On the Third Day

by Piers Paul Read

  Jake turned away. He hated London. He longed to be out of these gutters, filled with human rubbish, and back in Israel, in the desert, with his comrades in arms. How pitiable were those who had never known what it was to fight in the heat, side by side with your friends, for a cause that had been ordained by Yahweh himself. How majestic it was, when they camped under the stars, to know that their lives were not to be lived out as ants in the antheap of a city like London, but as the heroes of Providence, reconquering and rebuilding the land of God’s chosen people.

  He found a telephone and dialled Aron’s number. The girl answered. Aron had left over an hour before. There had been a call from Tel Aviv. That had held him up. And the traffic. Or the Tube. She did not know how he had travelled. Jake told her to tell Aron, if he rang in, to meet him outside the offices of the Soho Newsletter.

  It was now a quarter past twelve. He had to start his surveillance soon, or risk losing the chance of finishing the job in the lunch hour. He walked up Dean Street, past a nightclub advertising non-stop striptease by big-busted girls. He shuddered. How vile, this wantonness of the Philistines. Never, never, would Jerusalem become like London. Never would a new Isaiah be able to say: ‘What a harlot she has become, the faithful city …’

  He came to the building which housed the office of the Soho Newsletter and walked straight past to the corner. He crossed the street and walked back down the other side. There was a small sandwich-bar, with three or four stools up against the counter. He could sit there and watch, but how would he know who to watch for? He would have to go to the office and try to find out. He crossed the street again and went straight into the old brick building, then up the stairway, with its bright green plastic banisters, to the first floor.

  He did this with all the confidence of someone who worked there. Only at the door to the office of the Soho Newsletter did he hesitate for a moment, not because he was afraid, but because he had entered on the spur of the moment and had made no plan of what to do. He knew that Henry was the managing director, and that he was Andrew’s brother; he also knew that he was unlike Andrew in almost every way – an atheist, not a Catholic; a roué, not a prig.

  He pushed open the door and found himself in a small foyer. He looked around at the wall. Perhaps there would be a photograph of the board of directors. There was none. There were framed prints; modern, tubular chairs; a table, with magazines on it; and a desk behind which a sharp-nosed girl sat answering the telephone and putting through calls.

  She looked up as if to ask what Jake wanted, but as she did so the telephone burbled. She picked it up – her eyebrows still arched in the interrogatory look she had directed at Jake.

  ‘Soho Newsletter,’ she said in the sing-song voice of the trained receptionist. ‘Mr Nash? One moment, please.’ She pushed a button on the board in front of her, and turned back to Jake. ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘I was wondering …’ Jake began.

  She was not listening. The light was still flashing on her console. She smiled up at Jake. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ She picked up the telephone again. ‘Sandy? Is Mr Nash in his office? Oh, I see. He can take it here, then. It’s that young chap – Alistair something or other. Will you take it? Good.’

  She pushed another button; another light flashed for a moment, then stopped.

  She turned back to Jake.

  ‘I was wondering …’ he began again.

  Again she was distracted. Two men, both in suits, one blue, the other grey, came out into the foyer from the passage behind the desk. ‘There was a call for you,’ the girl said. ‘I put it through to Sandy.’

  ‘Was it Alistair?’ asked the man in the grey suit.

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘About time,’ said the man in the blue suit.

  ‘Sandy can deal with him,’ said the man in the grey suit.

  They went out.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said the girl to Jake.

  ‘I wanted to see Henry Nash,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, that was him who just went out of the door.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The tall one.’

  ‘I’ll run and catch him.’

  Out in the street, the two men were sauntering away from the office. Jake walked behind them, cursing the girl, because neither seemed taller than the other. They were both about the same age and, above all, they were the same type. The grey suit was better cut. The blue suit seemed crumpled. As he grew closer, he noticed that the man in the grey suit was an inch or two taller.

  They came to the corner, stopped for a moment, finishing what they had to say, then parted – the man in the blue suit turning to the west, the man in the grey suit to the east. Jake went to the east, a short way behind, convinced that the man in the grey suit was his target. He felt for the syringe in his inside pocket, found it, but left it there. The street was neither empty enough nor crowded enough for him to prick him without running the risk of being seen. In a moment he would turn into Frith Street, or, even better, into Oxford Street, and there, quite safely, it could be done.

  He removed his gaze from the back of the man’s head, knowing that people could sense when they were being followed. When the man hesitated before crossing a street, he too stopped. Then, when the man crossed the street, he followed and found that they had come into Soho Square.

  The man walked through the garden in the centre, where small bunches of office workers sat eating sandwiches and drinking juice out of cartons and cans. This would do. If he sat down on a bench, Jake would sit next to him. But it seemed unlikely, from what he knew of Henry, that he would take sandwiches from the pocket of his well-cut suit.

  He did not stop and sit down, but walked straight through the gardens and crossed the street on the other side of the square. There he hesitated, looked at his watch, then slipped furtively through the door of a red-brick church.

  Jake frowned, wondering why an atheist should go into a church. He had looked at his watch. Perhaps he had an assignation. Churches, after all, were always used as a meeting place for lovers or spies. The newsletters involved covert connections. He must be using the church to meet a cautious informant.

  Jake crossed the street and followed Henry into the church. He had been in churches before and always had loathed them. However beautiful the building, or rich the decoration, they were the temples of the enemy – stew-pots of that malign ideology which had persecuted the Jews since the death of Christ.

  This one was ugly, and smelt of incense and candlewax. There was a lobby – empty but for a large marble bowl of holy water, and stands selling tracts of Catholic propaganda. Beyond, through double doors of glass, was the church itself – painted stucco, aping the baroque, with portraits above the altars of the Holy Family looking Irish or Italian – anything but Jewish.

  At first the church seemed empty, but then he saw, kneeling before the statue of a woman, perhaps St Bernadette or the Virgin Mary, two Filippino women, and, right at the front, at the foot of the altar, the man in the grey suit, staring up at the figure of Christ on the cross.

  Jake felt once again for the syringe in his inside pocket. This seemed as good a place as any for the job to be done. He took out the syringe, unscrewed the top, and, holding it behind his back with two fingers and the thumb of his right hand, he walked quietly down the left-hand side of the church.

  When he was within fifteen feet of his target, he stopped and looked around. The church was still empty but for the Filippino women, and their eyes were fixed on the statue behind the bank of flickering candles. He looked back at the man, brought the syringe out from behind his back and stepped forward. At that moment, the figure in the grey suit went down on his knees before the cross, lowered his head, and clasped his hands together in prayer.

  Jake cursed inaudibly, turned, and went back down the aisle. Henry Nash was an atheist. He would not pray. He had followed the wrong man. In the foyer, he put the top back onto the syringe and the syringe back into his pocket. He went out i
nto the sunlight of Soho Square. As he did so, he caught sight of Aron, looking for him among the people sitting on the benches. He crossed the street, went up behind him, and tapped him on the shoulder. Aron turned. He looked afraid.

  ‘I was held up,’ he said. ‘There was a power cut on the Bakerloo Line.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Jake. ‘Did you bring the photograph?’

  ‘Yes.’ He reached into his pocket. ‘But Louvish called. The mission is off.’

  Jake took the photograph. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. There are developments in Jerusalem. The whole thing is definitely off.’

  He looked at the photograph. He had followed the right man.

  ‘I’m not too late, am I?’ asked Aron. ‘You haven’t done it?’

  ‘No,’ said Jake. ‘I haven’t done it.’ He gave the photograph back to Aron. ‘Did Louvish say what I was to do?’

  ‘Go back as planned.’

  Twenty-five

  Three weeks later, Henry met Anna when she returned to London. She arrived on the same flight from Tel Aviv that Andrew had taken two weeks before. Henry greeted her as he might have greeted a sister, had he had one, or a very old friend. Neither said much as they walked to the car park, and even as they drove through the tunnel beneath the runway, they were silent – Henry apparently concentrating on keeping his silver-grey BMW in the flow of other cars leaving the airport, Anna staring ahead with a wistful look in her eyes.

  It was only when they were on the motorway that Henry asked: ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said shortly, but with a shrug, as if to add: ‘As well as can be expected.’ She turned towards him, and for a moment the wistful look left her eyes to make way for an expression of pained apprehension. ‘But what about him?’ she asked. ‘Is he all right?’

  Henry could not return her glance – he was driving in dense, fast-moving traffic. He simply nodded and said: ‘Yes, I think so. For the time being.’

  They drove on for some time in silence. Then, again with some reluctance, Anna said: ‘Did he tell you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About him and me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She paused, then said: ‘I guess you think I behaved badly.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘I really loved him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But once he knew about the hoax …’

  ‘Why did you tell him?’

  She gave a sad smile. ‘At first, I didn’t. When Louvish let me go, he was waiting at the hotel, and he was so happy to see me and I was so happy to see him that I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him that everything Dad had found was phoney. I told him that Dad had had a brainstorm, and had destroyed the skeleton because Father Lambert’s suicide had made him think that the find would lead to more suicides, riots and civil wars.’

  ‘Did he accept that?’

  ‘Sure, but then he would have accepted almost anything.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he needed to believe that Jesus definitely had not risen from the dead. It was all a package – the priesthood, celibacy and the Resurrection on the one hand; sex, me and the skeleton of Jesus on the other.’

  ‘You realized that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet you told him?’

  She sighed. ‘It’s hard to lie to someone you love, especially someone like Andrew. And then the whole thing got out of hand. Andrew felt he had to tell the Simonites what had happened. He went to see the Prior and then telephoned the Cardinal, who gave a press conference in Rome …’

  ‘I read about it.’

  ‘And when he was rebuked by the Pope the next day, Andrew felt that it was all his fault.’

  ‘But Cardinal Memel said nothing about the find.’

  ‘I know. It was all kind of theological. But Andrew felt sure that he would never have said what he did about the Resurrection if he hadn’t seen the skeleton in the cistern. So he was all set to go to Rome and tell the Pope the whole story, and I could see him getting deeper and deeper into a lie, so I told him.’

  ‘You knew the risk?’

  ‘I guess I did, but I thought …’ She sniffed. ‘You see, one of his favourite sayings of St Paul was that the truth sets us free.’

  ‘He still loves you,’ said Henry.

  ‘Sure. Like a sister.’

  The cars in front of them slowed down as the motorway narrowed from three lanes to two, and then was carried on concrete stilts over Chiswick.

  ‘So what happened after you told him?’

  ‘It was terrible. Much worse than I had imagined.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He withdrew into himself, but at the same time pretended that nothing had changed. But I knew that, well, he was suffering – that he was even forcing himself to make love to me when he didn’t really want to.’

  ‘He felt guilty?’

  ‘Guilty. Ashamed. Disgusted. He came to see me as Eve who had inveigled him into eating the forbidden fruit, and as a result he would never make it back into the Garden of Eden.’

  ‘The idea of Hell was always very real to him,’ said Henry.

  ‘You can say that again. But, you see, he’d promised never to leave me. He’d said we were married in the eyes of God, so he was completely caught.’

  ‘Poor Andrew.’

  ‘Sure, poor Andrew, going to bed each night as if he was getting into his coffin, making love to me with a look of doom on his face, and afterwards – Jesus – it wasn’t a matter of post-coital sadness, it was post-coital despair.’

  The trace of a smile came onto Henry’s lips. ‘Poor Anna,’ he said.

  ‘In the end I couldn’t bear it. I told him to go.’

  ‘And he agreed?’

  ‘He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to stay. But he felt he had to go to Rome anyway, to tell Cardinal Memel that the whole thing had been a fraud. So I suggested that he go back from there to the monastery in London – for a while, at any rate, to think things over.’

  ‘And he agreed?’

  ‘He didn’t want to leave me, but I persuaded him that Dad was still in a bad way, and that I needed to be alone with him for a while.’

  ‘Which was perhaps partly true?’

  She shrugged. ‘Sure. Dad did have a kind of breakdown. I think he still can’t forgive himself for Father Lambert’s suicide. I’m sure that’s why he smashed the skeleton, though Ma says he did it to save me from Louvish. He’s certainly fed up with Jake for landing him in the whole shemozzle, and only wanted me and Ma with him. So we went off to Galilee, and Andrew came back here – miserable but relieved.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘That’s how I found him. Miserable but relieved.’

  They had reached Kensington. ‘Are you staying with your aunt?’ Henry asked as he waited at a red light.

  ‘Yes, but you don’t have to take me all the way there.’

  ‘Of course I will, but perhaps you’d like some supper first.’

  ‘I’m not hungry, but I’d like to talk.’

  The car moved forward again.

  ‘What I really hate about the Christian religion,’ said Anna, ‘is that it talks about loving one’s neighbour, but when it comes down to the business of Heaven and Hell, it’s every man for himself.’

  Again a slight smile came onto Henry’s lips. ‘Sauve qui peut,’ he said.

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘I think, to give him his due,’ said Henry, ‘that Andrew’s dilemma was a little more complicated than a straight choice between being saved as a priest and being damned as a lover.’

  ‘Did you talk to him about it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘His thoughts were very confused,’ said Henry. ‘I was worried that he was heading for a breakdown.’

  ‘So was I. That’s why I thought he should go home.’

  ‘I’m sure it was the right thing for him to do at that time.’

 
‘And have you seen him since?’

  ‘Yes. He’s much calmer.’

  She scowled. ‘I bet the monks are glad to get him back.’

  ‘I’m not sure they know how nearly they lost him.’

  ‘His confessor must know.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They turned into Eaton Square and stopped outside Henry’s flat.

  ‘I feel as if I’ve been away for years,’ said Anna.

  ‘A lot has happened in a short space of time,’ said Henry.

  He brought her suitcase up to his flat, because she said she wanted to take a shower. It was a sign of how much had changed that neither seemed embarrassed by the intimacy of the position in which they were placed. The condition of Henry’s flat suggested that he too had altered in some way which was not at once apparent in his manner. Where, before, the living-room had been kept scrupulously tidy, with every rug and cushion in place, there was now a certain chaos in the room, with odd books in haphazard piles and letters left unopened on the table.

  So preoccupied was Anna with her own state of mind that she did not notice the untidiness of his flat, nor that his manner had subtly altered from the sardonic charm which had once so enraptured her to a kindlier, more tentative approach. When she returned from taking her shower, wearing fresh clothes, he handed her a glass of wine with a look of great solicitude, as if he cared for her now far more than he had ever done before.

  ‘You said you thought,’ she said as she took it, ‘that things were more complicated with Andrew than they seemed.’

  He sat down opposite her, but, rather than sink back into the cushions of his plush sofa, he perched on the edge, holding his drink between his knees.

  ‘Do you find Andrew naïve?’ he asked.

  She seemed hurt. ‘No. I don’t think he’s naïve.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s the wrong word,’ said Henry.

  ‘He’s kind of unspoilt and uncompromising …’

  ‘Yes. Uncompromising and unspoilt. That’s what I mean. He has never had to live his life at odds with his ideas. He has never had to settle for anything other than a clear conscience.’