Acts of the Assassins (4 page)

‘You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? We have work to do.’

In the street Gallio tells Judas to stop worrying, he’ll be fine. All Cassius Gallio wants him to do is to stand up for the truth, remind people there are contrary opinions about Jesus among his closest followers.

‘Remember, even when you can’t see us we’ll be watching. You’re totally safe. They can’t hurt you, and they’re cowards. They’re not going to throw the first stone, you know that.’

‘Can I have a drink?’

‘No.’

They stop on the way for a stiffener, Judas in his fresh expensive clothes with his recently washed hair drinking two to Gallio’s one. They leave with the bottle, Judas a public drunk, swigging as they approach the Temple. Gallio pushes him forward through the crowd gathered at the Temple steps.

One of the minor disciples, Simon or Jude, is promising the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Judas objects, which is all Cassis Gallio has asked him to do. He shouts out his own name, fronts up to the idea of the living Jesus. He challenges Philip or Bartholomew to measure the size of their inheritance, and Gallio questions the wisdom of the drink. Judas holds up his wallet, richer than the other eleven disciples put together. He shoves a blind man across the back of a mobility scooter, sings chants for Beitar Jerusalem FC, proves his Jewishness categorically undimmed.

Then he loses interest, because he has more entertaining places to be. Does he? He has things to do. He’s hungry, and he can eat what he wants. Can he? He remembers he can. He’s hungry and he’s thirsty. He doesn’t have to stand here stating the obvious. No one has come back from the dead.

One month after the incident at the tomb Cassius Gallio
promises Judith, his wife, that when this is over he’ll pay for a weekend in Rome. Just the two of them, for a whole week. The three of them. The baby can see a big-city specialist, they’ll book her in. Ten days. A doctor for the baby and a family holiday, the three of them together, plenty of time to see the sights. He promises he’ll take two weeks away from the office. He’ll leave his phone.

‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

First, though, that body needs to come to light. Gallio writes a provisional report, explaining his strategy and his confidence that a breakthrough is imminent. He is using Judas to provoke the disciples into an act of retaliation, and when they crack he’ll pick them up, one by one if necessary. Gallio has to go through Pilate but he attaches a second confidential copy of his report to Valeria. He wants her to feel included, and she’ll see that everything’s under control. He has behaved erratically, but he’s had his reasons and he’s on the way back, the same Speculator she once thought was amazing. He clicks Send.

‘I’ve read your report,’ Pilate says. There is a squared-off printout on the desk in front of him, old school. ‘I’m not signing it off.’

‘The disciples can’t keep this farce going forever. No one comes back from the dead. We can break them apart, and I’ve set up a public debate with Judas head-to-head against Peter. Peter has a temper on him. Let’s push him over the edge.’

‘Can’t risk it.’ Pilate has aged, or needs more sleep. He seems to have lost weight. He pushes the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, then swipes the air beside his head, as if pestered by an insect. ‘Judas will probably warn them in advance. They’ll have some stunt ready.’

‘Judas barely leaves the safe house. Or he’s drunk. He’s ours.’

‘You increased the reward money. Ordered a new print run of posters.’

‘Every disciple has his price. We know that from Judas.’

‘
Dead or Alive
, that’s what your posters say.
Wanted, Jesus, Dead or Alive
. You fatigue me, Gallio. You acted without my authority. You’re supposed to be looking for a body, not a ghost.’

‘I’m covering the angles. We’re making progress.’

‘You haven’t found the body, which by now will be in a severely perished condition. It’s in everyone’s interests to sort this out. I want you to bring me Judas.’

‘To the Antonia?’

‘In the usual way.’

Pilate squares off the pages of the report, even though they’re square. Gallio feels exposed, alone: the next time Judas enters the Antonia he won’t be coming out.

‘I promised him our protection,’ Gallio says. ‘He’s essential to my strategy.’

‘I promised him nothing. Certainly not the most visible table at Canela. He knows more than he’s saying. He’ll talk.’

‘Will he?’

Torture hadn’t worked with Jesus: overdo the pain and he’d confess to anything. I’m hurting, Jesus said, but they kept on until he swore he was the son of god, if that’s what they wanted. Gallio is convinced he has a better approach: ‘Your authorization for Joseph to take away the body is in my report. You may have noticed.’

‘Is that a threat? I’ll send you to Moldova where you’ll dig latrines.’

‘Where’s Moldova?’

‘Exactly. No fucking idea.’

Pilate shouldn’t be speaking to him like this, not to a Speculator sent from Rome. ‘Why did you let a senior Jew take charge of the body? This is material information.’

Pilate fends again at thin air, but can’t brush away an imaginary insect. ‘Politics. You wouldn’t understand. Do a bad thing, send a man to his death. Then do a good thing, agree to a reasonable request from a senior member of the local priesthood. Keep a balance, keep the peace. Politics.’

‘In that case, politically, let me have Judas for one more week.’

Pilate considers the balance, the this-way-and-that. Gallio adds weight to his side of the scales. ‘I’ll assume full responsibility.’

‘One week. But don’t let anything happen to him. Find the body in the next week or your career becomes my priority. And not in a good way.’

Day by day Gallio increases the pressure. He trains Judas to debate against Peter, providing every reasonable argument against life after death. Then in the afternoons he picks the weakest of the disciples, at least to his eyes, and follows them. By now it’s them or him. The disciples travel in pairs, for security reasons or to keep their stories straight, and in East Jerusalem on a Tuesday afternoon Gallio wastes valuable time watching Bartholomew and Philip from an unmarked Antonia car. They’re serving soup to the poor from the back of a van.

Cassius Gallio doesn’t crack, he doesn’t have a breakdown, despite what the army psychiatrist later claims on oath to the military tribunal. Cassius Gallio does nothing during this period that is irrational or unjustified. On this particular day he
may have been guilty of impatience. He is frustrated. He wants to make something happen, and he tells his driver to move fast, brake hard behind the soup van. Doesn’t bother with introductions, puts Bartholomew in an armlock and ducks him into the back of the Mercedes.

‘Keep your hands off the leather.’ Gallio dives in beside him. ‘Drive.’

The car climbs the switchback up the Mount of Olives, until they pull in at a Panoramic Viewpoint, bumper to low steel barrier. Below is the walled city of Jerusalem, past and present merged in every stone. An Arab boy calls out from the ramparts. In the car park beside them the bin overflows with burger cartons. Bartholomew ignores the view.

‘What do you want from me?’

‘I thought you were Jesus.’

‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘My mistake. I can’t tell any of you apart.’

Bartholomew is thinner, less solid than the others, but the resemblance is intact. He is thin-boned, breakable, like Jesus with a drug habit. Otherwise Gallio knows him from his file, which is flimsy: he was born in Cana, a Galilean like all of them except Judas. His father is a peasant farmer, but Bartholomew was training as a doctor when Philip recruited him to the cause. Bartholomew gave up his studies, seduced by the glamour of saving the world.

‘Tell me about the Jesus appearances. In your professional opinion, as a medical student, would you say they’re scientifically feasible?’

Bartholomew shrugs his thin shoulders. ‘He appears to us. I wouldn’t believe it except I’ve seen him with my own eyes.’

‘Did you see inside the tomb?’

‘Peter and John told us it was empty.’

‘But you didn’t see it? How can you believe it was empty if you didn’t actually see it?’

‘Jesus is alive. If that’s what you’re asking.’

Gallio smacks his hand into the headrest. Beside him Bartholomew flinches.

‘Fine.’ Gallio stares hard at the leather headrest as it pushes back the indent. Then at Bartholomew, at his alarmed brown eyes. ‘You know this is not a story to be invented lightly?’

‘None of us chose to be involved.’

‘You want me to believe that Jesus can reverse the laws of nature? I want you,’ and here Cassius Gallio pokes the top of Bartholomew’s arm with his finger, to be sure he knows that ‘you’ means him, ‘I want you to think of the consequences, for you, for everyone. I want you, properly, to engage with the responsibility for making up the resurrection of Jesus.’

In Barthomew’s version of the world there is a god, but Gallio reminds him that evil has not ceased to exist, not in the last month in Jerusalem. This god of theirs watches over us, and can intervene in human affairs, but Bartholomew and others can be bundled at random into the back of official cars. Soon followed by the fortress and the sweatbox and the rest, with god reliably failing to intervene. Every atrocity, every tragedy, every accident is intended. Imagine the cruelty of this invented god, if that were so.

‘Jesus is alive.’

‘Sorry, can’t be.’

Bartholomew rubs the side of his head. Gallio wants to tug on his beard, shake some sense into him, but in the rear-view mirror Bartholomew is making eye contact with the driver.

‘Don’t look at him. Look at me.’ Gallio pinches Bartholomew’s cheeks between his fingers and turns his head, squeezes a little until he can see the inside pink of Bartholomew’s mouth. ‘Look at me, Bartholomew, look.’ Gallio could encourage him to be reasonable with the usual temptations, with girls or boys, with money. The disciples say they’re not interested but they are. They must be, like everyone else, like Judas. ‘Remember me, Bartholomew. One day I may be able to help you.’

Cassius Gallio watches for a reaction, studies this face so similar to the face of Jesus. Nothing. He pushes the face away. The side of Bartholomew’s head cracks against the window. Gallio leans across and opens the door.

‘How will I get back?’

‘Walk. Like everyone else.’

The next day they murder Judas, and Gallio stops wanting to be the Speculator in charge. Not him, not any more. He doesn’t want to have to explain to Pilate, to the CCU, to anyone.

Someone phones in, voice disguised, could have been a man or woman, any age. Cassius Gallio keeps the news to himself and reaches the field within the hour. The rope is lashed low to the trunk of an isolated tree, run up and over a high branch, with a single knot in the loop of the noose. At first glance Judas looks like a suicide.

Gallio is weary but he investigates. The details need attention, and he can’t find a note, a decisive indicator if this is genuine. Judas didn’t write a suicide note. At the tribunal, no one will be interested in the non-existent note.

He remembers cursing out loud. Fuck fuck you fuck you fuck. Cunt. Cassius Gallio had promised to protect Judas, had such brave plans for him. He slaps at the naked body, then remembers his training. Calm, breathe. Steady the body, flat hands, gentle, bring it to a slow dead stop. He checks the pale skin for abnormalities, marks, signs of a struggle. Breathe. The hands, the ragged tips of the fingers, look for blood beneath the nails. Judas has withered fingernails, self-inflicted by eating himself to death. His body stinks of sweat and alcohol.

At the base of the tree a folded pile of clothes and a wallet. His killers left the money. Clever. Make it look in every way, besides the absence of a note, like suicide. Time goes by while Cassius Gallio doesn’t know what to do. He hears the whine of a petrol strimmer on a wind from the city. A plastic bag tumbles across the field, snags on a scrub-thorn. The rope creaks, heats in the midday sun while Judas turns, slowly, like a man afloat. His heavy body swells with gases, inflating with the hours of the day. Judas has been hanging three hours, maybe four, long enough for his skin to tighten and flies to breed on his tongue.

Here is a body, the wrong body. This isn’t the body Cassius Gallio had wanted to find.

He might cry. Where are his people, his agents, his officers? Where is his Valeria, and his wife and the child? How did they let this happen to him? His frustration pushes from the inside out and distorts his face. He grimaces, his nostrils flare. He punches the body, and flesh envelops his knuckles. He punches Judas again, a left–right combination, punishment for needing protection. And again, with gritted teeth, for failing to be protected. A flat right to the belly.

The rope snaps.

The body thumps to the ground, the exploded rope whipping over the branch, following Judas down. His ripened belly heaves and here it comes, the bursting asunder, the innards and green-grey muck of Judas Iscariot sliding across stony ground.

A crow lands, cocks its mad-eyed head.

“BEHEADED”

Heat haze on the runway tarmac, petrol-blue C&A windcheater, sunglasses against the Jerusalem white light. Inside the terminal, blocking a long corridor between the gate and Immigration, a pair of officials ask for his papers. Just Cassius Gallio, not anyone else off the flight from Munich. The other passengers flow on past.

Terrorist prevention officers, one man, one woman. Security has tightened globally since the fire in Rome. They examine the name on his passport, check the photo against his face.

‘Sunglasses. Take them off.’

His naked face against the photo. They get a good look at Gallio’s blue eyes. Yes, he thinks, take your time. You know who
I am, the idiot who let a corpse escape, but much older and with a face creased like a veteran. Of something, of everything.

‘Business?’

Gallio puts his glasses back on. ‘Holiday.’