The Messiah Conspiracy - A gripping page-turning Medical Thriller - [Omnibus Edition containing Book 1 & Book 2]

by Irvine, Ian C. P.

  “Well done Charles!”, the President congratulated himself. “I’ll give Tim the good news when he gets back to Washington...when he’s completed the project here.”

  .

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  12am

  .

  Later that morning the four of them gathered once again around the Smithsonian, watching the cells on the overhead plasma screen. For twenty minutes the group simultaneously monitored the three sets of double cells on the screen above. Then as if by magic and within thirty seconds of each other, all three pairs divided. From two cells to four cells. The second cell division had taken place on schedule and the President was overjoyed. Tim escorted him to the airfield and stood stoically on the tarmac as Air Force One rolled down the runway and took off.

  The President had left Tim with the specific command that within twenty-four hours, the President’s fiancée ‘had to get pregnant’. Tim would do his best to comply.

  .

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  7pm

  .

  As if on cue the cells divided again early in the evening. There were now eight cells in each Petri dish, and they would soon have to choose which embryo they would use for the implantation scheduled for the next day.

  Yet before they were forced to make the selection, an accident in the laboratory simplified the choice. There was no physical explanation that they could attribute to what happened, and if they had not witnessed it for themselves, they would never have believed it.

  The two Professors and two other lab assistants were watching and filming the three cells, examining them on high magnification so that what was happening inside the cells could be recorded clearly using the latest high speed digital cameras. Hopefully they would capture the action on film of the ribosomes unzipping and replicating the chromosomes. Tim was standing in the background listening casually to the conversation and trying to understand what they were talking about.

  Suddenly, in front of their eyes, two of the three Petri dishes containing the cells burst into flames and within a few seconds the contents of the dishes had been incinerated. All that was left was a skin of charred residue coating the glass.

  The three dishes had been arranged in a line under the hood of the Smithsonian. Although no one could attribute any credible scientific reason for it, two shoots of flame had seemed to leap out from the middle dish, landing in the Petri dishes on either side of it. The SGN fluid in both the dishes had ignited, burning fiercely. Only the Petri dish in the centre had remained intact, and the choice of which embryo to use had been made for them.

  Tim had seen the whole thing. He had never seen anything like it before. It was almost as if, supernaturally, one of the embryos had taken the other two out of the equation.

  Over dinner that night Tim had argued once again with the members of his team about the risk in continuing with the experiment. It was a difficult situation. Since the President had personally ordered the project to continue unchecked, Tim had no authority to instruct the team otherwise, but through the course of intelligent reasoning he appealed to their scientific minds and knowledge in the hope that somehow they would agree to progressing only with cloned egg cells which continued to exhibit the ‘normal’ 'Angel Light' effect. Yet, try as he might, they could not see the danger that Tim could almost now taste in his mouth, such was the growing strength of his convictions that they were making a mistake and entering dangerous scientific territory.

  That night Tim found it difficult to sleep again. He lay in his bed, his eyes staring at the plasma monitor on the wall which continuously relayed images of the world outside, and as he watched the lights of the city twinkle in the distance he started to pray.

  For the second time during a visit to the lab in Vale he prayed for help. Whereas last time he had found himself begging for the life of his daughter, this time he prayed for guidance.

  He'd had enough. He wanted out.

  But Tim knew he needed to find a way of getting out of his job which didn’t threaten the lives of his family. Unfortunately, there was no simple way out, and as Tim’s eyes grew heavy and he finally fell asleep, it seemed to him that it would take nothing short of a miracle to get him out of the situation he was now in.

  .

  Chapter Seventy One

  Vale, Colorado, America

  22nd Dec 10pm

  .

  The next evening at 10pm everyone was assembled in the small operating theatre, which over the past few months had been specially constructed in one of the rooms attached to the main cloning laboratory. The entire floor on which the lab was situated was deathly quiet. Outside the usual scientists hurrying past in the corridors were conspicuous in their absence, and the microscopes and lab benches stood unusually idle. In its place there was a strange silence.

  As agreed with the President, everyone except the essential few were forbidden to access that floor that evening. The President’s fiancée was able to come and go from the theatre without being seen.

  Danielle was dressed in a white robe, almost virginal in her appearance, an observation which Tim found strangely ironic. Few knew the truth as Tim did: Danielle was a strip artist and a whore, and it was many years since she had been a virgin. Tim smiled to himself when the thought occurred to him that, in the space of a few good years, Danielle had gone from being ‘anybody's lady’ to ‘first lady’.

  As Tim entered the theatre she was lying on the operating table nervously, waiting for the tranquilliser to take effect, with two nurses in white uniforms standing stoically on either side of her. The room was quiet, and smelt of antiseptic and disinfectant, clean and sterile. The floor was white, the walls were covered in white tiles, the ceiling was white. Everything was white.

  .

  Just fifteen minutes before Danielle had arrived, the cells had divided again, and with one hundred and twenty eight cells now in the embryo, they felt comfortable for the implantation to go ahead. Tim had very mixed feelings as he watched the doctor carry the embryo through to the theatre. On the one hand he felt some professional pride that the project had come this far. They had come a long way in such a short time.

  But for Tim, the moment was marred by the totally unscientific and inexplicable feeling of fear and dread that raged throughout his body. Something about the whole procedure was terribly, terribly wrong, but in spite of his misgivings he knew that there was nothing he could do to halt the process.

  As he watched, the embryo was taken from the Super Genetic Nutrient, in which it had lived contentedly for the past few days, and was placed carefully within the womb of Danielle.

  .

  The moment passed without any great pomp or ceremony. There were no fanfares on trumpets or angelic hosts to herald the moment the baby was placed in the womb. There were no outward signs to proclaim the event, and yet, as history would show in the years to come, this moment signified one of the most major events in the history of mankind.

  .

  And Tim had been unable to stop it.

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  Chapter Seventy Two

  Banbury Gardens Cemetery

  Near Oxford, England

  23rd Dec 1pm

  .

  The snow fell slowly but surely, dancing in the sky as the wind caught the soft, large flakes and blew them into intriguing patterns that came and went, as it continued on its downward journey to the ground, covering the headstones and graves with a blanket of white.

  It was a dull day, the heavy falling snow masking the sounds of the everyday world around and filtering the natural light so that everything seemed either grey, white or black. It was freezing cold, and the small group of people huddled around the dark hole in the ground, were slowly beginning to merge into the background as the snow began to settle on their shoulders, and long, dark coats.

  "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..."

  Don heard the words being spoken, but he still couldn't take it all in. It all seemed so unreal. Almost surreal. He felt d
etached from these strange, bizarre goings-on. He looked up from the coffin lying at the bottom of the hole, and turned to watch the faces of those around him, Jason's former friends and colleagues.

  The Professor stood at the end of the grave, his arm firmly round Lydia's shoulders, who until a few minutes ago had managed to put such a brave face on it all. Now she was weeping uncontrollably, and the sight of her sadness was too much for Don. He looked away quickly, the feeling of guilt returning swiftly and eating away at him from within. "If only he had got to Jason's house sooner...maybe he would have been able to save him…"

  He knew it was ridiculous, that Jason had been dead for hours when he had found his body, but he couldn't stop feeling that somehow it was all his fault.

  Louisa stood with Maria, beside the Professor, the other nine people around the grave being a mixture of school friends and people Jason had known in Oxford.

  .

  As one by one they shuffled forward to pick up a handful of earth and scatter it onto the coffin below, Don saw a movement in the corner of his eye, a moving dark blur amongst the grey headstones.

  Instinctively Don left the group and moved towards the man standing underneath a tree, sheltering from the snow. It was Patrick from MI5.

  "What are you doing here?" Don asked, anger bubbling beneath the sadness in his voice.

  "We just came to pay our respects."

  "What have you done with her? Where is she? And why did you have to kill her husband?" Don asked, trying to keep a grip of the rage that Don felt sure would engulf him at any moment. First Jason, then the family who had become the surrogate parents to the A-clone. Where would it all end?

  The MI5 agent stared back at him. Don could see the thoughts racing through the agent's mind, and he noticed the movement inside Patrick's coat, as he tightened his grip on the gun in his pocket.

  "You guys have done your part, and now it's our turn. We'll make sure the Haissem project delivers its full potential. Something your team could never do..."

  Don took a step closer to the man in front of him. Immediately a second man stepped out from behind a tree on his right, another emerging from between the gravestones on his left.

  "Don, go back to your world. And forget the Haissem project! Jason and your team did a brilliant job, but it's over now. Forget it. For all your sakes."

  The threat was clear.

  For a second, he stared at the MI5 agent, feeling weak, and helpless. Then he turned, and tramped heavily through the snow back to the edge of the grave, where Maria was waiting for him.

  .

  Chapter Seventy Three

  Chicago, America

  24th Dec 7.30pm

  Christmas Eve

  .

  The impromptu party at Jessie’s Bar was beginning to break up and people were beginning to spill out onto the street to find their way home to their families, laden down with bags of last minute presents. The first wave of the evening was coming to an end, and would soon be replaced by the Saturday night crowd out for the evening to celebrate Christmas Eve. The atmosphere in the bar had been brilliant, with people cheering and shouting as they watched their local Chicago team, the Chicago Blackhawks beat the visiting Boston Bruins at Ice Hockey on national television. In fact, when the whistle went at the end of the game and the Blackhawks had beaten the Bruins for the first time in three years, Jessie had been so carried away with the moment that she found herself standing on the bar shouting “Drinks are on the House!” Her husband, who didn’t follow the hockey, almost had a heart attack. Still it was Christmas Eve, ‘Goodwill to all men’ and all that.

  Seamus O’Hallohan waved goodbye and shouted Merry Christmas for the hundredth time that evening, and staggered out the door. The cold chilled wind caught him by surprise and for a second he stopped, carefully putting his bags of presents on the ground, before lifting the hood of his jacket over his head. He pulled on his gloves and bent down to pick up his bags. The ground was thick with snow, great mounds of it piled high on the edges of the sidewalks, but it hadn’t snowed since the morning, and it looked like they were getting a break in the weather. The skies above were crystal clear now, and the stars sparkled like little diamonds in the sky. As he picked up his bags Seamus looked up at the stars with awe, noticing how his breath almost froze in the air above him as he breathed out.

  “Wow! What’s that?” Seamus exclaimed aloud.

  His shout was taken up by others in the busy street around him, as one by one heads turned skyward to see what the others were looking at.

  The sky was alive with colour. From nowhere a line of bright, multicoloured light had appeared in the sky, a path of glowing fire which stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, blotted out at either end by the edges of the tall buildings around them.

  “It’s the comet!”, a voice shouted from behind him.

  “Yeah…the one Father O’Brian told us to look out for!” another cried.

  Behind him other people were pouring out of the pub, all faces turned upwards and staring towards the heavens in wonder, as the trail of the comet glowed and shimmered and danced before their eyes. For a good two minutes the trail was clearly visible, and the Christmas revellers on the ground watched the stunning display in amazement.

  “Mommy, is that the nativity star?” One little boy squealed, pulling on his mother’s hand.

  Around him the crowd took up the little boy’s question, pointing excitedly to the star and shouting to each other that it was the Star of Bethlehem…

  “Rubbish man...it’s the Star of Chicago!” a young reveller shouted back.

  That night on the ten o’clock news, the lead item started with the little boy’s question:

  “Did we see the nativity star tonight? …Was it ‘the Star of Chicago’? Just what was that comet in the sky?”

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  .

  In New York the busy streets came to a standstill as people stopped and got out of their cars to watch the comet.

  In Salt Lake City, people left their homes and started to pray on the roads, holding impromptu services in little groups of people dotted around the city, whereas in Las Vegas gamblers flocked into the Casinos, believing they had just seen the best good luck omen they were ever likely to encounter. The Casinos reported their best night in months, and for one man, his Christmas wish did come true. He won $20m on the ‘Big Slot’ at The Moulin Rouge Casino.

  From coast to coast, people stared in wonder at the comet above and wondered at the meaning of it. As predicted the media went to town, and by eleven o’clock the regular programmes had been cancelled and were replaced by discussions between leading theologians and academics about the true meaning of the heavenly signs.

  By the time Christmas day arrived, the majority of the population of the North American continent were in agreement that they had just witnessed a sign from God indicating that the ‘Second Coming of Jesus Christ’ was imminent and would be in America. A new age was about to dawn.

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  .

  The feelings of the scientists at NASA were mixed.

  Their ‘little show’ had been a great success. They had conned their public well, and the population of the world would believe completely the lie they had told in the skies above their country. The only consolation that they could take for their hypocrisy was that they had had no choice.

  From the East Coast of America to the West, the comet had been visible and clear. The unmanned space shuttle had skimmed across the surface of the atmosphere exactly according to their calculated trajectory, releasing a trail of space debris along its path which burned up slowly in the upper atmosphere from one side of the country to the other. Their choice of metals had been brilliant, each chosen to burn brightly and colourfully, giving off different shades of red, blue, green and yellow.

  Then just as the shuttle neared the end of its journey, the scientists flying it remotely from their
base in Florida altered the trajectory of the spacecraft and it came down faster, burning up and vaporising completely in the sky above the rocky mountains in Nevada.

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  25th Dec

  Christmas Day

  .

  The population of the world woke to a very special Christmas Day. The newspapers and television broadcasters proclaimed excitedly the sign that God had put in their skies the evening before. Across the globe the minds and eyes and the attention of billions of believers and non-believers alike turned to America, the land that would be the birth place of the Messiah.

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  .

  Tim had done a good job. The President would miss him when he left for England in the New Year. He had almost begun to regret having given him the Ambassador’s job. If Tim hadn’t been so excited about the ‘promotion’ when he had been told the news, the President might have been tempted to change his mind.

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  .

  For Tim, the news had come as an answer to his prayers. That year in the Curts household they celebrated the true meaning of Christmas for the first time in their lives. It was the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birthday, the birth day of the Son of God.

  On Christmas Morning, as they sat in the candle-lit church for the Christmas Mass, surrounded by children playing with their new toys and proud parents holding hands amongst the church pews, Tim had a strange thought to which he could think of no good answer.