Mission (59 page)

Chained hand and foot, Joshua was delivered to Herod at the Western Palace in the Upper City. Herod Antipas was pleasantly surprised to see the man whose career he had followed with interest but who, up to that moment, had eluded him. What Herod wanted to see more than anything else was one of the Nazarene's miracles.

Herod and his circle of courtiers were to be disappointed. Joshua, by nature or design, proved to be depressingly inarticulate. How, wondered Herod, could anyone think that this man could walk on
water? He didn't have the wit to step over a puddle. Why did the Sanhedrin want him killed?

Whatever the answer, it was not Herod's problem. For Joshua had been born in Bethlehem. Which made him a Judean and, since the exile of Archelaus, Judea was directly under the rule of Pontius Pilate. Herod ordered Joshua to receive twenty strokes of the whip for wasting his time, then sent him back to the Fortress Antonia dressed in a purple robe. It was, after all, only fitting, joked Herod to his courtiers. If Joshua was supposed to be King of the Jews, then he should be dressed like one.

And so Joshua was returned to Pontius Pilate, standing on the back of an ox-cart, surrounded by an escort of Syrian mercenaries from Herod's palace guard. Glad of a little excitement, the soldiers hammed it up, shouting at the people in the streets to make way. Some of the disciples were in the crowd that gathered as Joshua went by. They could hardly bear to watch as the soldiers urged the crowd to salute their ‘king' and demonstrated how it should be done by spitting on him and beating him about the head and body with their fists. Forcing their way to the front of the crowd, the disciples tried to catch Joshua's attention but, although he looked right at them, he gave no sign of recognition.

Pilate was not overly pleased to find Joshua back on his doorstep. Stripped of his ‘royal' robes, he was dragged before Pilate for a second, and final interrogation. Did he realise the gravity of the charges against him? No reply. Did he have anything to say in answer to the evidence of his accusers? No reply. Did he claim to be King of the Jews? Answer: ‘
Thou sayest it.
'

Pilate had passed sentence on a large number of people since he had been appointed
procurator
but never, in his whole life, had he seen an accused man under threat of crucifixion act like this. Joshua did not have the gallows-defiance of a rebel who knew he had no hope of acquittal. He was just allowing himself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter. So be it.

Like the news about Paul, this next section may leave some of you gasping, but this is where we have to part company with the Book which now proceeds to cast Pilate as the noblest and most reluctant Roman of them all. All that business with Barabbas and the crowd is pure moonshine. It didn't happen. The agonising by Pilate, his wife's warning dream, the orchestrated howls of the mob in front of the Fortress Antonia, Pilate washing his hands of the whole affair – all
this was the work of later writers whose job it was to whitewash the Romans and, by extension, the rest of the Gentile world. Neatly shifting the blame for The Man's death unfairly but squarely on to the backs of the Jews and playing right into ‘Brax's hands in the process.

It is important to realise that Paul was a Roman citizen as his father had been. The Jew from Tarsus, who had studied under the great Gamaliel in Jerusalem and had been regarded by the sage as one of his most promising pupils. Intelligent, quick-witted, endowed with enormous energy and vision and, above all, a burning ambition to succeed. He also had one other, important advantage. You don't grow up as a Roman citizen without realising that the secret of Rome's success lay in efficient, disciplined organisation. Paul was not only a great letter-writer; he was also a great organiser.

It is no secret that he willingly accepted the task of crushing the rapidly expanding number of Judeo-Christian communes that the Apostles and Followers were setting up everywhere. Paul knew that if he succeeded, he would not only earn the Sanhedrin's grateful thanks, it could mean rapid promotion to a position of power within the Temple hierarchy. But there remained one insurmountable stumbling-block. No matter how well Paul did in his given assignment, even with Gamaliel's backing, he could never make it all the way to the top. His Roman citizenship, plus the fact that he was not a Sadducee meant that he could never be High Priest.

But, on the other hand, as Paul was quick to see, the belief-system of the Judeo-Christians he had been detailed to beat sense into had great possibilities. And the more Paul considered them in detail, the greater those possibilities became. Judaism, as they say, was a living, but the market for it beyond the borders of Palestine was nonexistent. The Man's message, however, with its built-in element of universality, was something that
would
sell. The text just needed a little adjusting. The essential thing, apart from widening the franchise, was to make Joshua of Nazareth as important as Jehovah. To say that he
was
God, and not just God's messenger. With that one shrewd move, Paul put Christianity on a par with Judaism. Let's face it, if you're planning to sell stock in Western Union, it makes more sense to have the Company Report signed by the Chairman of the Board instead of by one of the telegraph boys.

The light that hit Paul on the road to Damascus was a blinding flash of inspiration. A biliion-watt bulb that lit up with the word
‘IDEA!' printed on it in Latin. When Paul and his new-found friends took the big step and started recruiting uncircumsised Gentiles into the Judeo-Christian movement it marked the break with Judaism. From that point on, the Jews were to be the enemy. And to make sure nobody forgot that fact, the Pauline scribes sharpened their quills and applied themselves diligently to the task of setting the record straight. Eliminating much of The Truth in the process.

Pilate did not agonise over Joshua's fate. He knew that the Jewish establishment had a powerful lobby in Rome. If the Senate heard he had been less than zealous in maintaining the emperor's authority it could damage his career prospects. When it came down to it, keeping Caiaphas happy was more important than dispensing justice to a tongue-tied carpenter.

Anxious to rid himself of Joshua's unsettling presence, Pilate quickly sentenced him to death by crucifixion and handed him over to the duty officer of the garrison. As it happened, an execution squad had already been formed to deal with two thieves who had been sentenced by Pilate some days before. Their scourging – a grimly painful softening-up process – had started when Joshua was committed to the squad's care with the request for special treatment in deference to his rank. It was not every day that a Roman soldier got a chance to lay hands on royalty.

The squad-members were all tough ex-campaigners from the province of Galatia – now part of modern Turkey. They were no strangers to pain, or the methods of inflicting it. But the same kind of thing is still going on in the basements of political prisons all over the world today.

Basically, a prisoner up for crucifixion was beaten with alternate strokes from the
flagellum
– a whip made up of several thin strands of square-section leather that sliced straight through the skin, and the
flagrum
– which consisted of three lengths of heavy cord on to which human knuckle bones were knotted some three to four inches apart. A real rib-breaker. On top of which, they rammed a crown of thorns around his skull. If you've ever pricked yourself pruning roses, just think about what that means.

Throughout Joshua's scourging, Ya'el remained in the Garden of Gethsemane; his meta-psyche drifting invisibly among the trees. A formless cloud of super-consciousness that took upon itself the full force of Joshua's agony.

What Joshua felt as he hung chained in the cellars beneath the
paved courtyard of the Fortress Antonia was the physical impact of the blows that drove the breath out of his body. The resulting pain was dulled in the way it is when your dentist administers a local anaesthetic. You feel the pressure and vibration of the drill but the pain is mostly imaginary.

For Ya'el, each blow was like the shrieking jolt you feel when a raw nerve is jabbed. But because of the nature of his spirit-being, the pain you or I might have felt was magnified within him a million times over. That was why he had been so reluctant to face this ordeal. It was this, and not the earlier moment of distress, that was the Agony in the Garden. The moment when, as the writer of
Luke
noted in a passage that should not be taken literally – ‘
his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
'

The Man's account of this moment had left me puzzled, but before I could seek clarification, I had been distracted by the arrival of our visitors. Now, as I listened again to his voice on the tape I asked myself the same question: If God, The Presence, or Whoever could change the rules of the game and wipe out Ya'el's
karma
at a stroke, why couldn't he have arranged his escape without killing Joshua? Why was it necessary for them to suffer, each in his own way, the agony of the Crucifixion?

I had to wait until I reached Jerusalem before I was given the answer to that one.

On what turned out to be my last Monday evening in Manhattan, Miriam hung up her white coat an hour before her day officially ended, went home, and cocooned herself in the bath and bedroom; emerging, when I called at eight, as an impeccably groomed social butterfly. I knew that it was meant to be a special going-away present and I complimented her accordingly, whilst secretly wishing she would stop cutting her wonderfully thick, dark hair.

I am conscious of the fact that Miriam's
coiffure
is of relatively minor importance in the overall scheme of things, but I mention it to illustrate how life is made up of both the mundane and the metaphysical. One should remember that even while such notables as Augustine and Jerome were bucking for sainthood and speculating on the nature of God, their minds were also dwelling on the unholier attractions of good food, drink, the racier Greek classics and strong-limbed, eager women.

As my special treat, I'd made a reservation at The Leopard. We had a superb meal, after which Miriam allowed me to take her to see my hero in
Escape from Alcatraz.
On the way there in the cab we passed the hospital. To my surprise, it was still standing. After the movie we stopped off at the bar where we'd first met when the group of people she was with had come in out of the rain to phone for a cab. Her escort was a guy I'd known at high-school. Which was good luck for me and bad luck for him. Her hair had been long then. Glistening with drops of rain. But that's another story.

We had a couple of drinks and looked at each other a lot and then it was back to my place, where we lay in bed, happy to be together.

In the morning, we were woken by the phone. It was the hospital
for Miriam. One of the team had come down with a viral infection. Could she cover? She swore quietly under her breath and grimaced at me. ‘Is it okay if I don't see you off?'

‘Sure,' I smiled. ‘I hate goodbyes.'

You know how it is. You either get there too early and run out of things to say, or you're all tensed up trying to make it through the traffic to the terminal before they close the boarding-gate.

Miriam got dressed. I pottered around in my robe and made some coffee. We had a toast and orange juice breakfast together during which she checked my wallet to make sure I had the list of names and addresses of her friends in Israel. Some of whom she had already telephoned from the hospital to tell them I was coming. No wonder the goddamn city was going broke. I called her a cab and, minutes later, the janitor buzzed through to say that it had arrived. I took her in my arms and kissed her gently. On her lips, her forehead and each side of her nose.

‘Take care,' I said.

‘You too,' she replied.

‘Listen,' I began. ‘If anything – '

She kissed me to stop the dread words coming out.

‘I love you,' I said, and saw the tears spring from her eyes. ‘Hey, hey, hey, come on. I've told you that often enough.'

‘I know.' She flicked the tears away with her fingers. ‘It's just that this time I get the feeling that you mean it.'

‘Perhaps that's because I've finally understood,' I said.

‘Me too …' She blinked her eyes dry.

‘Good,' I smiled. ‘Maybe there's hope for us yet.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Maybe there is.'

‘See you, red-eyes.' I gave her a quick shoulder-hug then closed the hall door and went over to the window, waiting for her to appear in the street below. She looked up as she crossed the sidewalk, blew me a kiss then got into the cab and was carried away down the street.

When I was all packed, I sealed the tapes of The Man's conversations in several large buff envelopes along with the NYPD Polaroids and the colour film I had shot of him at Sleepy Hollow, arm in arm with Linda, Gale McDonald and the others, and that I'd put in for processing the day before. And I wondered how Kovacs's film had turned out.

Just after midday, the phone rang. It was Gale McDonald. ‘Hi,' I
said. ‘Had any more thoughts about the weekend?'

‘Several,' she replied. ‘Tell me, how well do you know your secretary?'

The question caught me by surprise. ‘Linda? Pretty well, I guess. She's worked with me for a couple of years now. Why do you ask?'

‘Because I've been digging around since that brown VW truck with the bum licence plate eavesdropped on our conversation in the coffee shop,' said McD.

‘And?'

‘Did you know that she was never employed as a secretary by Universal?'

‘Yes, I knew that,' I said, with a dry laugh. ‘If you dig far enough, you'll probably find she tried to break into movies and ended up as a party girl. Not exactly the best reference for getting a job with a straitlaced New York law firm.'