The Painted Messiah (12 page)
'It's a matter of trust,' Malloy answered. 'They'll stick their necks out only if they know what kind of person they're dealing with.'
Whitefield's expression showed skepticism, but he didn't respond.
Wanting to change the subject, Malloy stood up, walked across the room, and looked out his window. 'I've been reading some of your reports from this summer,' he said.
'About Julian Corbeau?'
'Corbeau is one of my personal hobbies.'
'Corbeau is everyone's hobby, T. K, at least until we can prove something.'
Living now in Switzerland with a one million dollar bounty on his head, Corbeau had left America a decade ago under indictment. His interests in the Middle East were both extensive and complex, leading the skeptical to wonder if he might be one of the financial resources of the terrorists, but the Swiss refused to treat him as anything other than what he pretended to be, a legitimate businessman. According to a field report filed by one of Bob Whitefield's operatives, the Americans had finally stumbled across a tangible connection between Corbeau and a prominent neo-Nazi operative who went by the name Xeno.
Tantalizing as it had seemed, the connection involved only a single meeting with Corbeau's chief of security, Jeffrey Bremmer, in Hamburg. There were no telephone intercepts, no follow-up meetings. If the two were presently using cutouts, it was working. Nothing had put Corbeau's
organization in direct contact with the man again. What did it mean? For Malloy, it was proof Julian Corbeau was dirty. Any kind of formal pursuit of Corbeau based on the meeting, however, was impossible.
Corbeau's indictment was for tax evasion and illegal trading. These were not extraditable crimes in Switzerland. As far as the Swiss were concerned, the United States government was engaged in nothing more than harassment. It was their view that any surveillance of Corbeau was unwarranted and vowed they would promptly expel any individual thought to be attempting to monitor Corbeau's business activities. There was more naturally. The Swiss were rarely so blunt that they refused to cooperate, but those points where they did agree to help involved pursuing Xeno, should he ever cross into Switzerland.
'So what happened this summer?' He meant what had happened that didn't make the reports.
'We got lucky. We were watching some people in Hamburg and Jeffrey Bremmer showed up.'
'That much I got. Talking with the neo-Nazi underground. I'm wondering why.'
'Someone made a run at Corbeau this summer. Didn't make the papers, but he lost three men. A couple more of his bodyguards were wounded. My guess is he wants the people who did it, and he's brought in an assassination team. Whether Xeno is heading it or just running his surveillance, I don't know. This much I do know. Last summer Corbeau had five people around him at any given time. Now, we can't tell how many people are working for him. They're coming and going all the time. One estimate put the number at thirty-to-thirty- five guns.'
'So he's either going after someone, or he's seriously paranoid. We weren't involved last summer?'
'Freelancers, presumably, but we don't know. Corbeau wasn't even at his place when they arrived. Corbeau hears about it while he's at a VIP party in the city and sends his security team ahead to take care of the intruders. I'm not sure he was even there for the gunfight.'
'Maybe they didn't want Corbeau. Maybe they were looking to score some rare books.'
'You want a few thousand bucks in rare books or paintings, there are easier targets, believe me. You want a cool million with no questions asked, Corbeau is the product.'
'Not with thirty-five hired guns on hand.'
Whitefield smiled and shook his head. 'Not these days.' He shifted in his seat and took a sip of his drink. 'I understand our flight out is at fourteen-thirty Tuesday.'
'Glad to see the agency hasn't lost its touch.'
'We do our best. I'll meet you in the first class wagon on the twelve-o-three out of the Zürich main station, if that's okay with you. You can catch the train at a couple of different points along the way, but let's make the pass before we get inside the airport. I'll carry it through the flight. Once we pass customs stateside, you can take it from there. Anything comes up, this is your phone.'
Malloy checked the directory on the Tri-Band Whiteside handed him and found the numbers for Whitefield and Harrison already on the address book. He programmed in both his home number and Gwen's cell number as they talked. 'Any idea what you'll be carrying?'
Whitefield gave a satisfied smile. 'They tell me it's safe to handle, compact, light, and extremely valuable to people who matter.'
'We live in a democracy, Bob. Remember? Everyone matters.'
Whitefield smiled and stood up, signaling the end of the meeting. 'Some of us more than others, T. K. Some of us more than others.'
The first of them appeared on the horizon just after dawn. They kept coming for the rest of the morning, a long ragged line of men walking at the side of the road from Jerusalem to Caesarea. They were not soldiers, apparently not even armed. Each man wore a filthy white robe, carried a blanket over his shoulder and a gourd on a rope, this last presumably filled with water. They possessed nothing else, nor was there any kind of supply train supporting them, as one would properly assume. They appeared to be headed for the city gates, but turned off and marched directly toward that point along the wall where the prefect's and his wife's apartments lay. As they arrived they continued moving their feet. Hundreds and then thousands joined them. All the while they chanted something in a language Procula did not recognize.
'What do they want, Lady?' a girl's voice asked.
Procula turned and saw one of her husband's lovers, a fourteen-year-old Egyptian slave, staring nervously toward the bearded men. 'You have nothing to fear, child,' Procula answered gently. 'They are unarmed.'
***
That evening at dinner Pilate entertained ambassadors of Herod Antipas. They had come to ask the prefect's presence in Peraea to honour the tetrarch's sixtieth birthday. The men had been in the city for several days and were only now admitted to the palace. Pilate did not care to visit Antipas until Antipas should see fit to visit him, but it was not as simple as that. Antipas's father was Herod the Great, who had been friends with Augustus, and it was said that Antipas himself had visited Tiberius for several days only a year ago. Antipas did not answer to the prefect of Judaea, of course, nor did Pilate inform the tetrarch of his actions. They were equals, after a fashion: one a soldier in the service of Caesar; the other a prince and ally.
As he indulged in wine Pilate became more cheerful, though he had still not consented to travel to Peraea. The ambassadors, not wanting to return to Antipas with a refusal, walked carefully around the issue of ten thousand Jews camped just beyond the city walls and talked of the pleasures to be found in the Orient. They spoke of how quiet the city of Tiberias remained, for example - not a single disturbance among its population. Their message was both subtle and clear: Antipas knew how to handle the Jewish population and could be a useful friend to an inexperienced Roman administrator.
Pilate did not care for their smugness and responded with a question to which he already knew the answer. The lack of any kind of substantial Jewish population had something to do with the city being erected over a Jewish cemetery, did it not?
The insult apparently scored nicely, for the answer that came back from the senior ambassador had teeth. 'Many things affront the most zealous of the Jews - even something as seemingly insignificant as a small bronze head.'
Pilate gave a careless shrug of his heavy shoulders. 'It has been my experience that people adapt when they must. And not just the Jews! I myself awoke this morning to find my city under siege by two legions' worth of men who came with neither supplies nor weapons, determined to defeat me with prayers to their god.'
'Will you speak to them, Prefect?' one of the ambassadors asked. He seemed genuinely curious.
'I wouldn't presume to do so, but I am most anxious for their god to speak to me!'
One of the ambassadors laughed. 'What exactly do they expect him to say to you that will change your mind?'
It was Pilate's turn to laugh, 'One supposes an earthquake or bolts of lightning.'
'They won't last long,' one man remarked. 'How can they, fasting as they are?'
'I wouldn't be so sure,' another interjected. 'They are nothing if not fanatical, these Jews of Jerusalem.'
'Let them pray until their voices turn to sand,' Pilate snarled. 'The
imago
standard I erected last week will remain in Jerusalem for as long as Tiberius lives. It may not make the desert god happy, but by the gods-that-matter it makes
me
happy!' The ambassadors lifted their cups and toasted the courage of Pontius Pilate. Making his victory complete, Pilate announced to the delegates he and his wife would be honoured to attend Herod Antipas's birthday celebration.
The least discreet of them responded with spirit. 'You may march under your standards into Peraea, Prefect! We are not so sensitive as our neighbors to the south.'
***
The Jews were there the following morning and, because Procula's bedroom provided the best view, or so he said, Pilate came to her and ordered his breakfast brought to him. It was a first in their marriage. 'We should enjoy this incredible view together!' he told Procula cheerfully. 'I can't imagine why I haven't done it sooner.' From Procula's terrace she could look west to the sea, south along the desert, and east toward the mountains.
As they waited for their meal Pilate stood and directed his gaze at the early morning commerce inside the harbour - the only view he really enjoyed. Procula stood so that she could look out toward the sea and yet still watch the Jews. A fresh morning breeze swept in from the north keeping the heat of the morning in check, but the Jews caught none of it. They were in the sun already and murmuring their prayer like bees in summer.
'What is it they say?' Procula asked.
Pilate turned his gaze from the harbour and looked at Procula. 'What is it
who
says, my dear?'
Procula glanced toward the Jews. 'Those men. They chant something over and over again. I can hear the words, but I don't know what they mean.'
'Do not let them see you looking at them, Procula. It will only encourage them.'
'I'm sorry.'
'They will leave when they understand the utter futility of their prayer.'
'Of course. I know this. I was just curious.'
'They say, "God, turn his heart from stone." One is to suppose I am the man with the heart of stone.'
'All of this because of an
imago
standard in Jerusalem?'
'The priests of the Temple haven't the courage to die for their god on a Roman cross, so they rally an army of fools and send them through the desert to pray to their god in my presence, thinking it will inspire me to remove a little bronze head from the central portal to Herod's palace. The thing is not the size of your fist, my dear. They can't even see it. They complain only because they know it is there. That is what this is about - pure nonsense!'
Procula came out onto the terrace again at dusk. She told herself she wanted to see the sunset. Recalling her husband's advice, she did not allow herself to look at the suppliants. She was not sure how any of them could continue all day long, speaking the same phrase in a low murmur. What was it exactly? She tried to recall her husband's words. Something about his heart being made of stone.
Not long after they had moved to Capri Pilate had been talking pleasantly at dinner one evening, when he suddenly struck a slave who was serving them. With a fury she had never witnessed, her husband then rose from his couch and began kicking the boy. When he had finished, the slave lay on the marble floor bleeding and unconscious - close to death. After calling someone to drag the injured slave away, Pilate returned to his couch and began talking again in his normal tones. Later, when she was sure his temper had cooled, Procula asked her husband what the slave had done to warrant his beating. 'He looked at you longer than I thought appropriate.' Once the boy had recovered, Pilate ordered his castration and sold him on speculation to a merchant ship's captain.
There would be weeks when he seemed an utterly, absolutely normal human being, the man she thought she had married, but it never lasted. Power seduced him, it seemed, and he gave in to its seductions with a fury that left her trembling. It arrived for the first time in Caesarea late one afternoon after Procula had gone to direct the work in the kitchen. She heard about it in the excited chatter of her slaves and walked out to discover the disemboweled body of a bright young Syrian boy attached to the cavalry hanging from the palace gates. His crime? The slaves said the boy had not translated quickly enough for the master.
So it had returned after months of inordinate calm. It was no surprise really. Pilate had his feet under him now. That being the case, human life was cheap again.
'God, turn bis heart from stone!
' That was what the Jews whispered as the sun dipped into the sea. She did not care what Pilate said. He was not here to see it anyway. She turned and looked at them and did not pretend to do otherwise. They were shadows now, their voices like the chirping of nocturnal creatures. 'God, turn his heart from stone. God, turn his heart from stone.'
