Gallio looked again in an obvious place: the family. Valeria had labelled a dossier ‘Nazareth’, and searches of the house where Jesus grew up were routinely logged in the weeks after his body vanished. Gallio now sees from photocopies that he signed the original warrants himself, back in the day, but Valeria had raided the house more recently. Empty, mother gone, father long dead, neighbours adamant that Joseph and Mary had seemed a normal couple who kept themselves to themselves. Yes, they remembered Jesus. Always had time for everyone.
None of these enquiries revealed a hidden twin who could have died in his brother’s place. Valeria made sure her people asked, checking back through school yearbooks and birth certificates. No secret twin or brother of about the same age. Only Jesus, from Nazareth, and his circle of Galilean friends.
His friends. The original twelve disciples, with the violent exceptions of Judas and James, were alive. No reported deaths from natural causes, as yet, but not one of the disciples was resident in Israel. The beheading of James was unlikely to tempt them home.
Gallio thought some more about the disciples, and how they looked so similar. He dug out the tape of the crucifixion and watched it again, and again. He stayed in the office after everyone had left, and gradually he remembered how to speculate. Cassius Gallio felt meaningful for the first time in years, and reacquainted himself with his youthful desire for glory, like a lost friend he was surprised to recognise.
Then he suppressed his ambition as best he could. There was no glorious return to Rome in this, consuls rising to acclaim him. The CCU did not divert its finest minds to tracking down a missing Jewish mystic who was anyway probably dead. Valeria had assigned the case to a washed-up ex-Speculator. Cassius Gallio knew that, but this was his second chance. He knew that too.
Find Jesus and take him alive. Parade him in a cage before a glut of academicians who will explain his escape from the tomb. Either that or prove once and for all that Jesus is dead. The most ridiculous illusion in history will unravel, for the entertainment of the rational classes.
Cassius Gallio watched the tapes, remembered his vocation, and a possible solution began to emerge.
‘There’s more to life than Jesus.’
Baruch is a restless passenger. The road climbs through the glitter of sunlit olive trees and he fiddles with his phone, the buttons of his suit, with the radio. He can’t find a decent station, too much news not enough music. ‘I have plenty to be doing in Damascus.’
‘Like what?’
‘Hunches. Seeing a man about a dog.’
Cassius Gallio sets the satnav for Damascus, but there’s only one road over the mountains, a ribbon of tarmac through the summit passes. Before long they leave the horse-drawn traffic behind, and near the highest point on the road Gallio pulls into a lay-by, comfort break. Though not straight away. Before getting out of the car they wait, as a precaution. No other vehicles but the Toyota Corolla out on the ancient highway.
‘Safe,’ Baruch says, and they both climb out of the car.
Up in the mountains a wind blows through, and a rush of clouds hustles across the peaks, blocking and unblocking the sun. The hills and the road go dark then light, and in the dry bush to the side of the Damascus road, on rusting poles, triangular signs warn of landmines.
Baruch ignores them, steps through some flowering thorns towards a solitary scrub oak. He survives, pisses, shakes, zips. He strolls back and survives again. Either he’s lucky or he has access to privileged information.
At the car Cassius Gallio leans with his hands on the bonnet, straight-armed, stretching his calf muscles. Baruch sits on the front wing and lights a cigarette, inhales.
‘I tell her I don’t smoke.’ He sighs out the smoke, a long relief, at last. ‘Figure she’s heard worse lies in her time.’
Gallio swigs from a water-bottle, watches a pair of eagles glide high in the blue above the summits. Like a bird of prey, Gallio can rise above Baruch’s goading. He can be patient. Baruch points up at the eagles with his cigarette hand. ‘Vultures. A rich and varied life.’ He takes another drag. ‘The misfortunes of others will provide.’
‘Eagles.’
‘Whatever. She’s a lovely woman. No side to her.’
‘Shut up, Baruch.’ Gallio points the water-bottle at him, and Baruch points back. Bottle versus cigarette, water against fire, but in this form neither much good as a weapon. ‘Shut up or we’ll have to fight.’
‘She is, though. You must be interested.’
‘OK, tell me about Judith. How is she?’
Gallio drinks the water, Baruch smokes the cigarette.
‘To be honest, she bores me. She doesn’t bother me. That’s why I like her.’
Gallio raises his face to the sunshine, breathes. Baruch flicks his cigarette into the bush, then stands and sweeps his arm over the rocky hills. ‘Here, or somewhere near here, Jesus intercepted Paul.’
‘Allegedly.’
‘That was after the ascension.’ Baruch puts his hands on his hips, looking, thinking. ‘Of all the appearances, Paul was the last person to see Jesus alive.’
The wind dies, leaving in its place a complicated silence. Gallio stretches and makes the moves to show he’s starting the car, very soon now, as soon as his brain can find a story that’s more reasonable than a dead Jesus appearing to Paul on the Damascus road.
‘I’d take my chances with Jesus if I met him.’ Baruch cracks his knuckles, and Gallio checks but Baruch isn’t joking. His face is set. ‘Don’t believe in hell. And if I decide to go easy on him don’t believe in heaven either.’
Baruch is not sorry for the enemies of Israel he has killed. Perhaps he regrets the son of the widow of Nain, a little, who may have had valuable information about the afterlife. And also he was only a child.
‘Paul is an ongoing investigation of ours,’ he adds. He walks back to the car. ‘No organisation likes their best employees to defect.’
‘Not many witnesses.’ Cassius Gallio slaps Damascus road dust from his hands. ‘Not in a place like this. Anything could have happened here.’
‘Not anything. Neither of us believe that.’
‘Time to make a move.’
They used a substitute. Another man died on the cross in the place of Jesus. Cassius Gallio analysed the record that remained, and each time Jesus fell on the way to Golgotha strangers broke from the crowd. It was chaos, the soldiers pushing back, not knowing which way to turn. As soon as they restored order there came another fall, another interruption, three times in all.
The disciples needed three attempts at manufacturing the incident — the heat, the pain, the mayhem — to exchange a stranger who looked not dissimilar to Jesus. The substitute, his features disguised by blood and bruising, then died on the cross while the real Jesus slipped away through the crowds, hidden and supported by his disciples. At that point in the proceedings his injuries were skin deep, and he could later reappear uninjured.
This switch theory called for meticulous planning, and a follower (probably from Galilee, for the looks) willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Such a gesture wasn’t unthinkable, because belief in eternal life could inspire drastic errors of judgement, and on the day of the crucifixion there were twelve men in Jerusalem who were known to look similar to Jesus.
Back to the office, to the files. One of the few fresh pieces of information was an updated image of the young woman who had left the crowd to wipe Jesus’s face. Now this was interesting. Cassius Gallio could speculate that ‘wiping his face’ was a cover, a misinterpretation. She was preparing his face, or checking his wounds so that the substitute Jesus could look as similar as possible when they enacted the exchange the next time he fell.