‘You deny phoning him?’
‘I do not. I had an issue I wanted to discuss. A private matter, of a theological nature.’
‘So why didn’t you speak?’
‘At the last minute I changed my mind. I decided not to share.’
‘James jumped from the roof of his building after you put through a call. Have you been blackmailing him?’
‘I don’t have to answer. You’re obliged to allow me an appeal in Rome.’
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ Baruch studied Paul’s face, and he was right. Paul was enjoying himself. ‘You end up with exactly what you wanted when we met up yesterday. Protection. Look at you. You don’t give a flying fuck about James. You get what you requested in the museum, as if you’d planned this death for your own benefit.’
Cassius Gallio recognised Baruch’s sense of being used, and it made both of them uneasy. Gallio felt the mysterious hand of Jesus deploying the pieces, devising outcomes that favoured his followers. A death was not a death, any more than this arrest of Paul was a punishment. Jesus had worked out the moves in advance.
‘This isn’t right,’ Baruch said. ‘Something here is wrong.’
Paul laughed. He couldn’t help himself. He beckoned the waiter, but no waiter dared approach, not while Gallio and Baruch were ruining Paul’s breakfast. Paul knew differently, that not everything was as it seemed.
‘Congratulations,’ he said, ‘there’s hope for you yet. Something is wrong. Everyone senses it, and from this feeling religion begins. There are difficulties to our existence that feel wrong. Jesus offers an explanation.’
‘This is a set-up,’ Baruch said.
His phone rang. A second later so did Cassius Gallio’s. News from the medical centre: Bartholomew was out of his coma.
‘I’ll go,’ Baruch said.
‘We’ll both go.’
‘I’ll drive.’
No one forgets Judas, and his betrayal of Jesus is proof the disciples can be weak.
Bartholomew has a weakness for cappuccino. Back from his coma he’s in love with life and surrounded by god’s miracles, including Italian frothed coffee and slot-machine lights at the A46 services near Thorpe.
Cassius Gallio hopes to turn Bartholomew as he once turned Judas, but even on his second Costa he’s yet to be bought. Gallio leans across the laminated table. ‘You don’t remember me, do you? Many years ago we had a chat in the back of a car. I said that one day I’d help you, and seventy pieces of silver is a lot of money. However you choose to look at it.’
‘I’m looking down on it,’ Bartholomew says. ‘What would I do with so much silver?’
‘I’ll buy you some catalogues. You don’t need to be short of ideas, not these days.’
‘Jesus will provide.’
Yet Bartholomew declines to explain how Jesus will arrange the dead-drop, on these mysterious future occasions when Jesus will deign to provide. They’re soon back in the taxi, Bartholomew fascinated by the spaces that divide one town from the next. Strip villages, obese children, and marshes where wheat refuses to grow. Rivers. England is a developing region, the kind of backward territory where gibberish can flourish among the uneducated, but sometimes Gallio just looks, and forgets he’s looking for Jesus.
‘I sense you’re troubled,’ Bartholomew says. ‘What can I do for you?’
Gallio compliments him on his sensitivity, and says that to be honest he’s troubled by the latest forensic reports. ‘I doubt you can help.’
‘That isn’t what I meant. You’re avoiding the question.’
And Gallio continues to do so because this is his taxi, his story. He will ask the questions and sift the answers. He will speculate, because that’s what he was put on god’s good earth to do. ‘We’ve found evidence of high-strength anaesthetic stocked in Joseph of Arimathea’s house during the period of the crucifixion.’
Perhaps Bartholomew can be useful after all. Gallio runs through one of his Jesus survival theories, not the switch but the sedative on the sponge. What does Bartholomew make of that?
‘It’s possible.’
Bartholomew trained as a doctor so he should know. He also wants to be kind, allowing Gallio to speculate, and surprised by Bartholomew’s meek response Gallio sees for the first time how tired he is. As a Speculator he should take advantage.
‘In the sense that anything is possible? Or that the sedative made it easier for whoever took Jesus’s place? A minor disciple. Like Simon, for example, crucified in the place of Jesus but mercifully spared the worst of the pain.’
‘I don’t know. I can’t say whether your theories are true or untrue. They’re not unreasonable.’
‘Tell me how Jesus stays hidden.’
‘He’s not hidden,’ Bartholomew says. ‘He is everywhere.’
‘Yes, but where exactly, right now? Is Jesus here in England? Is he standing in for the disciple who’s been located in Caistor? Tell me and put an end to this. We won’t hurt anyone and you can relax. Seventy-five pieces of silver would set you up, even in this day and age.’
Cassius Gallio offers himself up as a saviour, and as soon as Bartholomew allows reason to prevail then Gallio will have saved him. But Bartholomew stares out the side window, captivated by the forecourt of a BP garage, the first one he’s seen, another everyday miracle. He wipes a hole in the condensation to let in the green and yellow glow of prices and pumps. For the moment the secret entrusted to the disciples is safe with Bartholomew.
‘How well do you know Paul?’
‘Not at all. We’ve never met.’
‘I arrested him in Jerusalem. We think he’s involved in the death of James.’
After the BP garage a superstore, a Real Ale pub, a slow length of road following a vintage Morris Traveller. Bartholomew is easily distracted from explaining how a god can appear on earth. ‘Who do you prefer, Peter’s Jesus or Paul’s Jesus? I think I can guess the answer.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘The Jesus according to Peter is a Nazareth carpenter who champions the disadvantaged. Paul thinks Jesus has a direct line to god and can take over the world. Peacefully, as long as everyone believes in him.’
‘I don’t prefer either version. Both can be true.’
‘Paul’s Jesus is winning.’
‘He makes skilful use of the postal service.’
‘Paul is not the person you think he is.’
‘I try to remember Jesus as he was to me.’
Gallio tries another angle, flattery. Bartholomew escaped the carnage of Philip’s martyrium. He was spared a terrible death, meaning he might be the chosen one, as described by Jude. Bartholomew could be the disciple Jesus loves. ‘Couldn’t you? That would explain why you’re alive.’
No disciple with a human heart could fail to warm to this idea, the glory of the disciple beloved above all others.
‘I think that’s Peter,’ Bartholomew says. ‘Jesus called him the rock.’
‘Do you know where Peter is now?’
‘I don’t. I’m sorry.’
Of course he doesn’t. None of them know a thing. The disciples claim encounters with divine omniscience through Jesus, but can’t keep in touch with their friends.
‘Really, I’m the least of all the disciples.’
They do love to brag, each disciple more humble than the next.
The traffic congestion eases at a section of dual carriageway, and the taxi eases out past double-trucks carrying hay bales, then makes way for a full-beam fish van hurtling back to Grimsby. Claudia is asleep in the front seat of the taxi, head lolled forward.
‘We can give Peter twenty-four-hour global response protection.’
This is a genuine proposal. If an assassin or team of assassins is targeting the disciples then the CCU has a civilised duty to protect them. At the same time, Valeria could monitor Peter night and day to reduce the chances of a terror attack. Bartholomew, the least of the disciples, closes his eyes.