Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

Paul’s bodyguard, the third person to arrive ahead of them on the terrace, was armed. The curved blade of his sword was dulled with blacking, a professional touch, Gallio thought, and proof that Paul trusted no one.

‘Break it up, gents.’ Valeria had seen enough hugging, or shared some of Gallio’s operational anxiety. ‘We’re busy people, with problems to solve. No time like the present.’

In the uplight she looked years younger, the Valeria Gallio had once almost loved in Jerusalem. No jacket, no bag, no weapons. Paul and John broke apart but held each other at arm’s length, like friends before a long separation. Or afterwards, reunited.

‘I missed you,’ Paul said. ‘Now I have to go.’

Claudia coughed, held out the padded envelope containing Paul’s fee. ‘I brought your money. You can count it if you like.’

‘Which one is the assassin?’ John asked. He pulled away from Paul and raised his chin.

Part of growing old is the forgetting. The days grow longer then shorten then lengthen again. On Patmos Cassius Gallio loses track of how the starlings come and go, flocking as they depart, then arriving again with a sound like circling bells. The sun goes down and the sun comes up. Light reflects from the sea onto the under-wing of a seagull. A black cat jumps from a seaside trellis, lands safely on all four feet.

The Jesus church continues to grow, travelling along the trade routes on the words of dead disciples, promising that Jesus will have dominion over the earth. It looks like he may. For every one of the original disciples there are twelve more, and those twelve breed another twelve, blowing across the region like seeds. The Jesus believers are many but mostly harmless, allowing the first to remain first, leaving the rich and powerful unchallenged.

Some of the stories that reach Patmos are ludicrous. Cassius Gallio hears about memorials to Peter in Rome, of all places, a basilica over his tomb and a piazza that can welcome eighty thousand believers to prayer.

‘Is there singing?’ John asks, and the Vatican has a choir of twenty tenors and basses and thirty boy choristers and yes John we can confirm that there is singing, along with domes by Michelangelo and stonework by Bernini, sunlight through arches onto pillars.

‘Sculptures?’

‘In bronze, in marble, in purple alabaster.’

John laughs. This is not what Jesus had in mind, or not that he ever said.

‘They pay their taxes,’ Gallio reminds him. ‘At least some of them do.’

‘I’ll take John now,’ Valeria said. ‘Thank you Cassius, for finding him and bringing him here. I’m grateful for all you’ve done, and I’ll keep my promise. You can go, leave us, disappear.’

Valeria was offering Gallio the extinction he had longed for in Caistor, and for most of the time in Patras. Cassius Gallio could disappear and his name with him, a Speculator who never existed.

‘Unless you give me a reason to change my mind the CCU will leave you in peace. Your work is done. For the avoidance of doubt, should anyone ask, I see no one here at the Abbey but us.’ She gestured round the terrace, at Claudia and Paul and Paul’s bodyguard. ‘Just the three of us, you and me and John.’

‘The last surviving disciple of Jesus,’ Gallio said. ‘It took us a while, but we got there in the end. Every disciple located, and all dead apart from John. You don’t worry it was too easy?’

‘The full set, exactly. When no disciples are left alive, Jesus can’t come back. Or none of his sympathisers can tell that particular story, not in good faith, about Jesus returning at the latest in the lifetime of his beloved disciple. His prophecy collapses, and with it the dangerous idea that he’s a mystical genius. With John we have the twelve. We’re done.’

‘Here I am.’ John opened his hands towards her, lifted up his arms. ‘You win. We’ve been hopeless at protecting ourselves.’

‘I’d have to agree,’ Valeria said.

‘Be careful, you’re falling into their trap.’

Despite Gallio’s best efforts in Caistor and in Patras, he’d found he couldn’t walk away from the story of Jesus. He saw the same patterns repeating themselves, but this time Valeria was at the centre, over-confident as he’d once been in Jerusalem. Gallio believed he’d outwitted Jesus, because a corpse does not escape a sealed tomb. Valeria was satisfied that eleven disciples of Jesus had not chosen to die — but if they didn’t think this through Jesus would trick them again.

‘I know you were responsible for killing the other disciples,’ Gallio said. He wasn’t expecting Valeria to confess, but she would listen to his reasoning. She was a Speculator too, and Gallio was worthy of her attention if he could unfold the how and the why.

‘Personally?’

‘You have your people,’ Gallio said. ‘Operatives like me, like Claudia. We don’t see them and they don’t see us. You’ll deny them, because that’s the agreement, but you made it to regional chief of CCU because you respect how complex a case can get.’

‘I didn’t kill the disciple Simon in England. How did I kill Simon? I didn’t kill Andrew in Patras or James when he jumped from that roof.’

‘Simon in Caistor was an unexpected bonus, courtesy of Baruch, and in Jerusalem with James the riot police followed your orders. They have comms equipment, like the rest of us. They radioed for guidance, then used their batons because that’s what you told them to do.’

‘How did I get James off the roof?’

‘Paul made the phone call,’ Gallio said. ‘When James picked up, Paul kept quiet. That was a signal. James wanted to die, as did the others. Paul helped James by letting him know when the time was right, a dark evening when you were jacked into the HQ radio. Paul started the process with the phone call, then you finished the job.’

‘I enjoy your agile mind,’ Valeria said. ‘If it wasn’t for Jesus you could have been one of the greats. Explain to me how I killed Andrew.’

‘You had your people in the Patras mob, easy to disguise during Carnival. In their costumes and masks they incited the locals and ramped up the aggression. They were the ones who had the cross ready, and the bindings. The mastermind assassin was never Paul, nor was it Jesus, or Satan. It was you, Valeria, though you were helped by Paul from the start. You sent us after Paul in Antioch to give yourself time to kill Thomas in Babylon, then you tipped off Paul and let him run from his hotel before we could make his life awkward. He’s a paid informer and he told you where to find the disciples. My role was to make it look like we found them by ourselves.’

On the terrace of the Abbey, John was a picture of serenity, rejoicing that finally his time had come. Paul, however, was showing the strain. He didn’t know where to stand; it was as if he wanted to avoid Gallio as the truth came out. He moved into the shadows, banged the back of his head against the stones of the Abbey. He slapped his hand over his eyes, ran his palm down his face. He mumbled to himself, the same sounds over and over, and this was not the composed style of prayer favoured by James on the monitors. Paul clenched his fists and squeezed his old eyes shut. He released his jaw and uncricked his neck, reminding Gallio of Baruch whose soul was never at rest.

‘You’ll find no evidence of civilised involvement in these deaths,’ Valeria said. ‘With the single exception of Peter, punished for organising the fire of Rome, an unforgivable act of terror. As for the other disciples, they were randomly murdered by whichever excitable locals they upset most. Infidels can be vicious. That’s how history will remember this.’

‘You’re probably right. Until Peter you kept it clean. We achieved the result we wanted while maintaining our reputation for tolerance. You constructed and followed a brilliant piece of reasoning, which I respect. But you’re also wrong.’