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

by Cordy, Michael

  "Non, merci."

  Something in her look must have reached him. He stopped leering, gave a diffident, almost nervous shake of his head, and walked off.

  The large black car stopped across the street and the driver got out and opened the far side rear door. Maria ignored the car at first, still disturbed by the memories the barman had raked up. Then she saw the door to the clinic open and the tall figure of Dr. Carter step out into the rain. He was holding an umbrella and an envelope. Maria remembered that he had also held an envelope when he had met the man at the clinic in Turin. Afterward the man had left with the same envelope clutched in his hands. Was it payment? If so, what for?

  Maria sat forward in her chair and peered out of the window. She saw Dr. Carter approach the car and lean forward with the umbrella, as if to offer assistance and cover to the passenger. When he stood again and stepped back from the car, Maria saw a small, elderly woman leaning on his arm. Then he turned and walked toward the clinic door with the old woman hobbling beside him, as if her feet were giving her great pain. Maria felt a tightness in her chest as she realized that her suspicions were indeed confirmed. She raised her miniature Olympus camera and looked through the zoom lens, studying the woman's hands.

  Click--whir. Click--whir. Click--whir.

  She shot off three frames of film, the automatic motor barely troubling the quiet of the cafe.

  Yes, she thought, just like the man in Turin, the old woman's hands were covered in thick bandages.

  Tom offered the bent old woman some coffee before ushering her into the small private examination room he'd rented from a local doctor friend of Jean Luc. It looked remarkably similar to, if slightly more elegant than, the small white rooms he had rented in all the other European towns he'd visited over the last three weeks. A sink, a flat examination couch, a hard-backed chair, a medicine cabinet, and a white steel table were the only furniture. This particular facility also had a mini-lab in the back.

  In his heart he realized that what he was doing stretched the limits of science. There was only the slimmest scientific basis behind Cana--the wildest of hypotheses. But he was in need of a miracle, and as Jasmine had said about going to Lourdes--you had to go where the action was.

  He sat Michelle Pickard down on the brown leather couch.

  "How long have you had the wounds?" he asked in his stumbling French, as he started to undo the bandages on her hands.

  "Seven years. They first appeared when I was sixty-five. When my husband died."

  "Do you have them all the time?"

  "No, just on Friday to Sunday. They heal on Monday. And from Tuesday to Friday afternoon the wounds disappear."

  Tom nodded. The pattern was typical of some of the other stigmata he'd seen, but this didn't particularly en courage or discourage him. He was only too aware that he was sailing on uncharted seas here, and was determined to keep his natural skepticism in check and just examine the facts before him. He gently took off the last layer of dressings on her hands. The marks were visible on both the palms and the backs of her hands. As usual the blood was fresh and there was no sign of infection or inflammation. But the wounds were deeper and larger than any he'd seen before.

  He then revealed the wounds on Michelle Pickard's feet and found them in a similar state--open and glistening with fresh blood. The same with the wound on the woman's side. He winced as he studied the lesions.

  "Are they very painful?"

  The old woman's small, smiling eyes watched him closely. "It's good. My pain is my comfort."

  There was no answer to that. He took a swab from deep within each of her five wounds and placed each swab in its own labeled, sealed glass tube. Then he took a sample of Michelle Pickard's blood from the vein in her arm. He placed this sample in a sixth tube. After asking the old lady some final questions he redressed her wounds. Then when Tom was done he thanked her, made sure the old woman took the envelope containing the payment, and walked her back to the car.

  Michelle Pickard seemed disappointed that it had been so quick, as if she wanted to tell him more about her stigmata. But Tom was tired and had heard all the stories before. For now he just wanted the samples. Samples told their own story. Every other stigmata he'd checked so far had yielded nothing of any real interest. Two were obvious fakes, driven by some warped desire for attention and profit to mutilate themselves. The others, including Roberto Zucato in Turin, merely had blood that was genetically unremarkable. Michelle Pickard looked more genuine than most, but it was the samples that counted. They couldn't lie.

  After seeing the old woman off, he walked back to the minilab behind the examination room. He began to pack up the samples, keen to move on. He hadn't seen Holly for over a week, and wouldn't see her until after he met Jack in Italy tomorrow. Alex was looking after Holly, and she was used to his being away, but he still missed her. What the hell am I doing here? he asked himself again. And as always he came up with the only reply he could: trying to give Holly a chance.

  He looked in his samples bag and reviewed the stigmata samples he had collected over the last few weeks. Almost all the holding compartments were full, so he decided to run a preliminary screen on the six samples of Michelle Pickard's blood. He would then take only the vaguely interesting swabs with him to Italy, and then to Boston.

  Using the microscope in the small laboratory, he first tested the blood sample from the old lady's left hand, then the sample from the vein in her arm, the only one not to have come from her wounds. His first thought when he looked at the second blood slide was that he must have made an error. He checked the sample tubes again to make sure he hadn't been looking at the wrong blood. But there had been no mistake.

  He frowned and he felt a tremor of excitement. "How strange," he heard himself saying. "How very strange."

  The Adriatic coast of Italy

  The next night, as Tom Carter stood on the deck of a forty-foot fishing boat off Italy's Adriatic coast, he still hadn't worked out the mystery of Michelle Pickard's wounds. He'd told Jack about it two hours ago when they'd boarded the boat at Pescara. "It's got to be a scam," had been the ex-FBI man's first reaction before calling up some "friends" to check her out.

  The boat lurched and Tom's aching stomach lurched with it. The enigma of Michelle Pickard suddenly seemed very unimportant. He groaned and bent his legs, trying to roll with the swell of the waves as the crew attempted to anchor the large fishing boat as close as possible to the shore. The trip from Pescara had been relatively short, but he wasn't a good traveler--particularly by sea.

  He stood next to Jack Nichols, who to Tom's annoyance seemed unperturbed by the motion of the boat. The night was clear and surprisingly mild for early March. Tom could make out the beach ahead, glowing in the moonlight: a pale sliver of silver. As he scanned the shoreline for the two men, the sound and movement of the waves made his empty stomach contract.

  He felt Jack Nichols's hand on his shoulder, and heard his friend ask with a chuckle, "You okay? You look pretty green."

  "I feel goddamned green." He scowled. Still, at least it took his mind off his nerves. The two men Jack was meant to rendezvous with were already late.

  Jack had arranged for the two men, contacts of old, known simply as Dutch and Irish, to visit the selected sites on Alex's list and liberate the necessary items. Even though Tom had given the professional thieves the correct equipment, with instructions on how to store the samples, everything had been done at arm's length with every link back to GENIUS covered up. But since tonight was the final job--the two men should have visited the church at Lanciano by now--he had decided to join Jack to pick up all the samples collected by the two thieves over the last few weeks. It was a risk, but he'd told himself it was necessary to ensure the samples got back safely. He also had to admit that at the time it had sounded exciting. But now, even though Jack was clearly enjoying being out in the field again, Tom wished he'd gone straight home to Holly.

  "Not again," he muttered, as he felt another cram
p in his gut. He leaned over the side and dry-retched before gulping in the cool, salty air.

  Jack passed him the infrared binoculars. "Have a look through these. It'll take your mind off the boat."

  Tom groaned, put the binoculars to his eyes, and scanned the beach. Through the lenses, the scene appeared to be illuminated by green light. Everything looked clearer and he could now make out a small rubber dinghy on the sand, but there was still no sign of Irish and Dutch.

  Wait! What was that?

  He could have sworn he saw a reflection of moonlight on metal, or glass, coming from the right of the beach, by the cliff. Fingers of ice walked down his spine. Were they being watched?

  Then he saw the two figures running down the left of the beach toward the dinghy. He patted Jack on the arm. "They're here." The taller man, Dutch, threw a bag into the boat and helped Irish drag the dinghy into the lapping waves. Both men then jumped in and began rowing out toward the fishing boat. Tom panned the binoculars back to the right of the beach, by the rocks. Nothing. He must have imagined whatever he thought he saw there in the eerie green light.

  Within a minute the two men arrived at the side of the boat and Tom and Jack helped haul them aboard.

  "Any problems?" Jack asked.

  Dutch smiled, revealing strong white teeth. "No, it was as quiet as a church."

  Irish delved into the large bag on the deck beside his partner. He pulled out an aluminum case and a dog-eared list. "I think you'll find it's all there. Labeled and ordered as you wanted."

  Tom checked the list. Every one of the five entries had been crossed off, and when he opened the refrigerated case a crack and peeked inside, he saw that all five slots had been filled with labeled glass vials. He closed the case, clutching it tightly to him. "Well done. You got all of them."

  Dutch nodded. "Yeah. We had some trouble with the Santiago sample in Spain. Some smartass had put the blood in a container which was designed to destroy the contents if it was forced open."

  "What happened?" asked Jack.

  "Don't worry! Irish found a way."

  "And the Lanciano sample tonight?" asked Tom. This was the one he was most interested in. The blood in the Lanciano Eucharist had already undergone carbon dating by Oxford scientists over a decade ago and the results had been particularly promising.

  "Like I said. Easy. No security at all. And don't worry--in every case no one'll know anything's been taken."

  Jack took an envelope out of his coat pocket and handed it to Dutch. "Untraceable yen."

  "Thanks, Mr. Nichols. Just like old times. Pleasure doing business with you."

  Carter watched Dutch take the money and put it in his bag without counting it.

  Jack said, "We'll drop you off at Pescara as agreed. Then you're on your own."

  When the two men had gone below deck, Tom opened the aluminum case again, and studied the row of five neatly laid out vials. Each one was labeled with a date and an address. The last vial bore the legend: Eucharist of Lanciano, Italy, March 6, 2003. Ignoring the others, he took this out of the case and held it up to the moonlight. The rusty powder inside seemed to glow like crushed rubies.

  "Is that the one?" asked Jack as the crew weighed anchor.

  Tom felt a shiver, which had nothing to do with the cold night breeze blowing over the Adriatic, and as he felt the boat move toward Pescara, he realized that his seasickness was gone.

  He turned to Jack and whispered, "According to tests conducted at Oxford, this blood is two thousand years old, male, and human." He paused and smiled. "Certainly narrows down the odds, doesn't it?"

  Click--whir. Click--whir.

  Maria Benariac stood by the rocks on the darkened beach, holding the night-vision camera as she watched the boat leave the shore. Her body felt stiff from the cold, but inside she was burning with a blend of anger and righteous vindication.

  It was true then; there could be no more doubt about it. Not only had she seen Dr. Carter studying the stigmata but now she had witnessed the two thieves taking the sample from the Lanciano church. And if that wasn't enough she had actually seen Jack Nichols paying for the stolen property, and Carter openly studying it in the full light of the moon.

  It was unbelievable. Not only was Dr. Carter ignoring her threat, but he was taunting her, pushing his blasphemy into still darker territory. The devil was even willing to sacrifice the sacred relics of Christ on his black altar of genetics. If she'd thought Dr. Carter was a threat before, she now knew he was far more than that. Why else would a mortal search for the genes of God? If not to become God himself?

  South Boston Junior High School

  Next morning

  The first glial cell refused to obey its genetic instructions at 11:09 on the morning of Friday, March 7, 2003.

  At the time Holly was sitting between her best friends, Jennifer and Megan, in the second row of her French class at the South Boston Junior High School. When she eagerly raised her hand to answer Mrs. Brennan's question, "Comment allez-vous?" she was a healthy little girl, only weeks away from her birthday. But seconds later, by the time she had answered, " Je vais bien, Madame Brennan," and put her hand down, she had cancer, and was only months away from her death day.

  In that split second the glial cell in her brain had turned rogue, and the first mutation of clonal evolution that would lead inexorably to cancer had begun. As simply as a switch being flicked the healthy little girl had become terminally ill.

  Every cell in the human body is strictly controlled, its death, renewal, and proliferation all kept in check by the genetic instructions in its DNA. The instant that the p53 gene was lost in Holly's affected glial cell, that strict control broke down and the cell began to divide--producing more cells with corrupted DNA.

  There are four stages of clonal evolution, and in this first stage Holly's affected cell has begun to obey new faulty instructions. These instructions turn off the brakes in the cell's nucleus so it continues to divide and proliferate indefinitely. The cell seems normal, but by proliferating excessively it clones its own rogue DNA, and creates other rebel cells that in turn crowd out its genetically obedient neighbors. And because the body's antibodies don't recognize these rebel cells as foreign, they are left to multiply unhindered.

  The second mutation occurs when the still normal rebel cells begin to proliferate at an accelerated rate, creating pressure on the surrounding area--and in turn on Holly's skull.

  The third mutation of clonal evolution sees the cells proliferate still more rapidly with some of the cells undergoing structural change. By the time this occurs a whole cluster of key genes on Holly's chromosome 9 will have been wiped out.

  The fourth and fatal mutation usually sees the cells become malignant, cancerous. By now the whole of one copy of chromosome 10 has been lost, and all the genetic instructions contained within it. The cells are now obeying only their own selfish instructions: To survive and to multiply--ignorant of the fact that this will kill their host: that Holly will die.

  The ultimate irony is that cancer is about a cell's attempt to become immortal. This selfish search for immortality is what kills the rest of the body. And of course when the body dies, the cancer cells die with it.

  However, as Holly sat in class with her friends she knew nothing of this. She was blissfully unaware of the traitor inside, rebelling against her. It could take weeks, or even months, before she felt any discomfort. Her father would be the first to learn of her condition when she underwent her next CAT or PET scan. Then the slightest suggestion of a growth would be revealed. Of course, even then Holly might still be none the wiser. When her dad looked more worried than usual on their next outing to the hospital, Holly would just assume that he was in one of his moods.

  She wouldn't even begin to guess what her father would then know, that the prophecy the Genescope had made three months earlier had finally come to pass. That the dormant enemy within her body had not only awakened, but had already begun its futile and fatal quest for immortality. />
  Chapter Thirteen.

  Three days later

  Geneva

  Three days had elapsed since Maria Benariac had spied on Dr. Carter and Jack Nichols off the coast of Italy. She sat in the splendid foyer of Hotel de la Cigogne, admiring the gleaming wood and elegant marble while she waited to be called. She had been to this discreet Geneva hotel a number of times before. Always to meet with the Father. She knew that Father Ezekiel De La Croix liked it here because the guests were always greeted with impeccable courtesy and understated good taste, but never any questions. He kept a suite here, which he used when he made his regular checks on the Brotherhood's banking interests in the city.

  Maria glanced at the ornate clock standing by the reception desk. She had been waiting now for almost twenty minutes. Usually the Father was prompt but then she supposed he had much to decide today. The photographs and notes she had sent to Brother Bernard must have given them a lot to think about. She crossed her legs, smoothed her plain navy skirt, and sipped her mineral water. She was in no particular hurry.

  The sound of footsteps on marble made her turn her head in the direction of the elevators. She picked up her small attache case and stood when she saw the obese form of Brother Bernard approaching. He was dressed in a severe dark suit. His goatee appeared more unkempt than she remembered, but his thick, pouting lips were curled in their familiar sneer.