Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

Valeria joins him at the balustrade. ‘I’m not convinced Baruch can see the bigger picture. He takes everything so personally, and doesn’t always appreciate that we have everyone’s best interests at heart. That’s not surprising, of course. We have so much power in the world that he loves to chip away at us, as if everything is our fault.’ She peeks over the balustrade. ‘Without our civilising influence they’d still be sacrificing children.’

‘What’s this about?’

Valeria smells the warm air, looks at the figures scurrying and stopping below. ‘Who do you think killed Jude?’

Gallio has been asking himself the same question, and keeps reaching the same conclusion.

‘Someone who knows what they’re doing,’ he says. ‘They’re good, whoever it is, very good. In Beirut the killers adapted to a local weapons ban, and moved unobserved in and out of Babylon. At Pamukkale the killer carried rope and tools through a World Heritage Site and not one terrorist-aware tourist identified suspicious behaviour and called it in. Jesus should be on our suspects list. No one can vanish and reappear as effectively as Jesus.’

‘Give me his motive,’ Valeria says.

‘He had a motive for killing Judas. As for the others, I don’t know.’

‘Come on, speculate.’

‘OK. This is what I’ve got. After years of doing nothing we reopen the case on Jesus. We start looking for him as if he’s alive, and if anyone knows where he’s hiding it’s the disciples. Thomas dies, Philip dies. Bartholomew is in a coma. Jude dies. Jesus doesn’t want to be found, or not by us.’

Gallio can do this. He hasn’t forgotten how to speculate. ‘Every time a disciple dies there’s less of a path to the leader, the kingpin, the king of the Jews. The disciples have done everything he asked of them. They’ve co-operated with the switch move, spread the false story about resurrection, grown his following. Now Jesus is telling them something else.’

‘Fuck off before you mess up,’ Valeria says. ‘Better dead than betray his whereabouts. Not much of a thank-you. Who else is a suspect?’

‘One or more of the disciples.’

‘Motive?’

‘Internal feud. Probably a power struggle to decide a new leader. Might be connected to the second coming, and jostling for position before that happens.’

‘What is that, exactly, the second coming?’

‘If it’s not Jesus emerging from hiding, it could be one of the disciples standing in for him, and picking up where Jesus left off. Another switch play. They’d each be anxious to be number one.’

‘Good. Convincing. Anyone else?’

‘Jesus and some of the disciples together. Same reason. Judas is proof they’re prepared to take action against anyone who threatens their plans, and maybe Jude in Beirut shouldn’t have told me about the beloved disciple. An arrow to the heart, and he won’t slip up again. Then there’s Paul. He’s easier to classify than the others. He enjoys influence, and five-star hotels. The Jesus movement grows in every city he visits, and in every community that receives his letters. Most converts see him as an equal to the disciples, but the disciples are also his competition. They’re rivals in spreading the message.’

‘I thought he wanted to join them?’

‘Except they didn’t let him join, did they? Even if he’s not being run by Jerusalem he has motive. The disciples rejected him. He owes them. If he eliminates them from the story then his version of Jesus wins out.’

‘How is his version different?’

‘The disciples aren’t so important in it.’

Valeria sits in one of the chairs, and Gallio turns to face her, the top of the terrace balustrade sharp in the small of his back.

‘Come and sit down, Cassius. Baruch I didn’t want here because I have information for you that’s not for him. It’s about Paul. He’s a public figure and he can be useful to us. In fact the CCU encourages Paul. We don’t disapprove of the work he does.’

Throughout the known world, Rome had always supported client kings. Valeria’s concept of Paul was as a client apostle, because his version of the faith suited the requirements of an advanced nation state. Paul believed in marriage and social stability and paying taxes, solid civilised virtues.

‘That’s my idea,’ Gallio stays by the balustrade, wishes Valeria had shared this information before now. ‘In Jerusalem I had that idea with Lazarus, and wanted to recruit him as a client messiah.’

‘It was a good idea. That’s why I reused it. If we empty Paul’s story of the elements that make Jesus dangerous then we’ll disarm their religion, and since your trip to Hierapolis Claudia has made a new discovery. She has a lead on the second coming.’

Gallio moves from the balustrade to the chair. He sits down, leans forward with his elbows on his knees, fingertips planted together. He senses that at last this is the main reason Valeria called him to the Prefect’s office, alone.

‘The second coming is disciple code for the next big event, and for some time I’ve suspected Jesus and the disciples of working up to a major new incident. Claudia has analysed the documents. We think they’re planning a terrorist attack.’

Gallio listens to Valeria as she presents the evidence. According to Claudia’s analysis, every Jesus story starts with health care and spreading the wealth but ends in fire and disaster. The Temple is destroyed, or the Antichrist or Satan is destroyed. The way the disciples tell the story something big finishes up in the bin, the world effectively at an end. The disciples use the rhetoric of terrorism to promote violent fantasies of a catastrophe that involves the fall of civilisation. Cities will burn, walls come tumbling down, and a deliverer will lead his followers to a final, crushing victory followed by a general resurrection of the righteous. CCU can’t ignore that, not in today’s climate.

‘The clues are there in the language they use,’ Valeria says, ‘and we’d be foolish not to pay attention, the way the world is now. I have a bad feeling about an attack on Jerusalem. Jesus spoke openly about taking out the Temple.’

‘Or Rome.’ Cassius Gallio will not be out-catastrophised, because his story should be the big story. The ambitious Speculator he once was has survived exile and sleepless nights and shattered nerves. The bigger the story the more significant a figure Cassius Gallio will be. ‘Don’t underestimate the disciples. They’re highly capable people.’

‘They are, I think.’

Valeria has been sorting evidence, assembling the pieces. She has spent the days of Gallio’s absence in Hierapolis full-time speculating, and can now foresee a level of danger that Gallio finds thrilling. His story is the big story. This time round Cassius Gallio will get his chance.

‘I’m changing the status of the Jesus search,’ Valeria says. ‘The security code increases from Elevated to High.’

‘That’s a terrorist level.’

‘It is.’

One obstinate doubt nags away at Gallio. ‘And the murders?’

‘If the disciples are eliminated, every truth and secret they know dies alongside them. Jesus would benefit.’

‘I don’t understand. How does that implicate Jesus?’

‘He can’t risk his crucifixion being revealed as a fake, not now, when the next phase is imminent. He needs the death and resurrection story to hold together, especially now before the second coming.’

But there’s more that Gallio needs to know. For Cassius Gallio this story is his story, or he’d have no reason to care. ‘You brought me in to lead a Missing Persons enquiry. That investigation became a murder case and now we’re policing a terrorist alert. Am I still the principal on this?’