In His Image

by James Beauseigneur

  COPYRIGHT

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, incidents, and dialogue, except for incidental references to public figures, products, or services, are imaginary and are not intended to refer to any living persons or to disparage any company’s products or services.

  Copyright © 1988, 1997, 2003 by James BeauSeigneur.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  The author is represented by Jan P. Dennis Literary Agency, Monument, CO.

  Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

  Scriptures noted KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  Warner Books

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: March 2004

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-0897-2

  For Gerilynne, Faith, and Abigail, who sacrificed so much

  to allow this trilogy to become a reality.

  But most of all for Shiloh, who sacrificed far more.

  May it serve you well.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Important Note from the Author

  1: The Right Place at the Right Time

  2: The Shroud

  3: Body of Christ

  4: Mother of God

  5: Christopher

  6: Secrets of the Lost Ark

  7: The Tears of Dogs

  8: When in the Woods and Meeting Wild Beasts

  9: Dream a Little Dream of Me

  10: Disaster

  11: The Master’s Promise

  12: Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

  13: The Color of the Horse

  14: Dark Awakening

  15: Plowshares into Swords

  16: The Hand of God

  17: Master of the World

  18: Revelation

  19: The Prince of Rome

  20: Through a Glass Darkly

  21: When Leaders Fall

  22: Simple Arithmetic

  23: Offering

  24: The Elect

  25: Old Enemy, Old Friend

  26: The Reason for It All

  27: Stopping at Nothing

  28: The Power Within Him—The Power Within Us All

  Special eBook Feature: Excerpts of JAMES BEAUSEIGNEUR

  A Preview of "BIRTH OF AN AGE"

  Prologue: The Power Within Him— The Power Within Us All

  A Preview of "ACTS of GOD"

  Prologue: Behold the Hosts of Heaven

  Acknowledgments

  While writing The Christ Clone Trilogy, I called upon the support of specialists in many fields of endeavor to ensure the accuracy and plausibility of my work. Others provided editorial direction, professional guidance, or moral sustenance. These include: John Jefferson, Ph.D.; Michael Haire, Ph.D.; James Russell, M.D.; Robert Seevers, Ph.D.; Peter Helt, J.D.; James Beadle, Ph.D.; Christy Beadle, M.D.; Ken Newberger, Th.M.; Eugene Walter, Ph.D.; Clement Walchshauser, D.Min.; Col. Arthur Winn; Elizabeth Winn, Ph.D.; Ian Wilson, Historian; Jeanne Gehret, M.A.; Linda Alexander; Bernadine Asher; Matthew Belsky; Wally & Betty Bishop; Roy & Jeannie Blocher; Scott Brown; Dale Brubaker; Curt & Phyllis Brudos; Dave & Deb Dibert; Estelle Ducharme; Tony Fantham; Georgia O’Dell; Mike Pinkston; Capt. Paul & Debbie Quinn; Doug & Beth Ross; Doris, Fred, & Bryan Seigneur; Mike Skinner; Gordy & Sue Stauffer; Doug & Susy Stites.

  Sincere appreciation to poet Nguyen Chi Thien for his unfaltering spirit; and to the staff of the Library of Congress; the Jewish Publication Society of America; the Zondervan Corporation; Yale Southeast Asia Studies; and the hundreds of others whose work provided background for this book.

  Important Note from the Author

  As with any suspense thriller, all is not as it appears in The Christ Clone Trilogy, and you should not assume you know what the story is all about until you’ve finished the entire series. I am not insensitive, however, to the fact that a story about cloning Jesus may not set well with some Christians. As you read, therefore, please consider the following: (1) Never assume that the characters—any of the characters—speak for the author. (2) I have taken the position of dispassionate reporter, telling the story and reporting the dialogue as it unfolds, and resisting all urges to judge or comment on the veracity of the story’s participants. For readers who are Christians, I would ask your patience and remind you of the words of Ecclesiastes 7:8: “The end of a matter is better than its beginning.”

  Regardless of your religious persuasion, I now cordially invite you to experience The Christ Clone Trilogy.

  “Are these the shadows of things that will be, or are they the shadows of things that may be, only?”

  CHARLES DICKENS, A Christmas Carol

  1

  The Right Place at the Right Time

  Two decades ago

  Knoxville, Tennessee

  DECKER HAWTHORNE

  He typed out the letters of his name and his hands paused on the keys. Quickly his eyes scanned the editorial for one last reassurance that he hadn’t misspelled something, or that he couldn’t say something just a little more convincingly, or perhaps improve the sentence structure. Finally he decided it would have to do. The deadline had passed, the newspaper was waiting to be put to bed, and Decker had a plane to catch.

  As he left the offices of the Knoxville Enterprise, he stopped to straighten the hand-lettered placard that hung outside the door. It was a weekly paper, small by most standards, but it was growing. Decker had started the paper with a short supply of money and an abundance of naïveté, and it was still a struggle to survive financially. The upside was that with Decker’s aggressive style, the Enterprise frequently scooped the two local dailies, including once with a story of national significance. Decker had always been an overachiever who wasn’t afraid to take chances, and while he lost more often than he won, he liked to believe he had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Right now he was supposed to be at the airport, but he wasn’t.

  “You’re going to miss your plane,” called Elizabeth, Decker’s wife.

  “I’m coming,” he called back. “Start the car.”

  “It’s already running. I know you too well.”

  They made it to the gate with three minutes to spare, but Decker didn’t want to waste one second sitting on the plane when he could spend it with Elizabeth. After only three months of marriage, he wasn’t looking forward to being away from his bride for two weeks, but finally he had to board the plane or be left behind.

  As the plane left the runway, Decker looked out over the city of Alcoa on the southern outskirts of Knoxville. Below, he could pick out his small house on the edge of one of Alcoa’s parks. The steadily receding sight recalled disquieting emotions. Decker had spent most of his life traveling. As a boy it was with his family, moving from one army post to another. After that he had spent a year and a half hitchhiking across the United States and Canada; then four years in the army. Partly he felt cheated: He had never really had a home. But partly he felt blessed. Decker hated leaving, but he loved going.

  Decker’s flight arrived late into New York and he had to run to make his connecting flight to Milan, Italy. Nearing the gate, he looked for a familiar face but saw none. In fact, at first glance, there was no one at the gate at all. Decker looked out the window. The
re was the plane, but at that instant he heard the jet engines begin to whine. Thundering down the red-carpeted incline of the jetway, he almost collided with a ticket agent.

  “I’ve got to get on that plane!” he told the woman, as he put on the sweetest “help me” look he could muster.

  “You have your passport?” she asked.

  “Right here,” Decker answered, handing it to her along with his ticket.

  “What about your luggage?”

  “This is it,” he answered, holding up an overstuffed and somewhat oversized carry-on bag.

  The plane had not actually moved yet, so after notifying the pilot, it was an easy task to move the jetway back into place. After a quick but heartfelt thank you, Decker boarded the plane and headed to his seat. Now he saw a sea of friendly and familiar faces. On his right was John Jackson, the team’s leader. A few seats back was Eric Jumper. Both were from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Jackson had his Ph.D. in physics and had worked extensively on lasers and particle beams. Jumper, also a Ph.D., was an engineer specializing in thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and heat exchange. In fact, almost everyone in this sea of faces had a Ph.D. of one sort or another. Altogether there were more than forty scientists, technicians, and support people. Though he knew most only by sight, many paused long enough from their conversations to offer a smile of welcome or to say they were glad he had not missed the flight.

  Decker found his seat and sat down. There to greet him was Professor Harry Goodman, a sloppily dressed, short man with gray hair, reading glasses half-way down his nose, and thick bushy eyebrows that blazed helter-skelter across his brow and up onto his forehead like a brush fire. “I was beginning to think you’d stood me up,” Professor Goodman said.

  “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Decker answered. “I just wanted to make a big entrance.”

  Professor Goodman was Decker’s link to the rest of the team. Goodman had taught biochemistry at the University of Tennessee when Decker was in pre-med. During his sophomore year Decker had worked as Goodman’s research assistant. They had many conversations, and though Goodman was not the type to get very close to anyone, Decker felt they were friends. Later that same year, though, Goodman had grown very depressed about something he refused to discuss. Through the rumor mill Decker discovered that Goodman was going to be refused tenure. Primarily this could be traced to his policy of “Do now, ask permission later,” which had gotten him into hot water with the dean on more than one occasion. The next semester Goodman took a position at UCLA and Decker had not seen him since.

  Decker, for unrelated reasons, had changed his major from pre-med to journalism. He was still an avid reader of some of the better science journals, however. So it was that Decker read an article in Science magazine 1 about a team of American scientists going to examine the Shroud of Turin, a religious relic believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. He had heard of the Shroud but had always dismissed it as just another example of religious fraud designed to pick the pockets of gullible worshipers. But here was an article in one of the most widely read science journals reporting that credible American scientists were actually taking their time to examine this thing.

  At first the article had aroused only amused disbelief, but among the list of the scientists involved, Decker found the name Dr. Harold Goodman. This made no sense at all. Goodman, as Decker knew from his frequent pronouncements, was an atheist. Well, not exactly an atheist. Goodman liked to talk about the uncertainty of everything. In his office at the university were two posters. The first was crudely hand-printed and stated: “Goodman’s First Law of Achievement: The shortest distance between any two points is around the rules” (a philosophy which obviously had not set well with the dean). The second poster was done in a late 1960s-style psychedelic print and said: “I think, therefore, I am. I think.” Mixing the uncertainty of his own existence with his disbelief in God, Goodman had settled on referring to himself as “an atheist by inclination but an agnostic by practice.” So why was a man like Goodman going off on some ridiculous expedition to study the Shroud of Turin?

  Decker filed the information away in his memory and probably would have left it there had it not been for a phone call from an old friend, Tom Donafin. Tom was a reporter for the Courier in Waltham, Massachusetts, and had called about a story he was working on about corruption in banking—something that Knoxville had plenty of at that time. After discussing the banking story Tom asked Decker if he had seen the article in Science.

  “Yeah, I saw it,” Decker answered. “Why?”

  “I just thought you’d be interested in what old Bushy Brows was up to,” Tom laughed.

  “Are you sure it’s him? I didn’t see him in any of the pictures.”

  “At first I didn’t think it was possible, but I did a little checking, and it’s him.”

  “You know,” Decker said, thinking out loud, “there might be a story here. Religion sells.”

  “If you mean covering the expedition, I think you’re right, but security is really tight. I tried to dig into the particulars a little, but hit a brick wall. They’re limiting coverage of the expedition to one reporter: a guy from the National Geographic.” 2

  “That sounds like a challenge to me,” Decker said.

  “Oh, I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it won’t be easy.”

  Decker began to muse how he might, if he wanted to, go about getting the story. He could take the direct approach of trying to reason with whoever was making the rules. After all, why should they have only one journalist? On the other hand, what possible reason could he give to convince them to take someone from a tiny unknown weekly in Knoxville, Tennessee? Clearly, his best bet was to work through Goodman.

  Over the next three weeks Decker made several attempts to reach his old professor, but without success. Goodman was doing research somewhere in Japan and even his wife, Martha, wasn’t sure exactly where he was. With little to depend on beyond luck and determination, Decker arranged to fly to Norwich, Connecticut, and booked a room in the hotel where the Shroud team was scheduled to meet over the Labor Day weekend. He arrived the day before to look things over.

  The next morning Decker found that a private dining room in the hotel had been prepared for about fifty people. Checking with one of the waiters, he quickly confirmed that this was where the Shroud team was meeting. A few minutes later the first of the team members walked into the room. The eyebrows were unmistakable. “Professor Goodman,” Decker said, as he approached Goodman and extended his right hand. Goodman looked puzzled. “It’s Hawthorne,” Decker offered. It was obvious that Goodman was struggling to place the face. “From the University of Tennessee,” he added.

  A gleam of recognition began to show in the pale green eyes beneath the massive clumps of hair. “Oh, yes, Hawthorne! Well, how the heck are you? What are you doing here in Connecticut?”

  Before Decker could answer, another person entered the room and called out, “Harry Goodman!” and came over to where they were standing. “So, where were you last night? I called your room, hoping to have dinner with you.”

  Goodman did not respond but proceeded instead to formal introductions. “Professor Don Stanley, allow me to introduce Decker Hawthorne, a former student and research assistant of mine from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.”

  Professor Stanley shook Decker’s hand, gave him a quick once-over, and then looked back at Goodman. “So Hawthorne here must be the research assistant that I heard you’d suckered into helping out. What a shame,” Stanley added, pausing and looking back at Decker, “I’d have thought you looked too intelligent for that.”

  “He is,” responded Goodman, “and, unfortunately, so is the young man you’re referring to.”

  “Oh, so he jumped ship on you, did he?” responded Stanley with a chuckle.

  “Well, after all,” Goodman shrugged, “it is quite a lot to expect a young man to pay the cost of an airline ticket to Turin, Italy, just to
go on a wild goose chase.”

  Decker let none of this escape his attention. The possibility of replacing the missing research assistant provided a much better chance of getting onto the team than did the direct approach of getting the team to accept a second reporter. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the right opening.

  “If you’re so sure it’s a goose chase, why do you insist on going along?” Stanley asked.

  “Somebody’s got to keep the rest of you honest,” Goodman said, with a grin.

  By now several other members of the team had filed into the dining room and were gathering in small groups for conversation. One of the men caught Professor Stanley’s attention and Stanley walked over to greet the new arrival. Decker seized the opportunity to question Professor Goodman further about the missing assistant.

  “What is it exactly that your research assistant was going to do on this trip?” Decker asked.

  “Oh, everything from collection of data to general gofer work. We’ve got hundreds of different experiments planned and we may have as little as twelve hours to do them all. It’s the kind of environment where an extra pair of trained hands can be very helpful.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in a substitute?” Decker asked. He was counting on the fact that Goodman didn’t know he had switched his major from pre-med to journalism after Goodman left the University of Tennessee. Decker felt a twinge of guilt, but this certainly wasn’t the biggest omission of fact he had ever used to get a story. Besides, he was pretty sure he remembered enough to get by. And he could certainly qualify as a gofer.

  “What?” Goodman responded. “After I just told Professor Stanley you were too smart for such a thing?”