Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

‘Totally,’ she says.

She disconnects, tosses the phone on the bed, looks for a towel. Can’t find one, pulls on her pants instead. Then jeans from her suitcase. She clicks on the bedside lamp, and Gallio shields his eyes.

‘Bartholomew is dead.’

‘That can’t be true.’

‘In Bashkale, not long after his plane landed.’

‘Jesus.’

‘He was skinned alive.’

CASSIUS GALLIO SITS naked, head in hands, in the upstairs room of a pub in an English market town. The stress of chasing after Jesus has cut lines through his cheeks. He has grey in his days-old stubble, like cobwebs in foliage, and a diagonal pillow scar above the wound near his eyebrow. Knife-fighting in his sleep. He scratches his chin. Apart from the blue eyes he could pass, from a distance, as an apprentice disciple of Jesus.

Claudia is filling her suitcase. Like disciples, spies have limited belongings, and Gallio watches Claudia roll her anonymous tops, bag her sensible shoes.

‘Stay in Caistor with me,’ he says. ‘Live happily ever after.’

‘Bartholomew is dead. Skinned alive.’

‘That’s in the past already. It’ll be forgotten today or tomorrow, what difference does it make? Doesn’t change anything, and the world keeps turning.’

Claudia looks frightened, and older. Married. ‘We’ve been ordered to report to Valeria, in Rome. The case has moved forward. She increased the security code to Severe, as a response to Bartholomew’s killing. Code Red, unlimited budget.’

Skinned alive. Sawn in half, bludgeoned to death, hung upside down, stoned, shot by arrows, beheaded, hanged and now this. How random was a skinning, an eighth violent murder of a disciple? Each was more dead than the last, like a demonstration that no loving god could protect them.

Gallio imagines the inner Bartholomew, and without his skin his delicate body is tubes and fibres and feathered blood vessels that branch and branch again into nothing. His anatomy is full of gaps, with empty space between vein and muscle, between muscle and bone. His vital organs are barely acquainted.

‘We should have kept him with us,’ Claudia says. ‘At the end he almost stayed.’

‘Why does Valeria want us in Rome? What about Cairo?’

‘She said Rome. Those are her orders.’

Rome, after all this time. When they were cleaning Simon’s body out of the garage Gallio had thought it was over. He had failed, again, and Baruch was a sad dead example to anyone sincerely attempting to understand Jesus. For a short while Gallio had preferred the delusion of life in Caistor, where the planet could tilt and the raffle would still be called. The absence of significance in provincial England had seduced him.

‘She suspects the disciples Peter and John of being in Rome,’ Claudia says. ‘Trying to trace both of them, so far unsuccessfully. This isn’t finished.’

Gallio puts his hand on her shoulder. She zips her suitcase. He wants to slow her down, to establish that the value of now is equal to then and next. Caistor, in the present, can compete with the lure of future glory or the flight from past mistakes — even with Rome. Claudia should give him a sign that she takes this present moment seriously, as he does.

‘Stop, Claudia. Stand up and look at me.’

He wraps her in his arms and holds her, her eyelashes on his neck, blinking, brushing his skin, meaning her eyes must be open. She’s waiting this out, arms at her sides. Her elbow moves and Gallio suspects, behind his back, that Claudia is checking her watch. Time to let her go. He lets go. She picks up her book from the bedside table, gathers brushes and pots from the bathroom. Gallio follows her like a lost dog.

‘You don’t have to jump as soon as Valeria whistles. She’s chasing shadows.’

‘I have to follow orders. We both do. That’s how the CCU works.’

‘We could just not go. Exercise our free will.’

‘You mean disobey a clear instruction. We’ve pushed her as far as I dare. Stay and that’s desertion, for which the penalty is death, but it’s up to you.’

‘We’re in the back of beyond. What’s she going to do? Simon is dead, forgotten, and nothing else of importance will happen here. I feel the safety of this place in my bones.’

‘What about Bartholomew? In the wider world disciples are being slaughtered and civilisation is threatened. This isn’t all about us.’

Claudia turns side-on to move past him without touching, checks one last time she’s left nothing behind, looks under the bed and reaches for a pair of knickers. She stuffs them into the pocket of her case. She’s ready.

‘The summons to Rome feels like a set-up,’ Gallio says.

‘You’re not dressed.’

‘No, listen. Valeria suspects Jesus of starting the fire in Rome. Now maybe of planning something worse, but the CCU is neurotic about terror threats, always has been. I’m not above suspicion, all things considered, not when contact with terrorists is a convictable offence. I’ve had contact with Jesus followers, right back to the beginning in Jerusalem. I’ve been actively searching Jesus out, which looks bad. I sent drugs to Jude’s hospital. Should have told you that. Then we let Bartholomew wander off unattended.’

‘The CCU brought you back from Germany to do a job. Valeria wouldn’t abandon you now.’

‘I’m not convinced she’s that interested in Jesus. Sooner or later she’s going to take her revenge.’

‘You exaggerate. Why would she want revenge?’

‘History. Something that happened between us. Please, Claudia, sit down and think it over. At least try to imagine living happily ever after in Caistor.’

Gallio tries to hold her again, but she’s always moving and is made of elbows.

‘It’s not that simple,’ Claudia says. ‘She knows my house, my family. You have no idea what she’s like. Now put some clothes on. Valeria wants us in Rome and we’ve stalled here as long as we can. She isn’t joking about sending someone to fetch us. We don’t want that, believe me.’

‘Valeria can make mistakes. She doesn’t believe Rome can ever be outwitted, or go backwards. She thinks all she needs is a reasonable plan of action and with logic and strategy she’ll control the future.’

‘Why is that so wrong? Reason will prevail. Don’t waver, Cassius.’

‘The future is under control only as far ahead as she can see. Which isn’t very far, in the scheme of things.’

Cassius Gallio trusts in his previous experience of Jesus, which makes him question every change of direction. He remembers the feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed him in Jerusalem, in the week of Passover, all those years ago. Jesus had plans of his own for Cassius Gallio. Gallio had made everything happen — the arrest, the trial, the sentencing. But everything he made happen corresponded to preparations Jesus and his disciples had made in advance. Now Gallio has a similar anxiety about Rome, a doubt like a shadow in his mind since Antioch. He and Baruch had travelled to Antioch to question Paul, on a convenient detour while Thomas was stoned and speared in Babylon. They had been manoeuvred, and should have learned a lesson.

Gallio reaches out for Claudia but she’s at the doorway, suitcase in hand.

‘Not now, Cassius. Come on, we have a plane to catch.’

‘Bartholomew’s death isn’t our fault, and like Simon he may have wanted to die. Baruch said Simon wanted to die. We don’t know. There’s another disciple in Scotland, Andrew. That’s not far from here. We could take the sleeper train, finish what we started, save the CCU some money.’

‘Where we go and what we do is not your call to make.’