Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

‘I’m looking down on it,’ Bartholomew says. ‘What would I do with so much silver?’

‘I’ll buy you some catalogues. You don’t need to be short of ideas, not these days.’

‘Jesus will provide.’

Yet Bartholomew declines to explain how Jesus will arrange the dead-drop, on these mysterious future occasions when Jesus will deign to provide. They’re soon back in the taxi, Bartholomew fascinated by the spaces that divide one town from the next. Strip villages, obese children, and marshes where wheat refuses to grow. Rivers. England is a developing region, the kind of backward territory where gibberish can flourish among the uneducated, but sometimes Gallio just looks, and forgets he’s looking for Jesus.

‘I sense you’re troubled,’ Bartholomew says. ‘What can I do for you?’

Gallio compliments him on his sensitivity, and says that to be honest he’s troubled by the latest forensic reports. ‘I doubt you can help.’

‘That isn’t what I meant. You’re avoiding the question.’

And Gallio continues to do so because this is his taxi, his story. He will ask the questions and sift the answers. He will speculate, because that’s what he was put on god’s good earth to do. ‘We’ve found evidence of high-strength anaesthetic stocked in Joseph of Arimathea’s house during the period of the crucifixion.’

Perhaps Bartholomew can be useful after all. Gallio runs through one of his Jesus survival theories, not the switch but the sedative on the sponge. What does Bartholomew make of that?

‘It’s possible.’

Bartholomew trained as a doctor so he should know. He also wants to be kind, allowing Gallio to speculate, and surprised by Bartholomew’s meek response Gallio sees for the first time how tired he is. As a Speculator he should take advantage.

‘In the sense that anything is possible? Or that the sedative made it easier for whoever took Jesus’s place? A minor disciple. Like Simon, for example, crucified in the place of Jesus but mercifully spared the worst of the pain.’

‘I don’t know. I can’t say whether your theories are true or untrue. They’re not unreasonable.’

‘Tell me how Jesus stays hidden.’

‘He’s not hidden,’ Bartholomew says. ‘He is everywhere.’

‘Yes, but where exactly, right now? Is Jesus here in England? Is he standing in for the disciple who’s been located in Caistor? Tell me and put an end to this. We won’t hurt anyone and you can relax. Seventy-five pieces of silver would set you up, even in this day and age.’

Cassius Gallio offers himself up as a saviour, and as soon as Bartholomew allows reason to prevail then Gallio will have saved him. But Bartholomew stares out the side window, captivated by the forecourt of a BP garage, the first one he’s seen, another everyday miracle. He wipes a hole in the condensation to let in the green and yellow glow of prices and pumps. For the moment the secret entrusted to the disciples is safe with Bartholomew.

‘How well do you know Paul?’

‘Not at all. We’ve never met.’

‘I arrested him in Jerusalem. We think he’s involved in the death of James.’

After the BP garage a superstore, a Real Ale pub, a slow length of road following a vintage Morris Traveller. Bartholomew is easily distracted from explaining how a god can appear on earth. ‘Who do you prefer, Peter’s Jesus or Paul’s Jesus? I think I can guess the answer.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘The Jesus according to Peter is a Nazareth carpenter who champions the disadvantaged. Paul thinks Jesus has a direct line to god and can take over the world. Peacefully, as long as everyone believes in him.’

‘I don’t prefer either version. Both can be true.’

‘Paul’s Jesus is winning.’

‘He makes skilful use of the postal service.’

‘Paul is not the person you think he is.’

‘I try to remember Jesus as he was to me.’

Gallio tries another angle, flattery. Bartholomew escaped the carnage of Philip’s martyrium. He was spared a terrible death, meaning he might be the chosen one, as described by Jude. Bartholomew could be the disciple Jesus loves. ‘Couldn’t you? That would explain why you’re alive.’

No disciple with a human heart could fail to warm to this idea, the glory of the disciple beloved above all others.

‘I think that’s Peter,’ Bartholomew says. ‘Jesus called him the rock.’

‘Do you know where Peter is now?’

‘I don’t. I’m sorry.’

Of course he doesn’t. None of them know a thing. The disciples claim encounters with divine omniscience through Jesus, but can’t keep in touch with their friends.

‘Really, I’m the least of all the disciples.’

They do love to brag, each disciple more humble than the next.

The traffic congestion eases at a section of dual carriageway, and the taxi eases out past double-trucks carrying hay bales, then makes way for a full-beam fish van hurtling back to Grimsby. Claudia is asleep in the front seat of the taxi, head lolled forward.

‘We can give Peter twenty-four-hour global response protection.’

This is a genuine proposal. If an assassin or team of assassins is targeting the disciples then the CCU has a civilised duty to protect them. At the same time, Valeria could monitor Peter night and day to reduce the chances of a terror attack. Bartholomew, the least of the disciples, closes his eyes.

Cassius Gallio is doing his best: good cop, carrot, the agreeable options in life. So far he has spared Bartholomew the bad cop and the beatings, methods that carry more weight in the Antonia. Fewer contemporary distractions, but Valeria has sent him to England. She wants him to get ahead of Baruch and restore a sense of control, because Baruch gone rogue threatens the outcome of their mission.

‘You should have fitted him with a tracer.’ Valeria hated not knowing where everyone was, and what they were doing. ‘You had plenty of opportunity in Hierapolis.’

‘We’re supposed to be partners.’

‘But you fell out. You should have seen it coming.’

For the first time since Gallio came back Valeria was flustered, but she too had her career to consider, and the CCU was obsessed with results. Welcome to Jerusalem, Valeria, welcome to the complex case of Jesus.

Gallio wonders what damage Baruch can do in England. Unless, and this is not impossible, the disciple identified in Caistor as Simon is Jesus. Jesus has been hiding away on barbarian shores as a minor disciple, biding his time in an obscure and forgotten territory. Simon in a market town in England matches these requirements. Gallio urges the taxi onwards, because Baruch mustn’t get there first.

Even with a knife flat-bladed across his forehead Gallio had been optimistic that he was not in a proper fight with Baruch. A proper fight, with Baruch, was to the death, but they seemed to have reached a moment in the Shaare Zedek Medical Center where the fighting could reasonably stop. At least, Gallio was hoping they had.

‘You don’t want to die, do you, Gallio? You’re frightened of death. I can smell your little man fear.’

Baruch turned the blade, the cutting edge honed to the idea of slicing off an eyebrow, whole. In fact only Gallio had stopped fighting, and he waited for his life to flash before his eyes. It did not, which was encouraging, though as he’d noticed in other moments of extreme stress, most of them connected to Jesus, time did change shape. Time swelled, slowed, or everything happened at once. Time became unreliable, in the open moments between life and death.

Baruch’s knife stayed flat against Gallio’s forehead for several seconds, or for several years. He forgets.

‘You are pathetic,’ Baruch’s knife-face wavered. ‘You are old and ineffectual.’