least two or three decent stone-throwers,’ Baruch says. ‘Other
wise a stoning can take forever.’
The footprints on the slab foundation tell no single story. Too many shoes, in too many directions. Cassius Gallio picks up a stone the size of a bread roll, common enough in modern Babylon. He extends his arm, feels the weight in his hand, lets it go. The stone cracks off the concrete.
‘We bagged some bloodied stones and took them to the station. We don’t expect them to tell us anything. Toward the end someone took pity, and speared him through the heart. Not that Thomas was an innocent.’
‘I need to talk to someone who knew him.’
The deputy finance minister lives in a Babylonian villa with a partial view of one corner of the Hanging Gardens. Inside his walled compound he has an Abyssinian greyhound and caged canaries, the best of everything. The minister is out, but Gallio wants to interview his wife. She is in tears, desolate across a Moroccan sofa in an upstairs sitting room, a crucifix and a forty-two-inch television on opposite walls. She wants nothing more than to talk about Thomas.
‘He was a wonderful man.’ She dries her eyes, but the streaked mascara tells a story.
‘Maybe,’ Gallio says, ‘but he was also running a property scam.’ He won’t try to break this to her gently. ‘In our part of the world Thomas was a major player in a criminal fraud. Did you know that?’
‘He was not.’ She’s a handsome woman who hasn’t been pretty or thin for as long as her husband can remember.
‘Thomas was a serial confidence trickster,’ Baruch says. ‘He was known to the Jerusalem police and wanted for questioning in connection with a fraud involving the faked resurrection of a felon.’
Gallio sighs as if the truth is routinely sad, but, given his criminal profile, Thomas in Babylon had behaved as expected. The wife of the deputy finance minister should not be surprised that Thomas took investments large and small on a development he never intended to build, using grandiose language to mask a misleading dream.
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