The pain he felt at that thought pierced him deeply in his heart and for a second he stopped, only half way up the flight of stairs.
“Pull yourself together man…you have to be strong!” he muttered to himself.
He readjusted his tie, stretched his neck within the confines of his collar and straightened his back. He had to face facts. He had tried to make his case to the God above, but it had failed. It was God’s will that she would be taken from them...
The door to his house burst open and the light from inside poured out onto the porch, illuminating the small figure of a girl from behind. She stood in the doorway with her arms outstretched and before Tim could recognise her, she ran towards him taking the steps two at a time and jumped up into his arms.
“Daddy…daddy…”
Tim wrapped his arms around the girl, letting his attaché case and hat fall to the ground and roll down the steps.
“Tina, my darling Tina…how…you’re walking...jumping...how? What?...”
Already the tears were forming in his eyes and as the driver stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up at the couple in disbelief, Tim threw back his head and cried aloud to the stars above.
“Thank you God…Thank you!”
.
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The Walker Clinic,
Cambridge, England
Thursday 9th Dec 3pm.
.
Louisa sat nervously beside Doctor Rohloff, the German paediatrician who five years before had come to England to establish and head-up the Walker Clinic. They were sitting in a tastefully decorated 'lounge' style consultation room, lounging on two large red couches, separated by a large glass coffee table. A colourful bouquet of flowers added to the relaxing surroundings. All you would expect from one of England's top infertility clinics.
Doctor Rohloff and Professor Wainright had been friends for years, and under Doctor Rohloff's guidance, the Walker institute was pleased to help out the I.G.E.G.G.M. whenever it could be of assistance.
Doctor Rohloff understood the sensitivity of the issue that could still be associated with placing cloned babies with adoptive parents, and so he personally made the selection, ensuring that the needs of his clients would be met above all else. He understood the importance the work the I.G.E.G.G.M undertook, but his interest in helping out was not in furthering science, but solely in increasing the happiness of the couples who came to him, desperate to adopt or have a child of their own.
Louisa had contacted the Walker Clinic a few hours after the team meeting on the Wednesday morning, one of a number of calls she had made to the various agencies she dealt with. She had expected that it would be several weeks, or more realistically, several months before any of her contacts would be able to find someone suitable, if at all.
Although the Professor and the Doctor were good acquaintances and trusted each other implicitly, Louisa had decided that it would be best not to explain the full nature of their request. Rather, she had simply told Dr Rohloff that their latest course of research was at a crucial point, and they had identified that 'there were chromosomes present in the womb of most women which for some reason or other, hindered the growth of cloned embryos. However, they had established that the womb of a virgin did not contain these chromosomes, and as part of the work they were currently embarked upon they were keen to proceed now to full term growth of an embryo within the womb of a virgin. Of course, the implications to science if they were successful were incalculable…etc. etc. etc.'
She hoped that the Doctor knew sufficiently little about genetics to realise that what she was telling him was, for the most part, complete rubbish. Incredibly, he bought it.
"Yes, we would be glad to help you out. In fact, it seems rather incredible but only last week we had a young lady join the clinic, who seems to meet your requirements exactly! I have her file on my desk just now..." The Doctor had replied on the phone.
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.
.
Chapter Fifty Four
London, England
Friday 9th Dec 1.30pm.
.
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.
.
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.
.
---------------------
.
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!”
.
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.”
.
Chapter Fifty Five
The Walker Clinic
Oxford, England
Friday 9th Dec 11.30am
.
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 be 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 deal. 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?"
.
---------------------
.
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.
.
---------------------
.
"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.
.
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!”
BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS Page 121
