Richard Beard - Acts of the Assassins

Paul was louder with his repetitive prayer, moaning the words over and over oh lord oh lord. John joined him and held his hand, as encouragement. Claudia held the envelope with the money, but this was never a story about the money.

‘Paul has given me valuable assistance,’ Valeria said. ‘I admit that. We understand each other, and recently we both saw that the disciples had outstayed their welcome. They and their storytelling had to be removed to make way for ideas less damaging to the stability of modern life. We’ll replace superstition with community values. The resurrection becomes a symbolic idea rather than an absurd and exceptional fact.’

Valeria sounded so reasonable. Cassius Gallio pressed a fist to a twitch beside his eye. So reasonable yet mistaken. No one understood the cunning of Jesus but him. ‘Paul isn’t betraying the disciples,’ he said, ‘he’s helping them out. If Paul wants them dead he’s on their side . Trust me on this.’

‘You’re unbelievable,’ Valeria said. ‘Claudia, tell him his speculation doesn’t make sense.’

‘I think it does,’ Claudia said, ‘at least until the point about dying. Valeria, you killed the disciples with the help of Paul. But I can’t agree they wanted to die, because that would mean they manipulated the CCU, which makes them smarter than us.’

‘Remember the tomb in Jerusalem,’ Gallio said. He needed to convince them both. ‘Valeria, you were there when Jesus supposedly died, and whatever took place on the Friday and the Sunday we never successfully explained. These are clever people. Jesus picked disciples sharp enough to keep up with his scams and hoaxes.’

‘Paul is my asset,’ Valeria said. ‘We have everything under control. He’s my agent, and has been for years.’

‘Which puts him beyond reproach,’ Gallio said. ‘He has the perfect cover. Valeria, open your eyes and see what’s in front of you. He doesn’t work for us he works for them. Paul is a triple agent. He’s the father, the son and the holy ghost.’

‘I think my time has come.’ John’s voice wavered as he stepped forward, unsure who was tasked with the actual killing. ‘None of us can wait for ever.’

John spends hours at a time in his cave, hidden from heavenly sight, and over the years Cassius Gallio has occasionally failed to chivvy him outside.

‘Another glorious day,’ he’d say, which was unlikely to cheer John up. ‘Your loss, but at some stage you’ll have to forgive him for keeping you alive.’

‘How long before you forgave him for what he did to you?’

‘Fair point. Jesus is not an easy person to forgive.’

Inside the cave John writes by candlelight, except he doesn’t physically write because he’s blind. John dictates and Gallio writes down the seven miracles of Jesus that John remembers best. John remembers the last supper and resting his head against the shoulder of Jesus, and he sees now that Jesus was pitying him for the suffering to come. The memory offers insufficient comfort — Jesus knew in advance but still he left John behind, to live and breathe in a cave on Patmos while his soul yearns for the past or the future. He exists everywhere at once, opening gaps in time that let through unsettling thoughts.

‘Write them,’ he says, and Gallio records the thoughts of John, however extreme or apparently senseless. First he thinks in stories, then in images of natural disasters and harpists and carnivorous birds. He spews out numbers, threes and sevens and twelves, and the voice in his head wants to multiply his findings by a thousand. Gallio writes every word, from the miracles through to the final reckoning, not to please John but to inform the generations to follow.

They both seize on the insolence of this idea, understanding that every sentence of John’s Gospel and John’s Revelation is a snipe at Jesus. The beloved disciple is leaving a testimony for others to read, after he is gone. With every paragraph John scorns the notion that he’ll live to see the end of the world. Writing is his act of revenge, his doubt in the prophecy that Jesus will return in the lifetime of one of his disciples.

‘Credit where it’s due,’ Gallio says. ‘Jesus isn’t all bad.’

Whenever John annoys him, Gallio defends the record of Jesus, in particular his treatment of John. In Galilee John was among the first disciples called, and in Jerusalem Jesus trusted him to lay the table for the last meal the disciples ate together. From first to last, unlike some of the others, John was given specific tasks to achieve. He was selected with Peter to run and discover the empty tomb. He was chosen even among the chosen.

Gallio doesn’t know why he bothers, because there are nights in the cave when he considers blocking John’s airways. He watches the disciple while he sleeps, and at almost any time Gallio could lean heavily on John’s face and he could press down and keep on pressing and force Jesus to make himself known. To return or not to return. Either way would end John’s misery at being left behind, and at last Cassius Gallio would know.

Except he’s an ex-Speculator, formerly attached to the Complex Casework Unit. He’s a guardian of enlightened values and a champion of reasonable thinking. Cassius Gallio is not a killer, so in Patmos John wakes up come the morning. The two men go for their walk, look for clouds and leave Jesus to choose his moment. Or not, as the case may be.

On the surface, without question, Paul was a Jesus believer. But behind that façade of letters and prayers, Valeria was confident of Paul’s allegiance to her and the CCU. Gallio was now suggesting that in actual fact Paul worked, more secretly again, for real for Jesus. Valeria had chosen not to be worried by the spread of churches and congregations, or by how Paul had connected, under her protection in the name of Jesus, Ephesians with Galatians with Corinthians and Romans.

‘He encourages Jesus believers to love peace and pay tax,’ Valeria said. ‘Exactly as we agreed.’

Gallio could sense Valeria’s exasperation, her inability to accept that a fatal mistake had been made. As a young woman she had misread Gallio in Jerusalem, when he wouldn’t leave his wife, but since then she’d pretty much known what she was doing. Being wrong was a feeling she’d forgotten how to recognise.

‘The number of believers doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘as long as they don’t pose a threat to Rome.’

‘So you never believed in a Christian terror threat, or Jesus triggering the end of the world?’

‘I couldn’t rule out those risks, not until now. Paul is ours, but we needed to rationalise all twelve disciples to be sure they didn’t have a plan of their own in motion.’

‘Maybe, but who is actually winning here?’

Valeria turned to Paul. ‘Tell Cassius about Damascus, when I recruited you. You’ve been against Jesus from the start.’

Paul ignored her, his lips drawn thin, his head rocking forwards and back. He found a rhythm like a monk in active contemplation of the invisible, but he was trying too hard as if the invisible ought to be easier to see.

‘He was caught by a storm in the mountains,’ Valeria said. If Paul refused to take responsibility for his past she would tell the story herself. ‘He was badly shaken, but he recovered and the real change in him was the secret deal he made with me. Once we reached an agreement he was brilliant. He invented the bolt of lightning and the appearance of Jesus. The miracle revelation on the road to Damascus was mostly his idea.’

‘You were so impatient,’ Paul said, but as if Valeria was worth only a fraction of his attention. The rest of his mind was elsewhere, and not at ease, but Valeria was easily dismissed. ‘You didn’t listen to me. In Damascus you were so sceptical you’d have disbelieved in anything.’