“We wait and see if any or all of them actually make it through to the stage where we have enough cells to constitute what we would deem a stable embryo, one that we could implant into a host mother.”
“You mean, when it gets to the 128 cell stage…?” The President replied, proving he had at least learned something during the session that afternoon.
“Exactly. I suppose if they all get to that stage, then we have to look at the possibility of implanting Danielle with more than one embryo, which would enhance the chances of at least one surviving successfully through to term...How do you feel about twins or triplets Mr President?” Professor Calvert asked.
Inside his bunny suit it was just possible to make out that the President had turned a little white.
“Of course, the difficulty would be if they all survived. You would then have three living clones of Jesus Christ! That would certainly pose a few problems...” Professor Stuart added.
Even Tim hadn’t thought about that one. No one spoke. The implications of what Prof. Calvert had just suggested were quiet profound.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, ok? “ Tim interrupted them all. “We don’t even know if we’ll even get a single embryo from this.”
Something on the screen captured Tim’s attention. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the magical and serene 'Angel Lights' that had so entranced him the first time he had seen it, had stopped. Gone were the colours of the rainbow which were being radiated from the nucleus so beautifully before. In its place, the nucleus at the centre of the cell was glowing a deep red.
“Have you guys noticed that?” Tim asked, pointing to the glowing nucleus. “Its red....”
“Yes...we noticed...” Professor Stuart replied.
“Why did it change?”
“We don’t know.” Professor Calvert answered rather sheepishly.
As Tim stared at the nucleus sitting so peacefully at the centre of the cell he started to have the bad feeling again. A very bad feeling indeed. If he hadn’t known better, Tim would have called it ‘fear’.
“Is there any danger that we’ve damaged the nucleus, or that the radiation has changed the cell structure somehow?” Tim asked quickly.
“Yes, it’s possible, but we can’t tell yet.”
Tim felt very uncomfortable. It was almost as if a sixth sense was telling him that something had gone badly wrong.
“I’ve got a very bad feeling about this gentlemen. I can’t explain it, but my gut feeling says that we can’t simply ignore the fact that the Angel Lights has changed from a vivid spectrum of light to a simple deep red. I think we should abandon these cells and try and again…repeat it until we get one where the Angel Light stays multicoloured, like the rainbow effect you can see before it enters the cell.”
The two professors looked at each other.
“We’ve done this procedure many times, with cells from another lady, and each time we do it I’m afraid the light has changed colour. Each time…
“How many times have you done it?”
“About twenty?”
“Perhaps that’s not enough!” Tim replied sharply.
The two professor’s looked at each other again, then Jim Stuart spoke.
“The fact is, we’re running out of material. Apart from the other two we have ready now, we’ve only enough material left to make another two nuclei, and that would take another three days...”
Until then the President had been sitting quietly without saying a word, but now his impatience came out in a torrent.
“Enough! I’ve heard enough. If you think I’m going to hang around in this underground cave for one second longer than is absolutely necessary then you’re all sadly mistaken. I see no reason why we can’t go with what the good gentlemen are doing here...if they say it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me!”
Tim started to argue but the President lifted his gloved hand up to silence him and turned to the Professors for an answer. For a second they looked at each other, both embarrassed by the situation they found themselves in.
“Mr President, Tim may have a point, but we have no way of knowing…and yet, we really have no choice....even if we do try making and using another two nuclei it may not work any differently....of course, we could start completely from scratch and generate more material to make more nuclei, but that would take even longer, maybe another two weeks…and then there is no guarantee...and we only have a very limited supply of...”
The Professors had begun to stumble. Like Tim they were scared too, but for a different reason: they were scared for their own safety if they failed to deliver what the President wanted.
“So, I’m going to make an executive decision for you gentlemen.” The President interrupted and spoke over them. “We go with what we’ve got here…If none of the three embryos from tonight divide, then you give it another go. But either way, I’m leaving here tomorrow morning, and I want, and listen to me when I say this, I want Danielle to be pregnant with this stuff before she leaves here in a month...Get my drift?”
.
Yes, they got his drift.
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Chapter Sixty Nine
35 Huntingdon Road
Oxford, England
Wednesday 21st Dec 7am
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Angela Marsh stirred in her bed, her hand subconsciously slipping down to the bottom of her stomach and stroking herself on the outside of where she thought her womb was. She knew that she wasn't showing, and that the child within her was less than a month old, but the novelty of being pregnant hadn't worn off yet. Each morning she awoke excited, and happy. Happier than she had been in years.
Angela turned over in her bed and stared at her husband James. Throughout all the IVF trials, in spite of their spectacular failures, he had stuck by her. In the end, it was his idea to talk to the agency about finally joining the programme being run by the I.G.E.G.G.M, and now that the baby was growing healthily within her, she couldn't wait for the 22nd August, her due date.
She sat on the edge of the bed, slipping her feet into her slippers and standing up to walk over to the curtains. It was only 7am and it was still dark, but flashing lights in the street outside had woken her. As she pulled back the curtains she was surprised to see two police cars and a large black van sitting outside her house. Two police officers were standing on the pavement outside her front garden, beginning to unroll some yellow luminescent tape. It looked like they were going to cordon of the street in front of her garden.
As she stared incredulously at the commotion outside, the back door of the big black van suddenly burst open and six large soldiers dressed in black uniforms, with black helmets and dark visors which covered their faces, jumped out and started running up the path towards her door. Four of them carried large automatic repeating rifles, and they all wore thick body armour which matched their black clothing. As she watched, two of the men paused at the edge of her garden, while the others rushed at her front door. The two at the front were carrying what looked like a large, black, tree-stump between them.
There was a loud, crashing sound downstairs and the door at the front of her house splintered and burst inwards.
Angela screamed and her husband James sat bolt upright in bed, woken awkwardly from his deep sleep.
"What was that? What's the matter? What…" he asked, immediately scared.
Before he could finish the sentence, three of the soldiers burst through the doorway into the bedroom, making straight for Angela standing beside the window. Two of them grabbed her forcibly by the shoulders as a third injected her in the arm with a syringe. She immediately stopped screaming and went limp in their arms.
Her husband James lurched towards them, but as he did a fourth man in a dark suit stepped from the shadows of the hallway, raising a silenced gun towards him and fired once. The bullet made a single entry hole in James forehead, and he fell back silently onto the bed.
"Take her downstairs, and get her back to base as s
oon as possible. I'll sort things out here."
As the soldiers carried the sleeping body of the woman downstairs, and out into the back of the van, Patrick looked around the room. For no reason in particular he picked up the photograph on the bedside cabinet and looked at the picture of a happily married couple standing on the front steps of a church. He looked at it, smiled, and then threw it casually on top of the limp body of the man in the picture.
He reached inside his pocket, and took out the bag containing the gun, taking out the weapon inside. Using his gloved hands he positioned it carefully in the hands of the dead man, then turned and walked out of the house.
Outside on the street, he called across to the police sergeant, who had just finished securing the police perimeter.
"Thanks for your help, Sergeant. It's incredible. You would never think you'd find terrorists living right in your own midst…not here in the middle of quiet suburbia..."
The sergeant nodded back. He too found it hard to believe that international terrorists were living only a few blocks from his house.
"Unfortunately, the husband tried to resist...we'll leave it to your guys to clean up the body, and search the house. Listen...if you need to contact us, you can reach us on this number."
The MI5 agent pulled out a card, and handed it to the policeman.
A car drove up beside them, the door opened and Patrick got in. As he drove off, trying to catch up with the van in front, he turned to the agent beside him and said.
"That puts us a step ahead of the Americans. I wonder why Jason called it an A-clone anyway?"
" I thought you read the report you found in that guy's house! It's because Jesus Christ had A-type blood...at least, that's what the Haissem team found on the Crown of Thorns." Agent Black replied, glancing quickly at his partner as he drove the car.
"Whatever..." Patrick replied. "Listen, let's stop for a coffee on the way back to the office. I'm thirsty."
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Chapter Seventy
Vale, Colorado, America
Wednesday 21st Dec 7am
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Tim had hardly slept all night. He had been troubled by nightmares full of vague images he couldn’t understand. Twice he woke in the midst of the dreams, sweating and very scared, but unable to remember why. He knew it had something to do with the experiment, but he didn’t know what.
.
As he showered and shaved, the plasma monitors on the wall projected the image of the sun rising across the wave of hills that formed the horizon behind the city of Vale. Drinking only a glass of fresh orange juice he set off for the lab, only to find that both the Professors were already there.
.
“Well?” Tim asked impatiently as they looked up from the Smithsonian.
“I think you’d better see for yourself.” Dave replied, his voice shaking excitedly as he spoke. He stood up from his seat and offered it to Tim.
Tim sat down, and peered into the sights of the microscope. The Smithsonian was focussed on two cells, which were suspended in the Super Genetic Nutrient. The cell had divided. Where previously there had been a single cell, there were now two.
“What about the other two experiments?” Tim asked without bothering to look up.
“The same. They’ve both split.” Jim replied excitedly.
“Let me see...” Tim requested, looking up at Jim. “Show me.”
In the next few minutes Tim confirmed what both Jim and David had seen. Both of the other two cells that they had implanted with nuclei had successfully divided.
“I don’t like it gentleman. I don’t like it at all. All of them are showing deep red Angel Light. I’m convinced it shows that we’ve done damage to the cells…Who knows what it will mean to the developing child if the embryo grows.”
“We’ll take that chance, Tim. We will proceed as planned!” The voice of the President boomed across the lab. Tim and the two Professors had been so engrossed in looking at the cells that they hadn’t noticed the President entering through the airlock. Obviously, the President hadn’t been able to sleep either.
.
---------------------
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In fact, contrary to how it may have seemed, the President had slept excellently. He had slept deeply, but his sleep had also been interwoven with vivid dreams.
Excellent dreams. Dreams of a time when America once more led the world, in which he was once more a powerful leader, feared and respected across the planet, and rich and powerful beyond his wildest dreams.
He dreamt he was the leader of a fantastic army, an army which ruled the planet, a unified army made up of armies from all the nations of the earth, all dressed like the Military Council Protection Elite. In one dream he had stood on the edge of a cliff and as far as the eye could see his armies had passed by underneath him, led by the leaders of the world who had marched before him and paid him tribute.
And at his side throughout all these dreams had been his son and heir. His son, who the dreams had revealed to him would take his place at the head of the mightiest nation on Earth, and become the next President in the years after his own death. His son would lead America forward to an even greater age, and in time would become the first leader of a united planet.
He had dreamt it all. His dreams had shown him the future, and he knew without doubt that one day his son would lead the peoples of the earth...and no one was going to deny that to them. No one.
When he awoke he had showered quickly, and made his way to the lab as fast as he could. If his dream was to become reality, the cells had to have divided. And they had.
Tim stood up and let the President take his seat.
“You guys have done a great job here. Incredible! How long before they should divide again? I want to watch it for myself…”
“In about four-and-a-half hours.” Prof. Calvert replied.
“Great, make sure I’m here to see it.”
“So what are we going to do now? If all three cells survive to the one hundred-and-twenty-eight cell stage, do we make three clones? Do we implant them all into Danielle and hope for triplets?” Tim asked.
“There will be only one Christ. We will impregnate Danielle with one embryo only. Which one is for you gentleman to decide,” the President ended the discussion.
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10am
.
Apart from revealing to him his destiny, and the part his son would share in it, the dreams had left the President with a small problem. Tim Curts.
In his dreams Tim had appeared several times, but for reasons which the dreams had not clearly shown him, in his dreams Tim had not played the part of a friend or ally.
On the contrary, as he had stood at the top of the cliff with his son, surveying the battalions of his warriors marching before him, in the distance high in the sky, surrounded by mist and swirling clouds, there had been a group of people standing in white robes and glowing white in the light of the sun. As the President had watched them he had seen Tim standing at the forefront in their midst.
For the life of him the President could not understand or interpret that part of the dream. But as he had stood standing at the top of the cliff, looking at Tim and the others, he’d had a bad feeling about them.
They represented something that he couldn’t touch or understand, and in the waking moments when he opened his eyes the President realised that in a very strange way it was almost as if the dreams had given him a message: Tim Curts had to go.
.
The President was confused. Tim was the voice of reason and the ‘rock’ upon whom the President relied. There were few people the President felt any degree of warmth to, but Tim was one of them. Over the years he had been careful not to let Tim see any sign of the regard he held for him, and he doubted if Tim had the faintest inkling that he even liked the man. He knew that Tim was loyal above all else, and he had proven himself time and time again. The man was the salt of the earth. How then, could his dr
eam be telling him otherwise? So, in his dream, why was he not standing side by side with him at the top of the cliff where he belonged, instead of far off in the distance in the clouds?
Although he fought with what the dream was trying to tell him, the dream had been so real, that the feeling it had left him with continued throughout the day. The message, if you could call it that, was clear. He had to get rid of Tim. If it had been anyone else, the President would have made him disappear without a trace but in spite of himself the President couldn’t bring himself to pass judgement on the man without knowing what the whole thing was about! What was he to do?
The answer came to him in a flash when he returned to his room and called and spoke to his assistants in the White House. The problem started by the failed mission to assassinate the Oxford team in England was deepening. The Ambassador in London had made the situation worse by being overheard speaking too loudly in a party, voicing his opinions on the British monarchy. His comments had been published the next day in the British tabloids, and a wave of anti-American sentiment was sweeping the country. The Ambassador was a fool! Did he not realise how important it was to improve the diplomatic ties between America and Europe? Now more than ever they needed a good man over there to resolve the situation and turn around ten years of deteriorating relationships.
The solution was simple...as soon as the project had been concluded in Vale, the President would remove the Ambassador from England, -probably sending him to South Africa as a punishment-, and then offer his job to Tim. That way he could reward Tim for his years of service and simultaneously remove him from America, so that he could no longer be a danger to him and his son.
The Ambassadorship in London was the jewel in the political crown to which many aspired. The President felt sure Tim would view it as a reward for his loyalty over the years. The best part was that while being far removed from White House politics and sufficiently far out of the way, Tim was a genius who could be relied upon to resolve the European issue and restore the bond between their two countries. And, from time to time, he would still be able to avail himself of Tim’s wisdom if required.
The Messiah Conspiracy - A gripping page-turning Medical Thriller - [Omnibus Edition containing Book 1 & Book 2] Page 36