‘We could just not go. Exercise our free will.’
‘You mean disobey a clear instruction. We’ve pushed her as far as I dare. Stay and that’s desertion, for which the penalty is death, but it’s up to you.’
‘We’re in the back of beyond. What’s she going to do? Simon is dead, forgotten, and nothing else of importance will happen here. I feel the safety of this place in my bones.’
‘What about Bartholomew? In the wider world disciples are being slaughtered and civilisation is threatened. This isn’t all about us.’
Claudia turns side-on to move past him without touching, checks one last time she’s left nothing behind, looks under the bed and reaches for a pair of knickers. She stuffs them into the pocket of her case. She’s ready.
‘The summons to Rome feels like a set-up,’ Gallio says.
‘You’re not dressed.’
‘No, listen. Valeria suspects Jesus of starting the fire in Rome. Now maybe of planning something worse, but the CCU is neurotic about terror threats, always has been. I’m not above suspicion, all things considered, not when contact with terrorists is a convictable offence. I’ve had contact with Jesus followers, right back to the beginning in Jerusalem. I’ve been actively searching Jesus out, which looks bad. I sent drugs to Jude’s hospital. Should have told you that. Then we let Bartholomew wander off unattended.’
‘The CCU brought you back from Germany to do a job. Valeria wouldn’t abandon you now.’
‘I’m not convinced she’s that interested in Jesus. Sooner or later she’s going to take her revenge.’
‘You exaggerate. Why would she want revenge?’
‘History. Something that happened between us. Please, Claudia, sit down and think it over. At least try to imagine living happily ever after in Caistor.’
Gallio tries to hold her again, but she’s always moving and is made of elbows.
‘It’s not that simple,’ Claudia says. ‘She knows my house, my family. You have no idea what she’s like. Now put some clothes on. Valeria wants us in Rome and we’ve stalled here as long as we can. She isn’t joking about sending someone to fetch us. We don’t want that, believe me.’
‘Valeria can make mistakes. She doesn’t believe Rome can ever be outwitted, or go backwards. She thinks all she needs is a reasonable plan of action and with logic and strategy she’ll control the future.’
‘Why is that so wrong? Reason will prevail. Don’t waver, Cassius.’
‘The future is under control only as far ahead as she can see. Which isn’t very far, in the scheme of things.’
Cassius Gallio trusts in his previous experience of Jesus, which makes him question every change of direction. He remembers the feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed him in Jerusalem, in the week of Passover, all those years ago. Jesus had plans of his own for Cassius Gallio. Gallio had made everything happen — the arrest, the trial, the sentencing. But everything he made happen corresponded to preparations Jesus and his disciples had made in advance. Now Gallio has a similar anxiety about Rome, a doubt like a shadow in his mind since Antioch. He and Baruch had travelled to Antioch to question Paul, on a convenient detour while Thomas was stoned and speared in Babylon. They had been manoeuvred, and should have learned a lesson.
Gallio reaches out for Claudia but she’s at the doorway, suitcase in hand.
‘Not now, Cassius. Come on, we have a plane to catch.’
‘Bartholomew’s death isn’t our fault, and like Simon he may have wanted to die. Baruch said Simon wanted to die. We don’t know. There’s another disciple in Scotland, Andrew. That’s not far from here. We could take the sleeper train, finish what we started, save the CCU some money.’
‘Where we go and what we do is not your call to make.’
‘I don’t trust Jesus. He’s playing us.’
At last, the angle of Claudia’s head suggests she feels for Gallio, maybe pity, but better than no emotion at all. ‘Are you staying,’ she says, ‘or coming with me? Make up your mind.’
Cassius Gallio needs more time to speculate. He is convinced that he’s of no use to Jesus’s master plan, whatever it is, in Caistor. He therefore wins a victory by staying in England. Rome, on the other hand, is not Gallio’s choice, and to change the world in Rome Jesus will be needing all the help he can get. Gallio will not be duped into helping, not again.
‘You do what you feel is right,’ Claudia says, ‘but I won’t go down in flames because you want to waste your life in Caistor. Phone Valeria. She’ll tell you straight — Rome. That’s why they issue us phones.’
‘To keep us in line.’
‘I can’t cover for you. What should I tell her?’
Claudia genuinely intends to leave. Gallio rushes on his trousers, a T-shirt, follows her down the stairs and into the public bar, which barely makes sense in the pre-dawn light, out of its usual time. Beer mats and carpets and chairs upturned on tables, waiting to come to life.
‘Claudia.’
She’s outside. Gallio pleads on the pavement in his bare feet, slaps his arms for warmth. ‘We don’t have the complete picture,’ he says, and the words leave his mouth as steam. ‘Tell Valeria I’m on my way, but I’m researching the bigger picture.’
A minicab pulls up, and while the engine runs Claudia holds out her hand. After everything they’ve done she wants to shake on the end of the deal. It is finished. He refuses, and she says fuck off then and climbs into the back of the cab, pulling in her case behind her. In his bare feet, cold, alone, Gallio holds up a flat Roman palm to say goodbye, watches the car cross the square and away past the Georgian house. The truth is he has no concept of the bigger picture. It feels too big. He should have settled for the smaller picture, himself in the back of a minicab with Claudia. Wearing his shoes.
Upstairs at the White Hart he packs his small bag, waits for daylight, decides against a final English breakfast. He walks down the hill to the Heritage Centre, where he sits on a wall until it opens. Not much to see, a dog, some vans, litter in the wind. He bangs the heels of his shoes against the bricks. Caistor is a perfect place to lose himself, he is sure of this, and to be lost to Jesus. He’ll click onto a property site and find himself a one-bedroom flat. Job first, then flat. With his experience he should be able to pick up something in security, at the industrial estate or a superstore on a bus route.
And then working and sleeping and hiding away in provincial England will eat up his time. He can not look, not love, not live, be as good as he likes. Rome burned once without him and Rome can burn again, will always have burned whether he’s in the city or not.
Finally the Heritage Centre opens its doors. At a computer screen he logs in, and out of habit he uses his Speculator ID to access the restricted Missing Persons pages. He clicks through to the locator map, and at first he thinks there’s a glitch, or that he opened the wrong program. Eight of the disciples are dead, he knows this for a fact. Gallio had expected a maximum of four lights for the surviving disciples — Andrew, Matthew and, in or near Rome, John and Peter. But the map is signalling multiple sightings, many more lights than twelve, double that number in locations across the screen. A light comes on at Ephesus in Turkey even as Gallio watches. The disciples seem to have divided, and divided again, and from limited beginnings can now be everywhere at once.
The nearest sighting to Caistor is a light on the south-east coast of Scotland. The drop-down box, unconfirmed, names the disciple as Andrew, last seen in a town called Whithorn. Gallio magnifies Scotland’s North Sea Coast, activating a refinement that plots Andrew’s movements from the page history. In the last few days Andrew has been moving steadily southwards. Gallio sits back and considers the light, thinks about Andrew coming closer. He’s heading in the general direction of Caistor.