The thing that was bothering the professor was, that if the Crown of Thorns they were going to give back to the French wasn’t the real one, then it implied that somehow it had been swapped for a replica.
Besides Jason there were only six people who knew about the work they were doing or the true identity of the object they were dealing with: Cardinal Laurentin, the Cardinal’s assistant, Jason, Louisa, Lydia, Don and himself. If it had been swapped, then one of those six others had betrayed him and Jason. It was as simple as that.
First of all, there was Don. He had to be innocent. It was his responsibility to hand the Crown back to the Cardinal’s assistant. If he had swapped the real Crown for a fake replica then he could have got away with it scot-free if he’d wanted to. No one would ever have found out it was a fake. It would have gone back to France with a pile of scientific evidence to prove its authenticity, and for the rest of time no one would have ever challenged that provenance. Yet, Don had spotted the fact it was a fake and told him immediately. So it wasn’t Don.
It wouldn’t be the Cardinal either. He had everything to gain by proving its authenticity, and everything to lose if it ever came out it was a fake.
It could be the Cardinal’s assistant. He knew nothing about him. He was a complete grey area but he’d had no access to the Crown since he’d handed it over to them. So it couldn't be him.
So it was either Lydia or Louisa.
His gut feel was that it wasn’t Jason. Jason wasn’t the slightest bit interested in wealth. If he had wanted to make money, he would have wangled his way into staying at the dig in Egypt and could be happily trafficking in gold and ancient artefacts by now. Anyway, Jason was as straight forward as they came. What you saw, was what you got. There wasn’t anything devious about him. He was just a genius through and through. Too clever by far to get involved in anything like that. And this was his project. His future.
Lydia? There could be something there but he doubted it. She had no access to the Crown so it would have been impossible for her to steal it.
That left only one person. One person with full access to the Crown, and someone who could potentially be interested in wealth.
Louisa was a very decent person, and the Professor didn’t mind admitting he had a small crush on her. She was a fantastic woman. She had it all. Brains, beauty and personality. The only thing she lacked was large amounts of money to go shopping, her favourite past time. But then again, his gut feel about Louisa was that she wouldn’t do anything like this either. His group were all fiercely loyal to him. But the only person out of all the six people who had both access to the Crown and a possible, although very small motive to steal it, was Louisa. Unfortunately, maybe there was more to her than met the eye?
.
Then you came to the question of why someone would want to steal it? The Professor could think of at least three reasons why someone would want to steal the Crown.
Firstly, and most obviously, the Crown of Thorns, now it was proven to be completely authentic in terms of its origin and time period, would be priceless. If it was worth the amount of money the French had paid for it when they bought it all those hundreds of years ago, then nowadays it would have an equivalent value of at least tens of millions of Euros! That was more that the GDP of some developing nations.
The second reason was a bit more obscure but just as powerful. It is a religious artefact. The importance of the object to the Catholic, or any other Christian church or cult, would now be immeasurable. If the English had wiped out half the Middle East in the quest for the Holy Grail, what would religious groups be prepared to do nowadays for something as important as the Crown of Thorns if it can now be declared authentic?
And thirdly, if any other Government of the world had realised or taken a guess as to what his group at the I.G.E.G.G.M was really up to, they would have guessed that they were in the process of cloning Jesus Christ.
As he had discussed with Jason earlier on, even the simple belief...just the belief by itself ...even if it wasn’t backed up in any way by any facts, would be enough to drive some nations to war in an effort to obtain samples of the blood of Christ for themselves so that they could make their own Jesus clone.
The Professor thought back to the old cinema film called “Raiders of the Lost Ark” that he had seen as a child. In that film the Germans during the Second World War had fought to find the ancient Ark of the Covenant, because they believed that whichever nation controlled or owned the Ark would be victorious against all other nations. Apparently that film was based on Hitler’s real attempts to track down real religious artefacts so that he could “harness” their power! How much more victorious would a nation be with a clone of Christ on their side? Surely a nation that went to war with the Messiah as its general in chief would be victorious over all its enemies? That country would surely rule the world? Of course the argument didn’t stack up if you understood that God would not favour any one nation against another, but the intention of the military generals would be to brainwash and indoctrinate the cloned Christ so much during his childhood that he would believe in the supremacy of his mother nation over all others.
The Professor wasn’t a politician but he understood how politicians thought. He was very aware of the potential for global catastrophe if the ability or the imagined ability to clone Jesus Christ was not handled in the proper way.
There was one more piece to the jigsaw that he had to figure out. Who would have the capability to make a replica of the Crown in such a short period of time? The ability to duplicate it so exactly would take a big team with extensive resources and a large budget. In the space of a few weeks they would have to source identical thorns of the same dimensions as the ones used in the Crown, and hand-craft them into an exact replica.
The Professor realised he had just hit on an important point. To copy the Crown so exactly you had to have a detailed plan to copy and make the replica from...Suddenly something that Jason had said to him earlier that morning while they were waiting for the others to arrive for the 8am meeting sprang back into his mind:
“…anyway Louisa’s still seeing that American guy from the Engineering department. Remember? She met him when she took the Crown across to the Engineering lab for him to conduct the holographic analysis on it…”
That was it. It all fitted. Louisa must have somehow told the American about the Crown of Thorns. He had made a hologram, a complete three-dimensional map of the Crown, from which it would be relatively easy to reproduce a replica. He must have kept a copy for himself. AND…the Professor suddenly realised…he’s an American!
Which nation would place the most value on ensuring a clone of Christ was brought up on their soil?
AMERICA!
And who would have the capability and resources to make a copy of the Crown in such a short period of time?
AMERICA!
....and, unfortunately, who was the second most advanced nation in the world in the field of genetics?
America was.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
Shit, and more shit.
The Professor swore under his breath a dozen times. It all pointed to the fact that Louisa had betrayed them to the Americans.
But why?
And how could he prove it? And when did she get the chance to make the switch?
There was no way she could have done it during the day when everyone else was in the lab with her. She would have had to have made the switch at night during the last three or four days. The Professor had last looked at the Crown close up on the Thursday afternoon, so she would have either made the switch on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday night. Four possibilities. It would be easy enough to check them all out. All he had to do was look at the video security disks for the past four nights.
.
With so much mental activity, there was no way he would be able to fall asleep now. He knew he would never be able to sleep wondering whether or not he had got it all wrong.
He really liked Louisa, and had hand-picked her himself for the project. He began to feel guilty about having such negative thoughts about her.
“Shit! Can an old man not get any peace!” he swore to himself as he pulled himself out of bed, and threw on some clothes. He looked at his watch. It was three thirty in the morning. He would be in the lab in twenty minutes.
.
He pulled up in his car directly outside the front of the lab, and jumped out. He smiled to himself as he realised that he hadn’t been able to jump out of a car so nimbly in years. The true impact of the miracle that God had performed on him the other night was still sinking in.
“Good evening Professor.” the happy Welshman at the security desk greeted him as he swung his way in through the big glass doors of the I.G.E.G.M.M. entrance.
“Good evening Jonathan. How are you tonight?”
“Fine. That must be some important experiment that you guys are working on this week?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…recently you’ve all been coming in at all hours of the day and night to get on with your work. David Roberts has only just gone home, and last night Peter Johnson didn’t leave till two am, and I think that Gary Harrison actually spent the Thursday night at his desk.”
“Has anyone from the Red Team come in recently at night time?” Professor Wainright had many teams of scientists working for him at the I.G.E.G.G.M. and he had colour coded them all for simplicity. The Egyptian Pharaoh project was the Blue Team, and three of the other teams who shared labs on the second floor were the Yellow, Green and Indigo teams.
Jonathan looked down at his chart to check off the names in the Red Team. Without a chart he could never keep a track of who was in what team.
“That would be either yourself, Don, Jason or Louisa...Why yes, Don and Louisa were working late only last Friday night, and then you came to pick them up, from the pub, if you can remember.”
“Yes, I remember. I wasn’t that drunk. Is that all?”
“Yes, …well, no actually. Come to think of it, about an hour after you left with Louisa and Don, Louisa came back.”
“What? What time was that?”
“I can tell you exactly if you want? …Now let me see, yes, here we are…According to my notes it was ten twenty when she came in. But then she left again at three am. To see her boyfriend. It was all very romantic, it was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, see, it was like this. Her boyfriend was coming back from London and Louisa told him to come and visit her on the way home. He pulled up over there in his car, he did, and I watched her get in and give him a big kiss. Then they drove off, see. But I think they had a row or something because about twenty minutes later she came back in, and brought his present back with her. Either he didn’t like it or she forgot to give it to him!”
“What present?”
“The one in the big black box. It must have been something good, because the box looked awful heavy!”
“The Crown of Thorns security box!” The Professor thought to himself. “She must have taken the real Crown out to the car, swapped it for the fake one, and brought it back into the lab.”
“Jonathan, I would like you to lock the front door for just now, and go and find the video disks from Friday night to Saturday morning which cover the hallway outside my lab, the hallway here, and the elevator to Level 3. Give me a call on my pager when you have found them. It’s important. I want to look at them now. I’m just going up to speak to the security guards outside the lab on Level 3.”
“Will do. Sounds important . I’ll get right to it Sir!”
.
The Professor caught the elevator up to the third floor, and had the same conversation again with the two mandatory government guards stationed permanently outside the main lab. They checked their notes and confirmed that Louisa came back at 10.20pm, left at 3am with a large metal box, reappeared at about 3.30am with the same box, and then left again at about 4am.
“Mind you, she looked a little odd, if I may say so, sort of distant. As if she wasn’t all there...”
“What do you expect at four in the morning Charlie?” the other guard scolded him. “She was probably walking in her sleep. I would have been by that time if I’d been working all day long like she had!”
The buzzer went on his pager, and the Professor called the front desk.
“Hi Jonathan. Are you ready?”
“Yes. I’m in the security room. Would you like to come down?”
“Thanks. I’ll be there in a minute.”
.
The room was dark, and the video flickered slightly as they played back the mini-disks containing the video footage from the previous Saturday night. There was no doubting it. That was Louisa, and that was the metal security box which contained the Crown of Thorns underneath her arm. The final confirmation saddened the Professor tremendously. He had trusted her, and over the past few years had become quite close to her. He had even co-signed a security deed with her when she had applied for her mortgage a few years back. Why would she want to repay him back like this?
“Thanks Jonathan. Can you burn me a CD with all this footage on it? By tomorrow morning? And keep the originals in the safe. We may need them later.”
“Has Louisa done something wrong?”
“No. Nothing.” The Professor didn’t want to alarm anyone until he had decided what he was going to do about it all. “Don’t tell anyone about this. It’s going to be a surprise for Louisa. I’m going to give her an award for working so hard recently. She’s always denying that she puts in so many hours, but thanks to you I’ve got the proof. Remember, keep it quiet.”
“I like surprises, you can trust me Professor!”
.
Chapter Thirty Five
Oxford, England
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Louisa lay in the bed beside Mike. Her tousled hair cascaded down across her breasts, and her face was flushed and red. Her breathing was fast and deep, and as she reached her orgasm she cried out aloud, digging her nails deeply into his back. Afterwards, she held him tightly and stroked his hair with one hand, the other wrapped around his back, her two legs still entwined around his. She had never known a man that she had felt for so strongly as Mike.
She trusted him with her very life, and at nights she would lie awake and alone in her house, and it seemed as if her chest would burst, so much was the love she held for him in her heart.
Mike lifted himself up, resting on his elbow and extracting his legs from her grip. He looked into her eyes. In spite of himself he had fallen in love with Louisa. He had tried to resist it, but he couldn’t. He had made up his mind, resolutely, that he was going to end his clandestine manipulation of her. In fact, yesterday he had sent a coded report via the internet to his superiors in London, telling them exactly why he could no longer continue with this subject. His love for her was clouding his judgement and jeopardising his operation in Oxford. The truth was simply that there was no way he could carry on ‘using’ her as he had been doing. He wanted her for her…to have a proper relationship with her, maybe even to marry her.
In as much as he had hypnotised her, she had hypnotised him, and now he could not imagine a life without her. He needed her.
He hated what he had to do next. He had to hypnotise her one more time, and de-programme her. He had to remove all the hypnotic suggestions he had given her in the past, and set her mind at peace. From now on he wanted to relate to her as a woman, not as a contact he controlled. He wanted to know the real Louisa.
He stroked her cheek. She looked over at him, and he softly mentioned the code word.
“Daedalus, Louisa…Daedalus.”
Her eyes glazed over and she went into trance. Over the years Mike had learned that it was possible to create a dormant state of deep trance within a person, to which you could return very quickly just by the mention of a pre-planted hypnotic cue-word. The word would only have effect when uttered by the voice of the hy
pnotist, so there was no danger of the hypnotised person overhearing the word in casual conversation on the street and suddenly falling into a trance state.
In the next thirty minutes Louisa gave Mike a complete update on the activities of the group in the past few days since the switch of the fake Crown for the real Crown had been made, outlining also the arrangements for the return of the Crown to the French on the Tuesday afternoon.
Mike looked down at her and fought with the temptation to kiss her soft lips. There would be time for that later.
“Louisa...you are a very good person...a very good person. You have done really well. You must be proud of yourself. I want you to be happy, always. You have so many things to be happy about. Even when times may be difficult in the future, if they ever are, I want you to be confident in yourself and your body, to be positive and to see the good in everything. Feel happy. Smile at others, and they will smile back at you. When you encounter problems believe that you have the capability to overcome everything. Believe in yourself. You are a great person. Do you understand me Louisa? Do you agree with this?”
“Yes Mike, I do.”
“Louisa, I have something to say to you…something important...”
The phone rang.
“Shit!” Mike muttered under his breath. He jumped from his bed and ran for the phone trying to reach it as soon as possible. Normally he made it a rule to always unplug the phones before he hypnotised anyone, to avoid the risk of the shrill noise bringing the person out of trance at an awkward time. He had forgotten to do it today, because he was so pleased that he was going to see Louisa that he wasn’t thinking straight.
As he reached the phone on the table in the hall just outside the bedroom he cursed himself for making such a stupid unprofessional mistake. But it drove the point home, that it was impossible to behave professionally around Louisa. His feelings for her were beginning to jeopardise his operation.
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