‘Call Valeria,’ Gallio says. ‘Get her down here.’
Gallio pushes open the back of the van and jumps into the road. Claudia is behind him. ‘No. Keep the cameras on James. Don’t lose him. Stay in the van.’
He runs. The riot police see him and suddenly they’re alert, walking to intercept him hands free, shoulders squared. Gallio flashes his card, and throws himself at the door of the shop. It’s locked. So is the door to the stairs for the flat. The fire escape. Gallio runs round the side of the building and jumps onto a metal staircase that zigzags up the brickwork as far as the roof. He shouts up to James and tells him to get back in, because on the roof he’s exposed and anyone could be watching.
‘Go back inside! You’re not safe!’
Through the lattice of iron steps Gallio checks on the street as he climbs. No Claudia, that’s good. The riot police are out in the road now, pointing upwards. Five or six of them. They draw their batons, spooked by Gallio’s urgency. He makes it to the roof, in time to see James step towards the edge.
Gallio stops. He doesn’t want to startle him, but James is oblivious. He lifts his hands, palms upwards. A signal. From Gallio’s angle James looks like Jesus. He knows the shape he’s making.
‘James. Step back from the edge. Come down with me. You’ll be safer inside.’
James stands on the edge of the flat rooftop, hands out, speaking to himself, praying. Cassius Gallio hears roughly one word in three: Jesus, glory, dead. Kingdom no end. Gallio recognises what’s about to happen, but even as he starts forward he’s already too late.
Across the city, in the Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Bartholomew opens his eyes.
VII: SIMON sawn in half
IN RETROSPECT, THE task had been easier at the beginning, with Jesus and his disciples collectively active in Jerusalem. Cassius Gallio had been able to organise a textbook infiltration, an exemplary piece of fieldwork in the Passover season while the city heaved. He’d followed the disciples of Jesus through the holiday crowds and worked out that Judas, as treasurer, was entrusted once every day to make a solo trip to buy supplies.
The next morning, in the covered market, Judas found an unexceptional foreigner (linen trousers, short-sleeved shirt) close against his shoulder. A moment of your time, sir, no need to look around. An investment, a guaranteed return. Not today, not now, but alas if the mission of Jesus were to fail, if his plans for a righteous uprising should founder.
And the next day again: Judas, friend, it’s hardly my place to judge, but if Jesus has influence with the almighty shouldn’t his aims have been easier to achieve?
And the next: forty pieces of silver, think it through, no rush, a generous offer to a fringe member of a minor cult.
‘A terrorist cell,’ Judas eventually replied. He would not be undervalued. ‘That’s what you fear we are.’
Terrorists were worth more, and fifty pieces of silver would buy a plot of unimproved land not far from the city walls. A little patience, some prudent management, and the land becomes a field. Keep some money aside for livestock. Sell premium lambs to the Temple, Judas his own boss in a seller’s market.
Fifty-three, final offer. Don’t be greedy, Judas, I could ask one of the others. Fifty-five pieces of silver. Absolute tops. You’re breaking me here.
Judas had a head for numbers so he could do the maths. Fifty-five as capital outlay for the field, then he’d borrow against future tenant revenue from grazing. With loans he’d buy a pilgrimage inn that overcharged during festivals, and then he’d borrow again against the capital value of the property. He’d have nothing and he’d have everything. He’d have the big fifty-five, and by these calculations betraying the son of god should work out nicely.
Judas walked away, not glancing behind, not looking back.
You’re being ridiculous. Cassius followed him, stayed close on his shoulder.
The devil, Judas said, tapping his handsome head, I can hear demons whispering in my ear.
Thirty now, thirty on completion. Final offer. Sleep on it.
Cassius Gallio had designed and implemented an impeccable covert operation, for which he’d never received full credit. And until someone killed Judas nobody had died, not even Jesus.
At Ben Gurion airport the flight is delayed, held because of ice at Luton. Bartholomew has slowed their progress. The medical centre had to discharge him, and then on the road to the airport their unmarked car was trumped by the lights and sirens of Paul’s military escort out of Jerusalem. Come on. Cassius Gallio was in a hurry. He touched the crusted row of fresh butterfly stitches pinching the skin above his eyebrow. Motorcycles, a Mercedes and a Mercedes backup, an armoured vehicle, all for Paul and at public expense. Baruch would have been enraged. Even more enraged, wherever he is now.
The flight is diverted to Heathrow, and when they land the sky is pink with snow about to fall. At Nothing to Declare Cassius Gallio lets Claudia go through first. He hangs back beside Bartholomew and senses they’re being watched, a presence at the edge of his vision. He blames Bartholomew, whose familiar features and clothes attract attention. Gallio hurries him past the one-way mirrors and waits for a disembodied voice to call them back, but they make it through. Probably nobody watching, or watching but not caring.
Luton would have been a better airport from which to start. They now have a three-hour taxi drive to the town of Caistor, on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. Baruch is somewhere in England, ahead of them, but despite his head start they can catch him if they make good time around the M25, M1, A46. These roads are like the weather, clear now but threatening to turn for the worse, and the traffic eventually closes in on the A46 near Historic Lincoln. Gallio resents the jam. Why queue here? What in British Lincolnshire could be so worth seeing?
Except, of course, another sighting of Jesus.
In England a man answering the description was first seen at Glastonbury, then Westminster, now he’s further north at Caistor in Lincolnshire. Here in the outlands they’ve never known anything like it, and early unconfirmed accounts rival the miracles of Jesus. A man who fits Gallio’s Wanted profile has performed incredible exploits, healing the sick and thwarting demons. Voices speak from the clouds and animals talk.
Gallio gazes out of the taxi window. This is such a backward fringe of the Empire, but if Jesus plans to descend from clouds he’s come to the right place. The car battles against snow, then hail, as if their journey opposes the planet’s direction of travel. When the hail stops, as abruptly as it started, the sky breaks open and lets through a cold cosmic light. It is hard to believe that people live here.
The taxi crawls forward, and Gallio uses this crawl time to start the questioning. In the back seat beside him Bartholomew is as lightweight as when Gallio first picked him up in Jerusalem, years ago, though the coma hasn’t helped. He looks like Jesus after a month in the desert. Claudia sits up front, and she’ll struggle to hear the conversation but Gallio expects she’ll make the effort.
‘I don’t like to be the bringer of bad news,’ Gallio says. Claudia slides her seat back a notch. ‘But did you hear what happened to James in Jerusalem?’
‘He had his head cut off.’
‘The other James, this week, also in Jerusalem. I want to show you something, so you’ll understand why it’s in your interests to co-operate. You don’t want to die like your friends. We wouldn’t wish that on anyone.’
Cassius Gallio lights up his phone. Another disciple down, and because these deaths are real they’re available on YouTube. Gallio scrolls through the Google search results for James Bludgeoned to Death. The YouTube listings include Mexican Immigrant Beaten to Death by US Border Patrol Agents, Baby Beaten to Death by Her Nanny and Gay Rights Activist Beaten to Death.