Acts of the Assassins

by Richard Beard

  Paul adjusted his spoon, then volubly and coherently he waived his right to silence. He’d need to hear a legally valid charge. He intended to make an official appeal, which he was entitled to do as a citizen like any other. He demanded a secure escort to Rome, where he’d be happy to defend himself in person at the appeal hearing. He’d expect to retain his personal bodyguard because he was innocent until proven guilty.

  ‘Why did you telephone James?’ Gallio asked. He didn’t believe Paul was the assassin, who could kill with a phone call, but he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘We traced the call,’ Claudia said. ‘You made it. James jumped.’

  ‘No one could prove that connection. I’m sad that James died, and I’ll miss him, but his death has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You deny phoning him?’

  ‘I do not. I had an issue I wanted to discuss. A private matter, of a theological nature.’

  ‘So why didn’t you speak?’

  ‘At the last minute I changed my mind. I decided not to share.’

  ‘James jumped from the roof of his building after you put through a call. Have you been blackmailing him?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer. You’re obliged to allow me an appeal in Rome.’

  ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ Baruch studied Paul’s face, and he was right. Paul was enjoying himself. ‘You end up with exactly what you wanted when we met up yesterday. Protection. Look at you. You don’t give a flying fuck about James. You get what you requested in the museum, as if you’d planned this death for your own benefit.’

  Cassius Gallio recognized Baruch’s sense of being used, and it made both of them uneasy. Gallio felt the mysterious hand of Jesus deploying the pieces, devising outcomes that favoured his followers. A death was not a death, any more than this arrest of Paul was a punishment. Jesus had worked out the moves in advance.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ Baruch said. ‘Something here is wrong.’

  Paul laughed. He couldn’t help himself. He beckoned the waiter, but no waiter dared approach, not while Gallio and Baruch were ruining Paul’s breakfast. Paul knew differently, that not everything was as it seemed.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said, ‘there’s hope for you yet. Something is wrong. Everyone senses it, and from this feeling religion begins. There are features of our existence that feel wrong. Jesus offers an explanation.’

  ‘This is a set-up,’ Baruch said.

  His phone rang. A second later so did Cassius Gallio’s. News from the medical centre; Bartholomew was out of his coma.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Baruch said.

  ‘We’ll both go.’

  ‘I’ll drive.’

  No one forgets Judas, and his betrayal of Jesus is proof the disciples can be weak.

  Bartholomew has a weakness for cappuccino. Back from his coma he’s in love with life and surrounded by god’s miracles, including Italian frothed coffee and slot-machine lights at the A46 services near Thorpe.

  Cassius Gallio hopes to turn Bartholomew as he once turned Judas, but even on his second Costa he’s yet to be bought. Gallio leans across the laminated table. ‘You don’t remember me, do you? Many years ago we had a chat in the back of a car. I said that one day I’d help you, and seventy pieces of silver is a lot of money. However you choose to look at it.’

  ‘I’m looking down on it,’ Bartholomew says. ‘What would I do with so much silver?’

  ‘I’ll buy you some catalogues. You don’t need to be short of ideas, not these days.’

  ‘Jesus will provide.’

  Yet Bartholomew declines to explain how Jesus will arrange a dead-drop or other fieldcraft details, on these mysterious future occasions when Jesus will deign to provide. They’re soon back in the taxi, Bartholomew fascinated by the spaces that divide one town from the next. Strip villages, obese children, and marshes where wheat refuses to grow. Rivers. England is a developing region, the kind of backward territory where gibberish can flourish among the uneducated, but sometimes Gallio just looks, and forgets he’s looking for Jesus.

  ‘I sense you’re troubled,’ Bartholomew says. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Gallio compliments him on his sensitivity, and says that to be honest he’s troubled by the latest forensic reports. ‘I doubt you can help.’

  ‘That isn’t what I meant. You’re avoiding the question.’

  And Gallio continues to do so because this is his taxi, his story. He will ask the questions and sift the answers. He will speculate, because that’s why he was put on god’s good earth. ‘We’ve found evidence of high-strength anesthetic stocked in Joseph of Arimathea’s house during the period of the crucifixion.’

  Perhaps Bartholomew can be useful after all. Gallio runs through one of his Jesus survival theories, not the switch but the sedative on the sponge. What does Bartholomew make of that?

  ‘It’s possible.’

  Bartholomew trained as a doctor so he should know. He also wants to be kind, allowing Gallio to speculate, and surprised by Bartholomew’s meek response Gallio sees for the first time how tired he is. As a Speculator he should take advantage.

  ‘In the sense that anything is possible? Or that the sedative made it easier for whoever took Jesus’s place? A minor disciple. Like Simon, for example, crucified in the place of Jesus but mercifully spared the worst of the pain.’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t say whether your theories are true or untrue. They’re not unreasonable.’

  ‘Tell me how Jesus stays hidden.’

  ‘He’s not hidden,’ Bartholomew says. ‘He is everywhere.’

  ‘Yes, but where exactly, right now? Is Jesus here in England? Is he standing in for the disciple who’s been located in Caistor? Tell me and put an end to this. We won’t hurt anyone and you can relax. Seventy-five pieces of silver would set you up, even in this day and age.’

  Cassius Gallio offers himself up as a saviour, and as soon as Bartholomew allows reason to prevail then Gallio will have saved him. But Bartholomew stares out the side window, captivated by the forecourt of a BP garage, the first one he’s seen, another everyday miracle. He wipes a hole in the condensation to let in the green and yellow glow of prices and pumps. For the moment the secret entrusted to the disciples is safe with Bartholomew.

  ‘How well do you know Paul?’

  ‘Not at all. We’ve never met.’

  ‘I arrested him in Jerusalem. We think he’s involved in the death of James.’

  After the BP garage a superstore, a Real Ale pub, a slow length of road following a vintage Morris Traveller. Bartholomew is easily distracted from explaining how a god can appear on earth. ‘Who do you prefer, Peter’s Jesus or Paul’s Jesus? I think I can predict the answer.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘The Jesus according to Peter is a Nazareth carpenter who champions the disadvantaged. Paul thinks Jesus has a direct line to god and can take over the world. Peacefully, as long as everyone believes in him.’

  ‘I don’t prefer either version. Both can be true.’

  ‘Paul’s Jesus is winning.’

  ‘He makes skilful use of the postal service.’

  ‘Paul is not the person you think he is.’

  ‘I try to remember Jesus as he was to me.’

  Gallio tries another angle, flattery. Bartholomew escaped the carnage of Philip’s martyrium. He was spared a terrible death, meaning he might be the chosen one, as described by Jude. Bartholomew could be the disciple Jesus loves. ‘Couldn’t you? That would explain why you’re alive.’

  No disciple with a human heart could fail to warm to this idea, the glory of the disciple beloved above all others.

  ‘I think that’s Peter,’ Bartholomew says. ‘Jesus called him the rock.’

  ‘Do you know where Peter is now?’

  ‘I don’t. I’m sorry.’

  Of course he doesn’t. None of them know a thing. The disciples claim encounters with divine omniscience through Jesus, but can’t keep in touch with each
other.

  ‘Really, I’m the least of all the disciples.’

  They do love to brag, each disciple more humble than the next.

  The traffic congestion eases at a section of dual carriageway, and the taxi eases out past double-trucks carrying hay bales, then makes way for a full-beam fish van hurtling back to Grimsby. Claudia is asleep in the front seat of the taxi, head lolled forward.

  ‘We can give Peter twenty-four-hour global response protection.’

  This is a genuine proposal. If an assassin or team of assassins is targeting the disciples then the CCU has a civilized duty to protect them. At the same time, Valeria could monitor Peter night and day to reduce the chances of a terror attack. Bartholomew, the least of the disciples, closes his eyes.

  Cassius Gallio is doing his best: good cop, carrot, the agreeable side of life. So far he has spared Bartholomew the bad cop and the beatings, but both methods carry more weight in the Antonia. Fewer contemporary distractions, but Valeria has sent him to England. She wants him to get ahead of Baruch and restore a sense of control, because Baruch gone rogue threatens the outcome of their mission.

  ‘You should have fitted him with a tracer.’ Valeria hated not knowing where everyone was, and what they were doing. ‘You had plenty of opportunity in Hierapolis.’

  ‘We’re supposed to be partners.’

  ‘But you fell out. You should have seen it coming.’ For the first time since Gallio came back Valeria was flustered, but she too had her career to consider, and the CCU was obsessed with results. Welcome to Jerusalem, Valeria, welcome to the complex case of Jesus.

  Gallio wonders what damage Baruch can do in England. Unless, and this is not impossible, the disciple identified in Caistor as Simon is Jesus. Jesus has been hiding away on barbarian shores as a minor disciple, biding his time in an obscure and forgotten territory. Simon in Caistor, England, matches these requirements. Gallio urges the taxi onward, because Baruch mustn’t get there first.

  Even with a knife flat-bladed across his forehead Gallio had been optimistic that he was not in a proper fight with Baruch. A proper fight, with Baruch, was to the death, but they seemed to have reached a moment in the Shaare Zedek Medical center where the fighting could reasonably stop. At least, Gallio was hoping they had.

  ‘You don’t want to die, do you, Gallio? You’re frightened of death. I can smell your little man fear.’

  Baruch turned the blade, the cutting edge honed to the idea of slicing off an eyebrow, whole. In fact only Gallio had stopped fighting, and he waited for his life to flash before his eyes. It did not, which was encouraging, though as he’d noticed in other moments of extreme stress, most of them connected to Jesus, time did change shape. Time swelled, slowed, or everything happened at once. Time became unreliable, in the open moments between life and death.

  Baruch’s knife stayed flat against Gallio’s forehead for several seconds, or for several years. He forgets.

  ‘You are pathetic,’ Baruch’s knife-face wavered. ‘You are old and ineffectual.’

  Warm, wet, dripping into Gallio’s eye. The bastard, Gallio thought, he cut me. Gallio put his hand to his face and it came away wet and red, and not even a proper fight because he sensed the worst was over. He pressed his fingers hard against the wound, like a clumsy salute. Baruch had cut him, but he dared go no further because behind Cassius Gallio was Valeria, and behind her the CCU, and the legions, all the way back to Rome.

  The two men had arrived at the medical centre to find Bartholomew sitting up in bed with a bowl of chicken soup. He was pale, but he managed a smile of welcome. Baruch sat down on the end of the bed, eyes greedy like an ancient prophet, sizing Bartholomew up, no suffering too extreme to imagine. Bartholomew steadied his bowl. He had no idea.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Gallio said. Paul’s smug acceptance of his arrest, turning it to his advantage, did not sit well with Baruch. On the journey from the hotel he’d driven like a man possessed, his anger fierce enough to deter every possible accident. Now Gallio wanted to intervene before the anger from the road found a way to settle on Bartholomew. ‘He’s been unconscious since Hierapolis. What can he tell us?’

  ‘He has information about his attackers. Maybe an identification.’

  ‘We arrested Paul,’ Gallio said. ‘You wanted Paul. Leave Bartholomew to me.’

  ‘Why should I? Paul will get his escort, the works. Cushy house arrest in some middle-class district of Rome, and now we can’t touch him. They’re pulling us out of shape, like last time, leaving too many questions unanswered.’

  ‘Baruch, we’re on the same side. We’re partners.’

  Bartholomew sipped at a spoonful of soup, licked his lips, rediscovered entry-level distinctions between alive and dead. Eating was one of them. Baruch stood up and Bartholomew spilled soup on his sheets. Advantages, disadvantages.

  ‘Who was trailing me in Damascus?’

  Gallio took a step back from Baruch’s undivided attention, but at least he was distracted from his prey.

  ‘You were followed?’

  ‘You know I was. And who tipped off Paul in Antioch?’

  ‘Why are you asking me? Ask Bartholomew, he’s more likely to know than I am. But do ask nicely, please.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I plan to do.’

  Bartholomew had moved his bowl to the safety of the bedside table. Baruch sat closer this time, the disciple’s eyes, nose and throat within his reach. ‘Start at Hierapolis,’ he said. ‘This better be good.’

  ‘Nicely.’

  Bartholomew opened his mouth, but at first no words came out. He coughed into his hand and tried again. His voice was weak, feeling a way back into speaking. ‘I remember the beginning of the attack.’ Another cough, more forceful this time. ‘If that’s what you want to know. They were quick. They put a sack on my head. I didn’t see any faces.’

  ‘How many of them?’

  Bartholomew shook his head; the memory simply wasn’t there for him.

  ‘What about voices?’

  ‘One voice, I think. Maybe more. It was difficult to hear, because of the sack.’

  ‘Try to place the voice,’ Gallio said, and compared to Baruch he sounded like a saint. ‘A man or a woman? What language were they speaking?’

  Bartholomew smiled thinly, tired now. ‘At the time,’ he said, ‘I thought that’s how the devil would sound.’

  ‘Like the devil,’ Baruch said. ‘Thank you hugely for your help.’

  For a full half minute of silence, Cassius Gallio considered Satan as a suspect. Satan had been accused twice, in Babylon by the wife of the deputy finance minister and now by Bartholomew. Gallio resisted coincidence as an explanation, but could hardly bring in Satan for questioning. Instead he reasoned their latest suspect away: from inside a kidnapper’s sack voices will sound satanic.

  ‘Another question for you,’ Gallio said. ‘If you feel up to it. Why did James jump from the roof?’

  Bartholomew looked confused. ‘Did he do that? I didn’t know.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Leave him alone, Baruch.’

  ‘Or what?’

  Baruch reached around and pulled out his knife, laid the blade across his thigh.

  ‘He’s doing his best. He’s telling you what he remembers.’

  ‘He’s lying. Disciples lie. That’s their defining characteristic, to lie about what they’ve lived and seen. They’re keeping a secret, and Bartholomew is going to hand it over.’

  ‘The knife isn’t the way.’

  ‘So what is the way? Look at you, with your reasonable questions and your miserable face. I don’t know what the truth is with Paul, but I do know he goaded Jesus into an appearance. He stung the living Jesus by setting up the murder of Stephen on the street in Jerusalem, then Jesus ambushed him on the Damascus road. The two events are connected. Hurting a disciple can incite Jesus to intervene.’

  ‘That may be a correlation, not a cause.’

  ‘So let’s find out. Le
t’s taunt Jesus and see what happens.’

  Baruch picked up his knife and Gallio reached for his arm. Baruch was up and on Gallio with the speed and expertise of a killer. He hissed like a snake. He pressed the blade flat against Gallio’s forehead, and cut him. He cut him above the eyebrow. He drew blood.

  Then he pushed Gallio away, and with him everything Gallio stood for, the CCU, the legions, civilization. With practiced ease the knife found the sheath in the small of his back. ‘I’ll have answers,’ Baruch said. ‘If not here then from one of the others, and without your help.’ He made for the doorway, as if Jerusalem were full of disciples and he was in a hurry to find them, and to damage them. ‘I’ll deal with the disciples my way. You and your procedures are holding us back.’

  Baruch slammed the door on his way out, making the liquids in the IV bags tremble.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Gallio said. He stood there with his fingers clamped to the cut above his eye. Blood found its way through to his knuckles, across the back of his hand as far as his wrist. ‘I won’t let anyone hurt you. I’m one of the good guys.’

  Caistor is on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds, away from nearby towns, away from significant transmitters, and the broadband is patchy at best. The town has under three thousand inhabitants, and the spire of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul is a central feature, though in English market towns every building has history, or will have. The fire station on the hill is closed down or not yet operational. It’s difficult to find anyone to ask, because cold and late the market square is roadblocked by squad cars. Blue lights flash in the darkness, sliding across the slick black numbers on the white car roofs. A helicopter hammers above, searchlight strobing the narrow streets.

  Cassius Gallio spits into the gutter, and his spit freezes on double yellow lines. A hostage situation. Not what he needs right now, but as likely in Caistor as anywhere else, as the big city, as an isolated farmhouse—wherever the human brain decides that action needs to be taken, that destinies can be changed by force.

  In Caistor, hubris requires the presence of emergency police from Hull, who have surrounded a large Georgian house just off the market square. To the side of the driveway are three lock-up garages, the far one subject to a breaking and entering. The two men inside the garage refuse to leave peacefully, hands in the air, as requested by a thirty-watt police loudhailer. The authorities will do the rest. The intruders are foreigners. No one understands a word they say.