Over the years, Tim's opinion of his President had changed dramatically. During the first days of the President's administration, when Tim had been appointed to his position, he had really believed in the Presidency. But over the years he had seen the truth behind the administration. President Jamieson was a brutal man, godless and greedy. The title President had never been able to hide the 'General' behind the blue suit and tie, a soldier with a soldier's military mind.
Yet, it was the ‘President’ that yielded ultimate power in America and Tim had taken the oath many years ago to defend his land, and to support and obey ‘the President’, whoever that President may be.
Tim was loyal to the core, and he wouldn’t change now. But it didn’t stop him looking back fondly upon the days when Clinton, the Bush Boys and Powell had ruled America. The old America had been a great land then. A good place to live. Decent, free…
The phone rang and Tim pulled himself away from the window to pick up the red receiver. It was the security phone, so he knew immediately that the call would be important. Probably either the President again or his boss calling from the Pentagon. It was the latter.
“Tim. Sorry to hear that you were called away from your family. How is Mrs Curts and that gorgeous little girl of yours?”
“Fine Daniel. Very good. I spoke to Regina an hour ago and they were about to go for a walk in the forest to work up an appetite for the family dinner…”
“She’s a good woman Tim. You’re a lucky man…” Daniel was a good boss. Director and Chief of the CIA for the past ten years, he cared about his employees and took a genuine interest in their family lives. No wonder that he commanded respect, friendship and even a small degree of love from those who worked for him. He was a rock, a giant of a man, and Tim had always thought that if fate had not thrown America such an unlucky curved ball, Daniel would have made a great President. A real President. Like the ones in the past. Not like the one they had now.
“And you? What are you doing in the office?” asked Tim. He knew that Daniel preferred to work hard, rather than sit at home alone in his huge empty house. Daniel had never married.
“Something came up…something that I want you to take a look at. It’s a Code Green. For your eyes only. But I think you may need to get an opinion from some others. If you do, just use your judgement in who you choose, okay? You know the ropes.”
“So, what is it?”
“I sent the file over thirty minutes ago. It should arrive in your office in about ten minutes. When you’re ready to advise me on your opinion, give me a call. Day or night. You know where to reach me. I'll leave it to you to brief the President. I don’t think we have much time to waste...”
“Sure thing Daniel. As soon as I know what’s going on. In the meantime, get yourself off home and fix yourself a brandy!”
“Roger that Tim. Sounds like a good idea. I think you’d better fix yourself one too, you’ll want one when you read what I've just sent you!”
.
The green file arrived ten minutes later exactly, escorted by two heavily armed escorts in blue striped suits. Standard CIA garb nowadays. All very cosmopolitan and European.
Tim fixed himself the brandy as his boss had suggested. Daniel wouldn’t have suggested it unless he meant it. He didn’t mess around.
Tim laid the box on the oak desk in front of him and first typed his personal password into the small keyboard, then pressed his index finger onto the security reader on the front of the file. There was the slight sound of a “click” as the container disarmed itself, having correctly scanned in his finger print and recognised the owner, allowing Tim to open the box without it self-destructing and destroying the contents.
Inside there was a green folder containing a field report from Ambassador Johnson in London. Tim had never met the man, but he had heard good reports of his work. He knew that the Ambassador would never send in a Code Green report unless it was something really important.
The field report contained a long type-written report in clear text, with a set of photographs, and very strangely, a hologram of a thorny branch wrapped into a circle, like a wreath of some sorts. The hologram fascinated Tim and for a few moments he played with it, holding it up to the office light and watching how the wreath projected itself into the space in front of his eyes as the light shone through it from behind. It was amazing. After a few minutes he put it back on the table, took a sip of his brandy and sat back in his large leather chair to read the report.
.
He had only got to page two when he realised that his hands were beginning to shake. He took another sip of his brandy, read another page and then finished the rest of the glass. He needed it.
.
Chapter Twenty
The Chesapeake Room
The White House
Washington D.C.
.
Two days had passed since Tim had first read the report on the ‘Haissem’ project. Its content had both scared and inspired him, and had filled his every thought for the past forty-eight hours. That evening he had placed some calls to a few of his colleagues, and the next morning a select group of people had been sent copies of the file. They had each reviewed its contents, and had flown down that night to meet with Tim in a Code Green meeting at 8am the next morning.
.
“First of all, may I thank you all for coming so soon, and I’m sorry if I disturbed your holiday celebrations. But, as you have all read the report I think you will agree that we have something here that requires our complete and immediate attention.” Tim spoke directly to the team gathered around the round table in the Chesapeake Room of the White House. The room had been swept for bugs and listening devices immediately before the meeting began, and it was now secure. In the centre of the table, the hologram had been laid upon a light box, casting the three-dimensional hologram up into the space above it, so that the entangled wreath of thorns hung mysteriously in the air above the table.
Tim rose to his feet and walked around the table, resting his hand briefly on the shoulders of the people as he passed them.
“I want you all to speak openly here. Honest opinions. Straight talk. Whatever you say is for the benefit of this team only. Nothing said here goes beyond this wall. I think we all understand that.” It was a statement not a question.
“Jim, you lead the best genetics team the government has got…what’s your opinion?” The question was given to Jim Stuart, head of the governments Genetics Research Core, or ‘The GRC’ for short, as it was more commonly known. Tim didn’t approve of most of the programmes Jim was working on, investigating how to use genetics in creating genetic and biological weapons of mass destruction, but he was the expert.
“Scary. Very scary. Incredible. But possible. Very possible. We don’t have the capability yet. But it sounds like the graduate student Jason has combined several existing processes to invent a new one. We need to find out what that is.” Jim replied in his deep voice. He was a giant of a man, overweight and over tall, and when he spoke he stroked his long black beard. Tim didn’t like him. Quite frankly, he looked weird.
“Okay, and how long will that take?”
“About six months. Maybe a year if we have to do all the work ourselves, but we can’t be far behind. We’ve been trying in the GRC labs to clone people for years, since the turn of the millennium.”
“…but you haven’t succeeded yet. Have you?”
“No, not yet. They have all died in their infancy. Well, actually before they were born, but we can do it. We’re very close.”
“You’ll have to get closer. But, if I am understanding you correctly, you are telling me that technically this project may be completely viable, as in something we have to take seriously?”
“More than that. This is genius. I wish I’d thought about it.”
“...But you didn’t. A graduate student did.”
Tim turned his attention to the man sitting opposite Jim. “ ..and what is your opinion Dave?”
>
Dave was one of the country’s leading biologists from Caltech University in California. He chaired many of the government committees on genetic and biological research, and Tim had always suspected his involvement with the government didn’t stop there.
“Completely doable, although probably about five years ahead of its time. They’ve stolen the lead.”
“What do you mean ‘stolen the lead’?” Tim replied immediately.
“…just that there are lots of groups all round the world trying to clone humans successfully. Unfortunately, no one has ever been able to publicly repeat the success of Professor Wainright from Oxford, the man who is really heading up this project.”
“What do you mean ‘stolen the lead’?” Tim repeated the question.
For a second Dave said nothing, looking briefly out of the window as if contemplating if and how he should reply.
“Dave, may I remind you that I am head of security here at the White House, and that I have the complete trust of the President, and report to him directly. I have his full authority. If there is something going on here that I don’t know about, you had better damn well tell me now, …and I mean now!” Tim put both hands on the table and leaned across towards Dave, staring straight into his eyes.
“Okay, I thought you would have known. We’ve been trying for a number of years to clone President John F. Kennedy. He was never buried in Arlington. Weird though it may seem, he was really put into cold storage…frozen in one of the crazy cryogenic programmes of the late twentieth century. There isn’t a hope in hell of bringing him back to life, but we might be able to clone him. So far we’ve made two little boys, but they both died when they were four. Don’t know why. Just died one day. No reason. But from what I read in the report it sounds like the Oxford group are way ahead of the game. Way ahead. If I wore a hat, I’d take if off to them.”
“JFK? Bloody hell!!! What the hell has the world come to when you can’t even die in peace, once and for all!” Tim shook his head. “Dave, I want you to give me a full report on that project, whatever it is, and I’ll circulate it to the others. But from now on, this one will take precedence.”
Tim turned to the last member of the team who until this time had been quiet. Unlike the other two who were dressed in civvies, Colonel John Smart was in his full dress uniform.
“Colonel Smart. Your report please?”
Colonel Smart was well known to Tim. He was a top soldier but was also one of the smartest men Tim had ever met. He’d ‘done’ several other ‘jobs’ for Tim in the past, in his role as Security Chief at the White House. Over the years Tim had come to trust his judgement, and a couple of times he had taken his counsel on international security issues. Colonel Smart had grown up in Europe and spoke five European languages, and had a deep understanding of international and cultural issues.
“Having heard the reports from our learned friends, I believe we have no choice but to obtain the Crown of Thorns, to give it its proper name, and to advance our cloning programme rapidly so that we can make our own clone of Jesus Christ as soon as possible. We cannot, under any circumstances allow the Europeans to take the lead in this race. America was once a God fearing nation. And now is our chance to put Christ at the head of the nation once again. It is our duty to make sure that Christ is born and brought up in America. An American!”
“And how are we to ‘obtain’ the Crown?” Tim asked, knowing full well that Colonel Smart would have already drawn up a plan to steal it from the Europeans.
“According to our Oxford source, who as you can see from the report is a member of the team undertaking this research, the project is going well. The original agreement with the French Catholic church was for a loan of the Crown not to exceed six months. But the work is already ahead of schedule and if things continue on track, our contact has told our agent in England that the Crown will be due for return to France in two months time. This gives us a maximum of seven weeks to obtain the Crown. Our agent in England has been very thorough. He has made a full hologram of the Crown and has provided it with his report. From this hologram we are able to view in every aspect a life-size image of the Crown. Using this information an exact replica of the Crown must be constructed using materials similar in origin to the object being replicated. As soon as we have an identical copy I will arrange for the duplicate to be swapped with the original. Ideally, this should be done after all the examinations are complete at the laboratory in Oxford, and just before it is returned to France to its current home in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris."
"If we miss the window of opportunity to obtain it while it is at Oxford we will have to take it from its vault in Notre Dame, however the logistics of doing that would be significantly harder. While it is in Oxford it is under minimal security so as not to draw attention to itself. Very few people even know it has left France.”
“Once we have the Crown I will deliver it to the new G.R.C. labs in the underground CIA Biological Warfare Institute deep in the mountains in Vale, where it will be up to our scientists to discover how to clone Jesus Christ.”
“The immediate problem I face is how to swap the Crown with a duplicate when we have it ready. It will be a few weeks before I have made all the arrangements and have put together a couple of back-up plans, should the first go wrong, but by the time we have a duplicate made I will be ready." Colonel Smart finished his report.
“Thanks Colonel Smart. For now I’m putting you in charge of arranging for the duplicate to be made, and for arranging all the details of the operation to make the swap in England. In the meantime, Dave and Jim, I’m looking to you two, to provide the smarts on how you’re going to make the clone. Make the necessary arrangements for preparing the lab in Colorado. Code Green too. This whole project is Code Green. We’ll meet again in a week for an update. Any questions?”
.
---------------------
.
The visit to his boss in the CIA building the next day was like a trip down memory lane. Nowadays he didn’t make it over to the old building as much as he would have liked, but today he had the perfect excuse. Before he briefed the President he wanted to brief Daniel, his real boss. As he had expected, Daniel gave him full authority to proceed as he thought fit, and later that day Tim sat down in the big leather chair in his office and dialled the President’s private mobile number. It would give Tim the greatest pleasure to call up the President and inform him there was a full blown Code Green operation on. Top Level National Security and all that.
“I’m sorry, I know it means that you’ll have to cut your golf trip short, but I think you will appreciate the reason when I brief you. Tomorrow at two? …That’s fine sir...And you sir...and enjoy the rest of your game!” Tim enjoyed the subtle irony that after the President had ruined his Redemption Day holiday, that he had just cut the President’s holiday short, and summoned him to a Code Green in Washington.
The President stormed into the office the next day, still smarting from having lost the game the day before. President Jamieson hated to lose. At anything. He always did his best not to lose. And sometimes Tim knew that clouded his judgement, which was dangerous.
As he walked across the room towards Tim's desk, he threw his suit jacket onto one of the chairs. His dress sense today was fairly typical of his everyday clothes; dark blue trousers held up by dark red braces; a light blue Oxford shirt with a yellow tie; gold cufflinks and black polished shoes. President Jamieson wasn't very tall, only about five foot seven, but his muscles were overdeveloped from years in the army gym and his large chest strained to burst out of the shirt. His bristly blonde hair, still crew cut in the typical army regulation style, complimented his piercing blue eyes. A two inch scar, the result of a bullet wound in Desert Storm, added to the character of his tanned face. The man was small, but he oozed power and quickly made his presence felt wherever he went.
“So this better be good Tim. Do you realise how good the weather is down there today? It’s perfect! An
d it’s bloody raining here again. What the hell has happened to the weather these days?”
Tim thought momentarily about pointing out the latest report on Climate Change effects, but realised this wasn’t the time. Anyway, the President didn’t care about anything that would penalise his plans to rebuild their industries. Thanks to the coal burning factories he had authorised all along the Canadian border, Washington now spent most of the year in a semi-tropical climate like the rain forests of Brazil. And everyone knew it was directly attributable to the President’s cheap energy programme.
“As I said, I think you’ll be interested in this one. This could be just what you’ve been looking for to put the country back on the road to greatness.”
“What do you mean? For fuck’s sake Tim, I’ve told you about that before. I will not, I repeat, I WILL NOT hear you talk negatively of this great country of mine. America is still the greatest country in the world, and always has been...”
Out of the corner of his eye President Jamieson suddenly saw the holographic image of the Crown floating above the table in the centre of the room.
“...and WHAT, if I may ask, what the hell is that?” he said pointing at the rotating three-dimensional image.
“That’s what you’re here to see. It’s a three dimensional hologram of the Crown of Thorns. The Crown of Thorns that Jesus Christ was forced to wear on his head when he was crucified.” Tim’s voice was calm and matter of fact.
The President glanced at Tim and then returned his attention to the floating Crown. He crossed back to the big round table and leaned forward over the hologram, supporting his weight on two-balled fists planted firmly on the table top. He put his nose as close to the hologram as possible, and then he lifted one hand off the table and tried to grab the image with his fingers. His hand met thin air and passed through into the space beyond.
The Messiah Conspiracy - A gripping page-turning Medical Thriller - [Omnibus Edition containing Book 1 & Book 2] Page 9