Twenty fours later Louisa was sitting in the clinic with the Doctor and Maria Quinn. A virgin, an ex-nun, and desperate to have a baby.
It seemed too good to be true.
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Chapter Fifty Four
London, England
Friday 9th Dec 1.30pm.
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Mike had lost a lot of weight since the last time he had worn the suit to report to London, and now it hung loosely around his waist and his stomach. The strain of the past weeks had taken a heavy toll on him, although thankfully, the threats from his superior officer to send him back to America, or from the English Professor to report him to the English authorities had seemingly not materialised.
That wasn’t to say that he hadn’t spent countless sleepless nights expecting a knock at his door in the early hours of the morning, or to return to his flat one day and find the door forced open and British secret agents waiting for him inside.
Strangely though, after a few days, the fear of being caught, imprisoned or deported had become secondary to the sadness he felt at the loss of Louisa. The upset was almost too much to bare. He had never imagined that anyone could have such feelings for another person, and that the pain and the longing could be so intense.
He had lost his appetite, his self-respect, and to a certain extent, the will to live.
After the first week he had visited his doctor and been signed off work at the University, and since then he had lived in a state of semi-hibernation in his flat, drinking too much and trying to recall with every waking moment the sensation of kissing and touching Louisa, trying to remember the smell of her perfume and the warmth of her breath upon his face as they held each other close.
Mike had never been in love before, and experiencing these emotions for the first time so late in life, in spite of the training he had gone through to protect himself from the weakness of the human heart, only added to his inability to cope. He had become a shadow of his former self.
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He had called her several times, leaving desperate, lovesick messages on the answering machine, pleading that she should call him back. On three occasions he had waited outside her house. When she had emerged he was too scared of being rejected to approach her and could only follow her, at a distance
Then one day she had come round the corner leading into her street and found him standing in a doorway. Louisa had been shocked by how terrible he looked and for a moment she felt some concern for him, but when Mike had recovered sufficiently to try and speak to her, she just burst into tears and ran off. Mike had shouted after her and she had yelled back at the top of her voice,
“Leave me alone...leave me alone...”
He had not seen her again after that.
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When the Ambassador had called him that morning he was fortunately sober enough to understand the conversation, and as instructed he showered, shaved, dressed and caught the first bus to London. The staff at the embassy hardly recognised him as they ushered him into the ambassador’s rooms.
“What the hell has happened to you?” The ambassador stared gobsmacked at his field agent. “Are you ill?”
“I have been better,” was all Mike replied.
“I don’t know what your problems are, and quite frankly I don’t really want to know. The whole world is going to pieces and your problems are the least of them. But make sure you stop by the embassy doctor before you leave. Get yourself thoroughly checked out. That’s an order.”
The Ambassador spoke briefly into his desk phone, ordering his secretary to arrange an immediate appointment with the doctor.
“You’re lucky I never sent you home. Perhaps I had second thoughts. Perhaps I decided to go easy on you considering the circumstances…who knows…but it was good that I did. An order has just come through for you from head office.”
Mike straightened his back and swallowed, mentally preparing himself for the mission that the Ambassador was surely just about to give him.
“It’s straight from the top. By Presidential decree you have been instructed to take out the Oxford Haissem team. All of them. As soon as possible.”
“Excuse me? Take them out? Take out, as in assassinate or take out as in invite them all to a meal for the evening? “Mike replied rhetorically. “...This is crazy....You can’t assassinate a team of the most respected scientists in the world! It would be too high profile!”
“Let’s be clear about this Mike. This order was personally authorised by the President. It is not for us to question the why or the wherefore, just to execute the command.”
Suddenly the face of Louisa flashed before Mike’s eyes. It only dawned on him then that he had just been ordered to kill the woman he loved more than his own life.
“All of them?”
“The whole team, as described in your last report. By the end of next week.”
“It can’t be done!”
The Ambassador leaned over his desk, glowering down at Mike.
“Mike. You have just over one week. If by that time I haven’t heard confirmation from you that the job has been done, Washington will send a specialist to complete the job. And if a specialist comes, then there’s every chance that your and my name will be added to that list. We won’t even know he’s arrived. I won’t be told...”
“… The first we will know about it is when we get a bullet in our heads. This isn't a game. It’s gone beyond that…I'm ordering you to do the job for both our sakes! It's what you have been trained for. Kill them!”
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Later that afternoon the Ambassador reluctantly placed a call to his superior in America.
“It’s a negative. I wanted to give him one last chance but he hasn’t got it in him anymore. I know him, and he’s not going to do it. You’d better send over your man. Don’t bother waiting a week. Send him over as soon as you can...and when he gets here tell him to kill Mike too. The man’s become a walking liability.”
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Chapter Fifty Five
The Walker Clinic
Oxford, England
Friday 9th Dec 11.30am
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The meeting between Maria, Dr. Rohloff and Louisa had gone well. Although nervous at first, Maria had been keen to learn as much about Louisa's programme as possible.
Once the introductions had been complete, the Doctor had politely excused himself from the meeting room to allow Louisa and Maria to talk more privately about how the I.G.E.G.G.M. could help her.
Louisa had asked Maria lots of questions, encouraging her to explain why she had become a nun, why she had given it up, and what she was doing now. She was particularly interested to find out what Maria thought about Genetics, her views on cloning and modern medical practices. Maria was not a member of the Haissem team, she was an outsider. They knew very little about her and it was important for Louisa to establish whether or not they could trust her. Before they could explain the true nature of the Haissem project to Maria, they had to be sure of her discretion, and confident that she would keep the details secret and under no circumstances go public with it.
What's more, Louisa needed to know whether Maria would still be interested when she found out that she would be carrying the cloned embryo of Jesus Christ. If they decided to tell her.
So after lunch, Maria was given a thorough medical examination, after which Louisa spent several hours interviewing her, and going through the questions about her background.
As the afternoon wore on, Louisa grew to like Maria more and more. When the evening came they quite naturally moved from the clinic to a quiet restaurant in the city centre, and it was over the desert that Louisa finally took the plunge and quietly and discretely told Maria the identity of the DNA donor, and about the Crown of Thorns.
Louisa didn't know how Maria would react when she told her. She half expected her to get up and walk out, or to shake her head vehemently, throw her hands up in the air and back out of the dea
l. What Louisa wasn't prepared for was the tears that flowed from Maria's eyes. Louisa had not expected Maria to cry.
For a few minutes, Maria was silent, then she smiled and said,
"Yes. I would be honoured. When can we start?"
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The next day Louisa introduced Maria to the rest of the Haissem team at an impromptu meeting she called after lunch. They all liked her, and she liked them. Trust between them was established almost immediately. The references that Louisa had checked first thing that morning all came back glowing, especially the ones from the local church and the Mother Superior at the convent. The Professor's contacts were also able to confirm that she had no criminal records, and even volunteered that several of the police officers in Oxford knew her, and that she was well respected and liked for the public charity work she had done with children for the Home.
Within a few hours Maria had become the last and final member of the Haissem team.
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"So you 'stole' one of the thorns from the Crown?" Jason was asking Don in disbelief.
"I didn't steal it. I had this overpowering feeling that I should look after it, just in case we needed it in the future."
"Need it for what?"
"I don't know. Have you never had a gut-instinct?" Don asked Jason. Don was turning red from embarrassment. Don had decided that the meeting called by Louisa to introduce Maria, was as good a time as any to come clean, but perhaps he had misjudged his timing.
"And you say that after you had stolen it, a gut instinct told you to re-examine it?"
“Come on…I didn’t steal anything…I just kept it for safekeeping.” Don defended himself again., immediately rising to the bait. Was Jason really angry or just winding him up?
Jason laughed.
“It’s okay, I’m just teasing you. Since the Americans have stolen the Crown, it's probably just as well that you stole a bit for us! If we needed any more samples, there no way we would have been able to get any more now…Anyway, from what you say, it wasn't your fault it was broken off in the first place. So what have you done about it so far? Have you examined it properly yet?”
“I’ve made a start. I couldn’t see anything on normal magnifications, and I need to reset the Smithsonian and do a few scans on maximum power…I was waiting until the weekend when you guys would be out from under my feet.” Don relaxed a little bit.
“Forget that, let’s do it now.” Jason replied instantly.
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Having come clean to the group, Don rushed home to fetch the thorn while Jason and the Professor prepared the lab and the scanning microscope, and Louisa showed Maria around the building.
Louisa arranged for Maria to get a pass to admit her to the I.G.E.G.G.M. when accompanied by another person from the team, and then allocated her her own 'bunny suit'. Maria found the whole thing completely fascinating.
When Don returned they ate lunch together in the Lamb and Flag, taking the opportunity to get more acquainted with Maria. Then after lunch they returned to the lab and started the serious work.
“I’m going to look again at the split in the thorn that I told you about. Maybe there’s something trapped in the crack that we’ve overlooked.” Don announced to the others, as he focussed focussing the sights on the Smithsonian.
On the initial scan they didn’t see anything unusual, but at the Professor’s suggestion Jason manipulated the thorn with some surgical forceps, forcing the crack in the surface of the thorn to open slightly wider so that the microscope could scan the inside surfaces of the fissure.
At first they saw nothing, but then as they passed over the inside edge of the crack once again Louisa, pointed to something on the screen.
“What’s that?” she shouted excitedly.
They looked at the area again.
“I don’t know...whatever it is has been absorbed and covered by the resin from the thorn. We’ll have to try to get it out.”
For the next hour Jason and the Professor worked with their robotic surgical instruments, skilfully manipulating the specially designed pieces of machinery to remove the unidentified material from its cocoon buried deep in the thorn's resin.
The others followed their every movement on the overhead projector, watching in silence as they used the microscopic platinum tipped scalpels, to carefully clean the remainder of the resin from whatever it was they had found.
“So Don, what do you think that is then?” the Professor asked almost rhetorically. It was obvious to the group what they had discovered. Only Maria couldn’t recognise what they were looking at.
Don could feel the sweat running off his forehead inside his facemask. He knew immediately what they were looking at.
“It’s a tiny piece of skin...a tiny piece preserved in the resin of the thorn. How it’s managed to be preserved for over two thousand years…don’t ask me. The chemical makeup of the resin must somehow have protected it!”
“What? Skin? Whose?” Maria asked excitedly.
“Well, if we were to hazard a guess, I would venture that it must only come from one very special person. Jesus Christ.”
“My thoughts too." The Professor joined in, his voice trembling with excitement. "But we can confirm that easily by checking to see if the skin's DNA gives off the MVWLE. If it does it's a fairly safe bet that it comes from the same source as the G-blood type. And, if this does turn out to exhibit MVWLE and it comes from the same source as the G-type blood, what do you think that would mean...Louisa?”
Louisa looked at the Professor and then at Don, her eyes wide with excitement.
“It means that we can take one of the skin cells out, dissect it and extract the nucleus from the cell. The nucleus will contain all the chromosomes of Christ. And we can then take that nucleus and put it directly into the enucleated egg cell. And bingo...we’ve got a G-clone!”
“A G-clone? What are you talking about? This is all Greek to me. Someone please explain in plain old English what’s happening!” Maria’s begged.
“Let me try…” Jason offered. “So far we have tried to clone Jesus Christ by isolating a blood cell from the residue we found on the Crown of Thorns, and taking from it the genetic information we need to create a clone. To do that we need a complete set of all the chromosomes that Christ would have had in his body. Unfortunately, normal blood cells don’t contain all the chromosomes of the donor, so we had cheated a bit by stealing a tiny piece of the DNA taken from the blood cell, and extracting from the DNA the information that should give us the blueprint on how to build the complete chromosome set…”
“… We thought we'd succeeded but for some reason, the process wasn’t working. Normally we would take a set of the chromosomes and make a little bag of them called a nucleus. We would then insert the nucleus into a specially prepared cell which was taken from a target egg. If everything went well, the egg cell would accept the donated chromosomes set and start reproducing multiple copies of itself...and grow into a little human being...”
“...Unfortunately when we do this with the material we get from Christ’s blood cells, each time we attempt to insert the nucleus of the chromosomes into the egg cell, the nucleus is physically ejected from the egg as soon as it is inserted. We don’t know why…”
“Either there is something else going on, maybe even something supernatural that we don’t know about, or we are missing some part of the cell…maybe there are some extra chromosomes missing…special chromosomes which would signal to the egg cell to accept the nucleus and not reject it...chromosomes that only Jesus Christ would have, without which the process would not work.” Don added. “The first thing we got wrong was that we were just using egg cells from a normal woman. It didn’t dawn on us that we would have to use special egg cells...very special ones. In fact ‘yours’...egg cells from a virgin.”
“But if we now have real, complete skin cells from Jesus Chr
ist himself," Louisa interrupted, "we won’t need to guess at what a complete set of chromosomes would look like. We may actually have all of them already! And all we would have to do then is to copy them genetically and insert them into an egg cell taken from yourself, and we will be able to make a G-clone.” Louisa finished the impromptu lesson.
“But what is a G-clone?” Maria asked again.
“It’s our code name for a clone of Jesus Christ…a God-clone.”
“Thank you. That last bit I understand…now if you would just repeat the rest of what you said from the very beginning, then maybe I’ll have a clue what you’re all talking about!”
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Chapter Fifty Six
Mount Vernon Hospital
Washington D.C.
Friday 9th December 1 p.m.
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For the 2nd time in the space of a week, Tim and his wife Regina were sitting in the waiting room at the Mount Vernon waiting to see Doctor Dubovecka. They had been there since very early that morning.
Earlier on that day, Tim had called the hospital and told the Doctor there had been a serious change in Tina's condition and Doctor Dubovecka had been waiting in reception with two nurses to personally assist them into the hospital when their Cadillac had pulled up in front of the entrance. The Doctor had been expecting to receive a child whose condition had seriously deteriorated, perhaps close to death.
The look of confusion that had spread across the Doctor's face as Tina had jumped out of the back of the Cadillac and run up the hospital stairs to meet him had been priceless. Tim would never forget it.
Even though Tina was jumping about, and refusing to sit still for even a second, energy coursing through her body like electricity, the Doctor had insisted on admitting her and running another complete battery of tests. Then when the results had come back, the Doctor had ordered them all to be repeated.
The Messiah Conspiracy - A gripping page-turning Medical Thriller - [Omnibus Edition containing Book 1 & Book 2] Page 28