.
The President strode confidently and briskly across the tarmac to meet them. He took Tim’s right hand in his own, and with his other hand grabbed him almost affectionately by the shoulder.
“Welcome back, Tim. Welcome back. So let’s get it inside and have a look. I want to touch this baby for myself.”
“Thanks Sir. It’s good to see you too.”
They walked quickly to the hangar, and into an office just inside the hangar gates. Tim posted a couple of armed guards outside on the tarmac, and some more outside the office. A couple of black presidential limousines were already parked inside the hangar, with extra guards standing round the doors of the cars. Satisfied that there was enough fire power to protect them from a small invasion, Tim relaxed and took the small black box from his assistant. Placing it on the table in the middle of the room, he opened the lid, and slid it round to face the President.
The President beamed, rubbing his two hands together like a little kid who had just been promised a candy bar.
“So that’s the Crown of Thorns, huh? Doesn’t look like much, but boy, I reckon it’s got some history to tell. Can I touch it?”
Tim was surprised he had asked for permission, and immediately wondered if the President was actually just a little bit scared and in awe of the Crown. That pleased him. It was good that the President showed it a little healthy respect. It was unusual that he showed any respect for anything.
“Sure, if you put this paper mask on over your mouth, and then put these gloves on, ..and treat it very, very carefully, …like a nuclear detonator that could go off if you are too rough with it."
He handed the President a white facemask, and put one on too so that the President didn’t look stupid all by himself. ‘Even though he normally does’, Tim thought cruelly. Then, after donning a pair of his own, he gave the President a pair of protective gloves. When the President slid them on, Tim carefully took the Crown out of its box and passed it to the President. President Jamieson took it from him and held it so tenderly that Tim thought it looked like the President was handling a new born baby, not something already over two thousand years old.
“Can you feel it Tim?” the President said quietly.
“No. What?”
“Can you not feel that we are standing at the dawn of a new era for our great nation? This little wreath of prickly twigs is going to be the source of a rebirth for our country. Perhaps, just now I may even be holding the future of mankind in my hands...”
Tim saw the sparkle in the President’s eyes. A cold shiver ran down the length of his spine and a premonition of fear crossed his heart. Far from feeling good, Tim was suddenly scared for the future. Instead of feeling hope for what the Crown offered them all, he had a dull premonition at the back of his mind of how the President would manage to corrupt it and turn it all around, from good to bad...unless they were all careful. Tim shrugged the premonition off and almost protectively he reached for the Crown and took it away from the President with the excuse,
“We shouldn’t really be exposing it to the air at all. I’d better put it back in its container, and get it to Vale as soon as possible. The plane will be refuelled by now.”
“Okay, Tim. I want you to stay up there for the next couple of weeks, until the project is well underway …keep me informed…this project is your baby. Make sure it works. Failure is not an option on this one.”
“Yes Sir.” Tim had already heard the threat several times. It was par for the course.
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Chapter Thirty Three
The Meeting Room, Third Floor
I.G.E.G.G.M laboratory
Oxford, England
.
The Professor had brought with him a bag of chocolate croissants for the Monday morning meeting. He was still on a high, and looked even better than the week before. He strode into the office without a walking stick, carrying his brown briefcase in one hand, and the fresh croissants in the other.
“Wow…you’re beginning to spoil us. If you’re not careful Professor I’ll move that we do this every day!”
“And why not? That’s an excellent idea. From now, I’ll get breakfast sent in. You guys deserve it.”
“So where’s Louisa and Don?”
“Oh, they’ll be here in a moment. Don just called to say he’s in the car park with Louisa. He gave her a lift in this morning. You know, sometimes I wish they would get it together…I think they would make an excellent couple.”
“What? Don and Louisa? I’d never thought about it, but I wouldn’t have said that Don was really Louisa’s type. Anyway Louisa’s still seeing that American guy from the Engineering department. Remember? She met him when she took the Crown across to the Engineering lab for holographic analysis. It was him that did it. He works for Professor Smythe. As far as I know, it’s pretty serious. She really likes him.”
“Oh…oh well, good for her. She deserves a little happiness. We all deserve a little happiness.”
“So what did you do yesterday then? Anything special?”
“Jason, my boy. I don’t think you would believe me if I told you. I actually went to Church. In fact I enjoyed it so much in the morning, that I went again in the evening. It was quite inspirational. Quite excellent in fact. Did you know that long ago, when...”
Just then Louisa and Don walked in, and Louisa took one look at the table and exclaimed.
“Wow... Chocolate croissants! What a good idea! You know what, maybe we should make this a regular occurrence. Why not do this every day?...What? What did I say?”
“Nothing. We just had the same conversation. It’s already been arranged.”
.
Over coffee and croissants the team discussed the progress of the last week, and the plans for the coming five days. The most important thing was the impending return of the Crown back to the Cardinal’s assistant the next day. Don was given the task of packaging it up, and getting it ready for handing it back.
Jason’s progress report was excellent, and he was pleased to report that they would be ready to try commencing the cloning process in two weeks time. However, he did raise one question for the group to consider: ‘Did they really want to carry on the programme working on both the blood types they found present on the thorns?’ He pointed out again that whereas one type was completely normal, the other exhibited almost supernatural qualities, and was of a type never seen before. Jason had spent a lot of time thinking about it over the weekend, and he had decided that although they had no evidence to prove it, he had to concede that the G-type blood was proving to be something rather special, and as such it seemed quite obvious that if either of the two were to come from blood residues left by Jesus Christ, then the G-type blood had to be the one.
“Quite so, my boy. I think from what we have all learned and seen with our own eyes about the G-type blood sample, that we all believe this is the blood that must have come from Christ, if either of them did. Personally, I have no doubt that it did. But, I would venture to suggest that it would make sense to continue with a course of action to clone both samples. Although we now expect the A-type blood to give us a perfectly normal human, it would be useful to have a measuring stick against which to compare the progress of the other. Whereas one type of blood may come from Jesus Christ, the other may then come from someone who was present at the crucifixion but who scratched his or her hand on the thorns as they held it. And, given that, even if we couldn’t clone Jesus Christ, it would be a scientific miracle in its own right to clone someone who was present at the crucifixion. Think about that!…”
“…Unfortunately I also had some rather bad news over the weekend concerning the progress of the clones from my other ongoing Egyptian project...We now only have one mother carrying a developing clone of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Rahipti-Ani. The other mothers have both had miscarriages. Two within a week. The surviving one seems to be doing very well indeed, but you never know. Personally, I would like to maximise our chances for succe
ss for producing one successful clone from the Haissem project DNA, so if I may, I would suggest we continue with both as planned?”
No one saw any reason to disagree. Louisa agreed to do the necessaries to try and have the enucleated egg cells ready for chromosome implantation in two weeks time.
.
The meeting came to an end shortly afterwards, and they all started their work for the day. After lunch Don decided to take one last look at the Crown and then package it up, ready for the coming handover back to the French. Suitably attired, he went to the wall-safe, retrieved the big black box which housed it, and opened it up. He took the Crown out and set it down on the tabletop, on top of some protective matting.
Don’s heart missed a beat, and he was forced to cough to relieve the uncomfortable feeling left in his chest. He looked at the Crown again. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Something very strange had happened. The thorn that he had cut off from the Crown and smuggled home with him on the Friday night had mysteriously re-grown itself onto the Crown again. The Crown was intact, as good as new. It was a miracle!
He picked up the Crown and turned it over in his hands. He knew exactly where to look to see the incision marks they had made on the Crown to extract the plant material from inside the thorns, from which they had later removed some of the blood residues.
“Shit…” Don exclaimed underneath his breath. “The incision marks have gone too…it’s almost as if the Crown of Thorns had healed itself!”
He thought about what he should do? He couldn’t tell the others about the missing thorn and its sudden reappearance. But maybe he could say something about the incision marks having gone away. ”
On second thoughts, maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to tell everyone. Perhaps he should just tell Jason or the Professor.
“Professor, have you got a minute, please. I would like to show you something...”
“Sure, what is it my boy?”
“Would you take a look at this?” Don beckoned the Professor to come over to his bench.
“Look, take a look at the Crown and tell me if you can see anything unusual about it?”
The Professor took the Crown out of Don’s hands and turned it around and then upside down, handling it very gently in his hands.
He successfully managed to conceal his surprise when he saw that the thorn he had last seen damaged and almost hanging off, had now completely re-grown itself to the Crown. He couldn’t admit to Don that the last time he'd seen it, the thorn was damaged, because that would have led to an embarrassing discussion about how he'd managed to damage it in the first place. But when the Professor then looked at the places where they had removed some small bits of genetic material, and where other incisions had been made on the surface of the thorns to get at the material beneath, he found that they too had gone.
“That's interesting! The incision marks have disappeared. And some of the bark that we took away has miraculously re-grown itself.”
“Exactly!” Don agreed.
“Is it a miracle or is there some other explanation?” Don asked the Professor rhetorically.
“I don’t know.”
They both stood staring at the Crown.
“It may sound weird Professor, but it, I mean…the Crown…doesn’t feel the same...”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. But for the past few months whenever I was working with the Crown, I had this sort of feeling from it. Not something that you could easily describe. Just that there was something intangible there beside a pile of thorny twigs. Something that we couldn’t touch or measure scientifically in any way…just something about it…”
“I know what you mean boy. I felt it too. So what is your point?”
“Well… that feeling has gone! It's not there anymore…”
The Professor was quiet for a second.
“You’re right. I was too busy to notice it before but now you mention it…it does feel different!”
“What should we do?”
“I don’t know...maybe nothing. Listen, the Crown is being returned tomorrow. We can’t stop that. We have all the samples we need. For now, I would like you to shoot off a few rolls of film and take photographs of it from every angle. Take as many as you can. Then pack it up, and get it ready to go. Hopefully we can get it out of here before anyone else notices anything different. When you’ve done that, get the photos developed and let's chat about it tomorrow evening...after the Crown has been picked up by the Cardinal’s assistant. In the meantime, I think it's best if we don’t mention this to anyone else apart from Jason. You should tell him... Okay?”
“Do you think something miraculous has happened then?”
“What do you think Don, what’s your gut feel?”
“Honestly? My gut feel is that this isn’t the Crown of Thorns!”
“Exactly. I feel the same way. That’s why we’ve got to hand it over to the French as soon as possible. We’ll worry about what’s happened to the real one, when this one’s back in Notre Dame, and we’re in the clear.”
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Chapter Thirty Four
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In fact, instead of waiting till the Crown was on the way back to France, the Professor started to worry straight away. Try as he might he couldn’t get to sleep that night. He kept tossing and turning, and eventually gave up trying to force himself to fall asleep. He got up, and made his way down to the kitchen to make himself a cup of hot milk.
Hot milk was good for helping you to fall asleep. That was something his mother had taught him. As he passed his bar in the study he picked up a bottle of Glenmorangie Malt Whisky and poured a large dram into his milk. Whisky was good for helping you sleep too. That was something his father had taught him.
.
He took his healthy milk up to his bed, switched on the sidelight and put on a mini-CD of ‘Late Night Jazz Piano Music’ and relaxed back into his big fluffed up pillows. He had some serious thinking to do.
The thing that was bothering the professor was, that if the Crown of Thorns they were going to give back to the French wasn’t the real one, then it implied that somehow it had been swapped for a replica.
Besides Jason there were only six people who knew about the work they were doing or the true identity of the object they were dealing with: Cardinal Laurentin, the Cardinal’s assistant, Jason, Louisa, Lydia, Don and himself. If it had been swapped, then one of those six others had betrayed him and Jason. It was as simple as that.
First of all, there was Don. He had to be innocent. It was his responsibility to hand the Crown back to the Cardinal’s assistant. If he had swapped the real Crown for a fake replica then he could have got away with it scot-free if he’d wanted to. No one would ever have found out it was a fake. It would have gone back to France with a pile of scientific evidence to prove its authenticity, and for the rest of time no one would have ever challenged that provenance. Yet, Don had spotted the fact it was a fake and told him immediately. So it wasn’t Don.
It wouldn’t be the Cardinal either. He had everything to gain by proving its authenticity, and everything to lose if it ever came out it was a fake.
It could be the Cardinal’s assistant. He knew nothing about him. He was a complete grey area but he’d had no access to the Crown since he’d handed it over to them. So it couldn't be him.
So it was either Lydia or Louisa.
His gut feel was that it wasn’t Jason. Jason wasn’t the slightest bit interested in wealth. If he had wanted to make money, he would have wangled his way into staying at the dig in Egypt and could be happily trafficking in gold and ancient artefacts by now. Anyway, Jason was as straight forward as they came. What you saw, was what you got. There wasn’t anything devious about him. He was just a genius through and through. Too clever by far to get involved in anything like that. And this was his project. His future.
Lydia? There could be something there but he doubted it. She had no access to the Crown so it would have been impos
sible for her to steal it.
That left only one person. One person with full access to the Crown, and someone who could potentially be interested in wealth.
Louisa was a very decent person, and the Professor didn’t mind admitting he had a small crush on her. She was a fantastic woman. She had it all. Brains, beauty and personality. The only thing she lacked was large amounts of money to go shopping, her favourite past time. But then again, his gut feel about Louisa was that she wouldn’t do anything like this either. His group were all fiercely loyal to him. But the only person out of all the six people who had both access to the Crown and a possible, although very small motive to steal it, was Louisa. Unfortunately, maybe there was more to her than met the eye?
.
Then you came to the question of why someone would want to steal it? The Professor could think of at least three reasons why someone would want to steal the Crown.
Firstly, and most obviously, the Crown of Thorns, now it was proven to be completely authentic in terms of its origin and time period, would be priceless. If it was worth the amount of money the French had paid for it when they bought it all those hundreds of years ago, then nowadays it would have an equivalent value of at least tens of millions of Euros! That was more that the GDP of some developing nations.
The second reason was a bit more obscure but just as powerful. It is a religious artefact. The importance of the object to the Catholic, or any other Christian church or cult, would now be immeasurable. If the English had wiped out half the Middle East in the quest for the Holy Grail, what would religious groups be prepared to do nowadays for something as important as the Crown of Thorns if it can now be declared authentic?
And thirdly, if any other Government of the world had realised or taken a guess as to what his group at the I.G.E.G.G.M was really up to, they would have guessed that they were in the process of cloning Jesus Christ.
The Messiah Conspiracy - A gripping page-turning Medical Thriller - [Omnibus Edition containing Book 1 & Book 2] Page 16
