It was on one such diplomatic flight that Tim Curts had flown into England with Colonel Smart and his five-man team.
The day before the flight their agent in Oxford had confirmed a plan to steal the Crown peacefully from his contact in the Haissem team, but Tim wanted to be sure of success and had brought the troops in anyway.
It was only his third trip to England, that ‘oh, so fair and pleasant land’, and he had looked forward to it. Officially his wife was not meant to know where he was, but after thirty years of marriage he trusted her more than any other person alive, or dead, and she had given him a long list of English foods and novelties to bring back with him. If everything else went well, the second part of the mission was to buy up half of Harrods. He didn’t know which he feared most: failure to get the Crown for the President, or failure to bring back a packet of English Rich Tea Biscuits from Harrods, a new silk nightdress from Covent Garden and a packet of Earl Grey tea from Selfridges for his wife.
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Officially a camera crew making yet another documentary on life at the world famous University of Oxford, the undercover team checked into the Radcliffe Hotel in the centre of Oxford, the poshest place in town. Each day they took to filming in the streets around the town, trying to blend in as much as possible with the sights and sounds of the town so that people would get used to seeing them around.
Being a camera crew gave them the perfect excuse to push their noses in places they wouldn’t normally be able to see, and after a while, people stopped asking them what they were doing hanging around the various colleges.
They even used real film in the cameras and conducted bona fide interviews with students and Professors, as well as people living in the city who they stopped in the streets.
The week passed quickly as they waited for Friday night to arrive, the time when their agent had arranged for the switch to be made.
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Chapter Twenty Nine
I.G.E.G.G.M laboratory
Oxford
.
It was Tuesday night and Jason and Don were working late in the lab, preparing the last of the samples.
They were almost ready to go to the next stage of the process during which they would proceed to producing the complete chromosome sets from the blood residues found on the Crown. This would be achieved by using the genetic information they had obtained from dissecting and genetically interrogating the DNA strings they had extracted from the blood residues. The next stage which would take three or four weeks to complete and was going to be the most difficult part of the job.
The process by which Jason had proposed to achieve this was complex but clever, and if they succeeded they would be the first people in the world able to reproduce complete chromosomes sets from ancient, dried blood samples. Nevertheless they were confident of success.
Their work with the Crown itself was coming to an end. They had extracted as much information and as many samples from it as they needed, and were preparing to hand it back to Cardinal Laurentin’s representative when he visited them the next week.
“Have you noticed that the Prof. has stopped limping?” Don asked Jason.
“Yes, I noticed it this morning. The treatment must have been successful. I asked him about it, but all he said was that the 'prognosis was excellent!' It’s amazing what they can do nowadays.’ Jason replied.
“Sure is.” Don agreed as he carefully placed the last tube into the rack inside the covered vented hood. That was him done for the evening. Everything was now ready for Jason to start the next stage of the process.
“So what are you doing later Jason? Fancy a pint?”
“Sorry, I’ve just got to finish this, then Lydia’s going to meet me for a quick curry at Jamal’s before we head home. She’s flying back to Egypt tomorrow, so tonight’s her last night.”
“How long's it been now? It's getting pretty serious isn’t it?”
“Always has been mate. Love-at-first sight and all that. Or was it lust-at-first sight? Don’t know. All I can tell you is that for the first time in my life I’m a one-woman-man..”
“In which case you’re a lost cause...but in the nicest way possible!”
“Thanks. Anyway, take it easy and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Don nodded and mumbled something, and left leaving Jason alone in the lab.
It was funny. The past few weeks had seen a marked difference in the team. They were coming together now and working as a unit. They had started to laugh at each other’s jokes, even Jason's, which were by all accounts, outdated and ancient. They had also all accepted Lydia as one of them, and seemed to enjoy her visits almost as much as Jason did. Louisa had even gone shopping with Lydia in London, returning with a pile of clothes which would probably be worn once then hidden in the back of some cupboard or other. Mind you, with Lydia it wasn’t clothes. It was shoes.
“A woman can never have enough shoes!” she would say.
So, exactly how many feet does the average woman have? Last time Jason had counted, the total seemed to be two. A fairly constant two. And try as he might, Jason hadn’t been able to figure out any way how women could wear more than one pair of shoes at a time. So why have so many?
“They’re so sexy though...” She had insisted.
Jason hadn’t ever managed to get up the guts to tell her that shoes were probably the last thing that a man looked at when he scoped a woman, or ‘checked her out’. Breasts, bottom and legs, eyes, hair…and then the average man was done. Shoes? They didn’t even come into the equation. In the entire history of mankind Jason couldn’t think of one single man who had reportedly fallen for a woman because she was wearing a great pair of shoes.
A buzzer went off, and Jason responded by taking the test tubes that Don had worked on and carefully inserting them into the large molecular incubator along with the others already there. He pressed the glowing red “Start” button on the front of the incubator’s panel and that was it. The cycle had started and he could go off and meet Lydia.
Jamals was his favourite Indian restaurant. It had been there for years. It probably wasn’t even owned by anyone called Jamal any more. Jason’s uncle had eaten there too when he had spent a year at New College as a graduate student and when he was there, Jamal was apparently a happy Indian guy in his thirties. Happy, no doubt, because the place was earning a fortune and was always full. That was the original Jamals, the first one before it had been franchised and a hundred different 'Jamals' cloned restaurants had opened up in all the different cities of England. Each apparently as good as the first one. Normally booking a table was a nightmare, but Prof. Wainright and his teams were regulars and got preferential treatment compared to the average person on the street.
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Lydia was already sitting at the table in the corner when he walked in. As usual she was looking lovely. Her long blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders and her eyes sparkled as she looked up and saw him walk in. He felt his throat tighten involuntarily. She was beautiful.
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Lydia had spent the day shopping with Louisa again, picking up a few things to take back to the others still working on the dig in Egypt. They had been into London and had bought half of the city, which now sat around in large bags underneath the table.
“So how was it?” Jason asked, scanning the mountain of bags. “Did you buy any shoes?”
“Actually, yes I did. They’re beautiful…look…”and she lifted up her feet at the side of the table to show him.
“Yes, they certainly are beautiful.” Jason agreed, scanning the rest of her legs obviously, and not paying any attention to her feet.
Dinner in Jamals was great. Washed down with a bottle of decent Cabernet Shiraz, it all made for an excellent evening. On the short walk home they huddled together against the cold, biting wind, absorbing the warmth and heat from each other's bodies.
When Lydia closed the door behind her after reaching Jason’s flat, she stood in front of Jason and removed her coat. Then
she reached up and kissed Jason quickly on the lips. While Jason watched she removed her pullover, and after flicking her new shoes off into the corner she removed her skirt, followed by her blouse and bra.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Jason smiled naughtily, nodding his head towards her pants.
“No…I wanted to leave you some work to do…I don’t want you to think that I’m a pushover...”
Lydia wasn’t going to see Jason for another month. She intended to try to make the evening as memorable as possible.
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Chapter Thirty
I.G.E.G.G.M laboratory
Oxford
.
Don was troubled. His conscience was telling him that it would be wrong, but something in his mind kept telling him to do it.
After the Monday morning meeting Don had noticed that one of the thorns on the Crown had somehow become partially detached from the rest of the Crown, and was only hanging on by a thread of thin bark. Unfortunately that particular thorn was the one that pointed inward into the centre of the Crown, and was the one that contained one of the blood samples.
They had found two different types of blood on the Crown, on three different thorns. The blood taken from the thorn that had become broken only contained one of the two types found, but importantly it was the type they had christened the G-type. The other thorns on the outside of the ring contained both the normal A-type as well as more of the G-type.
At the previous day's Monday morning meeting, during a discussion on the two blood types they had found, Don had told the rest of the group that “this was actually consistent with the proposal of the Crown having sat upon Christ’s head.” His reasoning was simple.
“The fact that there were two different types of blood found on two of the thorns facing out and away from where the Crown would have sat on the victim’s head, was actually consistent with the idea that the thorns had pricked and drawn blood from both the wearer of the Crown, as well as someone else who may have handled the Crown and thrust it forcibly on to the victims head. That the inner thorn contained only a single type of blood, the G-type, was consistent with the idea that this thorn faced inward and would have torn into the scalp of the victim as he was forced to wear the Crown of Thorns during his crucifixion.”
“Beyond that, the fact that the type of blood observed on the inwardly facing thorn is like nothing we have ever seen before, and behaves curiously, exhibiting the beautiful but strange phenomenon of Modulating Variable Wavelength Light Emission (MVWLE), as the Professor has come to call it, points to the fact that the blood belonged to a very special, perhaps supernatural being.”
.
No one had disagreed with his reasoning. In fact, for the first time the Professor had positively agreed with the idea that the evidence was now pointing to the wearer of the Crown being someone very special indeed. Perhaps even divine. “Divine” being the actual word the professor had used. Only Jason had felt the need to try and temper the feelings of the team by pointing out that there was not yet sufficient evidence to back any claims of divinity, and that such descriptions were best avoided.
“This is a purely scientific project. And let’s keep it that. Based in reality! Unless of course we start to experience the odd miracle here or there!”
At that point the Professor had coughed, smiled and stood up, offering to make everyone another cup of tea. As he walked to the tea machine on the other side of the lab no one yet noticed that he was no longer hobbling or limping. It wasn’t until later that day that the team had first noticed the dramatic change in the Professor’s health.
It was when the Monday morning meeting had finished that Don had looked at the Crown and noticed the broken thorn. Strangely, as he looked at it he could have sworn that he heard a little voice telling him to secretly cut the broken thorn off and keep it somewhere safely. Of course, it had only been his imagination but it had implanted an idea into his brain which grew from strength to strength, and by the end of the day he had started planning how he could be alone with the Crown to cut off the damaged thorn unnoticed and hide it away.
On the Monday night he lay in bed planning when best to do it, and concluded that the best time would be on the Friday night, when everyone went to the pub. He was always the last person to leave the lab, and no one would suspect anything. The Cardinal’s assistant was coming to pick the Crown up on the Tuesday of the following week, so the chances of his little theft being discovered were small. And if anyone did notice that the thorn was gone he could simply suggest that it had fallen off and was probably lost in the lab somewhere.
Having made his plan, the guilt set in. Why should he steal the thorn? Would stealing the thorn not be a total violation of the trust that had been given to him, a trust which allowed him to work on it with a free-hand? If he was discovered, it could bring shame to the group, and maybe even get the Prof. in a lot of trouble. On the other hand, there were some good reasons for taking it. None of them being for personal gain.
First of all, Don really believed in the work they were doing, and he believed that someone had to protect and appreciate the value of the thorns embedded with the blood of Christ. The French had had the thorns for almost a thousand years and it hadn’t even occurred to them to look under their own noses to see the true potential the Crown offered. It had taken a genius like Jason to see it.
Secondly, although everything was going well, there was always the possibility of a problem developing later on, and with it the likelihood that they would have to take another sample from the Crown. Once they gave it back to the French they would never have access to it again, so perhaps it would be prudent to take a sample thorn now and keep it for later…just in case. If they were found out they could always argue that the price of authenticating the Crown was some destructive testing of one of the thorns. ‘Sorry’.
Finally, there was just something about the Crown. Being around it was addictive. It held some sort of power over Don. Exactly what, he didn’t know or understand, but he had an overwhelming urge to keep part of the Crown so that he could keep hold of that feeling. Okay, so one of the reasons was personal. So what?
The feeling of guilt was intense, but every time he felt the strength to tell himself it wasn’t right and that he wouldn’t do it, he had this feeling, this incredible urge that he should, and that he must. After three days of constant mental unrest he gave in. He would do it. That Friday. And then he felt peace, and a reassuring knowledge that he was just about to do the correct thing.
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The rest of the week flashed by and Friday evening came. It had been an incredible week. Jason’s research was working out really well, and everything seemed to be on track. Barring any really unforeseen troubles, they would have rebuilt and reproduced sufficient quantity of all the chromosomes from the blood samples by the end of the month.
In fact, things were actually ahead of schedule. In yesterday's meeting it had been agreed that Louisa would approach the usual agency they dealt with, to source and obtain five human eggs from suitable donors. From these they would take and enucleate the egg cells in preparation for the cloning process, with the goal that these should be ready in three weeks time.
However, it was unlikely that they would actually proceed with five clones. The very special nature of the cloning subjects dictated that they would only proceed with one clone of each blood sample at a time. Only if either of the pregnancies didn’t make it successfully through to term, would they try again later with a fresh host mother.
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As Friday afternoon wore on, Don started to get increasingly nervous. He was sure that Louisa had noticed his nervousness, because for some reason she had started to get nervous too, and by five o’clock they had both bumped into each other in the lab at least twice, apologising profusely and hurrying back to their work to avoid each other’s gaze. When six o’clock came, the Professor put down his electronic pipette and announced.
“Come on team, it’s Fr
iday evening, and I’m buying! This has been one of the best weeks of my life, and tonight I’m going to celebrate. Last one down to the Lamb & Flag is a Scotsman!”
The last comment had been a guided one, designed to initiate a playful reaction from Don, who had been looking far too intense the whole day long. He took the bait immediately.
“…and what exactly is wrong with the Scots...my father is Scottish...which makes me Scottish too, I’m proud to say...And how can you slag off the Scots when they are the most affluent and successful nation in the whole of the European Union?”
“Aha…so the Don we know is still in there somewhere...just kidding young man, as well you know. I, for one, have the utmost admiration and affection for the Scots race, and before you start, yes I already know that they are probably the most successful inventors in the world. Anyway, if you want to bore me to tears again with your unending list of inventions that the Scots have made, then I’ll happily listen to you down in the pub. I can hear my pint being poured as we speak.”
“I’ll join you soon, Professor. I’ve just got to finish up this run, then I’ll be straight down.” Don apologised, pretending he had important work that had to be finished.
“Likewise!” Announced Louisa, not even bothering to look up from the microscope she was pouring over.
“Come on Professor, let’s go. I’m gagging for a slow one... See you others down there soon.” said Jason, taking up the invitation.
As the Professor and Jason made their way through the series of airlocks Louisa and Don could hear them laughing aloud and cracking jokes to each other. It had been ages since they had seen the Professor laughing so much, and it was a tonic to them all.
The Messiah Conspiracy - A gripping page-turning Medical Thriller - [Omnibus Edition containing Book 1 & Book 2] Page 14
