Acts of the Assassins

by Richard Beard

  ‘But Baruch would know if that were true,’ Gallio says, emboldened by the serenity of Bartholomew and his deep, easy breathing. ‘You’d know if Jerusalem was running Paul, wouldn’t you Baruch? Senior man like you?’

  Cassius Gallio is not alone in having suffered for Jesus. Baruch had once been the top Israeli fixer in Jerusalem. Back in the day, whenever the priests had a Jesus problem, Baruch was the man to solve it—the son of the widow of Nain, Lazarus after he was brought back to life. Following the insolence of the crucifixion weekend, his superiors lost confidence in his powers.

  ‘Maybe I wouldn’t know.’ It hurts Baruch to say it. ‘Not these days. They could run Paul without keeping me in the loop. I have to accept that.’

  ‘Not as vital to the cause as you thought you were.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Let’s stick to the information we have,’ Claudia says. ‘Thomas and Philip were targeted, we can agree on that, and these hits are professional. The incident sites are clean, and the killers know what they’re doing. That doesn’t mean Paul is involved.’

  ‘Paul knows what he’s doing. Remember Stephen.’

  ‘Remember Judas,’ Gallio says.

  No suicide note, when Jesus and his disciples had an obvious motive for killing the man who’d betrayed them, but for Baruch the disciples are short of practical ability. They can talk and they’re kind; none of them are killers. Cassius Gallio isn’t so sure. He remembers Judas hanged, alone on his blood-money property, swinging from the neck for hours in the morning sun. Judas was a lesson, a vengeance killing. His death was public and violent, a classic gangland memorandum: Jesus and the disciples sweep clean. Jesus was human and he wanted revenge on Judas, as would Cassius Gallio, if Judas ever happened to him.

  The murder of Philip fell into a similar category. An inverted hanging had the same vengeful showiness, the theatre.

  ‘In Babylon, Thomas was stoned and he didn’t run,’ Gallio says. ‘Philip had a rope pulled through his thighs but not a single bruise on his face. Look at Bartholomew. He’s had a disturbing experience, but I can’t see any evidence he fought back. There’s not a scratch on him.’

  They dutifully examine Bartholomew’s unblemished face and hands, pale as alabaster. With a single finger Claudia moves a strand of hair away from Bartholomew’s eye. His brow is unmarked, and in his sleep unlined.

  Gallio says: ‘It looks like they knew the killer.’

  ‘They know Jesus,’ Claudia says.

  ‘They know Paul!’ Baruch shouts. He calms down, chastened by the room’s hygienic echo. ‘Jesus isn’t a killer. He doesn’t have the record.’

  ‘He escaped his own execution,’ Gallio says. He brushes a fly from his face. It veers upward and is zapped with a single buzz. ‘A man who dies and doesn’t die could easily set up a stoning and a hanging. I’d say it’s within his capabilities to wipe a crime scene.’

  ‘Paul used to kill for a living, and he’s completely alive and traceable. Everything fits to incriminate Paul. For fuck’s sake, let’s find Paul and bring him in.’

  Gallio is alarmed by the tension in Baruch, who can’t see beyond Paul the defector. His fingers twitch, words beginning to fail him, but their disagreement is cut short by Claudia’s phone. She answers deadpan, ‘yes’ and ‘go on.’ She turns to the window and listens, ends the call with a nod. ‘Thank you, I understand.’

  She looks at the screen, disconnects, composes herself. She turns round and shares the news.

  ‘It’s Jude in Beirut,’ she says. ‘Shot by arrows. He’s dead.’

  VI

  James

  “BLUDGEONED TO DEATH”

  Cassius Gallio finds the red marker pen, and at the incident board he considers the latest magnified image of Jude. The print dates from before Jude fell ill. He is younger, unyielding, holding some kind of framed picture. Gallio strikes a red cross through his face.

  The CCU operations room has double-checked the encryption codes, and can now confirm the reports from Beirut have more than a single source. The news remains consistent: Missionary dead in Beirut. Israeli national, more than one alias. Stock of international prescription drugs, no receipts.

  Verifiable data about how exactly Jude was killed is less forthcoming, and so far no Lebanese militia group has claimed responsibility. Jude was shot with an arrow or arrows, a setback to supporters of Beirut’s gun-free zones. The death is currently being treated as an accident.

  Gallio tosses the permanent marker onto a desk and leaves the incident room, walks up two flights of stairs to the Prefect’s office. He hasn’t been here since Pilate’s day, and after the mishandling of the Jesus episode the status of Prefect has declined to the point where Valeria can commandeer these rooms at will. These days no one knows the Prefect’s name, or needs to know it. CCU runs the show.

  Valeria lets him in, and they sit in high-backed chairs in a reception room with one wall open over the city roofs of Jerusalem. ‘Thanks for coming up,’ Valeria says. ‘I wanted to see you alone, without Baruch, and up here we’ll get some privacy.’

  ‘Baruch and I are supposed to be partners.’

  ‘We worry about him. Gives off a definite tension. Is he all right?’

  ‘He doesn’t like flying.’

  ‘What about you? You seem to be bearing up.’

  At the balustrade Gallio leans on his elbows and looks at roof tiles and satellite dishes. Is he bearing up? He thinks he is. A decent amount of time has passed since he last had to crush a rogue nerve in his face, and his search for Jesus feels successfully purged of emotion. He is thinking again like a Speculator, following procedures, pursuing an achievable objective. He feels back on track, a somebody. Down below, in the streets of Jerusalem, the people are so indistinct they could be historical figures.

  Valeria joins him at the balustrade. ‘I’m not convinced Baruch can see the bigger picture. He takes everything so personally, and doesn’t always appreciate that we have everyone’s best interests at heart. That’s not surprising, of course. We have so much power in the world that he loves to chip away at us, as if everything is our fault.’ She peeks over the balustrade. ‘Without our civilizing influence they’d still be sacrificing children.’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  Valeria smells the warm air, looks at the figures scurrying and stopping below. ‘Who do you think killed Jude?’

  Gallio has been asking himself the same question, and keeps coming back to the same conclusions.

  ‘Someone who knows what they’re doing,’ he says. ‘They’re good, whoever it is, very good. In Beirut the killers adapted to a weapons ban, after moving unobserved in and out of Babylon. At Pamukkale the killer carried rope and tools through a World Heritage Site and not one terrorist-aware tourist identified suspicious behaviour and called it in. Jesus should be on our suspects list. No one can vanish and reappear as effectively as Jesus.’

  ‘Give me his motive,’ Valeria says.

  ‘He had a motive for killing Judas. As for the others, I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, speculate.’

  ‘OK. This is what I’ve got. After years of doing nothing we reopen the case on Jesus. We start looking for him as if he’s alive, and if anyone knows where he’s hiding it’s the disciples. Thomas dies, Philip dies. Bartholomew is in a coma. Jude dies. Jesus doesn’t want to be found, or not by us.’

  Gallio can do this. He hasn’t forgotten how to speculate. ‘Every time a disciple dies there’s less of a path to the leader, the kingpin, the king of the Jews. The disciples have done everything he asked of them. They’ve cooperated with the switch move, spread the false story about resurrection, grown his following. Now Jesus is telling them something else.’

  ‘Fuck off before you mess up,’ Valeria says. ‘Better dead than betray his whereabouts. Not much of a thank-you. Who else is a suspect?’

  ‘One or more of the disciples.’

  ‘Motive?’

  ‘Internal feud. Probably a power
struggle to decide a new leader. Might be connected to the second coming, and jostling for position before that happens.’

  ‘What is that, exactly, the second coming?’

  ‘If it’s not Jesus emerging from hiding, it could be one of the disciples standing in for him, and picking up where Jesus left off. Another switch play. They’d each be anxious to be number one.’

  ‘Good. Convincing. Anyone else?’

  ‘Jesus and some of the disciples together. Same reason. Judas is proof they’re prepared to take action against anyone who threatens their plans, and maybe Jude in Beirut shouldn’t have told me about the beloved disciple. An arrow to the heart, and he won’t slip up again. Then there’s Paul. He’s easier to classify than the others. He enjoys influence, and five-star hotels. The Jesus movement grows in every city he visits, and in every community that receives his letters. Most converts see him as an equal to the disciples, but the disciples are also his competition. They’re rivals in spreading the message.’

  ‘I thought he wanted to join them?’

  ‘Except they didn’t let him join, did they? Even if he’s not being run by Jerusalem he has a motive. The disciples rejected him. He owes them. If he eliminates them from the story then his version of Jesus wins out.’

  ‘How is his version different?’

  ‘The disciples aren’t so important in it.’

  Valeria sits in one of the chairs, and Gallio turns to face her, the top of the terrace balustrade sharp in the small of his back.

  ‘Come and sit down, Cassius. Baruch isn’t here because there’s information I want only you to have. It’s about Paul. He’s a public figure and he can be useful to us. In fact the CCU encourages Paul. We don’t disapprove of the work he does.’

  Throughout the known world, Rome had always supported client kings. Valeria’s concept of Paul was as a client apostle, because his version of the faith suited the requirements of an advanced nation state. Paul believed in marriage and social stability and paying taxes, solid civilized virtues.

  ‘That’s my idea,’ Gallio stays by the balustrade, wishes Valeria had shared this information before now. ‘In Jerusalem I had that idea with Lazarus, and wanted to recruit him as a client Messiah.’

  ‘It was a good idea. That’s why I’ve reused it. If we empty Paul’s story of the elements that make Jesus dangerous then we’ll disarm their religion, and since your trip to Hierapolis Claudia has made a new discovery. She has a lead on the second coming.’

  Gallio moves from the balustrade to the chair. He sits down, leans forward with his elbows on his knees, fingertips planted together. He senses that at last this is the real reason Valeria called him to the Prefect’s office, alone.

  ‘The second coming is disciple code for the next big event, and for some time I’ve suspected Jesus and the disciples of working up to a major new incident. Claudia has analyzed the documents. We think they’re planning a terrorist attack.’

  Gallio listens to Valeria as she presents the evidence. According to Claudia’s analysis, every Jesus story starts with health care and spreading the wealth but ends in fire and disaster. The Temple is destroyed, or the Antichrist or Satan is destroyed. The way the disciples tell the story something big finishes up in the bin, the world effectively at an end. The disciples use the rhetoric of terrorism to promote violent fantasies of a catastrophe that involves the fall of civilization. Cities will burn, walls come tumbling down, and a deliverer will lead his followers to a final, crushing victory followed by a general resurrection of the righteous. CCU can’t ignore that, not in today’s climate.

  ‘The clues are there in the language they use,’ Valeria says, ‘and we’d be foolish not to pay attention, the way the world is now. I have a bad feeling about an attack on Jerusalem. Jesus spoke openly about taking out the Temple.’

  ‘Or Rome.’ Cassius Gallio will not be out-catastrophized, because his story should be the big story. The ambitious Speculator he once was has survived exile and sleepless nights and shattered nerves. The bigger the story the more significant a figure Cassius Gallio will be. ‘Don’t underestimate the disciples. They’re highly capable people.’

  ‘They are, I think.’

  Valeria had been sorting evidence, assembling the pieces. She had spent the days of Gallio’s absence in Hierapolis full-time speculating, and can now foresee a level of danger that Gallio finds thrilling. His story is the big story. This time round Cassius Gallio will get his chance.

  ‘I’m changing the status of the Jesus search,’ Valeria says. ‘The security code increases from Elevated to High.’

  ‘That’s a terrorist level.’

  ‘It is.’

  One obstinate doubt nags away at Gallio. ‘And the murders?’

  ‘If the disciples are eliminated, every truth and secret they know dies alongside them. Jesus would benefit.’

  ‘I don’t understand. How does that implicate Jesus?’

  ‘He can’t risk his crucifixion being revealed as a fake, not now, when the next phase is imminent. He needs the death and resurrection story to hold together, especially now before the second coming.’

  But there’s more that Gallio needs to know. For Cassius Gallio this story is his story, or he’d have no reason to care. ‘You brought me in to lead a Missing Persons enquiry. That investigation became a murder case and now we’re policing a terrorist alert. Am I still the principal on this?’

  Valeria smiles at him, her first gift since she put her hand on his in the Lebanese restaurant. ‘You are. We’re treating Jesus and the seven survivor disciples as a terrorist threat. An outside chance, admittedly, and a long way from the centre of civilization, but CCU doesn’t gamble with people’s lives.’

  The Complex Casework Unit defines itself through internal security issues, and is always taken seriously for funding because the imagined consequences of doing nothing are extreme and distressing. The CCU speculates, more often than not, on the end of civilization, playing to a reliable terror of decline and fall. The conspiracies and threats identified by the Unit tend to be clever, they have to be, because Rome is not at risk militarily.

  ‘Not such an outside chance,’ Gallio says, enjoying his new importance, ‘or as the section chief you wouldn’t be personally involved.’

  ‘We need to know what the disciples are planning, and how big this second coming thing is. What, when, where and who’s involved. I want to know whether Jesus is alive, controlling every move, or if a smaller group of disciples is acting alone.’

  ‘How much does Baruch know?’

  ‘Baruch is our liaison partner for the Jerusalem security services.’

  Which means not very much, Gallio thinks. Valeria acts like a god in her localized CCU region; she has knowledge, and can intervene, but she chooses to do so selectively.

  ‘I’ll find out what they’re planning,’ Gallio says. ‘And then stop it.’

  ‘That’s the general idea. Nobody gets hurt.’

  In the fully furnished major incident room at the Antonia Fortress Cassius Gallio is in charge, and he relishes the responsibility. He feels he always knew instinctively that the story would end in Jerusalem. The membrane between god and man is thin here, between the living and the dead, madness and sanity.

  He embraces Valeria’s theory about Jesus as a potential terrorist threat, as it supports his reasonable instinct that Jesus is alive. And if Jesus is as powerful as his disciples claim, then the Temple in central Jerusalem is an appropriately spectacular target. He’d once threatened to pull down the city’s landmark building, so for Jesus the Temple is unfinished business. At the same time, a Jesus capable of such miracles should have been able to protect his disciples from violent death. Either way, the second coming will find Jesus out; he’s involved and immensely powerful, or he’s not and he’s a fraud.

  Cassius Gallio develops a strategy, approved by Valeria. He’ll intensify the search for Jesus, which has caused the death of four disciples. Searching for Jesus is the key
to making progress.

  First Gallio ensures that Bartholomew is safe. From Hierapolis with an escort of nurses Bartholomew transfers on a military Hercules to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. The journey by air, above the clouds, fails to wake him from his coma, though in Jerusalem a disciple in a coma needs guarding like a corpse. This time Gallio does not assign the most stupid conscripts.

  Next he chases up forensics about the glass fragments retrieved from Joseph of Arimathea’s bin. The results show the glass comes from two separate vials. The smaller piece shows traces of a saline solution. The lab needs more time for further tests. The larger curved piece of glass once contained a liquid solution of opium and belladonna, traditionally used as an anesthetic.

  Forensics confirm that the glass dates to the correct period, and at last Cassius Gallio has credible evidence of a sabotaged, stage-managed crucifixion. From the picture archive he knows that on the afternoon of the execution, when Jesus or a substitute was nailed to the cross, a sponge was touched to his lips. Soon after this event the man, whoever he was, lost consciousness. Until now the sponge was thought to have been soaked in vinegar, to wake Jesus up, though the sponge is missing so the liquid substance can’t be verified.

  In which case, the sponge could instead have been soaked in a sedative prepared in advance. Sponges are traditional carriers for anesthetic, with the active ingredient released by a touch of water. So the crucified man received pain relief.

  Gallio decides to put every scrap of information into the public domain, to make Jesus sweat. Over the next twenty-four hours he goes through the documents and collates every descriptor of Jesus. Jesus is Jesus, and Gallio assembles the physical images that exist, mostly sculptures and a great many paintings, and also the imprint on a shroud. But according to his closest followers Jesus is simultaneously not Jesus. He is also the door, the light, the way, the bread, the water, the life, the resurrection, the refreshment, the pearl, the treasure, the seed, the abundance, the grain of mustard, the vine, the plough, the grace, the faith and the word.