‘We made donations.’
‘You gave him public money.’
‘For a good cause. He wanted to build a heaven on earth.’
‘Does your husband, the minister, know the extent of your donations?’
Cassius Gallio doubted a government minister could be shocked. Housing scams were not unusual, especially in Babylon. However significant the sums of money, an experienced minister would expect Thomas to ensure generous returns for the rich from substandard housing that exploited the poor. Business as usual.
‘Laundering?’ Baruch presents the suggestion like a gift. Thomas had received cash donations. The city leaders can make his murder look like a gangland hit for a laundering scheme gone wrong. If they so please, if such an explanation keeps the politicians happy.
‘That’s not what he was doing.’ The woman sits up straight and swallows the last of her tears. She adjusts the chain round her neck to settle the medal of Thomas flat between her breasts. ‘He was a good man. He donated money to the Friends of the Vulnerable of Babylon.’
Gallio makes a visual inventory of the room, checking off the mementos of opulence earned from a lifetime’s graft by a successful political official. He sees many objects with no obvious function made from precious metals. The woman sobs, can’t help herself, holds her hand to her mouth.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Cassius Gallio says. ‘A few more questions and we’re finished. Did you ever see Thomas with Jesus? You’d know because they look similar, like brothers.’
‘Thomas said Jesus was often with us.’
‘But did you ever actually see him? I need you to be clear on this point.’
We can cut through their delicacy, Gallio thinks, through their carefully confusing wording. ‘We know that Thomas claimed to be acting in the name of Jesus. Did you ever see Jesus or know how Thomas received his orders?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘So you didn’t see him?’
‘No.’
‘Who do you think killed Thomas?’
‘Satan,’ she says, no hesitation. ‘Satan carries away the servants of Jesus. He is a savage wolf, and he is among us.’
Cassius Gallio tries again. ‘Calm down, please, no need to exaggerate. Now tell me, did Thomas have any enemies?’
He’d still be alive if they hadn’t flown first to Antioch, on Turkey’s eastern Mediterranean coast, to interrogate Paul who wasn’t even one of the original twelve. Paul wasn’t there when Jesus threatened to pull down the Temple or turn the world on its head. He was a hanger-on, an afterthought. He never spoke to Jesus and never met him, but in their wisdom Baruch and Valeria had decided to target Paul.
Baruch made a fuss about flying, which he claimed was unnatural. He had pills to take, and then he didn’t take his pills. He slept most of the connecting flight of the journey, KLM to Amsterdam, and for the next leg while the Boeing taxied across the Schiphol runway he put a mask over his eyes. He pulled it off. When they were airborne he couldn’t believe the plane stayed up.
‘The last one did.’
‘Flying is presumptuous. One day we’ll have to pay.’
‘Go back to sleep, caveman.’
Baruch preferred the aisle seat, to be closer to the emergency exit when the plane crashed into mountains. He unclipped his seat belt, clipped it again. Gallio refused to give up his half of the armrest.
‘You’re in a plane. The world is not about to end.’
‘But if it were, though. If the world were about to end, what would you do differently?’
Gallio ignored him and looked out of the window at the heavenly weather of air travel, sunlight rebounding from the white upsides of clouds. He felt lucky ever to have seen this.
‘Would you abandon Judith like you did the first time?’
‘I wouldn’t have this conversation.’
‘Maybe you would. Faced with the end of the world.’
‘But we’re not facing the end of the world, are we?’ Gallio gave up looking for heaven in favour of shutting Baruch up. ‘Listen, we’re on a flight from Jerusalem to Antioch with a change at Schiphol. Whatever the destination, there’s always a change at Schiphol. The world as it is keeps turning.’
Gallio remembered Jude, sick and hopeful in Beirut, waiting for the return of Jesus. ‘You don’t really believe the world is ending, do you?’
Baruch snorted. ‘Of course not.’ The stress lines beside his eyes deepened. ‘Just the important part of the world that’s conscious in this plane as me. Do you believe Jesus is alive?’
The return question felt like a test, but Cassius Gallio had been employed by Valeria on behalf of the CCU. His personal beliefs were irrelevant, and the correct answer would be to claim he was doing his job. Instead, he told Baruch the truth. Baruch was his partner, and one day Gallio might need him to cover his back.
‘I saw Jesus die. We both did. I’m ninety-nine per cent sure it was him.’
‘So why are you pushing this switch theory?’
‘It’s the explanation that remains when others have been eliminated. What about you? Think Paul knows something?’
Baruch managed a grim smile, an Old Testament curse in his eyes. He wanted revenge. Paul had made a fool of everyone who initially believed in him.
‘And Jesus?’
Baruch repaid Gallio’s favour of honesty, and his honest opinion was hardly surprising. ‘Dead. Gone forever. Don’t believe in miracles.’
Paul was giving the keynote lecture at a Faculty of Theology conference at Mustafa Kemal University in Antioch. His subject was the death, resurrection and lordship of Jesus Christ. The title didn’t suggest nostalgia for his earlier rational self.
‘He’s staying at the Ottoman Palace.’ Baruch had been on the phone since Customs, and he was connected to someone now as he joined Gallio in the queue for conference accreditation. He covered the mouthpiece with his thumb. ‘The man has a retinue. A secretary and a bodyguard. Hold on a sec.’
He checked the phone but had lost the signal. One bar, none, like living in the past. He dropped the phone into his jacket pocket. ‘A bodyguard. Think about that. A bodyguard and the Ottoman Palace Hotel. Jude in ruined Beirut this is not.’
The lobby of the conference hall was filled with academics on a junket to the sun, and they were clueless about security. A graduate student checked bags at the door, his mind on a dissertation about the nature of grace.
‘We’ll pick Paul up after the lecture,’ Cassius Gallio said. ‘Shake the tree. He sold you out, so you can lead the questioning.’
‘Really? Valeria wanted us to be careful.’
‘Valeria isn’t here.’
Gallio wore clothes to blend in with the occasion—jeans, a soft-collared shirt, a cotton jacket. Brown shoes. It was a brown-shoes academic event, with flip-flops at the hotel for the pool. Baruch was sticking with his suit, no tie, in line with the more self-regarding associate professors.
‘Are you carrying a weapon?
Baruch swept back the side panels of his jacket, sank his hands into his trouser pockets, as if that proved he was clean. ‘No.’
‘Don’t do anything stupid. Not here.’
In the lecture hall, deliberately early, they memorized the cameras, their angles, the rows in the auditorium the cameras didn’t reach. Gallio staked out the entrance, pretended to make notes in the program, drew shapes instead.
The first delegates arrived and Gallio looked for familiar faces, maybe a surprise disciple. Like everyone else he had his name on a lanyard, his area of interest recorded as Jesus Studies, and he was in the lobby when Paul swept through, dressed like the disciples but in a darker colour. In close attendance he had his bodyguard, a slab of a man who stared at collars for comms equipment. He was good, an experienced professional, but Gallio gave nothing away. He gazed at Paul like every other starstruck theologian.
At the lectern, Paul cleared his throat and assessed the audience. He was short and bald, the grey curls at the sides and back of h
is head cropped tight to his skull. The stage lights reflected from his pate, and cast a shadow from the boxer’s snub nose in his middle-aged face. He was clean-shaven, not from Galilee, not a disciple.
He shuffled his notes, lifted one foot then the other from the floor, by habit a walker more than a speaker. He slapped a strong hand onto his forehead and ran it down his face, over his eyes, flattening his nose, dragging down his jaw. He blinked, recovered himself. Then he smiled.
‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, his voice unexpectedly high, but confident and clear. ‘You know who I am, and most of you know what I do. Like it or not, you’re going to hear about Jesus.’
He spoke fluently, perhaps a little fast, as if he was overfamiliar with his material. Cassius Gallio struggled to recognize Jesus in Paul’s description of an all-conquering Christ who would come again bringing fire and destruction. Crucifixion and death would change anyone. But not this much, not from a Nazareth carpenter to the lord of heaven and earth. The Jesus described by Paul sounded like an idea, a useful projection, as if in Paul’s version the cult had moved beyond a living Jesus.
In that sense, Paul made the second coming sound like a code, and Gallio sat in the auditorium speculating a new official leader. Whoever emerged strongest from among the surviving disciples would lead as if Jesus had returned. Then again the second coming could be literally what Paul said it was: Jesus reappearing from beneath whichever rock had been hiding him. Or not a rock, but a cloud. Jesus would arrive by air, descending from the clouds. In Paul’s world of international conferences this was not so outlandish a notion. Paul reminded the audience that he had been the last person to see Jesus alive, which validated his every opinion: Jesus would come again.
He winced and straightened at the microphone, his back killing him. Paul’s view was that yes, Jesus had communicated directly with the disciples, but alas they’d failed to appreciate his message. The disciples could be theologically naïve, trusting Jesus to deliver them from evil, just as James had trusted, poor James, recently beheaded in a public place in Jerusalem. Paul’s thoughts and prayers were with the family and friends of James at this difficult time.
Paul ended his lecture with a reminder that death was not itself an ending, not since Jesus had come back to life. So be of good heart. The troubles of now will fade before the glory of the great not-yet.
Everyone clapped. During the Q&A Cassius Gallio raised his hand. He waited his turn, then tried a question about an intriguing conflict he’d read about in the files.
‘You don’t always agree with the disciple Peter, do you? What exactly is the nature of your quarrel?’
Paul stared evenly at Gallio, but with a hint of pity, as if Gallio had forgotten to turn off his phone. An easy mistake, but he’d still managed to embarrass himself. ‘I have opposed Peter to his face, that’s true,’ Paul said. ‘But only on minor points, and when he was clearly in the wrong.’
On circumcision, for example, and food purity. But Paul didn’t want to dwell on their differences, which had been taken out of context.
‘You preached specifically against John.’ Cassius Gallio tried again. ‘You said you didn’t want to meet him on your travels. Do you have a problem with the disciples?’
‘I love the disciples, every last one of them.’
At the end everyone clapped, as loudly as they had the first time. Paul clapped them back, arms above his head, hands barely coming together. He did not look at Cassius Gallio. He did not go to the bar.
Outside the lecture hall Gallio turned his phone back on. He had three messages from Valeria. He ignored them. She wanted Paul, and he was getting Paul.
‘Come on.’ He made sure Baruch was out of the hall, and following. ‘We’ll lose him.’
Baruch caught up with Gallio before they reached the taxi rank, where they barged the queue and had the cab tailgate Paul’s limo to the Ottoman Palace Hotel. Paul and his retinue crossed the marble and chandelier lobby without stopping. They waited for a lift, the bodyguard facing back into the lobby, then into the lift and up. Sixth floor.
In Beirut, Jude the disciple of Jesus was helping those in need, while dying quietly from a preventable illness. In Antioch Paul had a hotel with spa and a personal staff and official platforms from which to spread his views.
‘He’s a jumped-up coat-holder,’ Baruch said. ‘He’s got answers for us, I’m sure of it.’
A change had come over Baruch. The chairs in the lobby were designed for lounging, but he sat forward and turned an invisible ring on the thumb of his left hand. He was a former killer, and it seemed his past remained available to him. He could access a primitive state of mind beyond the reasonable boundaries that Gallio tried to respect. Baruch was entering his special zone, which wasn’t where Gallio wanted him to be right now.
‘Paul is a citizen,’ Gallio said, ‘we have to respect his rights.’
‘Or what?’
‘There’ll be repercussions. Valeria won’t forget, and she’s not good at forgiving. I’d say that’s one of her weaknesses.’
Baruch bribed the concierge in dollars: there were two rooms booked in Paul’s name. Another softened greenback and he had the number of the larger room, a suite. They waited. A lot of what Cassius Gallio did, when he wasn’t speculating, was waiting. He didn’t ask again if Baruch was armed.
‘I reckon the secretary has the smaller room.’ Baruch was winding himself up. ‘The bodyguard sleeps in the suite with Paul. That’s how I’d arrange the beds, if I was worried about security. The bodyguard may be carrying. I looked but couldn’t be sure.’
‘What about Paul?’
‘You must be joking. If the bodyguard’s clean, it’s two against two.’
‘You don’t believe that. It’s two against one.’
Paul didn’t count as a genuine opponent, not at close-combat fighting.
The lift to the sixth floor opened onto a peach-coloured carpet. Along the corridor a straight-backed chair obstructed the door to Paul’s suite. Baruch lifted it to one side. Gallio placed his thumb over the peephole and rapped on the door. No answer.
‘Paul,’ he kept his voice low, speaking close to the door, thumb down over the peephole as if condemning a gladiator to death. ‘Paul, I have news about Jesus. Open up. Something you should know.’
He rapped again. Nothing. He stood back and let Baruch pull a magnetic key card from his pocket. The card had a USB lead connected to a flash disc, and Baruch slipped the card into the slot. The light went green and the door clunked open. Gallio worried about Baruch, about his particular skill set from this point on, so he pushed into the suite ahead of him.
The double bed was undisturbed, and in the bathroom fresh towels were warming on the rail. Paul and his retinue had gone, but Gallio would not be outwitted, not again. He fumbled with his phone, saw another voicemail from Valeria, pressed Call and before she could speak he told her Paul had disappeared from his hotel. He needed CCU backup for an Antioch area locate and lift. Immediately.
‘Slow down,’ Valeria said. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’
‘He can’t have gone far. He must have been tipped off by someone. He knew we were coming.’
‘Something’s happened,’ Valeria said. ‘In Babylon. You’ll need to change your plans.’
Thomas won’t be needing his rented apartment, not any more. The studio is in a five-storey block made primarily from asbestos, and however much money he’d collected in ‘donations’ he’d spent none of the profits on himself.
In the kitchen area his cooker looks unused. In the main living space Baruch turns over the mattress on the single bed, peers behind the TV. He holds up the power lead—the plug has been removed and rewired to a lamp on the bedside table, where there’s a line drawing made on a white paper napkin. Boxes, rectangles. Shapes.
Baruch considers the diagram with his head to one side. ‘Floor plan.’ He points with his finger—‘kitchen, bathroom.’ With his forefinger he cuts an imaginary window
in one of the imaginary walls. ‘Needs more light.’
‘And maybe more actual building.’
Cassius Gallio asks the police chief if Thomas ever invested funds in tangible, real-world construction. The police chief shakes his head. ‘His blueprints existed in the upper air. Illusions, delusions. Never laid a single brick.’
They check behind the curtains, explore the bathroom, but it soon feels as if they’re done. Gallio speculates that someone has been in the flat before them, because no one lives as simply as this. Thomas doesn’t own a phone or a computer, so he can’t have kept in touch with the others, or not from here. He has a wardrobe but no clothes to fill it, and a kitchen cupboard empty of kitchen implements. Gallio would normally sift through Thomas’s possessions, looking for clues, but Thomas has no possessions.
His personality is absent from the Babylon studio, and assuming no one else was here before them, the fieldcraft shown by Thomas is close to perfect. The Jesus disciples were handpicked and have been impeccably trained in the business, in Cassius Gallio’s business, to make a difference but leave no personal footprint. The flat doesn’t hold out much promise for traces of DNA. Gallio makes a final tour of the sanitized single room, and feels a dull feeling of infinite sadness.
‘How did he settle his rent?’ Baruch like Gallio feels they must be able to learn something here.
‘Cash,’ the police chief says. ‘Promptly on the first of every month. We looked into it.’
‘Pay any taxes?’
‘You’re joking.’
Thomas lived outside the world of telephone books, credit cards, medical insurance, voters’ rolls and utility bills. He didn’t leave forwarding addresses for deliveries, or passport details with money changers.
‘People gave him stuff. Food, his rent money. Probably shoes and clothes too, for free. Hard to believe, but true.’
‘The cash economy, dependent on handouts.’
Baruch is a government employee with a mortgaged house and a pension and at least one adopted family. He lives in the borrow-and-spend economy, never depending on handouts. ‘How do they get away with it?’
Acts of the Assassins Page 11
