The Painted Messiah (9 page)

A young Syrian connected to the auxiliary cavalry arrived from within the hall and spoke to the priests. When they had finished talking in what seemed to be a heated exchange of Greek, the Syrian turned to Pilate. 'You pollute them, Prefect, by requiring them to stand before the standards of the Fretensis.'

Pilate turned and saw the familiar standards, pennants and banners arrayed over his door. As he still considered them and just what he wanted to do with these impertinent priests, the Syrian continued.

'In their religion they are not allowed to look upon human or animal images.'

Pilate gave Cornelius a pleasant smile he would have no trouble interpreting. 'Have we more than one interpreter in the palace, Centurion?'

'We have many, Prefect.'

'Then you will inform this man that when he preaches to me again in his own words or speaks to these men anything but what I have said, I will have him cut open and hanged from the palace gates.'

Cornelius told the man in Latin, as if he needed to hear it again: 'Be advised, sir. Speak only the words of Caesar's prefect and the priests. Nothing more - on your life.'

The young man began to answer, then thought better of it and simply nodded.

Tell them,' Pilate said, 'they may look upon the standards of the Roman Legions or they will die at the hands of those same men they insult. The choice is theirs.'

The translation followed promptly, and the Jews roared angrily. Some addressed Pilate, some spoke to one another. As it was not in Greek, but Aramaic, the translator began speaking to the Jews in Greek, asking them to speak a language he could translate.

'Execute him,' Pilate said.

Cornelius seemed not to understand for a moment, but as Pilate glared at the interpreter he understood and ordered his guards to take the Syrian by his arms. The poor man's urgency to get the Jews to talk in Greek was now forgotten. He screamed in Latin for Pilate to have mercy.

Pilate spoke quietly to Cornelius. 'Why is that man still speaking, Centurion?'

Cornelius gave no order this time, but drew his own sword and walked forward. He swept the point of his weapon directly down across the Syrian's stomach in a vertical slash. While the young man still stood with a look of surprise, his blood poured over the white marble steps. Cornelius ordered him suspended from the palace gate and the two soldiers holding the man began dragging him away - still screaming, for he had not yet expired from his wound. A third soldier went for rope.

The priests at last were silent.

A young tribune, pale and stricken by what he had seen, was sent to bring a second interpreter out. Pilate showed the new interpreter his predecessor, now hanging over the road leading into the prefect's palace compound with his guts half-out of his body, and asked him if he thought he could do a better job.

The man said he hoped as much, and Cornelius explained his duties to him without a glimmer of emotion.

'Where is Annas?' Pilate asked the priests. The interpreter repeated the question in Greek.

The Jews consulted quietly with one another, determining their spokesman. He was elected quickly and spoke to Pilate with the respect one shows the emperor's prefect. 'The high priest regrets he is unable to make the long journey to Caesarea Maritima. His age does not permit it, but he hopes soon to meet you when you travel to Jerusalem.'

'I am not interested in regrets. It is the custom of the high priest to serve Caesar's prefect, not the other way around. You will kindly inform Annas that as his age limits him, he no longer holds his title.'

'As you wish, sir. May I kindly ask whom you desire to name in his place?'

Pilate studied the man's expression as the interpreter repeated his acquiescence in Latin. 'Who among you are his sons?'

They identified themselves. The man they had elected as their spokesman was not among that select group. That made him the one they were willing to sacrifice.

'And what is your name?'

'Caiaphas.'

'Are you a priest, Caiaphas?'

'We are all priests of the Temple, sir.'

'What is your relationship to Annas?'

'I have no familial relationship to him, sir.'

'Congratulations, my friend. You are the new high priest of the Temple of Jerusalem. Please me, and you shall become the second most powerful man in Judaea. Resist me, and you will envy the death of that unfortunate Syrian hanging at my gate.'

Hearing these words in Greek, Caiaphas neither blinked nor turned to examine the man whose only crime was to ask the priests to speak in a language he could understand.

Pilate liked that about his new high priest. He liked the man mightily, in fact. He then surveyed the other priests so he would not forget their faces, the sons of Annas in particular, then turned and walked back into his palace.

As an afterthought to his meeting with the Jewish priests, Pilate sent for one of the magistrates of longstanding to appear before him. Like the Jewish priests who left the courtyard, the magistrate passed under the corpse of the Syrian without daring to look at the open wound. 'In Caesarea,' Pilate said to the man, 'we hang all the imperial standards, including the
imago
which bears the bronze head of Tiberius. Is this not true?'

It was, of course, a matter of demonstrable fact, but the magistrate, who was also a Syrian, could not stop himself from answering lavishly. The standards adorned every public square and every public building. Was there a problem? Pilate asked how the Jews of Caesarea dealt with such an affront to their religion.

The magistrate grew more circumspect. 'They endure it, Prefect. As you know, their religion—'

'I should warn you,' Pilate interrupted, 'the last man who tried to explain the Jewish religion to me is hanging at the gates to my courtyard.'

'Of course, Prefect.'

'That is your answer? They endure it?'

'Caesarea is a Roman city, so the Jews adapt. They avert their eyes from the images.'

'Are you telling me there is not a single image of the emperor in Jerusalem?'

'Excuse me for saying it, but that would be an outrage, Prefect.'

'I am not so sure I will. The imperial standards adorn every city in the empire as a matter of law.
Every
city!'

'Not Jerusalem, Prefect.'

Pilate brought the matter up with his wife that evening over their meal. Did it not seem to her an insult to the Roman religion, this refusal to honour their emperor? In the east, after all, Tiberius was to be honoured as a god. Procula said she thought it exceedingly strange that a city should insult Tiberius in this fashion.

'In Caesarea,' he told her, 'where we have a great many Jews, they graciously allow us to hang the imperial standards as well as the golden eagle, the standards of the Fretensis Legion and all her cohorts and centuries. Perhaps you can explain to me the difference between Caesarea and Jerusalem.'

'I would not presume to explain politics to you, sir.' Claudia Procula had the black hair and exceedingly large, luminous, brown eyes that distinguished all of the Claudii women, whom Rome inevitably celebrated as the most beautiful women in the empire. The matriarch of the clan, after all, was none other than Livia, the legendary wife of Caesar Augustus and mother of Tiberius. Unlike her great aunt, Procula did not seem especially attracted to power. By the age of twenty-one Livia had already divorced one husband, the father of Tiberius, in order to marry Augustus who, with her help, seized the imperial throne and held it for the next fifty years. As men liked to observe, when they were quite sure it was safe to say such a thing, Augustus had ruled the world, and Livia had ruled Augustus.

'I don't want you to explain politics to me. I only want your opinion. An objective consideration,' he answered. 'What do you think of it?'

'Sir, please. I don't know about such things.'

'Why does Jerusalem fail to honour - at the very least - an image of Tiberius? I will give the Jew his Temple, but don't you think he should grant honour to his earthly ruler?'

'It would seem so to me, sir.'

'To me as well.'

Following his dinner, Pilate sent a slave to find Cornelius. Cornelius was not to be found, however. The following morning as Pilate's barber shaved him and he dictated a letter to Sejanus, informing him of his decision 'to engage the sensibilities' of the Judaeans, Cornelius showed up.

'We are twelve hours behind schedule, Centurion, because I could not find you in your quarters last night.'

'If the prefect had only told me I would be needed—'

Pilate waved the matter away with a friendly smile, or as friendly as he got in the morning. 'Were you practicing your Greek, Centurion?'

Cornelius nearly smiled in return. 'The Syrian women, Prefect, are beyond comparison, if I may speak freely.'

The centurion had told Pilate once that one woman was too many and two were not enough. So he took them by threes and was the happier for it. 'All of them, or have you a favorite trio?' Pilate's barber's razor hesitated as his eyes took in the huge centurion appreciatively.

'I have a favorite house, Prefect. The wine passes and the women are beyond—'

'—comparison. Yes. In the future you will please leave a forwarding address when you visit your wives, Centurion, so that the emperor does not grow impatient with his prefect. I want you to take three centuries to Jerusalem and raise the imago standard over the great door to Herod's palace. If I recall the plans correctly, it faces the Temple, so that everyone who goes to see the desert god may know the living god watches over them as well.'

'Yes, Prefect.'

'You will inform Caiaphas with a letter written under my seal that should any disturbances transpire inside the city as a result of this display, your orders are to crucify Annas and all of his sons. You will then proceed to the population at large, taking every hundredth soul regardless of responsibility, age or sex.'

'Yes, Prefect.'

'And tell Caiaphas that, in my religion, we honour the images of all living things. Should he wish to discuss the matter with me, he had better bring his own interpreter. I find I am running short of them.'

'It will be done, Prefect.'

Over the North Atlantic October 6-7, 2006,

Malloy downloaded everything Gil Fine had sent him, hoping to browse through the material during his flight to Zürich. Gleaned from various sources, some print and some electronic, it was the kind of material you would have gotten from a good library a couple of decades ago if you were ready to spend weeks tracking through the
Reader's Guide
and photocopying a few thousand pages. From the organization of the material it was clear that Homeland Security had already done the basic work on Nicole North, Jonas Starr, and J. W. Richland. About half the articles on Richland involved the televangelist taking a resolute stand against sin. A great deal more was self-promotion, articles about Richland disguised as news. Finally, there was a small but persistent strain of real information, Richland's life as told by his enemies. The good stuff.

Despite a high profile and long tenure at the top, Richland's scandals had come and gone when he was still a very young man. There had been much made of it some years ago when Richland was a young preacher on the rise, but even then it was ancient history, nothing people could not forgive or at least overlook. Who hasn't been young?

The scandals were juicy, all the same. It seemed Richland had begun his professional life working tent revivals at the age of sixteen. He preached hellfire and damnation, cured cancer, caused the lame to walk, the blind to see. By age nineteen, young J. W. Richland sold his tent and rented a church in downtown Ft. Worth. Things hopped for a while. People rolled in the aisles, talked in tongues, and sang the night away. Then, according to people who knew him in those days, a delegation of the younger husbands and middle-aged fathers appeared at Richland's office one evening after services and suggested the preacher consider a career in the military. The idea apparently made good sense, because the next day Richland enlisted. Ninety days after that he was in Vietnam.

According to Richland's own account of that time, the next several years were given over to worldliness. His enemies named names. There was marijuana and liquor without question. A number of sources talked about cocaine, amphetamines, and always a steady stream of sexual partners, with a notable penchant for the married ones. In the army Richland liked to brag about his tent revival days, the pretty girls and young wives who needed 'special counseling.' All of it a great joke.

After his tour of duty and an honorable discharge, he enrolled at one of the junior colleges in Fort Worth. Grades were shaky but passing. The lifestyle was more of the same. In Richland's account of his conversion, he had hit rock bottom and was half-drunk when he stumbled into an old-fashioned tent revival. It was the kind of event he had run so well when he was too young to know what gifts he possessed. Even knowing the game, and it was nothing but a game to him at that point, he wasn't immune to its power. While the preacher spoke that evening, J. W. Richland sat in the back row and wept.