the Miracle Strain (aka The Messiah Code) (1997)

by Cordy, Michael

  "Okay. Then could your miracle strain be chemical instead of viral?"

  "Chemical? What do you mean? Like pheromones?"

  Jean Luc performed yet another shrug. "Oui. Why not? If insects can secrete chemicals, then why can't we?"

  Tom nodded cautiously, aware he was clutching at straws now. Still, it was true that some insects did secrete pheromones to arouse potential mates, and it had long been believed that humans secreted similar chemicals through their sweat and blood. He knew, for example, that when two or more women lived in the same house together the timing of their menstrual cycles would coincide over time. No one yet knew exactly how this happened, but it was suspected to be due to some chemical stimulus passed between them. A chemical rather than viral agent for the healing gift would also explain its rarity. A healer might possess rare genes in his DNA that allowed him to secrete healing chemicals through touch, or bodily fluids, without passing on--or "spreading"--the ability.

  "Still sounds a bit thin, doesn't it?" he said.

  "Perhaps the cures weren't scientific at all, but God's will," replied Jean Luc with a smile. "Tom, if you were a fellow Christian you might understand. Christmas has just passed and Easter is not far away. Perhaps God simply had mercy on two unfortunates? Decided to meddle in nature to commemorate the birth, death, and resurrection of his son?"

  Tom gave a wry smile and immediately thought of Jasmine. He envied her and Jean Luc's faith. Whenever they didn't understand anything they just had to say, "Oh, it must be God moving in one of his mysterious ways again." No more questions, no more doubts, no more headaches. Too difficult to work out? Then it must be put down to God. Easy.

  "So, Jean Luc," he asked with a weary sigh, "help me to understand. How would your God have gone about saving them?"

  Jean Luc smiled and his dark compassionate eyes searched Tom's face. It was plain that the French doctor was unsure how serious he was being. "Well, God can do anything. He is omnipotent, you know." The Frenchman spread his hands wide in an expansive gesture and shot Tom a mischievous grin. "Perhaps he just decreed that they both got better. Or perhaps he did as you say. He tampered with the blood..." Suddenly the Frenchman chuckled at something he'd just thought of. "Yes, Tom, perhaps he changed the blood transfusion into the blood of Jesus. It will be Easter soon, so it would be right that his son's blood should again save mankind. Non?"

  Jean Luc Petit laughed again, an easy innocent laugh that clearly gloried in the happy salvation of his two patients.

  But Tom didn't join him.

  Jean Luc suddenly stopped and looked upset, as if he'd caused offense. "I'm only joking, my friend. I'm a doctor, not a philosopher, and I still don't know."

  Tom didn't respond because his mind was elsewhere, making a connection between two apparently unrelated thoughts: the notion of a healing virus or pheromone and something else Jean Luc had said. When brought together they formed the germ of a preposterous idea. He tried to remember that article he'd read in a magazine a few weeks back. Where was the place again? Somewhere in Sardinia? He'd ring Dad. Alex would know. And he'd ask him to brief him on the rest of the topic too.

  He turned to the concerned doctor. "Jean Luc?"

  "Oui, mon ami."

  Tom rose from his chair and patted his friend on the shoulder. "Thanks for everything, but could I please ask you two more favors?"

  "Anything."

  "First of all can I use a private phone?"

  "Mais bien sur."

  "And can your secretary get my return flight diverted to Sardinia?"

  "Sardinia?" Jean Luc gave him a bemused smile, as he rose to lead Tom to the next office. "Certainly, Tom. Is anything wrong?"

  "No, Jean Luc," he said, trying to get his mind around his farfetched idea. "Nothing's wrong. Nothing's wrong at all."

  Chapter Ten.

  GENIUS Information Technology Section

  Boston

  Jasmine Washington watched Special Agent Karen Tanner's face and waited for her reaction. She wasn't disappointed when it came. The auburn-haired FBI agent's green eyes opened wide and an involuntary "Jeez!" issued from her parted lips. "How the hell did you do that?"

  Jasmine shared a conspiratorial smile with Debbie, her tall blond assistant. The Gene-Imaging software was virtually glitchfree, and the definition on the hologram was excellent. Even the technophobic Jack Nichols looked impressed.

  All four of them stood in the Genescope facility, next to Jasmine's office in the IT Section. Since Tom had dashed off to Paris three days before she had been working around the clock with Debbie and her team to perfect the software. And it was just as well, because earlier today Jack Nichols, still fuming about Tom's unescorted jaunt around Europe, had been telephoned by an excited Karen Tanner. There had been another murder in Manhattan with all the Preacher's trademarks, but this time the killer had apparently left something behind that might identify him.

  "So, how does it work?" asked Karen Tanner again, staring at the life-size hologram of her head as it floated above the holopad next to the farthest Genescope.

  Jasmine studied the 3-D image for a moment longer before answering. It was a pity Tom hadn't returned from Paris, or Sardinia, or wherever he was now. He hadn't yet seen a totally glitch-free demonstration of the technology, and this was perfect. The hologram was so lifelike it was spooky, even the auburn hair and green eyes were identical. If anything, it looked slightly younger than the real-life original, but that could be modified just by entering more accurate environmental inputs.

  "It works by reading your genes and calculating your appearance," Jasmine said eventually. "When you came in this morning I took a hair from the shoulder of your jacket. I had to check that it still had the root attached, but then the rest was easy."

  Karen reached out and put her hand through the ghostly head. "It looks just like me. It's incredible. Can you only do the head?"

  "No, we can do the whole body. But we decided to protect your modesty in front of Jack here."

  Karen gave her a puzzled look.

  "Clothes don't have genes," explained Debbie, grinning from ear to ear.

  Jack gave the crescent-shaped scar on his face a pensive stroke. "What a shame, Karen. You and I have been through some scrapes together, but I've never seen you au naturel before. I've often wondered about it though."

  "Well, you can keep on wondering, Jack," laughed Karen. "Unless of course you want to show me yours first."

  Turning back to Jasmine, Karen nodded toward the hologram. "So you got that from the DNA in my hair root?"

  "Yup. The Genescope has always been able to tell physical characteristics from a person's genotype, but this new software takes it one stage further. It builds up a three-dimensional computer-generated picture of an individual from their genes, and then converts it into a hologram." She pointed to the suspended head. "We only used your hair to show you how accurate it is."

  "I'm convinced. But how about the suspect's DNA? I can't wait to get a look at the bastard."

  Jasmine turned back to the Genescope and punched four keys on the adjacent keyboard. This prototype had no voice commands yet, but that would come. In time she would even be able to make the holograms talk back. She pressed one final tab and the life-size head of Karen Tanner vanished into thin air.

  Jasmine turned back to the screen above the keyboard. Karen's colleagues in forensics had found fresh blood on the thorns of a rose in the murder victim's kitchen trash; the same roses witnesses had seen in the blond suspect's tote bag. "Okay, we've done the analysis on the blood sample found at Fontana's apartment."

  The FBI agent nodded, her green eyes expectant. "And?"

  Jasmine watched Debbie check the holo-lamps, then give her a thumbs-up sign. "Well, what do you want? Just the Preacher's head or his whole body?"

  Karen smiled. "Give me the works."

  "Okay, time to summon up the Genie."

  Jasmine pushed the enter key.

  The rumble from the Genescope changed to the
crackling sound of static, then the holo-lamps around the circular holopad lit up, and a ghostly figure appeared before them. The apparition conjured up from the Preacher's genes gradually became more solid in appearance as the four colored holo-lamps--one magenta, one cyan, one yellow, and one white--merged to create the necessary variety of hues, painting in the higher levels of definition fed to them by the Genescope's bio-computer.

  This "painting" happened from the feet up, line by line, and within seconds the figure was complete. It was perfectly lifelike, except there was one thing wrong with it. It was a woman.

  Jasmine turned to the stunned FBI agent, staring open mouthed at the hologram, and said, "I thought the Preacher was a man."

  Karen nodded vacantly. "So did I."

  "She's beautiful," said Jack.

  And she was. Her hair was a rich coppery chestnut and her tall, athletic figure with its full breasts and long shapely legs was stunning. However, it was the large eyes that were most striking; their catlike shape was remarkable enough, but it was their unusual color, the left one blue, the right one brown, that really made her stand out.

  "She should be a man," said Karen Tanner again. "We know the Preacher killed a male prostitute called Babe and took his place to get close to Fontana. But when we questioned the doorman he described a blond man. Christ, only the height matches his description."

  "Are you sure the blood came from the Preacher?" asked Jack. "Perhaps you've got a copy-cat killer."

  "No way. The blood was fresh and it wasn't Fontana's, so it must have been the killer's. But the murderer didn't only leave the Preacher's biblical message, which everybody knows about; he used his pen too--"

  "Pen?" asked Jasmine.

  "Yeah, the Preacher almost always writes his message in the victim's blood, using a special nib to aspirate blood from one of the arteries--usually the femoral. But in this case he--or she--used the victim's severed jugular. The writing matches that found on other homicides too. No, this was definitely the work of the Preacher."

  "So, now you know the Preacher's a woman who's good at disguises," concluded Jack.

  "Really good at disguises," muttered the FBI agent, taking a computer-generated sketch out of her pocket. "This blond guy was seen by a ton of people approaching the apartment. Despite the obvious disguise, we've got what we think is a pretty good idea of his facial structure. But the nose, chin, cheekbones are all wrong. Even the guy's eyes were a different color." She pointed to the hologram. "And look at those breasts. You can't hide a chest like that even with strapping. This is one goodlooking woman, and believe me, some of the witnesses I interviewed were the kind of guys who would notice a looker. Yet they all swear they saw a man."

  Jasmine shrugged. "People do change the way they look. All the Gene Genie can do is replicate a person's appearance from the genes they were born with on the basis of a lifestyle 'norm' that takes into account average diet and exercise. It can't factor in cosmetic or surgical changes later in life."

  Karen Tanner grimaced in frustration. It was obvious that the agent had been expecting a major breakthrough, and this wasn't it.

  "At least you now know she's female," said Jack. "Surely that must put a whole new angle on the case. I bet you'll turn up new leads when you review the Preacher's past homicides in the light of this. And you know roughly what she looks like now."

  Karen turned and flashed her green eyes at him. "Do I, Jack? Christ, for all I know she could look like Marilyn Monroe or Arnold Schwarzenegger by now."

  Cittavecchia, Sardinia

  In fact Maria Benariac resembled neither as she studied the man coming out of the small white church of Cittavecchia in Sardinia. Dr. Carter seemed to be smiling and despite his slight limp moved with fast, purposeful steps across the sunlit street. In his right hand he held a case, and in his left something small, which she couldn't recognize. It looked like a glass tube.

  She adjusted her compact Olympus auto-zoom and leaned back in the hired Fiat, watching him approach a similar white car parked three spaces away.

  Click. Click. She took two pictures; the camera's quiet autowind motor purred in her ear.

  Dr. Carter had been in the church in Cittavecchia for almost two hours speaking with the priests. She couldn't understand it. He was an atheist. What business could he have here?

  After her unsatisfactory phone call to the Father, when he had been so evasive about the Brotherhood's plans for Dr. Carter, she had determined to shadow the scientist. It seemed to her that for some reason the Inner Circle lacked the courage or will to finish what it had started, and she hated the idea that his evil might go unpunished.

  It hadn't been hard to track him down to Sardinia. A call to GENIUS had told her where he was in Paris; then a concerned call to the Paris hospital had soon elicited the scientist's travel arrangements from there. At first she had tried to convince herself that she didn't need to follow him here. But she knew her reluctance stemmed from the fact that Corsica, with all its memories, was only a short boat trip away.

  Click. Click. Two more snaps. If the camera were a gun, she mused, the scientist would be dead. If only.

  She watched him open the door to his rental car, stoop his tall frame, and climb into the driver's seat. When he was comfortable, she saw him put his case on the car dash, open it, and then after one last glance at the glass tube put it in the case.

  She heard the car's engine stutter into life, and watched as he pulled out from his space and turned toward the airport. For a second she considered following him, but stopped herself. She had the plane timetable and there was plenty of time before the next flight back to the Italian mainland, and then Boston.

  With one last glance at Dr. Carter's receding car, she left her own vehicle, making sure her dress didn't catch on the car door, and walked to the church. Inside she addressed the first priest she saw in Italian, explaining that she was looking for her brother-in-law--a tall American man with a limp. He and another priest listened to this well-dressed woman with her sophisticated Rome accent, and respectfully informed her that her brother-inlaw had just left for the airport, but that she shouldn't worry because he had found what he came for.

  Before she could even ask what that was they led her to the statue of the Madonna at the back of the church. Still not understanding what the scientist had taken, she explicitly asked the priests to tell her. Their answer made her leave the church both baffled and outraged.

  It was only when she was driving back to the airport that the thought came to her.

  She always made a point of studying the motivations and practices of those she cleansed. It added to the righteousness of the kill to know what the targets did and why. After all, she wanted to satisfy herself that their deaths were necessary before she killed them. Dr. Carter had been no exception. She had read up on genetics when first receiving his folder. Although she had gained only a superficial understanding of what the science could and could not do, it had been enough to convince her that Dr. Carter was playing God.

  Now, as she tried to fathom why an atheist had chosen to visit a small church in Sardinia, she couldn't rid herself of the terrible notion forming in her head. If the thought was correct then the scientist was even more dangerous than she feared.

  But she wouldn't act yet. She would gather more evidence, and confirm the facts. Only then would she tell Brother Bernard and the Father.

  Despite her outrage, she smiled. At least, if her suspicions were proven correct, then Father and Bernard would have no choice. They would be forced to let her finish what she had started in Stockholm.

  Back Bay

  Boston

  Jasmine Washington had never seen so many guns in her life, and they frightened her.

  "Larry, what the hell are you doing with these in the apartment?"

  "Relax, will you? They're fakes." Larry smiled and put the brown box on the floor of the spacious lounge.

  "Fakes?"

  "Yeah, fakes. Props. They're samples for the thrill
er we're making in L. A. I only had the consultant send them here because I'm seeing the director first thing on Monday. She wanted to see the kind of weapons the hero and villain might use."

  Jasmine hated guns, and it wasn't just because of what had happened to Olivia. Throughout her childhood in South Central L. A., guns had been a daily feature, as had the shootings and schoolyard murders that went with them.

  She said, "Just keep them out of sight."

  Larry raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Come on, Jazz, you won't see 'em again. But perhaps you should at least consider looking at one of them. Just to see how they work."

  She shook her head. She remembered her elder brother saying the same thing back in the 'hood, when she was almost ten. Just before he'd been killed by a random drive-by shooting and her parents had banned her from going out on the streets alone. "Put them away, Larry. Okay?"

  Larry bent and pushed the box behind the couch. His voice was apologetic. "They're gone. Okay. I'm sorry." He walked over to her and took her in his arms. He was a tall, athletically built man with a sensitive face. But it was his strong arms that Jasmine loved most. She prided herself on her fearless independence, but there were times when it was reassuring to surrender all that hard-won independence for a moment, and retreat into those arms. Olivia's death and Holly's disease had made her realize how very fragile everything was. Her recent exposure to the Preacher's exploits hadn't exactly restored her faith in humanity. So Larry's protective embrace felt particularly comforting right now. She knew it was irrational, but she believed that nothing truly bad could happen while he held her. Offering no resistance, she allowed him to guide her gently onto the couch as he kissed her mouth.