Year Zero (37 page)

“A little of this, a little of that,” Izzy expanded. “Our clone hears some of the Christian lads in the yard telling tales, puts it together, and Ross here baptizes him Jesus Christ.”

“I only said Jesus,” Ross reminded them.

“Well somebody handed him the word
Christ.
Because it didn’t exist back then.”

Ross narrowed his eyes at Izzy.

“Jesus was a common name back then, like Bob or John today,” Izzy went on. “But the honorific
Christ
didn’t exist, see. It’s an Old English abbreviation for
Christus,
which is Latin for
Christos,
which is Greek for the Hebrew
meshiah.
The annointed one.
Christos
wasn’t used until the New Testament started to be written…decades after the crucifixion. The short form
Christ
didn’t arrive for centuries. The historical Jesus would never have had the vocabulary to call himself Christ. To say nothing of the fact that there’s no place in the Bible where he ever called himself Messiah. Do you see? If he calls himself Christ then he’s not Christ. It’s simple. The clone’s an impostor. Someone set him up. He’s not real.”

“Why would someone do that?” said Miranda.

“I don’t know. A prank?”

“Who could have gotten to him, though?” said Nathan Lee. “We’ve been so careful.”

“Not that careful. Somebody got into the yard and left that crucifix in the tree, remember? For all we know it could be the same merry prankster. Somebody with access to the place. Somebody inside.”

They looked at Ross again. “What about it,” said Nathan Lee. “Did you put the cross in the tree? Did you put the clone up to this?”

“No, sir,” Ross swore. Then he added, “Not that I see the harm.”

“Why is that, Ross?”

Ross looked at Nathan Lee like he was a little slow. “They are Christians.”

Nathan Lee slapped his knees. “Right,” he said.

“What I want to know is who leaked this nonsense?” said Miranda. “Look at that crowd out there.”

Ross fell silent. Joe provided.
“Pendejo,”
he rumbled.

“Is that true?” Miranda demanded.

Ross confessed. “I called my wife. I told her not to call her sister.”

“But he’s not real,” Miranda groaned.

Ross glanced up at her. “Why not?” he said.

“We just told you.”

Ross thought about that. His jaw looked like petrified wood. Nathan Lee sighed.

The Captain said, “Get him out of here.”

“Where to, Captain?” Joe said.

“Give him a mop. Have him change lightbulbs. I don’t know. Just keep him away from the Pound. And any telephones. And do not let him go out there. Those people do not need anymore of this brilliant display.”

After the two guards left, Miranda said, “Unbelievable.”

They went to the window. The vigil had grown from a few dozen to several hundred. Candle flames glittered in the night.

“But these are sophisticated people,” Izzy protested. “They can’t honestly believe we’ve got the son of God in our basement.”

Miranda gestured at the window. “Then what are they doing out there?”

“Human curiosity.”

“It’s three in the morning.”

“I don’t like it,” the Captain said. “These things can blow up. I want some breathing room.” He picked up his phone and called Pro Force. They were the shock troops, armed and menacing. “Keep it polite,” he ordered. “Ask them to disperse. They probably won’t, so just escort the crowd down the hill. Let’s set our perimeter at the road. They need to know our borders.”

The event was escalating before their eyes. People saw their lighted window and waved at them expectantly. They started singing “Rock of Ages.”

“They’re harmless,” Izzy insisted. “We know those people.”

They did look peaceful enough standing there. Mostly they were intent on keeping their candles from blowing out.

“Mobs aren’t people,” the Captain said.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Izzy said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

Miranda rubbed her temples.

“Pro Force,” said Nathan Lee. “They’re going to give it the stamp of reality, you know. Just their presence will legitimize the event.”

The Captain puffed out his cheeks. He looked out the window. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. It’s running out of control. Walking. Whatever it’s doing.”

“The Captain’s right,” Miranda said to Nathan Lee. “He has his job. You have yours. We need damage control. Fast.”

Nathan Lee got to his feet. “All right,” he said to Izzy. “Let’s go to the source.”

J
OE WAS BACK
on duty in the monitor booth. Ross was hanging by his thumbs somewhere, out of sight. Joe pointed at one of the screens. “Him,” he said.

Nathan Lee pulled up a chair and leaned close to the screen. “So,” he said, “finally.” It was the clone who’d cried Egypt. He never had given a name.

The man was sitting erect on the edge of his bed, as if awaiting visitors. His shoulder bones were set wide like a yoke, but he was thin. He had long feet and big hands, and his burr of hair and beard were black. He had seemed tentative and withdrawn ever since his outburst about the bronze sky, as if he’d misstepped. But his eyes were perfectly ferocious now. He’d made his move, no going back.

“What do you know about him?” Nathan Lee asked Izzy.

“Bit of a prig, you ask me. Keeps his own company. Put me off the few times I tried to chat him up.” Izzy summarized. “Don’t know a thing about him.”

“Let’s play back the tape,” Nathan Lee said to Joe. “I want to hear that ‘string of stuff’ Ross mentioned.”

They watched the replay. There was Ross, opening the door. He entered the cell timidly, and crossed himself. “Perfect,” said Izzy. The clone stood watching him. Studying him. He didn’t appear distressed or anguished, though only a minute earlier he’d groaned about God forsaking him.
Are you Jesus?
Ross asked in English. Very clearly, the clone answered
Jesus Christ.

Ross was right about the string of stuff. It was delivered so rapidly in Aramaic that Nathan Lee didn’t catch a word of it. Then Joe appeared at the edge of the frame, in the open doorway, and Ross was yanked from the cell. The door slammed shut.

“Again,” said Izzy. After the second replay, he said, “Oh, you’ll love this. Straight from Revelation.
I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, who is and who was and who is to come.
Then he goes on with something about suffering and repentance.”

Nathan Lee tried to remember the history of the New Testament. “Revelation,” he said. “But that wasn’t written until near the second century. This guy’s all over the place. Egypt. Revelation. Old Testament. New.”

“Doesn’t look like a Jesus to me anyhow,” said Izzy.

Nathan Lee knew what he meant. Jesus was an idol, a Shroud negative, a movie star…not a man. He had long blond tresses with a faint goatee, or dark curlicue forelocks and a ZZ Top beard. He came with blue eyes or black ones, with a straight nose and a crown of thorns. He belonged in Christmas mangers and Byzantine mosaics and on Mexican prayer cards, in stained glass, in marble statues. He was a figment of art, a creature of monks and Michelangelo and Mapplethorpe. Intellectually Nathan Lee knew this could not be the Christian godhead. But a deep, prehistoric part of him could not shake the outside chance of it.
What if this was God in a burr cut?

“Fishing for attention,” said Izzy. “A stunt.”

Nathan Lee agreed. “But why now?”

“That crucifix in the tree, I’d say. Nothing to lose?”

Nathan Lee frowned. “Looking back, that crucifix in the tree seems almost like a signal. Like a green light to go into action.”

“Well, he’s come out of the closet now,” said Izzy.

“Let’s finish him off,” said Nathan Lee. “This won’t take long. Then everybody can go back to bed again.”

They entered the cell. The clone remained sitting.
“Shlaa-ma umook,”
said Nathan Lee.
Peace be with you.

The clone was not friendly. “Ishmael and Nathaniel. Why do they send you?” he demanded. They: their captors and keepers.

“They sent us.” Nathan Lee kept it blunt.

“Who are you?” the clone demanded. That was supposed to be their question. “You’re not who you seem to be.”

Too true, thought Nathan Lee. They were a roomful of fakes.

“Tell us your name,” said Izzy.

“You’re one of them,” the clone realized.

“Name,” repeated Izzy.

“Eesho,” the clone said. “Yeshua, they call me. Jesus, you say. The
meshiah.”

“Christ?” said Izzy.

“That, too.”

“There are many people named Jesus,” said Nathan Lee. “Are you the one they call Jesus Barabbas?”

It was a trick question. If this Eesho was simply repeating whatever was given to him, he would agree to being the wrong Jesus, the one who wasn’t crucified. The hoax could end right here.

Eesho was contemptuous. “Would you be honoring me if I were a
lestai?”

“Honoring him!” Izzy barked in English. “Is that what he thinks?”

“What’s a
lestai?”
said Nathan Lee.

Izzy frowned. “Never heard the word.”

“Let’s start there then,” said Nathan Lee. “Pick him to pieces. Use his own words.”

Izzy fired off a burst of Aramaic. They spoke for a minute. “It’s something like an assassin,” Izzy said. “A political terrorist.” He listened as the clone went on talking. “That’s it.
Sicarri,
another term. Like Judas Iscariot. Judas the Sicarri. A Zealot.”

“Watch it,” breathed Nathan Lee. “Don’t give him more names. He’s creating himself out of our mistakes.”

“I didn’t,” said Izzy. “He came up with the name Judas himself.”

The clone saw Nathan Lee hesitate. A look of satisfaction came over his face.

“Oh, boy,” Nathan Lee muttered. Eesho, if that was his name, knew more of the story than he’d feared.

For the next two hours, they worked through the logical questions. Where were you born? Who were your family members? Name your neighbors. Who was the governor? Who were your teachers? Describe your travels. Did you ever visit Jerusalem? How many times? Why?

The clone answered dutifully, even mechanically. He had been born in Bethlehem, he claimed. In a cave. His father was a carpenter, descended from King David who was descended from Abraham. To prove it, he delivered a long list of names from memory, linking his father generation by generation to the great prophets. The names echoed off the stainless steel walls.

“Are you the son of David, then,” Nathan Lee asked, “or the son of God?”

“I am the Nazarene,” the clone declared simply. He was perfectly at ease. Any contradictions were his interrogator’s to unravel.

“But you said you were born in Bethlehem,” he said.

Eesho answered. “The Lord spoke through the prophet Hosea. He said,‘Out of Egypt I called my Son.’”

There,
thought Nathan Lee. The Egypt reference again. “Clever,” he said to Izzy. “He’s been setting us up from the start.”

“How do you mean?” said Izzy.

“He prophesied his own coming. He called this place Egypt that first day in the yard. The Son was called from Egypt. Therefore, he’s the Son.”

“But who gave him the Bible references?”

“Keep digging,” said Nathan Lee. “We’ll catch him out.”

Eesho said he’d had four brothers named James, Joset, Simon, and Jude, and three sisters whom he didn’t bother naming. His teachers had included John the Baptist. He’d spent years wandering the banks of the Dead Sea. He once meditated in the desert. Yes, it was true, he had attacked the merchants and money changers in the Temple. “After that, I was a marked man,” said Eesho. “They executed me.”

“Who executed you?”

Eesho recited the Passion Narrative perfectly. It was identical to the Gospel accounts, filled with evil Jews, treachery, and cowardice. Judas, the Zealot, had betrayed him. He was arrested and brought before the Temple intelligentsia, where his captors spit on him and slapped him and called him a blasphemer, then turned him over to Pontius Pilate who condemned him. Just like in the Bible, Pilate had washed his hands of the verdict.

With extraordinary dispassion, Eesho went on to describe his whipping, the crown of thorns, the soldiers’ mockery, and his passage through the narrow streets and out the west gate to Golgotha. He was nailed to the wood. His cross was erected between two others. A thief hung on either side of him.

“And then I died,” he said without emotion.

Nathan Lee looked at Eesho’s wrist, and the tracery of veins was blue under the smooth olive skin. A nail had driven through that bone and meat. Yet he was oblivious. Or else a liar.