The Jesus Germ

by Brett Williams

  ‘Perhaps after 1792 it was never meant to be found,’ Rachel said.

  Father Stephen thought out loud. ‘…a secret tribute to one of the great industrialists of the eighteenth century, uniting him with his most famous article of discovery.’

  A light went on in Zachary’s head. ‘It’s buried with Sir Timothy Sivewright!’

  ‘It makes sense, and finding it will test Venti and his cheque book. Ten million Euros would hardly seem a fair exchange,’ Rachel said.

  52

  The keeper entered the grassed enclosure to find Queen Moe sprawled beside a large artificial rock awaiting her daily polish. Touted as the world’s oldest living reptile and a bona fide tourist magnet, the giant tortoise, stranded on the beach near the capital, Papeete, in late 1835, was likely washed off one of the many sailing ships that passed through the Galapagos Archipelago. Then, she was probably thirty years old. Incredibly, nearly two centuries later she still wandered her home with the steady metronomic pace befitting a lumbering six-hundred-pound behemoth.

  A cloud of flies lifted off her shell, buzzing into the hot air. One shiny green fly paced tenaciously on top of her leathery nose, refusing to leave. The keeper gave the shell a hearty slap, noticing her long neck resting unusually on the ground and a dense circle of flies foraging at an eye. He scared them off with a sweep of his hand, to see the usually shiny black jewel in the wrinkled socket now glazed and milky. He tried lifting her head off the ground but it was stiff with rigor mortis. In disbelief, he draped a disconsolate arm across her warm carapace.

  His mind wandered back in time, imagining Moe breaking from her buried egg, clawing through the sand into daylight. He pictured the circumstances of her unnatural voyage aboard a sailing ship and her strange appearance on the Tahitian shore of the Society Archipelago, far removed from her place of birth. She outlived all twelve of her offspring, hatched from the eggs she laid soon after her arrival. The last of them, the old male Moses, died the day Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. He attained the ripe old age of one hundred and thirty-three. In zoos and parks around the globe, most of his siblings made one hundred but none of the four females ever bred.

  A shrieking macaw snapped the keeper from his day dream. With no time to remove Queen Moe from the compound, he sprayed disinfectant over her body, wiped away the mucous around her eyes with a soft cloth and closed the lids. The chemicals kept the flies at bay so she appeared to be basking in the sun.

  The keeper, miked up and standing on an elevated platform, contemplated the burgeoning crowd assembling for his 10 a.m. talk. After delivering an enthralling commentary on the Galapagos tortoise and the life of Queen Moe, he paused for questions.

  A tiny girl shouted from the fence. ‘Queen Moe’s dead.’

  The keeper swallowed, trying to muster saliva into his dry mouth.

  ‘Does anyone know what Moe means in Tahitian?’

  A bespectacled boy raised his hand. ‘Moe is the god of sleep.’

  ‘Correct, and some say sleep is the reason she lived...’ the keeper cleared his throat ‘... is why she has lived more than two hundred years.’

  ‘Make her do something,’ another boy yelled. ‘Jump on her back.’

  The boy’s father gripped him roughly by the arm, shooting him a withering glare.

  ‘I think we’ll let Queen Moe rest some more. If you care to come back later, you might be lucky enough to catch her on the move. You are welcome to take photos but remember she is the oldest vertebrate on the planet and deserves our respect.’

  At 2 p.m. the keeper repeated his talk as Queen Moe baked in the sun. When the park closed at 5 p.m. he was exhausted.

  After the last visitor left, a small front end loader entered the enclosure. Three blue nylon straps were run under Moe’s broad body and connected to the loader’s bucket to hoist her out, as dozens of disbelieving staff watched on. Her elephantine legs hung limply and the keeper supported her head for the short drive to the park’s veterinary hospital. There, she was lowered onto a large rolling table, covered with a dark green sheet and wheeled into an empty operating theatre. The keeper turned out the light.

  At the news of Queen Moe’s death, snaking queues formed at the park gates. People poured through the turnstiles, milling around the empty enclosure, poking flowers in the fence and openly shedding tears.

  The doctor patted Queen Moe’s head. ‘If only she could talk.’

  A wild smell pervaded the operating theatre; part reptilian, part decomposition. The doctor syringed four vials of blood from Queen Moe’s neck and stacked them in a plastic rack.

  ‘I thought she’d live forever,’ the keeper said.

  ‘Let’s get her into the machine,’ the technician said.

  They rolled her inside an MRI unit. It hummed to life and proceeded to take a series of cross-sectional photographs along her entire length.

  ‘I’m no radiologist but I can already see an obvious aberration. Has Queen Moe ever been operated on?’ said the technician.

  ‘Not that I’m aware,’ said the keeper.

  ‘Well, there’s an unusual shadow under her shell near her tail. What do you make of it, doctor?’

  ‘I have no idea, but let’s find out what it is.’

  The technician helped push the heavy tortoise back to the operating theatre where the doctor examined the image of the foreign body to ascertain its exact position. He slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and produced a fresh scalpel.

  ‘This won’t hurt a bit, old girl.’

  He reached under the carapace above the tail and made a vertical incision, touching away at the fatty flesh. The scalpel tapped something hard embedded in the meat. The doctor probed with his fingers until he got a firm grip on the object and wriggled it free. He showered it with warm water from a sink tap and laid it on a bench under bright fluorescent light.

  ‘What is it?’ The keeper said, picking it up.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ the doctor said.

  The technician put his head in his hands, then straightened and stuttered excitedly.

  ‘D... D... Darwin.’

  ‘What about Darwin?’ the doctor said.

  ‘It’s one of the lost ornaments and the little frogs are Trinity Harlequins, believed extinct for two thousand years.’

  ‘Where does Darwin fit in?’ the doctor said.

  The technician’s hands trembled. ‘This ornament was presented to Charles Darwin by the British Museum to accompany his voyage aboard the Beagle in 1831. I recognise it from drawings I’ve seen. It’s one of three lost between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their whereabouts have been a mystery. Darwin reported the loss of the ornament during a storm in the Pacific off Tahiti. It seems the Queen was taking good care of it all these years. She was probably loaded on the Beagle from an island in the Galapagos Archipelago as food for later in the voyage. The Beagle stopped here on route to Australia but Queen Moe arrived independently, found washed up on the beach by Queen Aimata, the Tahitian monarch of the time.’

  The doctor stared at the excited technician. ‘Anything else?’ he said.

  ‘That’s all I know. They’ve been lost for so long.’

  The doctor stitched the wound and ran his hand over the domed shell. ‘There you go, Moe, painless.’

  With the tip of a scalpel, the doctor flicked away a small cream maggot flexing in the corner of Moe’s left eye, and mashed it into the floor with his heel.

  The men photographed the ornament and the excision site and took a group selfie in which they grinned like schoolboys clutching a sporting trophy.

  Queen Moe lay in the background, a big old dinosaur, her immortality assured.

  53

  ‘Here it is!’ Rachel said. ‘Sir Timothy Sivewright, died 9th December 1792, interred in the graveyard of the Church of Saint Hormisdas, North East London on the 14th December 1792. I can see tombstones in the long grass but the site is a ruin.’

  Father Stephen examined the computer images. ‘What
are we waiting for, Zach? I believe you’re an expert in excavating sacred burial sites.’

  Zachary raised his eyebrows and a wry smile.

  The drive from Gatwick Airport was slow until the traffic thinned and the suburban clutter melted into patchwork fields and rolling green hills. Rachel navigated from the back seat, diverting Zachary onto ever narrowing roads and finally down a rutted track.

  The Church of St Hormisdas sat crumbling and overgrown at the top of a cobbled path. There were gaping holes in the roof where the rafters had rotted away. Weeds poked through the floor boards and spider webs sagged across empty window frames.

  Zachary surveyed the churchyard, and the headstones strangled with grass.

  ‘Let’s search from the perimeters,’ Father Stephen said, heading off up a gentle incline past the rear of the church.

  Zachary went the opposite way, down the slope to the bottom of the graveyard and Rachel trounced through a low tangle of weeds to the east. Near the fence-line, she came across a deep hole in the ground beside a pile of fresh earth. In the bottom of the hole lay a chaotic arrangement of long bones and ribs topped with a skull. On the grave’s weathered headstone was an etching.

  Sir Timothy Sivewright

  1740-1792

  God forgive his sins

  Jesus exalt him for his good deeds

  Holy Spirit, cradle him in thy wings.

  Rest in Peace.

  Rachel expected a grander monument to honour him. She called out to Zachary and Father Stephen as a drab frog hopped onto the headstone.

  Father Stephen knelt to read the inscription, swearing under his breath.

  ‘I want to check something in the grave.’

  ‘Wait, Steve.’

  Zachary disappeared into the Church. A loud crack broke the silence and he returned carrying a beam of wood, lowering an end into the grave to make a ramp, careful not to disturb the bones.

  ‘Thanks, Zach.’

  Rachel stood back as Father Stephen edged down into the grave. He picked up the skull, tossing it out of the hole in front of Zachary who caught it instinctively. Father Stephen climbed out and Rachel stepped closer.

  ‘See the front teeth,’ Father Stephen said.

  ‘They’re missing,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Snapped off at the gum line, the roots still wedged in the jaw bone. As I remember, the assassin’s musket ball drove straight through Sir Timothy’s front teeth, lodging in his brain. There’s the neat hole at the back of the palate.’

  Father Stephen got back in the grave, signalling Zachary, who with some moral discomfort dropped Sir Timothy’s skull into his waiting hands.

  ‘The grave’s thoroughly neglected,’ Rachel said.

  ‘There are no heirs. The Sivewright dynasty ended in the Great Depression at the hands of a great, great, great grandson who squandered an unfathomable fortune on ill-advised investments and ambitious building projects. Add in an exorbitant lifestyle and the stock market crash of 1929, and he was broke and up to his eyeballs in a debt the banks refused to re-finance. At just twenty-five, he took his own life in a dramatic plunge off London Bridge onto the deck of a passing steamer.’ Zachary compressed the facts he’d read the previous day.

  ‘So much for money and happiness,’ Rachel said.

  ‘If the ornament was ever in the grave it’s now gone,’ Father Stephen said, climbing from the hole.

  The triumvirate returned to the car and the drab brown frog leapt off the headstone into the grave. It landed on Sir Timothy’s skull, scraping its legs over the smooth dome to regain its balance, huddling into an eye socket to wait for bugs.

  The establishment was nearly as old as Sir Timothy. The flaky cast-iron numbers above the door read 1758. A fibreglass boar’s head, armed with ferocious tusks, loomed over the entrance, its threatening appearance rendered innocuous by the long boson’s pipe protruding comically from its lips. The Boar and Whistle looked inviting. The triumvirate settled inside for lunch and a well-earned drink.

  Zachary almost choked when the photograph of the lost ornament appeared on the television screen behind Father Stephen and Rachel. He dropped his knife and fork on the table, gesturing to the screen.

  As the newsreader spoke, Zachary jumped out of his chair and ran to the bar, hurrying the barman to turn up the volume.

  ‘Now to an unexpected twist to a story we brought you earlier this week. Veterinary staff at Tahiti’s largest wildlife park made a spectacular find while conducting tests on the remains of the giant Galapagos tortoise, Queen Moe, who died at the weekend. The ancient tortoise was reputed to be more than two hundred years old, but it’s what she concealed under her shell that has the scientific world abuzz. A glass block embedded with brightly coloured frogs was removed in a simple operation and is believed to be the same item presented to evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin by the British Museum to accompany him on his voyage aboard the Beagle in 1831. One of three similar ornaments, it is now the only known surviving example. In a wonderful gesture, it has been returned to the British Museum for public display from tomorrow.’

  Father Stephen unconsciously drained a full pint of lager and Rachel realised she had his arm in a vice-like grip. For a moment, they were speechless.

  ‘How tight is security in the British Museum, Zach?’ Father Stephen said.

  ‘Not impregnable. A few frogs in a glass paperweight should hardly raise an eyebrow amongst the general public, scheming priests excepted.’

  ‘What about evil cardinals, bored billionaires and their beautiful girlfriends?’ Father Stephen said.

  Rachel took a long draught of her beer

  ‘Stealing it will require opportunity and timing,’ Zachary said.

  54

  Rachel helped the old lady up the stairs to the museum entrance. She looked all of eighty, bent over, shuffling with the aid of a cane, heavy for a woman of her years. Zachary stepped ahead, waiting to accompany her through the revolving door. When all three were safely inside the museum, Rachel and Zachary wished the woman well, leaving her near the information desk. They made their way to the natural history wing, regarding every innocent look or sideways glance with suspicion.

  They pretended to peruse some of the exhibits. A replica of the radiant Sultan diamond was suspended in a bird’s nest of coarse twigs like some luxurious egg. The real paragon, the largest and most valuable in the world, belonged to the King of Brunei.

  Zachary examined a giant pangolin; a blend of anteater and small scaly dinosaur, hairless except for eyelashes.

  Rachel impatiently tugged on Zachary’s arm, nodding toward the staircase. They ascended two flights of steps to the next floor and walked through the butterfly room and the snake and lizard exhibits before emerging into a hall. A sign over a door read Amphibious and related fossils of the late Cretaceous Period.

  Rachel spotted the ornament a second after Zachary but they resisted rushing to it. They headed in an anticlockwise direction around an arrangement of glass-topped cabinets, pretending to admire the displays while analysing the position of security cameras. The room was brilliantly lit, with a fat guard patrolling the floor. Two cameras, hung from the centre of the ceiling, monitored every exhibit in the room. Rachel counted seven other visitors. Two impeccably dressed women gazed intently at the ornament. It stood unencumbered on a stand, behind a braided red rope that was more a polite deterrent than a physical barrier.

  Rachel and Zachary moved closer to the women. The ornament was stunning. The iridescent frogs radiated through the glass, reflecting the ambient light with all their electric colours.

  ‘They’re exquisite,’ one woman said.

  The other visitors gathered around, Zachary observing them warily. He longed to trust his earlier assertion the ornament could not be removed during opening hours.

  To compound his unease, another four visitors filed through the door. He took Rachel by the hand, heading for the exit, leaving the inept-looking guard to protect the precious harlequins.
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br />   The old lady they’d helped at the entrance had somehow managed to climb the stairs to the second level. Zachary handed her an exhibit brochure. She gave him a cheeky wink, forging on, huffing and puffing past the butterfly displays.

  She hobbled into the amphibian room, studying the brochure, working her way slowly around the exhibits, accidentally bumping into the fat guard and whacking him firmly across a shin with her cane. He good-naturedly apologised for getting in her way, and she continued on without acknowledging him.

  The guard watched her pause in front of the ornament. She reminded him of his grandmother, especially the feisty streak. He moved into the hallway outside to stretch his legs.

  The old lady leant over the red rope. The guard monitoring security cameras from the control room relaxed only when she straightened and the ornament came back into view.

  She bent forward again, closer, pulling an object of her own from the front of her coat, holding it tightly to her chest. Sweat trickled down her back, her heart hammering so forcefully she thought the fat guard might hear. She snatched the ornament and jammed her substitute in its place before standing upright. The control-room guard stretched back in his chair with relief.

  The old lady wanted desperately to hurry away. Instead, heart going like a locomotive, she moved onto the next exhibit, counted off thirty seconds then shuffled past a cabinet of ugly horned toads toward the exit. She entered the hallway where the fat guard stood to attention with a grin on his chubby face.

  Rachel and Zachary came out of the souvenir shop and inspected a three-ton iron meteorite on display in the foyer.