The Pope's Assassin

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  "What will the procedure be?" she wanted to know.

  "Are you feeling all right?" Jean-Paul asked worriedly.

  "Yes. Everything's okay. A little weak, maybe," she excused her self. She didn't want to admit that she was nervous, even if it was obvious.

  "You can eat on board. Don't be nervous, Sarah," Garvis instructed.

  The limo followed an unidentified vehicle, a kind of low tractor with a fork in front. Several identical ones were busily working the runway. Their function was to move the planes from the gate to the taxiway, ready to follow them to the runway, since planes can only move forward on their own.

  They stopped at a kind of crosswalk, though nothing Sarah could see identified it as such. Across the way she noticed a fleet of four private planes. One of them would carry her to her destination, and then . . . who knew? She felt as if she might not survive.

  "Aren't you going with us, Inspector Garvis?" she asked, to hide her discomfort.

  "No, Sarah. Relax. You're in good hands. Inspector Gavache's team is first-class. Too many people just get in the way."

  She had no more questions. In this case they would know the inter national protocols better than she.

  Leaving behind the crosswalk, the limo drove a few hundred feet to a Cessna that awaited them. Garvis was the first to open the door and let Sarah and Jean-Paul out. The noise of the engines was deafening.

  "All ready?" he shouted at a worker in a fluorescent jacket and ear protectors.

  "Everything's ready, sir," he answered respectfully, loud enough to be heard, and gave a thumbs-up.

  Then Garvis shook hands with a man in suit. "Garvis, Metropoli tan Police," he introduced himself. "Are you the one I have to thank for the plane?"

  "Not me, but the American people," the other answered, maintain ing his grip in a firm, courteous way. "David Barry, FBI," he lied.

  "Sarah, once again, thanks for all you're doing," Garvis said to the journalist. "And don't worry. They'll defend you with their lives if necessary."

  Sarah got most of what was screamed at her. The noise was immense. A plane started to take off on a runway next to them, lifting off with a roar that filled the surroundings. Sarah acknowledged Garvis with a nod, but Garvis kissed the back of her hand. A gentleman. Then a handshake for Jean-Paul.

  "Bon voyage."

  "Merci."

  Sarah gripped the folder securely and followed Jean-Paul to the steps of the plane.

  "Oh, and, Sarah?" Garvis shouted seconds before another plane took off nearby.

  Sarah looked at him from the door.

  "Greet him for me," Garvis asked.

  "Who?" Sarah asked.

  "You know who," Garvis said, getting in the front door of the limo, smiling slightly, leaving behind the confused noise and vehicles.

  Jean-Paul disappeared inside the plane when his phone began to ring. The American was the last to enter.

  A pretty flight attendant and steward with everything in its proper place greeted the passengers.

  Jean-Paul exchanged some words in French, of which Sarah barely understood half, not enough to connect with the conversation.

  "It was Inspector Gavache. He's on his way to the airport, but he has to take a short detour. We'll have to wait a few minutes."

  "That's all right. We have time," Barry said.

  Sarah didn't care. She wasn't in charge of anything. Her purpose was only one, to hand over the documents and hope for the best. How idiotic to play the role of Saint Sarah.

  Jean-Paul led her to her seat. The backs were very comfortable, but Sarah was already familiar with the perks that money, public or pri vate, can buy.

  "Hello," an older man greeted her, who Sarah thought must be a French agent, seated with a half-open newspaper on his lap. "You must be Sarah Monteiro," he said, taking her hand and kissing it. "Nice to meet you." He snatched the folder with the parchments out of her hand without even asking. "Let me take this weight off your hands."

  If circumstances had been different she might have enjoyed this gallantry, but unfortunately they weren't.

  "And you are?" Sarah asked suspiciously.

  "Jacopo Sebastiani," he said, lowering his head humbly. "At your service."

  54

  Disorder, disquiet, disillusion, affliction. This was the state in which Gavache had left Ben Isaac in his mansion in one of the richest neighborhoods of London after Ben Isaac had revealed a com pletely different story of the life of Jesus Christ. Even though Gavache was not a believer, the account had left him troubled. Something of the disquiet and disillusion had followed him from the house and stayed with him in the police car assigned for his use.

  Ben Isaac had begun the story without hurry and confusion, except the two interruptions when Gavache received phone calls.

  According to the Gospel of Jesus, which Ben Isaac uttered from memory with a tremor in his voice, Yeshua was born a year before the death of Herod the Great, during the Jewish month of Tishri in the year 3755 on the first day of Sukkot in Bethanya, a small village a mile and a half to the east of Jerusalem, at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

  "Do you think I have any idea what you're talking about?" Gavache interrupted.

  A discouraged Ben Isaac frowned. "September 14, 5 B.C. A Satur day. The first day of the Feast of Tabernacles."

  What the fuck. Gavache didn't need precise dates. He forced himself to keep his mouth shut and not show his skepticism.

  Jesus was prepared from an early age to assume an important role. He was a descendant of Abraham, David, and Solomon, who had ordered the building of the Temple. He was expected to restore the glo rious time before the exile, the glory of Israel. But the Jerusalem that Jesus knew was not the Jerusalem of the Old Testament. That city had fallen under the yoke of Babylonia, which razed the city and destroyed the Jewish Temple. The Ark of the Covenant had been lost forever in the sixth century B.C. The Jerusalem of Jesus's time was reconstructed from scratch by the Jewish rulers of the Hasmonean dynasty in the second century B.C., and the Temple was reconstructed by Herod the Great a year before Jesus's birth.

  Herod wanted Him dead, not because he was a lunatic, but because Jesus was a noble Jew who had been proscribed with all His family. Herod had to eliminate any possible challenge to his throne.

  "For the Jews the word Messiah didn't mean the chosen one or the one sent by God. Messiah simply referred to the heir from the house of David. Joseph was also an heir, and Jacob before him," Ben Isaac continued.

  "But why Jesus? Did He know he was an heir to the throne?" Gavache didn't understand.

  It wasn't difficult to find the answer in the Bible. The accounts place the family of Jesus in Bethlehem, later in Egypt, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Caesarea, Cafarnaum, Jericho, Betabara, Enom, Betsaida, throughout the Jordon valley and along the Sea of Galilee, among many other places. Jesus's family, a royal family, was in permanent flight. In one place His father was a carpenter, in another a stonemason, an artisan— always manual crafts, which those sent by Herod never paid attention to. Joseph never stayed in one place too long. Of course, this informa tion was not explicitly mentioned in Holy Scripture, since the authors of the gospels wanted to emphasize the importance of the virgin birth, of conception without sin. From the beginning the intention was to emphasize Jesus as the Son of Man, the Messiah, a man greater than all other men who could perform miracles as if He were the Son of God Himself. Everything else was history.

  "In the middle of the night, without warning, Father awakened us. It was time to leave again," Ben Isaac quoted.

  "Is that in the Bible?" Gavache asked.

  Ben Isaac shook his head no. It wasn't necessary to cite the source of the quotation. For Gavache it was a completely different picture of Jesus from what he knew.

  The life of Jesus bounced back and forth until his adult years. He became a renowned and respected rabbi because of His humility and wisdom until . . . John the Baptist. Gavache frowned and redoubled his attention at this point in the ac
count.

  John the Baptist was Jewish, the son of the priest Zacarias and Eliz abeth. He was born on the outskirts of Jerusalem in Ein Kerem, six months before Jesus, and began his Nazarite education at the age of fourteen in Ein Gedi.

  "Nazarite education?" Gavache asked.

  "Yes, the consecration of someone to God. It involved some physi cal sacrifices, never cutting one's hair, never drinking wine, never touching a corpse, never eating meat. One had to maintain a purifi ed state against all temptations," Ben Isaac explained, with the patience of Job. "Jesus was also a Nazarite."

  "Jesus the Nazarite, as opposed to Jesus from Nazareth, the Naza rene," Gavache deduced, absorbed in the story. "A Messiah consecrated to God?"

  "See how it all connects," Ben Isaac tossed out.

  Jesus was fascinated by John the Baptist for his abnegation, but even more for his personality. He saw a wandering preacher who advo cated baptism instead of fanatical extremism. Like all the Jews of his time, John had a preoccupation with purification by water. Even today archaeologists are constantly discovering the basins for ritual baths, the Jewish miqwa'ot. Practically every Jewish house had one, and any traveling Jew that entered one had to be purified. They had to dip themselves in a pool, which was filled with spring water, but, before going in, they had to wash their hands and feet, especially the lower limbs, which were the source of impurity. After dipping, their feet and head were rubbed with purifying oil. The woman who anointed Jesus in the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany two days before the Cruci fixion, according to the canonical gospels, was just performing a Jew ish ritual with ancient roots.

  "Okay, they took a lot of baths. What does that have to do with anything?" Gavache asked.

  "The baths were Jewish rituals. John the Baptist performed the same ritual in the Jordan River, but for gentiles," Ben Isaac explained.

  "And baptized Jesus," Gavache added.

  "But this didn't have the enormous outcry that the apostles and His followers claimed it did. The majority didn't understand what had happened. Not even John understood."

  Jesus was a flexible, open, intelligent man, a rabbi, a master, a healer of souls, a preacher who greatly admired John's methods. John the Baptist was an enormous influence. In reality John marked a break with the past. After him, Jesus intensified his rituals and preaching, presenting variations that were not pleasing to conservative believers. Jesus created a new branch of Judaism, a kind of sect. When John was beheaded by Herod Antipas, Jesus was his natural successor.

  "John never performed a miracle," Ben Isaac said, and then sighed deeply, as if in sorrow. "Neither did Jesus. The Jesus who gave sight to the blind and cured cripples exists only in the Bible."

  "How boring. And where does Bethlehem and Nazareth fi t into all this?" Gavache asked, disillusioned.

  "The authors of the New Testament had to emphasize that Jesus was the Savior, the Anointed One, the Son of God, Emanuel, and that there was no doubt about this. The prophets of the Old Testament had pointed the way and described the steps to follow. He would be born in Bethlehem, flee to Egypt, return, and be called the Nazarene. But, as you noted, they confused 'Nazarene'with 'Nazarite.'" Ben Isaac smiled slightly. "The only time that He stepped foot in Nazareth, as an adult, he was poorly received. People wanted to kill him. Do you think that would have been possible if he had belonged to one of the good fami lies of the region?"

  "What a confusing story." Gavache was speaking in general, not referring specifically to Ben Isaac's account, which made sense. "Why did Pontius Pilate wash his hands of all this and order the Jews to decide?"

  "That's more nonsense," Ben Isaac replied. "Do you know who the dominant force in the so-called civilized world was from 27 B.C. through the next four hundred years?"

  "I assume you're referring to the Romans."

  "You assume correctly. Do you know what happened during this time?"

  Gavache shrugged. He was an expert on life, not history.

  "Roman expansion, which lasted for several centuries, and in the case of the Eastern Roman Empire, more than a millennium." Ben Isaac counted off on his fi ngers. "The birth and death of Jesus and of Paul of Tarsus, the author of the Epistles. During this time the canoni cal and apocryphal gospels were written, and a new religion was born, Christianity."

  "In other words?"

  "In other words, everything happened under Roman infl uence. There are no originals of the sacred texts, only transcriptions of unknown authorship and motivation. Christianity is a patchwork quilt, based on historical misrepresentations. Why do you think the Vatican is always so attentive to archaeological discoveries? Always so quick to refute or control any new fact unearthed? Because they're living with a time bomb. They know that everything they have established is based on a lie. The New Testament is a purely political document, created to control the people. I think it also aimed to control the Jews, only they didn't succeed."

  "And why do you think they didn't succeed?" Gavache asked.

  "Because they knew the truth." Ben Isaac got up now and paced the room. The subject annoyed him. "Pontius Pilate wasn't the good, cour teous man the Bible portrays, nor was he intelligent. He was a bloody man with wicked instincts, a perverse schemer. He never washed his hands or let the Jews decide Jesus's fate. Washing the hands was a Jew ish ritual of purification, not Roman, the netilat yadaim. Barabbas, whom the Jews chose to free in Jesus's place, according to the New Tes tament, was a Zealot, from a violent, fanatical sect of Judaism, different from the Nazarites, though they shared some methods. Barabbas had killed Roman soldiers, a serious crime; today he would be considered a terrorist. The Zealots led innumerable rebellions, always put down by the Romans, and in their final hour committed suicide en masse— men, women, and children. Pilate would never have freed a killer of Romans. It's not only improbable but impossible."

  "That doesn't necessarily mean he didn't wash his hands of it," Gavache insisted.

  "How does the Bible say that Jesus died?" Ben Isaac asked.

  "Crucifi ed."

  "Exactly," Ben Isaac answered, as if expressing an obvious truth that Gavache didn't get. "If you had doubts, the Crucifixion was proof that Pilate never washed his hands. He was the one who condemned Him, and not others."

  Gavache was confused, and Ben Isaac realized it.

  "Crucifixion was always a Roman sentence, not Jewish," he explained. "If he'd been condemned by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council, the punishment would have been death by stoning."

  "A devil of a choice," Gavache said ironically.

  "But He wasn't sentenced to the Jewish punishment, was He?" Ben Isaac ignored Gavache's comment. "Jewish participation in the death of Christ was greatly exaggerated."

  "You mean they had nothing to do with His death," Gavache said.

  "Not only did they have nothing to do with it, they tried to help Him."

  When the Roman soldiers and the Temple Police arrested Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, they didn't bring him before Pilate. The first stop occurred during the night at the house of Caiaphas, the high priest of the Sanhedrin, in front of the Praeto rium, the governor's palace. It wasn't at the Temple or the place where the Sanhedrin met, which indicates an informal meeting, not an audi ence. Also, the Sanhedrin never met at night. One of its members was Joseph of Arimathaea, who aided Jesus along the route of the cross and offered his tomb to receive His body.

  "It was the beginning of Passover, the celebration of the freeing of the Israelites from Egypt, and the Sanhedrin never condemned anyone to death during this period. It was prohibited," Ben Isaac continued. "There are many indications in the Bible that suggest that the Jews never at any time mistreated Jesus."

  The prophet said that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, and the crowd would hail him as the Son of David. Jesus did that in the final days of His life, but the event was not as grand as Holy Scripture describes. The Romans reinforced all the gates of the city during Passover. If the eve
nt had had all the signifi cance the Bible gives it, Jesus would never have entered the city without being arrested. It was a capital crime for a nobleman to proclaim himself king of the Jews. Another story has Jesus expelling the money changers and sellers of doves from the Temple. It was obviously an insignifi cant event, exaggerated by the apostles and the writers of the gospels. Any major altercation within the Temple would have called the attention of the Temple Police, and there's no reference to this having taken place. Jesus couldn't have created a great scandal without being expelled from the Temple and the city itself by the authorities.

  "Or killed?" Gavache suggested.