Beside him Regina stirred, turning onto her side, snuggling her face into the side of Tim's arm and stretching her arm across his chest.
“Morning darling...don’t forget that we’re meeting the Thomsons for dinner tonight...”
Tim mumbled some sort of acknowledgement, and slipped out of the bed. He didn’t like the Thomsons really, but his wife and Mrs Thomson got on well.
As he stood in the shower, the hot water pouring over his head and filling the air around him with refreshing steam, he slowly began to wake up.
He had a tough day ahead of him. His work as an Ambassador was interesting, but more demanding than he would ever have imagined. It was one round of political meetings and diplomatic functions after another. Still, it was all good fun really, and he looked forward to the day ahead.
Tim and his family had taken well to their move to England. The lifestyle was completely different compared to their old one in America, and a refreshing change to the life he had been accustomed to living day to day in Washington. Things couldn’t have worked out better. He had been Ambassador for almost four years now and he enjoyed the job immensely.
As the days went past he thought less and less about his old life in America.
.
America’s change in fortunes had been incredible. Old Charles Jamieson was still in command, his politics having mellowed considerably over the years. As a result the President was being increasingly recognised by the international community as a world leader in his own right. He was truly building a country that he could be proud to hand over to his son in the years to come.
Outwardly people could have been forgiven for thinking that President Jamieson had become wiser in recent years, but Tim knew the true source of his new ‘wisdom’.
As of yet, President Jamieson didn’t know that Tim and a select group of others in England knew the true identity of his son, but from the reports Tim had had, it had been easy to put together and understand what they had really created in the ‘Crown of Thorns’ project in America.
At first he had felt fear and tremendous guilt that he had been responsible for the project that had brought the Anti-Christ into the world. But over the years he had come to accept the part he had played, realising that there was nothing he could have done to alter the course of things. Things were as they were, and now all he could do was to lead a good and fruitful life.
For now there was peace. But the time would come when that would change…
Tim had spent months studying the biblical texts of ‘Revelation in the New Testament, and he knew that in the years to come the Anti-Christ would take over the world, before being ultimately confronted by the real Jesus Christ, and then beaten and destroyed.
The world they knew would change and all their lives would take on new meaning...but that would be later. For now, it was a summer’s day and after the morning’s meetings Tim was looking forward to hopefully having lunch with Mathew Wainright.
Tim had met the Professor at an official reception at Christ Church College. They had immediately become firm friends, and after several months Tim had confessed his knowledge of the Haissem group, and the part he had played in the attempt to assassinate them. The Professor had forgiven him.
One evening Tim had told the Professor about the miracles that had taken place in his life, and in return the Professor had shared some of his own long kept secrets with him. From that moment on there had been a bond between the two of them, and nowadays they often spent time with each other, drinking whisky and playing the English card game ‘Bridge’, which Mathew had taught him one night in Oxford.
Tim had often asked Mathew about the outcome of the Haissem project, but the old Professor always avoided the subject. Officially the project had been closed down, and the project had not been successful but Tim knew that there was more to it than that. He suspected that it would be a long time before Mathew would learn to trust Tim enough to tell him what really happened, but Tim was prepared to wait. There was no rush: with the Anti-Christ growing up in America and becoming more powerful with each and every passing day, Tim knew that in order to fulfil the prophecies of the Book of Revelation, either the Haissem team must have already successfully cloned Jesus Christ, or that they would secretly complete the project within the next few years.
Otherwise, the prophecies of the Book of Revelation would be meaningless and the future would become a living nightmare.
.
Chapter Seventy Eight
The President’s Private Quarters
The White House, Washington D.C.
.
President Jamieson knew it had to be done. It was unavoidable really, and although at first he had thought about arguing against it, now he saw the sense behind his son’s instructions.
Tim Curts had to die.
His son was only four years old, but already he talked and reasoned as a man. His capacity to learn and absorb information was beyond the experience of any of his teachers.
And no one argued with him.
No one.
Otherwise his son would reach into your mind, and with a supernatural ability that surpassed any normal understanding, he could change your thoughts and make his thoughts your own.
.
He had not argued with the boy when he had decided that the doctors who delivered him had to be killed. His son wanted no witnesses to live who knew of the deformed animal-like hoof that he had been born with.
He hadn’t argued with him when he had insisted that the leaders of the ‘Crown of Thorns’ project in Vale, Colorado should be executed. Both Jim Stuart and Dave Calvert had died a week later in a terrible fire in their laboratory. Then Colonel Smart and the nurses and doctors who were in attendance when his son's embryo had been implanted in his wife’s womb, had also all met with horrible accidents, or a simple bullet in the head.
He had tried his best to change his mind and stop his son killing Danielle, his own mother, but there was nothing he could do to prevent it.
Danielle had never ever got over the shock of the birth, and she had abhorred the creature she had created. Danielle had rejected the child, and over the years had turned increasingly into herself and cut out the rest of the world. Then one day he had caught her reading the Bible, and the Book of Revelation .
.
President Jamieson had killed her painlessly, after they had made love one last time. A simple pillow over her face while she slept.
He had cried when he had done it, the first time that he had cried in years, and afterwards he had been sick into the toilet.
President Jamieson was powerless to resist the will of his son. After he had killed his wife, killing Tim Curts would be easy to do in comparison. Tim Curts was the only one of them left alive who knew the true identity of his son.
Surprisingly, when the President had finally agreed to organise Tim’s death, his son had told him not to bother.
His son had told him that he would do it himself.
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Chapter Seventy Nine
Wednesday May 21st, 2023 A.D.
London, England
00.15am
.
All in all it had been a good day. The meeting with the French Ambassador in the morning had gone better than anticipated, and the expected import sanctions on British Beef had finally been avoided.
Lunch with Mathew had been very pleasant, and he had invited Tim and his wife to Oxford for the weekend. Mathew was also inviting one of the other original Haissem team members over for lunch, along with his wife Maria, and their little son Jason.
Mathew had promised that his friend would introduce Tim to the British game of darts, and had assured them of a very interesting weekend. Tim was looking forward to it.
Unfortunately, something unexpected had cropped up in the afternoon, which had forced Tim to work late this evening. The only consolation was that he'd had a genuine excuse to miss dinner with the Thomsons.
He didn't managed to leave the of
fice until just before midnight, and he had hurried to the tube station hoping he would just make the last underground train back to Kingston, a short taxi-ride from his home in Surbiton.
.
The rest of the platform was empty, save for a beggar trying to fall asleep on one of the benches at the end of the platform. The overhead screen showed that Tim only had two minutes to wait before the second last train of the evening would arrive. Tim was glad to see that if he hadn’t made this one, the other one would have come along only ten minutes later. Luckily, he had made it with time to spare.
.
There was a loud rumbling noise, and a deafening wall of sound pushed past Tim on the platform. A light appeared in the depth of the tunnel, which grew and grew until at last, the train emerged from the tunnel and ground noisily to a halt before him.
With a large ‘wooshing’ sound the doors flew open and the overhead announcement shouted ‘Mind the Gap...Mind the Gap’ repeatedly at a few people as they staggered off the carriages onto the platform.
Tim stepped through the electronic doors and sat down in the last carriage at the back of the train. The carriage was empty apart from him, as were the other carriages he could see through the transparent doors at the other end of the compartment.
Suddenly, just as the doors were about to close, a young man emerged from the escalator onto the platform and jumped into Tim’s carriage, just making it as the doors closed behind him.
Obviously a little drunk, the man glanced quickly at Tim, then sat down at the other end of the carriage, looking briefly around him before bowing his head and starting to fall asleep.
With a large whirring sound the train gathered momentum and swept into the dark tunnel ahead.
.
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.
In the middle of the long tube tunnel between Richmond and Kingston a traffic light hung from the middle of the tunnel roof. Part of the latest in tube security, the light was connected electronically to an automatic braking system on each train. When the light showed red, the driver would have plenty of time to stop the train manually, but if for some reason he didn’t see the light, the electronic breaking system would take over and automatically stop the train for him. The light was connected to the main control depot in Waterloo, which controlled all the underground traffic in London.
It was a brilliant system, and in the last ten years there had not been a single accident on the underground.
.
The switch that controlled the stop light was situated half-way up the tunnel wall. Just high enough for the maintenance staff to reach it when checking it or fixing any faults. It had been checked only a few days before, and everything was fine. There were no problems to report.
.
Suddenly, in the roof immediately above the traffic light, a slight crack inexplicably appeared in the reinforced concrete cladding, and a small, thin trickle of water began to run down the inside wall of the tunnel.
It wasn’t much, but when it met the switch on the wall, a few drops found their way through a slight crack in the outer casing and dribbled into the circuitry inside.
There was a small spark from one of the circuit boards, and the light on the wall changed colour from bright green to red. Unfortunately, the fault didn’t show up in the main control centre, and on the flashing panel of lights covering the large wall in the Waterloo depot, everything showed that the light in the tunnel was still at green.
.
---------------------
.
Tim’s train came hurtling round the bend of the tunnel, half way between Richmond and Kingston. As soon as the driver saw the ‘red’ light in the darkness ahead, she applied the brake.
The driver was rather surprised to see a ‘stop’ light so late at night, but didn’t question it. She brought the train to a gradual halt just around the bend of the tunnel, and sat waiting patiently for the light to change. It should only be a few minutes.
As the train came to a halt the drunk in the corner of Tim’s carriage stirred, lifting his head and looking around the carriage. Satisfied they hadn’t arrived at the end station yet, he closed his eyes and his head fell forward again.
Tim looked up briefly from his newspaper, then turned the page and carried on reading.
When the train had been sitting there for ten minutes the train driver spoke over the Tannoy, apologising for the delay, and assuring them they would be on their way again soon.
.
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.
Behind them, the last tube train that night pulled into Richmond station, and a couple of passengers got off. Only three people got on, an old lady and a young couple. Apart from them the rest of the train was mostly empty, and when the light at the entrance to the tunnel turned green, the tube train rushed off into the darkness, gathering momentum and hurtling along the tunnel at increasing speed.
As the driver of the last train that night approached the Kingston curve, which marked the half-way point of the tunnel, the way ahead seemed clear. He was looking forward to arriving at Kingston and getting off home. It had been a long and boring day and he couldn’t wait to pour himself a long, cold, beer.
The curve of the tunnel opened up in front of him, and as the train rounded the bend the driver screamed aloud as he saw the train sitting on the tracks ahead, still waiting patiently for the signal light to change to green.
.
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.
As the approaching train threw on its brakes, Tim looked up from his paper just in time to see the look of horror on the driver’s face before the oncoming train piled into his carriage at eighty kilometres an hour.
The back of Tim's carriage disintegrated, providing little resistance to the driver’s cabin which piled into Tim’s compartment, crushing everything in its path. As the carriage concertinaed inwards on itself, the large plastic window at the back of the carriage popped out and flew through the air towards Tim.
The edge of the panel hit Tim just above his stomach, cutting easily through his upper torso, and severing his body cleanly in two.
The explosion and electrical fire that followed in the next few seconds completely destroyed both trains, causing a partial collapse of the tunnel roof, crushing and burning all the bodies beyond any possible recognition.
In the control depot at Waterloo, one of the lights on the wall turned from green to red.
.
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.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, President Jamieson rushed up the stairs and threw open the door to his son’s bedroom to see what all the commotion was about. He could have sworn that he had heard screaming and the sound of a muffled explosion.
His son was kneeling on the carpet, his model train-set spread out all around him, a heap of engines and carriages lying piled on top of each other at one end of the track. Suddenly, the toy train engines spontaneously burst into flames.
As the President ran forward to put out the fire, the little boy looked up at his step-father and laughed, clapping his hands together excitedly, saying,
“That was fun. I like to play with trains…”
.
Chapter Eighty
Saturday August 8th
The Cotswolds, Oxfordshire, England
Three months later.
.
Don came out into his back garden, carrying a tray on which three of Maria’s famous home made cakes were displayed. Louisa clapped her hands almost childishly, and the others around the table strained forward to look at them, as Don placed them on the garden table.
It was a truly beautiful day. The sun was shining lazily, high in the sky, the grass and the trees brilliant in the brightness of their verdant greens, and the English flowers that grew bountifully in the shade of the trees making up a patchwork of bright reds, yellows, and blues. Butterflies, bumblebees and tiny insects chased each other through the air, and t
he scent of flowers and garden herbs tantalised the nostrils with a mixture of sweetness and spice. Birds took shade in the branches of the trees and called to each other, whistling and singing and painting the sky with their tunes.
The group sat in deckchairs on the grass, relaxing and enjoying the heat wave passing through England, wearing casual T-shirts, shorts and summer dresses. They were all friends, and were happy to spend time together, relaxing in each other’s company. This was proving to be one of those days that English summers were made of.
“It’s hard to believe the way things have changed so quickly for us all!” Louisa leaned forward to cut herself a second piece of Maria’s delicious Black Forrest Gateau.
The others nodded in agreement, sipping their teas and munching down their cakes. The Professor snored.
“Someone wake him up. You know he’ll only complain if he misses the cake!” Don urged the others, but looking directly at Louisa.
“You know,” Louisa spoke again through a mouthful of crumbs, “...we should organise a party for him or something, try to get some official recognition from the university for all the stuff he’s done. If it wasn’t for him, none of us would be here and able to relax and enjoy this day like this.”
“Good idea. Sort of a lifetime achievement award?” Don nodded in agreement, the others laughing at him when they saw that he had got cream all over his nose from one of the cakes.
It was true though. Louisa had a point. They had all come a long way in the past four years. Two years ago Louisa had moved to London to be with her new husband, where she was now working at the Imperial College of London, heading up the Genetics department there.
All of them were financially independent. The shares they had earned in the I.G.E.G.G.M. had risen sharply in value in the past three years, and really, none of them had to work anymore. Only the Professor was still working full time at the lab. Don was still working in the lab, but only part time, preferring to spend half his time with Maria at their home in the country, writing books and short stories, and helping to bring up Jason, their son.
The Messiah Conspiracy - A gripping page-turning Medical Thriller - [Omnibus Edition containing Book 1 & Book 2] Page 39