Day by day Gallio increases the pressure. He trains Judas to debate against Peter, providing every reasonable argument against life after death. Then in the afternoons he picks the weakest of the disciples, at least to his eyes, and follows them. By now it’s them or him. The disciples travel in pairs, for security reasons or to keep their stories straight, and in East Jerusalem on a Tuesday afternoon Gallio wastes valuable time watching Bartholomew and Philip from an unmarked Antonia car. They’re serving soup to the poor from the back of a van.
Cassius Gallio doesn’t crack, he doesn’t have a breakdown, despite what the army psychiatrist later claims on oath to the military tribunal. Cassius Gallio does nothing during this period that is irrational or unjustified. On this particular day he may have been guilty of impatience. He is frustrated. He wants to make something happen, and he tells his driver to move fast, brake hard behind the soup van. Doesn’t bother with introductions, pulls Bartholomew into an armlock and ducks him into the back of the Mercedes.
‘Keep your hands off the leather.’ Gallio dives in beside him. ‘Drive.’
The car climbs the switchback up the Mount of Olives, until they pull in at a Panoramic Viewpoint, bumper to low steel barrier. Below is the walled city of Jerusalem, past and present merged in every stone. An Arab boy calls out from the ramparts. In the carpark beside them the bin overflows with burger cartons. Bartholomew ignores the view.
‘What do you want from me?’
‘I thought you were Jesus.’
‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘My mistake. I can’t tell any of you apart.’
Bartholomew is thinner, less solid than the others, but the resemblance is intact. He is thin-boned, breakable, like Jesus with a drug habit. Otherwise Gallio knows him from his file, which is flimsy: he was born in Cana, a Galilean like all of them except Judas. His father is a peasant farmer, but Bartholomew was training as a doctor when Philip recruited him to the cause. Bartholomew gave up his studies, seduced by the glamour of saving the world.
‘Tell me about the Jesus appearances. In your professional opinion, as a medical student, would you say they’re scientifically feasible?’
Bartholomew shrugs his thin shoulders. ‘He appears to us. I wouldn’t believe it except I’ve seen him with my own eyes.’
‘Did you see inside the tomb?’
‘Peter and John told us it was empty.’
‘But you didn’t see it? How can you believe it was empty if you didn’t actually see it?’
‘Jesus is alive. If that’s what you’re asking.’
Gallio smacks his hand into the headrest. Beside him Bartholomew flinches.
‘Fine.’ Gallio stares hard at the leather headrest as it pushes back the indent. Then at Bartholomew, at his alarmed brown eyes. ‘You know this is not a story to be invented lightly?’
‘None of us chose to be involved.’
‘You want me to believe that Jesus can reverse the laws of nature? I want you,’ and here Cassius Gallio pokes the top of Bartholomew’s arm with his finger, to be sure he knows that you means him, ‘I want you to think of the consequences, for you, for everyone. I want you, properly, to engage with the responsibility for making up the resurrection of Jesus.’
In Bartholomew’s version of the world there is a god, but Gallio reminds him that evil has not ceased to exist, not in the last month in Jerusalem. This god of theirs watches over us, and can intervene in human affairs, but Bartholomew and others can be bundled at random into the back of official cars. Soon followed by the fortress and the sweatbox and the rest, with god reliably failing to intervene. Every atrocity, every tragedy, every accident is intended. Imagine the cruelty of this invented god, if that were so.
‘Jesus is alive.’
‘Sorry, can’t be.’
Bartholomew rubs the side of his head. Gallio wants to tug on his beard, shake some sense into him, but in the rear-view mirror Bartholomew is making eye contact with the driver.
‘Don’t look at him. Look at me.’ Gallio pinches Bartholomew’s cheeks between his fingers and turns his head, squeezes a little until he can see the inside pink of Bartholomew’s mouth. ‘Look at me, Bartholomew, look.’ Gallio could encourage him with the usual temptations, with girls or boys, with money. The disciples say they’re not interested but they are. They must be, like everyone else, like Judas. ‘Remember me, Bartholomew. One day I may be able to help you.’
Cassius Gallio watches for a reaction, studies this face so similar to the face of Jesus. Nothing. He pushes the face away. The side of Bartholomew’s head cracks against the window. Gallio leans across and opens the door.
‘How will I get back?’
‘Walk. Like everyone else.’
The next day they murder Judas, and Gallio stops wanting to be the Speculator in charge. Not him, not any more. He doesn’t want to have to explain to Pilate, to the CCU, to anyone.
Someone phones in, voice disguised, could have been a man or woman, any age. Cassius Gallio keeps the news to himself and reaches the field within the hour. The rope is lashed low to the trunk of an isolated tree, run up and over a high branch, with a single knot in the loop of the noose. At first glance Judas looks like a suicide.
Gallio is weary but he investigates. The details need attention, and he can’t find a note, a decisive indicator if this is genuine. Judas didn’t write a suicide note. At the tribunal, no one will be interested in the non-existent note.
He remembers cursing out loud. Fuck fuck you fuck you fuck. Cunt. Cassius Gallio had promised to protect Judas, had such brave plans for him. He slaps at the naked body, then remembers his training. Calm, breathe. Steady the body, flat hands, gentle, bring it to a slow dead stop. He checks the pale skin for abnormalities, marks, signs of a struggle. Breathe. The hands, the ragged tips of the fingers, look for blood beneath the nails. Judas has withered fingernails, self-inflicted. His body stinks of sweat and alcohol.
At the base of the tree a folded pile of clothes and a wallet. His killers left the money. Clever. Make it look in every way, besides the absence of a note, like suicide. Time goes by while Cassius Gallio doesn’t know what to do. He hears the whine of a petrol strimmer on a wind from the city. A plastic bag tumbles across the field, snags on a scrub-thorn. The rope creaks, heats in the midday sun while Judas turns, slowly, like a man afloat. His heavy body swells with gases, inflating with the hours of the day. Judas has been hanging three hours, maybe four, long enough for his skin to tighten and flies to breed on his tongue.
Here is a body, the wrong body. This isn’t the body Cassius Gallio had wanted to find.
He might cry. Where are his people, his agents, his officers? Where is his Valeria, and his wife and the child? How did they let this happen to him? His frustration pushes from the inside out and distorts his face. He grimaces, his nostrils flare. He punches the body, and flesh envelops his knuckles. He punches Judas again, a left — right combination, punishment for needing protection. And again, with gritted teeth, for failing to be protected. A flat right to the belly.
The rope snaps.
The body thumps to the ground, the exploded rope whipping over the branch, following Judas down. His ripened belly heaves and here it comes, the bursting asunder, the innards and green-grey muck of Judas Iscariot sliding across stony ground.
A crow lands, cocks its mad-eyed head.
II: JAMES beheaded
HEAT HAZE ON the runway tarmac, petrol-blue C&A windcheater, sunglasses against the Jerusalem white-light. Inside the terminal, blocking a long corridor between the gate and Immigration, a pair of officials ask for his papers. Just Cassius Gallio, not anyone else off the flight from Munich. The other passengers flow on past.