no reference to this having taken place. Jesus couldn’t have created a great scandal without being expelled from the Temple and the city itself by the authorities.
‘Or killed?’ Gavache suggested.
Ben Isaac shook his head. ‘The maximum would have been jail awaiting sentencing. As I told you, during Passover, there were no executions.’
‘But that’s not what happened. They did execute Him,’ Gavache contradicted him.
Ben Isaac didn’t reply; he stopped suddenly, as if he were revealing too much. Too late. Gavache noticed.
‘It’s possible they didn’t have Him executed,’ Ben Isaac finally said, leaning back in the chair, defeated. ‘It’s possible that the evangelists and Paul changed certain events and exaggerated others, blaming the Jews and speculating about what they didn’t know. Only Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Matthew knew Jesus. No one else witnessed anything that occurred. All the other accounts are based on hearsay. There is also the problem that the evangelists relate conversations that occurred in private without any witnesses. How could they have known what was said?’
Gavache sat down in a chair next to Ben Isaac. ‘None of this means that Jesus wasn’t crucified.’
Ben Isaac sighed. ‘Do you know what documents the lady just carried out of here?’ he asked sorrowfully.
Gavache didn’t know.
‘An inscription placing Christ in Rome in A.D. 45 and a gospel written by Him around the same year,’ he said.
Gavache listened without expressing an opinion. He was used to stories being a string of lies. In his profession he had caught many charitable souls, defenders of morality, some prominent in society and politics, with their hands in the cookie jar, caught doing the very thing they criticized and even prosecuted publicly. Everyone lied for one reason or another, or for no reason at all, because it was easy to complicate life, maybe a human need. The church had no reason to be any different, and wasn’t.
‘Do you believe what was written in the gospel?’ Gavache asked.
‘I don’t know. It has the same errors as the others — contradictions, incoherencies, coincidences. It’s a testimony in the first person up to the final days before the Crucifixion, with some interesting information — mysterious, even — and other news. It gives Him a real human dimension that’s different from the other gospels. He seems to have been in search of a state of permanent illumination. Perhaps it was His consecration to God from the cradle that nurtured this. He said, I am not the son of God, but the way to Him. The gospel places Him in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion… and then ends abruptly.’
‘At least he didn’t narrate his own death, like Moses,’ Gavache joked.
Ben Isaac didn’t react.
‘Tell me, Dr. Isaac, like you’re explaining to an eight-year-old kid, what all this means.’
Ben Isaac took a deep breath. He was worn out. ‘It means He could have been simply a man whom the accidents of history ended up deifying.’
‘I understand,’ Gavache said thoughtfully. ‘What do you think?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Do you think He’s the Son of God or just the product of legend?’
Ben Isaac didn’t hide his shock at Gavache’s question. How dare he ask a question so personal, so profound, that Ben Isaac had asked himself for years without an answer.
‘Did I upset you, Ben Isaac?’ Gavache asked without a trace of pity. He waited for a reply. ‘Come on. You should know better than anyone. You’ve guarded the secret for more than fifty years.’
‘What does it matter to you what I believe?’ Ben Isaac snapped back angrily. ‘Is that going to bring my son back to me?’
‘That’s in the hands of God and the Son of God,’ Gavache replied scornfully.
Tears ran down Ben Isaac’s face. ‘What do you want me to say?’ he said, sobbing. ‘That I believe He was a man like me and everyone else? That every day I pray He wasn’t the Son of God? That I need that document to be true because that means that my daughter died because that’s the way life is and not because He took her from me? Is that what you want to hear? That I could lose another child, and that to keep my sanity I need to believe that it has nothing to do with divine intervention?’
Gavache looked at a point beyond Ben Isaac toward the back by the stairs. Ben Isaac looked toward the same spot and saw Myriam. He swallowed dryly, unable to react or take a step in her direction. She clenched her fists, turned her back on him, and went upstairs angrily.
Myr was the only thing he managed to say, silently, to himself.
Finally he got up and rushed to the stairs. The cell phone on top of the table began to ring, making him stop. It was his. Was it the kidnappers again? He answered reluctantly. He didn’t want any more news. He thought about little Ben and closed his eyes, wet with tears.
Gavache answered the phone without asking. He spoke some words in French and then in English, and immediately handed the phone to Ben Isaac. ‘It’s for you. Your son.’
‘What?’ Had he heard right?
‘Your son. He was freed and wants to talk to you.’
Ben Isaac was incredulous. He heard Myriam running down the stairs.
‘Ben? Is it little Ben?’ she asked.
Gavache nodded with the phone still extended toward Ben Isaac.
‘But the woman hasn’t even had time to land in Paris yet,’ Ben Isaac reasoned, grabbing the phone.
Inspector Gavache hurried toward the door to leave. ‘So long, Ben Isaac,’ he said as a farewell.
Myriam took the phone out of her husband’s hand and began to talk. It was her son. Tears of relief streamed from her eyes. The nightmare was over, even if she would be at peace only when she saw him in flesh and blood, safe and sound.
‘What’s going on, Inspector?’ Ben Isaac was unable to make sense of anything. ‘Where are Sarah and the documents?’
Gavache looked back and took another drag on his cigarette before answering. ‘Your son is safe. That’s all that matters.’
‘Sir, sir,’ Gavache’s driver called out when the car reached the corner and stopped by the curb.
‘Oui?’ said the other, leaving behind what had happened in Ben Isaac’s house.
‘We’re here, sir,’ he told him.
Gavache looked outside across the street? ‘Here?’
‘Correct, sir.’
Gavache opened the door and stepped outside. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked the driver.
‘Paul, sir.’
‘Paul, if things get violent, call for reinforcements.’
‘How will I know, sir?’
‘You’ll know, Paul. Trust me.’ Gavache left.
55
‘That threat only shows you don’t know me,’ Rafael said with a gun in his hand. He locked the door of Robin’s study and wedged the back of a chair under the knob to hold it.
Robin smiled mockingly. ‘What are you going to do? Hold me hostage?’
Rafael remembered Maurice and the coldheartedness with which he had murdered Gunter, the despair with which he had later taken his own life. ‘No, Robin. You’re like an Islamic terrorist,’ he accused, ‘capable of killing and dying for a cause, even if you don’t know what it is.’
‘Isn’t that what you do, too?’ Robin argued irritably.
‘No, Robin, don’t compare me with your insanity. I don’t kill innocent, defenseless people.’
‘Fuck you, Santini.’
