Acts of the Assassins

by Richard Beard

  Baruch will look up through the trees and groan.

  ‘We should have gone for Thomas before Paul,’ Gallio will say, ‘which I recommended. Then we might have learned something. If Jesus is with us, and if he can be found, we’ll trace him through his disciples. That’s my informed professional opinion.’

  ‘Not through Philip, though. Can’t wind up much more dead than Philip.’

  ‘No, but if they made a switch on the cross we’ll gradually get closer. Stands to reason. One of these disciples isn’t what he seems, and I have the feeling someone wants to stop us from closing in on Jesus.’

  The next section of climbing means it will be easier for Baruch to agree than to argue. First, though, to delay the pain, he’ll find he has more to say. ‘We struck at the shepherd, now someone is rounding up the sheep. But if Jesus is alive we’ll find him, retry him, and kill him again. That’s nobody’s job but ours.’

  As a former killer Baruch will forever insist on his right to be an expert about death. Death has been his life, and he’s confident that he can’t be surprised by any aspect of killing or dying. Jesus is dead, with no resurrection possible, and Jesus will remain dead because some surprises are impossible and all is well with the world. Or Jesus is alive because he never died, which is an utter scandal. Whoever is responsible will be punished, and if that means the disciples then so be it.

  Cassius Gallio will ask Baruch whether he believes in an afterlife. If he asks on the uphill trek to Philip’s martyrium, Baruch will struggle both to walk and answer at the same time.

  ‘Unlikely.’ He has to stop to make his point. ‘If there’s an afterlife I’d never have dared kill anybody. Too many unknown factors involved, including the threat of retribution after the event. A whole world of trouble.’

  ‘Good.’ Cassius Gallio will squint into the sunshine and assess what’s left of the hill. Same as there ever was. ‘One last push. Come on, my friend, not far now.’

  ‘So who’s killing them?’ Baruch makes himself the centre of attention in the incident room because murder is his specialist subject, and everything else is garnish.

  ‘Someone who’s willing and able to travel,’ Claudia says, ‘if the killings are connected.’

  ‘How many people involved?’

  Claudia glances at Valeria, and gets a nod so she carries on while Valeria looks inside a coffee cup: dregs but old and cold. Don’t read too much into it, Gallio thinks. The good stuff is not always in the past.

  ‘Maybe more than one person,’ Claudia says, ‘but not too many, because the killings are clean. With Thomas and now Philip they did a tidy job, leaving nothing behind we can use to construct a forensic link.’

  ‘In Babylon the crime scene was compromised,’ Valeria says. ‘They moved the body before you arrived. In Hierapolis we’ve managed to intervene in time, and they agreed not to cut Philip down, especially as for the moment he’s not putting off the tourists. The delay isn’t ideal. Might have been different if we had had our own people on the ground.’

  ‘Or there may be no pattern at all. That’s also a possibility.’ Claudia is comfortable double-teaming with Valeria, as if they’ve worked together before. ‘Despite comparable levels of violence, Philip and Thomas were murdered in obviously different ways. Serial killers usually fall into habits that betray them, but not here, or not that I can see.’

  ‘So it wasn’t the same killer. That would explain the differences in the method.’

  ‘I’ve dug up some grudges,’ Claudia says, ‘motives. Philip’s killing may be a local quarrel, specific to the Hierapolis region, and again it may not.’

  She projects a PowerPoint slide onto a blank white space on the far wall. Baruch sighs dismissively and pulls out a chair, his body language announcing that everything was better in the old days, before Claudia was born. She reads her list of Hierapolis suspects off the screen, clicking through a roster of potential assailants that the disciples of Jesus risk provoking wherever they stop to preach. Same for Philip as for Thomas—so connected, but also coincidental.

  Along with local priests opposed to atheist upstarts, every ancient city has its share of rationalists, of undertakers, of embittered materialists who insist on tooth-and-claw mortality. In Hierapolis Philip had offended pimps and landowners, businessmen and local moneylenders who wanted no enlightenment beyond the laws of supply. He had truly aggrieved the parents of dead children, enraged by chatter about resurrection.

  ‘Stop talking,’ Baruch says. ‘Yak yak yak. You’re being too clever.’

  Claudia ignores him. ‘And we shouldn’t forget that in both cases the disciples were survived by people on their own side who blamed Satan.’

  Cassius Gallio coughs gently, throat dry from the flying, and finds he enjoys the way Claudia turns her young, pretty face toward him. Attractive, clever, both ways round. He holds up a plastic evidence bag. Inside is a splinter of wood about six inches long.

  ‘I found this in the flat Thomas was renting in Babylon. If we now have access to the labs I’d like it analyzed.’

  ‘From here it looks like a piece of wood,’ Baruch says. ‘Hardwood. The floorboards in Babylon were pine. Indulge me.’

  Claudia glances once more at Valeria. Valeria nods, interested in every lead. Gallio places the baggie on Claudia’s keyboard, where she won’t be able to ignore it, but Claudia hasn’t finished speaking. He studies her lips, her chin, the indent of her waist, her long hips. Cassius Gallio is not a good man. Really, he is not.

  ‘There’s another connection we need to consider,’ she says. ‘The murders of Thomas and Philip took place after the two of you started looking for Jesus.’

  Baruch sees the implication an instant before Gallio, but Baruch had spent his early life constructing alibis, even when he was innocent. ‘Are we suspects for murder?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Claudia has the same hard edge as Valeria. Gallio took this long to notice it. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Of course they’re not,’ Valeria says. ‘They were flying back from Babylon when the news came through about Philip in Hierapolis. The point is not that you’re suspects. It’s that the search for Jesus may be connected to the killings. Maybe you’re right about the switch theory, and you’re closing in. We should keep pushing. Go to Hierapolis. Identify the body and learn what you can.’

  ‘Got anything else for us?’ Baruch is imagining the plane, the brace position, the landing on water—how is that even possible without a miracle? ‘We’re not going to find Jesus. He’s dead.’

  ‘We’ve told you what we know,’ Valeria says. ‘Though there’s one more thing. Philip has his own martyrium, to commemorate his selfless death. That’s where he was killed, so you’ll need to get your head round that.’

  Beyond the crest of the hill the path levels out, and directly ahead on a flat area of ground is Philip’s martyrium. Baruch will be infinitely grateful for the flattening out, and after a breather he and Cassius Gallio will approach the ruined building. The ancient stones are scratched with graffiti: the sign of the cross, the sign of the fish, and in black permanent marker Gaston makes girls come.

  Pilgrims who make the effort tend to linger, setting down their kagouls to sit with a view of the ruin. They will aim to take some quiet time of their own to meditate on the death of Philip the disciple of Jesus. Gallio will recognize the radiant black girls from the Bible Lands coach, in duffel coats and their matching maroon bobble hats. They will sit on plastic bags, taking turns to bite an apple. Even they will look a little sad, because it’s too late now to intervene. Philip is dead. Philip was dead. He will always from now on be dead.

  Gallio will step through a damaged gateway into what was once the centre of the octagonal martyrium, and from the moment Philip was called by Jesus in Galilee this is where he would die. This is where he died. Cassius Gallio will see him clearly—from a crumbling stone arch, just pillars and a span, a man hanging upside down. Philip is naked like an angel, arms extended, mouth open, forever f
alling from heaven. It will seem unlikely that Philip is the disciple Jesus loved. A rope has been forced through the meat of his thighs, behind the bones. On the cracked flagstones beneath his head, sparrows peck at a stain of blood or dried rust. Could be either now that time has passed.

  Violence is Baruch’s territory, his background. He will approach the body, make his experienced assessments.

  ‘Naked,’ he says. ‘Makes sense. Safety measure.’

  The assassin or assassins will have checked for concealed devices, drugs, amulets, looking to remove any protective padding or breathing apparatus that could keep Philip alive and later be misinterpreted as divine intervention.

  ‘Thorough,’ Cassius Gallio will say. ‘Whoever did this wanted to avoid another Jesus, a resurrection. No way Philip’s coming back, not after this. It’s a professional hit.’

  The rope, Phoenician hemp designed for inland boats, will creak as the fibres stretch, as Philip’s inverted body catches the breeze. The complaint of rope is a warning signal, a sign of the times saying that whatever the man-made world has lashed together, either with effort and ingenuity or in haste without care, threatens to break apart.

  For Cassius Gallio, the creaking rope will be a reminder of Judas in a field long ago, the beginning of the end of his career. ‘Still think Paul did this? He has alibis. He was nowhere near the killings of either Thomas or Philip. He’ll have witnesses.’

  ‘He disappeared from Antioch,’ Baruch says. ‘We had no idea where he went, and look at his record. When he killed Stephen he kept his own hands clean, but from that period of his life he knows plenty of capable people, and they can follow instructions. You’ve seen his bodyguard. Cassius, you have to admit Paul has form. He does, doesn’t he?’

  This, Gallio will later think, is the first time since they started working as partners that Baruch has asked for an opinion. Cassius Gallio will look at the hanging naked body of Philip the disciple of Jesus and he will try to establish what this particular death changes. A Galilean eyewitness to the miracles of Jesus is dead, and a V of migrating ducks passes overhead. This year, next year. Sparrows in the ruins hop two-footed in search of packed-lunch crumbs, different sparrows but the same basic patterns, century after century. Nothing will obviously have changed.

  ‘Cut him down, for Christ’s sake.’

  Tourists don’t bring the right kind of knife. The walkers and pilgrims have penknives for their cheese and apples, but nothing with the blade for Phoenician hemp. Baruch will have a knife.

  ‘What did you expect?’ he says. ‘I carry a knife. I’ve always carried a knife.’

  He will pull a Sicarii killing dagger from the sheath inside the back of his belt, but as he approaches Philip he is distracted by a flash of reflected light from a laminated board.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he says. ‘We missed something. Take a look at this.’

  A weathered information board that occupies an angle of the octagon in Philip’s martyrium. The text boxes are for the benefit of unprepared visitors, who may be interested to know that in most legends the disciple Philip was hanged upside down alongside a second disciple, his close friend Bartholomew. Bartholomew, at the decisive moment, was saved.

  ‘So where is this Barthomolew?’ Baruch will resheathe his knife. ‘Philip is dead. Nothing we can do for him now. Let’s pick up the other one.’

  In southwest Turkey only the Divriği hospital has the facilities to accept a foreign national in a critical condition after a brutal assault at Pamukkale.

  ‘I’m sending Claudia to join you,’ Valeria says by telephone. ‘Wait for her. She’ll make sure you ask the right questions, but work together. Try to get some sense out of this Bartholomew.’

  The Divriği, in the hills the other side of Hierapolis, bears no resemblance to Jude’s hospital in Beirut. The springs of Pamukkale have been a place of healing for centuries, and the city of Hierapolis has traditionally welcomed the latest developments in medicine. Bartholomew’s private room has a waxed linoleum floor, and an Insect-O-Cutor fixed to the ceiling. The machine buzzes from time to time, killing indiscriminately, doing its work.

  Cassius Gallio has used the authority of Security Code Yellow to relocate Bartholomew from the public ward. The disciple is unconscious, with IV drips in his arms and a catheter in his bladder, his body a filter for morphine and high-grade dextrose-saline. Gallio invites Baruch and Claudia to join him at the bedside, but Bartholomew won’t be answering questions.

  ‘Lucky bastard,’ Baruch says. ‘I’d have made him talk.’

  Unlike his friend Philip, Bartholomew the disciple of Jesus hasn’t had half-inch Phoenician hemp sewn through the muscles of his thighs. The assassins tied rope around his ankles and hauled him aloft beside Philip, and Bartholomew is suffering an aneurism caused by a surfeit of blood to the brain. He also has lung damage, and skull trauma from when passers-by cut him down but failed to protect his head. Each of these injuries alone could have sent him into a coma.

  ‘Why did the killers treat them differently?’

  ‘Time constraints?’

  Gallio is trying to be realistic. The murder of Philip could have taken longer than expected, with the sewing involved. Bartholomew would have died, in any case, if he hadn’t been unexpectedly rescued. Luck. Too late for Philip, but Bartholomew with luck on his side was saved.

  Though unluckily not soon enough to save him from a coma. The three investigators take turns in the two chairs, and as they consider what to do next they remember hospitals they’ve visited in the past. The injured, the dying, their incomplete emotions as witnesses to the misfortune of other people. Cassius Gallio has a clear picture of his stepdad waving away a nurse to show off the shiny stump of his amputated leg, admiring the elevation he could get and expecting Gallio to admire it too. The legion’s doctors had taken decisive action and Gallio’s stepfather was delighted. Their intervention would give him ten added years of life and this was the reason, he said, this was the reason that anyone of sane mind owed allegiance to the march of progress.

  A trolley crashes in the corridor.

  Claudia sits beside the ECG monitor and flips up the leather cover of her iPad, googles ‘coma.’ Gallio has a side view of her face, her forceful nose, the upper lip tight across strong white teeth. Braces, probably, at just the right stage of teenage development. One day there will be no imperfections.

  ‘What would you have asked him?’ Claudia prepares to write notes, to take the positives from a frustrating situation.

  ‘How about—who tried to kill you?’

  ‘Would be a good place to start,’ Baruch says. One more journey by plane and his reserves of patience will be empty.

  ‘Is Jesus still alive?’ Gallio suggests. He’s interested in the killers only in so far as they can lead him to Jesus.

  ‘Don’t you hate Paul?’ Baruch says. ‘That’s what I’d ask him. What the fuck are we doing here?’

  Claudia closes her iPad. ‘We’re wasting our time.’

  Cassius Gallio wonders who she is. Analysts sit behind their desks, and that’s where they stay, compiling bar charts. Claudia is smarter than that, pretty, about the age Gallio was on his first tour of Jerusalem, and now Valeria has assigned her to Gallio’s case. Claudia had somehow been entrusted to him, or he to her, and Gallio suspects she may be a test sent by Valeria, a revenge across time. He admires her collarbone and feels the full, sad stupidity of unrequited lust.

  Claudia flicks her wedding band with her thumbnail, making her ring finger jump. All the way from Rome for this.

  ‘You’ll be missed at home, I should think.’

  Gallio tries out small talk, a Speculator instinct, never knowing what he’ll find until he finds it. He’s feeling for cracks that may later widen to let a less guarded Claudia out, let Cassius Gallio maneuvre in. ‘Your husband must miss you.’

  He won’t make the same mistake twice, foolish, lovesick, spying on a life he can never have.

  ‘Comes with the job
,’ she says.

  ‘We could torture him,’ Baruch says. ‘Even though he’s unconscious. Why not?’

  Baruch would love to make his trip by air worthwhile. He is angered by obstacles, by Bartholomew in a coma, and for Baruch hesitation is a type of failure. In his experience clarity is achieved with decisive action. Specifically, he wants to torture Bartholomew into giving up secrets, and torture could plausibly wake the dead.

  ‘Or not,’ Gallio says. ‘If he doesn’t wake up, then how can he beg for mercy? You’d kill him.’

  ‘The coma is a problem,’ Claudia agrees, whatever Baruch might think. She has shadows beneath her eyes, and a vertical line in the centre of her forehead that will deepen for the rest of her life.

  ‘What do you think now,’ Gallio asks her, ‘do you believe Philip’s murder was random?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I believe. Either it is or it isn’t. Our job is to find out what’s true.’

  She thinks and talks like a Speculator. If Claudia is a humble analyst, then Cassius Gallio is a Swiss drugs salesman.

  ‘We should keep him with us,’ Gallio decides. ‘Make sure he’s out of danger, at least from the assassins. We’ll put him on a military flight to Jerusalem.’

  Claudia nods, all three of Valeria’s team now assembled at the bedside like family mourners with a recent corpse. Bartholomew is laid out in his hospital gown, a thin-boned Jesus—eyes closed, pale inner arms bared to the strip lights and IV feeds, a smile at the corner of his mouth. A nurse puts her head round the door. Baruch gives her a targeted stare and a two-fingered point. She leaves.

  ‘What about Paul?’ he says. ‘We can’t discount his involvement.’

  ‘Can’t rule him out, you’re right.’ That frown-line again cuts through Claudia’s forehead—so young, and the thinker of such difficult thoughts. ‘Paul used to be an Israeli operative, and years ago the priests sent him to assassinate disciples. He could be a double agent, and Jerusalem continues to run him.’