Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

‘One of the disciples stood in for Jesus on the day of the crucifixion,’ Gallio said. ‘It wasn’t Jesus who died. That explains how he could reappear after the crucifixion.’

‘We’d have noticed at the time.’

‘Would we? If there were ten disciples instead of eleven, who really would have noticed? That’s why he had Judas killed. Judas would have worked it out, eventually, because he knew the disciples up close. Nobody else can tell them apart, except their families who were safely out of the way in Galilee. The disciple who changed places with Jesus would have been one of the lesser ones. Collateral damage.’

‘I always forget their names,’ Baruch said. ‘I mean apart from Peter and a couple of the others.’ Suddenly this seemed relevant, as if the junior disciples were deliberately forgettable.

With the point of his index finger Baruch dotted semen spurting from the penis. Made one of the dots into the eye of a circled happy face. Then he pulled up a chair and sat on it backwards. ‘Simon, Philip, one of those. No idea what they’re for, if not for this.’

‘Jude,’ Gallio said. ‘None of the minor disciples would be missed, would they?’

‘So how do you suggest we act on this?’ Valeria was always looking forward, to a future where the confusions of the past could be straightened out, definitively.

‘We confront them,’ Baruch said. ‘We might get lucky. Track down Simon and he turns out to be Jesus. Hit the jackpot.’

Valeria checked the screen on her laptop. ‘According to this, the sighting in England may be Simon. The back of beyond is a long way to go on the off-chance that Simon is actually Jesus.’

‘So you’re saying no to England?’

‘We don’t have the budget. Times have changed.’ Valeria decided she might as well tell them the truth. ‘This isn’t a high-priority mission, not these days, or not yet. We can start somewhere nearer.’

Gallio hadn’t been gone so long he’d forgotten the bad weather of budgets and cost analyses. Work within the possible, one of the mottos of the Speculator cadre. ‘Let’s start in Beirut,’ Gallio suggested. ‘Put some pressure on them close to home.’

‘If it’s Jesus, how will you know?’

‘We’ll know,’ Baruch said. ‘We saw him when he was alive.’

Cassius Gallio wasn’t so confident. Would he recognise Jesus? Jesus might be the gentle son of god spreading the wealth and healing the sick. Or he could be an intolerant fucker, good with a knife. Gallio would be happier with a scientific method for confirming the identification.

‘We should send the glass from Joseph’s bin to forensics. I brought it in as potential evidence. We might get some DNA we could match against the disciples, or against Jesus.’

‘After all this time? Don’t worry, I have your pieces of glass. I’ll keep them safe.’

Valeria looked from Gallio to Baruch, then back at Gallio. At this stage they were all she had. ‘Beirut it is. You both knew Jesus and I’d trust your positive identification. Start with Jude in Beirut.’

A city that within budgetary restraints they could reach in a hire car from Jerusalem. And even that wasn’t so simple. The special needs of the region meant that traffic from Israel into Lebanon had to pass through the demilitarised zone with document inspections at every checkpoint. Valeria didn’t want diplomatic hotlines demanding why exactly her CCU agents were moving across these particular borders.

‘Damascus,’ Baruch said. ‘Let’s go via Damascus. Cassius can pursue your fool’s errand in Beirut and I’ll deal with the living. Let’s find out what in Damascus they remember about the conversion of Paul.’

In the Beirut hospital ward the smell hits, but thankfully Gallio’s collar is loose and he can pull his purple shirt and tie up over his nose. Jude the disciple of Jesus, patron saint of hopeless causes, steps towards him. He distrusts nobody! Cassius Gallio looks at Jude’s hands, no scarring, and up close Jude’s face is heavily lined and nothing like the face of Jesus, or Jesus in Jerusalem as Gallio remembers him. Jude eyes the cardboard box held in the crook of Gallio’s elbow.

‘Welcome. Come and see the work that Jesus has been able to do.’

Gallio lets his collar drop and bears the smell, glad he swallowed a double dose of antibiotics. In the beds along the ward Jude’s patients wring their sweating hands, or lunge sideways to vomit into plastic bowls. Some are seized with cramps, others have drops of blood beading in their ears.

‘No room left at the UN clinics, but there’s a limit to what I can do without medicines.’

The most extreme cases reach out, desperate to touch the hand that has touched the hand of Jesus. Even at a distance, they believe that Jesus through Jude has the power to heal.

‘I can’t save them, not all of them.’ Jude touches everyone, no exceptions. Every hand that reaches, he holds. ‘The nurses we have are wonderful, but some of our patients die, some don’t. It makes us sad.’

‘I brought antibiotics.’

‘We can use antibiotics.’

Jude has not offered Cassius Gallio his hand. He suggests Gallio distribute some of the sample pills, which is hardly fair, as Gallio is neither a medical professional nor even very caring. He can do this. Gallio holds his breath and picks out those who look the furthest gone, with neck glands so swollen they can barely breathe. He expects some kind of approval or gratitude, but is disappointed.

‘How many boxes like this can you get me?’

The whites of Jude’s eyes, Gallio now sees, are yellow and veined. He notices how Jude licks his dry lips, and how his frail hands tremble when he attends to the sick. Jude’s method of health care combines basic hygiene with prayer, but together they’re not enough.

Gallio reminds himself why he’s here. The disciples can be harried into mistakes, like the story they invented about the ascension. Without being immodest, the sudden absurdity of the ascension reflected well on Gallio’s earlier efforts. The ascension of Jesus reeked of panic, as if the pressure were beginning to tell. For forty days Gallio had crowded the disciples, crawling all over them until finally they had to add to their story. It couldn’t be a coincidence that only the closest followers saw Jesus ascend, the men who’d be punished most severely if he or his body were discovered.

The ascension story meant no body, no physical remains to unearth, dead or alive. Investigation over. Or so they hoped.

Cassius Gallio had rattled Jesus, though he hadn’t recognised his victory at the time. The ascension was an interference strategy, designed to confuse and divert resources from the search for a physical body. Unfortunately for Gallio, when he should have been reacting to this new development he was halfway to Odessa on a troopship. Now he finds the ascension a reassuringly ludicrous event, proof that Jesus and/or the disciples can lose their discipline. They will contrive implausible fictions and excuses. This is a weakness to exploit.

‘Can we go somewhere quieter?’ Gallio means away from the smell, from the sick.

Jude leads him out of the ward to sit on the stairs, midway between the top floor and the landing for the empty wards below. From the stairwell they hear the zing of makeshift arrows as they scrape off walls and pling into doors. Jude rests the box of pharmaceuticals across his knees, and sorts through the various packets and tubes.

‘Feel free,’ Gallio says.

Along with doxycycline Jude turns up eye ointments containing azithromycin for restoring sight to the blind. He reads the advice leaflets for samples of anticonvulsants to use against demons, and the dosage of antidepressants for milder cases of possession. Gallio has brought him divine intervention in easy-to-use blister packs, miracles from the civilised world.