Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

Gallio decided to settle for a physical approximation. Jesus would look something like his disciples, so he attached an image for distribution based on the severed head of James. At least the picture was recent. He then summarised his findings about Jesus into a Missing Persons template, and saved it to the central computerised register. The protocol gave him two options before going live: Jesus could be Missing , or he could be Wanted . Gallio clicked Missing , then Done .

At various stages in the city’s history there have been pleasant parts of Beirut, especially close to the seafront. That’s where Cassius Gallio parks the Toyota. Then he hails a cab for the other Beirut, the southern suburbs, where there’s no sea view and parking is at the owner’s risk.

He walks the last couple of blocks, white cardboard box of pharmaceutical supplies wedged beneath his arm. The pitted low-rise buildings smell of riverweed, and women in veils burn rubbish beside the unmade road. Men stand around and watch. A dog the colour of cement takes Gallio seriously and a motorbike chugs by, low on its axle through the potholes, metal milk churns rattling in the place of panniers. As a friend of the poor, if he were genuine, Jesus could hide in a place like this.

For some time, however, Gallio has known he’s on the trail of Jude. He found Jude’s name in the Lebanon Daily Star , where the classified ads are full of messages of thanks. Thankyou Jude, for your Intercession . That is, unless Jude was the disciple who’d changed places with Jesus for the crucifixion, and this disciple in Beirut is secretly Jesus. It would fit. Jude is a minor disciple, less likely to have been missed in the aftermath.

From early responses to the Missing Persons bulletin, and Jude’s name in the newspaper, Gallio has tracked this alleged disciple to a community hospital in the centre of one of Beirut’s southern city camps. Beirut shelters refugees from conflicts dating back to Assyrian wars and Canaanite rebellions, but no one gives up hope of a better life even now. Taped to the door of Jude’s hospital is a sign in black marker pen: No Guns Beyond This Point .

Inside the entrance, sitting behind a table, is a squat man in camouflage trousers and a Christian Surfers T-shirt. Jags of scar tissue interrupt the growth of his two-day stubble, and on his side of the X-ray scanner there’s a black steel crossbow. He picks it up in a good-natured way.

‘Bolt can go through a horse. Your ID, please.’

He nods at the Swiss identity card, hands it back. ‘Are you ill?’

Gallio holds up the box. ‘Drugs. I’m here to help.’

Security in a Beirut hospital comes with dreadful teeth. ‘Ha! We prayed for medicines. We must be expecting you. Come on in.’

Gallio walks around the metal detector. The man holds up his hand.

‘Through the gate, please.’

Gallio beeps once, backs out, takes off his belt and tries again.

‘Arms out, we can’t be too careful.’

He frisks Gallio, armpit to hip, takes his phone and wallet from the Strellson jacket. Waistband. Inner leg. ‘You’ll get your stuff back when you leave.’

Gallio feels nervy without his phone, suddenly back in a more vulnerable era when backup was in the hands of the gods. A small boy slides out from a corridor. He’s carrying a bow fashioned from a car aerial, and aims a home-made arrow at Gallio’s eye. The man cuffs the boy across the head.

‘Don’t frighten people you don’t know.’

The lift doesn’t work. The boy covers them across every angle of the stairwell as they climb and turn, bow poised, arrow in the slot. The hospital appears deserted.

‘Contagious,’ the doorkeeper says. ‘Everyone else had to leave. Jude keeps the infected patients on the top floor because the air is better.’

On the understanding that knowledge is power, Speculators value small talk for the information it can yield. As they climb the stairs Cassius Gallio gets the man to talk about how Jude cured him, and also his son. Like the patients at the top of the hospital, father and son had the plague.

‘Which is what, exactly?’

‘Some long medical name. We all call it the plague.’

Out of gratitude to Jude the man takes care of security, and besides, jobs in Beirut are scarce.

‘Why does Jude need protection?’

The man hauls himself up by the stair rail. He may be cured but he’s not in good shape. ‘You wouldn’t believe the nutters in this city. Some of them think we’ve enough gods as it is.’

The citizens of Beirut have a historical instinct for the damage religion can do. Gallio understands that, because he too has suffered. ‘I thought the worst was over? I heard Beirut was getting safer.’

‘It is.’ The man holds up his crossbow, balancing it on his meaty trigger finger. ‘No guns in this sector of the camp. Not even in the hospital. Believe me, that counts as progress.’

He turns, flips the crossbow upright, and fires at the Push panel on a door about thirty yards away. The bolt punches two-thirds of the way through the door. Gallio and the boy admire his work. The man has sent the bolt from A to B, a straight cause and effect between him and his target, the reassurance of connecting what he intended to happen with what then visibly happens. Bullseye. It’s practically all anyone wants.

On the top floor they push through another set of doors into a ward. High ceilings, a double row of beds. For a heart-stopping moment Gallio sees Jesus — the long hair, the beard. The fluorescent light, possibly, quivering on washed-out linen. The eyes, the pitiful brown eyes.

After sending out the Missing Persons bulletin, Gallio had waited to see what would happen, which was pretty much the essence of police work as he remembered it. The waiting, and the hope that he wasn’t entirely wrong. Some bright Antonia IT spark had written code for drop-down tabs across a screen-map of the known world. As soon as a station or associate bureau responded to the bulletin, a small star would light up in that place on the map. One sighting was all Gallio needed to justify his employment, and to make his first progress report to Valeria. A star, a light, a reason to begin.

Within minutes, a star lit up in southern Turkey, in the city of Hierapolis. Gallio paged Valeria. Another light in Ephesus, then a star above Athens, and another in central France. Lights started blinking across the screen, in Beirut, north into Russia. A star appeared above Whithorn in south-west Scotland, over Cyprus, across into Turkmenistan.

Gallio could barely keep up.

‘What’s going on?’ Valeria leaned over his shoulder, her head close to his. ‘How can he be in all of these places at once?’

Gallio rolled the cursor over each light in turn but the text box never guaranteed the identification. Not a hundred per cent certain. These were sightings that fitted the description on the bulletin, but none positively confirmed a location and lock for Jesus.

‘The disciples, it must be.’ Cassius Gallio pushed his chair back from the screen. ‘They look like Jesus, act in his name. Wherever they go the disciples are mistaken for Jesus.’

‘Or Jesus is mistaken for them.’ Valeria took over the mouse, rolled over each of the lights one more time. She stopped, read the text that appeared over each star, moved on. ‘He can pose as a disciple just as his disciples pretend to be him. Clever way to hide.’

‘It would be, if that’s how he’s hiding.’

‘Call Baruch.’

Valeria chaired the meeting in a disused case room. Apart from the reopened Jesus puzzle, Israel was quiet, and the room was currently the military police storeroom for military mops and buckets. Valeria sat Gallio down and invited him to talk them through his switch theory. She let Baruch guffaw and draw a penis in the dust of a storaged whiteboard.