

### The Messiah Conspiracy

### \- A Gripping Medical Suspense Thriller :

### (Book One)

### IAN C.P. IRVINE

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### Published by Ian C. P. Irvine on Smashwords

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Copyright 2001 IAN C.P. IRVINE

Note: This book was previously published as 'Crown of Thorns'

Reviews for 'The Messiah Conspiracy' Omnibus Edition Containing Book One and Book Two.'

**Awesome Read:** _'I read many books and this one was one of the best I have read. I loved it and think I will read it more than twice. It was the kind of book that was almost impossible to put down. Very glad I bought it and would recommend it to everyone.'_

**A Thumping Good 'Must' Read!:** _'Browsing the ebook stores for something to 'unwind' me, I chanced upon this excellent gem of a book. To my mind, the Author mirrors perfectly the Biblical events of Jesus' birth 2000 years ago and the subsequent 'Revelations' predicted for our time. The characters are totally believable, able to deduce and thwart the plans of the Americans and British governments and to hide the true Messiah. A well thought out and researched book by the author, I was totally absorbed in it from start to finish. Believers & non-believers alike will enjoy this thumping good read!!! Far better than the Da Vinci Code by a country mile, I am certainly recommending this to all my many friends.'_

**Well Written:** _'I was looking at a different book, Dan Brown Inferno and this title came up on a reviewers comments suggesting it to be worth a read. I have to agree, it is. Loved the idea of cloning Jesus and for me it was written well, had page turning elements to it but I was disappointed when it ended. In a nice way though! It does leave one hanging...'_

**Totally preposterous, but enthralling!** _: 'I just happened on this book while browsing to find things to download to my E-reader. The premise of the book captured my interest so I duly downloaded it. And, I loved it! The story is utter nonsense, let's be honest - recreating Jesus Christ through cloning?! But, it is written in such an engaging manner that I found myself drawn in unwittingly. Mid-read, I actually broke my ankle and I found myself begging my family to bring my E-reader to the hospital so I could continue reading the book! I would recommend this highly to anyone else, with the proviso that they suspend belief and read it for what it is - a truly interesting and captivating piece of fiction!'_

**Gripping: '** _A gripping story about what might just be possible with cloning bound up with a bit of fantasy and conspiracy theory. An excellent read.'_

**Brilliant:** _'Very thought provoking, if controversial book!! Also completely believable! Never read any of Ian Irvine's books before but I certainly will after this. Will be watching for a sequel Mr Irvine.'_

**Wow !!:** _'Wow what a book, just couldn't put it down, was sorry when I came to the end. What a really good film this would make. Somehow I knew what the outcome of the American side of the story was going to be, I hope there will be a sequel...read the book-you won't be disappointed!!!'_

**Great Story:** _'Enjoyed this book, a good mix of thriller and science. Story was well written, the genetics bit was explained simply so even I could understand.'_

**Scintillating read** _: 'I discovered this whilst browsing through the lists. I was absorbed from the first chapter. It has a great story line with well rounded characters. Mr Irvine's research is impeccable giving depth and credence to the story. The sincerity of his work shone from my small E-reader enveloping me in a virtual world of rainbow light and genetic dreams. Well done. It is years since I have read through to the small hours. The last book to have this effect being Dan Brown's. Highly Recommended.'_

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright observed above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

### Please note: This is the first book in a two part series. The story begins with Book One and concludes with Book Two.

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### Other Books by Ian C.P. Irvine

### Say You're Sorry

### I Spy, I Saw Her Die

### Haunted From Within

### Haunted From Without

### The Orlando File

### London 2012 : What If ? ( A Romantic Mystery Adventure )

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### The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Medical Thriller

### Time Ship

### Alexis Meets Wiziwam the Wizard

To my Wife

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Please note: This is the first book in a two part series. The story begins with Book One and concludes with Book Two: The Messiah Conspiracy (Book Two).

If you would prefer, you could purchase an omnibus edition that contains both Book One and Book Two. To do so please return to your browser and search for 'The Messiah Conspiracy –The Race to Clone Jesus Christ (Omnibus Edition containing Book One and Book Two).'

### Prologue

The Oval Office

The White House

United States of America

**4** th **November AD 2018**

1.

The President of the United States of America switched the cup of coffee into his right hand before picking up the ringing phone. President Jamieson was tired. The coffee was barely keeping him awake, but he couldn't sleep until he had heard from Tim Curts. He had to know whether or not the operation had succeeded.

"Mr President?" the voice echoed down the scrambled satellite connection from somewhere in Oxford, England.

"Tim! How did it go?" the President asked, nervously.

"Like a dream. We've got it. We'll be back in Delaware tomorrow night, and within a few hours we'll start the second phase of the operation. It's looking good."

"Excellent, Tim. Will anyone know it's gone?" the President asked, wondering how soon the French would miss their most important religious relic.

"They'll never know. We swapped it for an identical copy." Tim chuckled.

"I can't wait to see it. Tim, I've just decided, I'm flying down tomorrow to meet you. I want to see this baby for myself..." the President paused "You know, if this project works, we're never going to lose a war again. For Christ's sake Tim, and I mean that literally, if you're right about this, we're going to rule the bloody Universe, let alone the world..."

Tim hesitated for a second. He recognised the tone in the Presidents voice. And he didn't like it.

"It'll be good to see you again, Mr President. I'll brief you on the other details then."

"Look forward to it Tim."

The President relaxed back into the big mahogany chair behind his desk of office. He switched the cup back to his other hand, and took a sip of the coffee.

"Rule the Universe? Yes!" he thought to himself. "With God on our side, nothing will be impossible!"

### Part One

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Chapter 1

Carlisle, England

August AD 2012

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It was a hell of a place to die. After fifty years of life, Paul Dyke had hoped that he would have ended up somewhere better than this.

Their small flat was filthy. The wallpaper was beginning to come off the walls, and the rooms smelt of damp.

Not that Paul could smell anything anymore. The fever was burning out of control, and for the past two days he had been slipping in and out of delirium, shivering violently and sweating continuously, his body fluids drenching the bedding on which he lay.

The man on the television had described the symptoms well, and Paul had got them all. It wouldn't be long now.

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Outside, the sun was setting and the street lights had just come on. The sound of thunder rolled across the distant hills, and a flash of lightning lit the room. The humidity in the air was oppressive and even though the fan hanging from the ceiling was spinning as fast as it could, it did nothing to lessen the heat.

Jason, Paul's sixteen year old son, came back into the bedroom carrying a fresh bucket of ice and their last dry towel. He knelt down beside his father and tried to mop some more of the sweat from his glistening, emaciated body.

His father turned his head towards him, his eyes trying to focus on Jason's face. His lips began to move, and Jason knelt closer so that he could hear his words. When he tried to speak, he coughed and spluttered, and blood oozed out of the corners of his mouth.

As Jason reached out to wipe away the blood, he felt his father's hand grab his wrist.

"Jason...I'm sorry..."

He whispered the words quietly, but Jason understood.

The grip on his wrist relaxed, the hand falling lifelessly onto the wet towel covering the bed. A long, slow sigh came from his father's chest, and a trace of froth gathered round the edges of his lips.

Jason's father was dead.

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As Jason knelt beside his father's body, tears rolled down his face and blurred his vision. He listened in disbelief as the man on the television excitedly announced the discovery of the long awaited vaccine for the 'SARs 2' virus. At the end of the bulletin the man mentioned that the death toll in the UK had now reached one million.

Surely they meant 'one million and one.'

### Chapter 2

Somewhere in the Egyptian desert,

Six years later,

May AD 2018

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As the plane rose into the sky, Jason waved out of the small cockpit window at Dr Simons, his new girlfriend Lydia, and all the others gathered at the end of the runway. Quickly falling away far below him, the group which had assembled to bid him bon voyage soon turned into little black specks, and were swallowed up by the vast plain of the Egyptian desert.

Jason settled back into the seat, his eyes staring blankly at the waves of undulating sand dunes beginning to roll beneath them across the desert floor. The pulsating drone of the twin propeller engines washed over him hypnotically, and he fought with the urge to sleep. There was so much to think about. So much to remember.

He had spent the past six months digging up and living in the past. It had been an incredible time. A time full of new friendships, adventure and romance, but as soon as he stepped off the plane in Cairo he would be thrust back into the land of the living, and of science and the future.

He cast his mind back to the lab at Oxford, and to the discoveries and developments that would make cloning of the Pharaoh possible.

The progress that Professor Wainright's team had made in the past few years was nothing short of remarkable. Thankfully, the cloning process that had been developed at Professor Wainright's privately funded Institute for Genetic Evolution for the Greater Good of Mankind was still a well kept secret, and no one outside of the core I.G.E.G.G.M. team knew of its existence.

Rightly so. It was considered too dangerous to make public that Wainright's team had discovered a way of recovering and regenerating prime DNA samples from damaged genetic material previously considered unfit for use in the cloning process. The implications were incredible.

Until now, it had been believed that DNA had an inbuilt sell-by date, which prevented mankind from tinkering with the seeds of its past. But in some revolutionary, painstaking research, Wainright had found the key that unlocked the blueprint within the DNA itself, allowing them to take DNA samples which were centuries, even thousands of years old, repair them, reproduce them, and then introduce them to a donor egg to create an embryo which could be cultivated and grown to maturity.

Using this process Wainright's team would revolutionize the field of genetics.

It had already worked in the laboratory, and they had secretly succeeded in creating clones from genetic material extracted from three consecutive generations of humans, stretching back from 1900 to 1800 AD.

The three cloned embryos were now beautiful bouncing babies, all thriving and doing well, having been adopted by infertile loving couples.

Pushing back the boundaries of science even further, Wainright argued that there was no reason why genetic material couldn't be extracted and cloned from anyone, regardless of when they had died, so long as the required genetic material had not been contaminated by certain chemicals which rendered the whole process impossible. However, the process was still in its infancy, and although the first three babies born to couples within the program were doing well, there was admittedly still a thousand things that could go wrong.

Still, it was an incredible discovery, made by an incredible man.

Undoubtedly, Professor Wainright was one of, if not the leading geneticist in the world. His research over the past twenty years had completely revolutionized the world of genetic reproduction.

His contributions to the Human Genome Project, the worldwide effort of the late twentieth century to map human DNA, had been key to the overall success of the project.

After the Human Genome project had been 'completed' it had been Wainright that had later spotted the flaw in the research of all the other scientists, and it had been Wainright that had found the way to correctly reinterpret the data without having to repeat the whole Human Genome experiment again.

Then a year after winning the Nobel prize for his outstanding contribution to science, Wainright had led the first team in the world to successfully clone a human being. Whereas at the turn of the millennium such efforts would have resulted in public outcry, public opinion towards genetic research was now very, very different.

When the Al-Qaeda group had successfully released a new biologically engineered airborne version of the SARs virus into the Olympic Stadium in London, England, during the Olympic closing ceremony in 2012, the spread of the unseen terrorist organism had been swift. Within days commuters had spread the virus around the globe, and the ensuing mind numbing death toll of thirty two million had resulted in a fundamental change of public opinion: it was genetics that had found the antidote to the virus, and saved the remainder of the population from almost certain death.

Wiping out seven million in Europe and eleven million people in North America, the modified corona virus had changed the course of history. In the wake of its path across the world, a new age had evolved, the Age of Genetics.

Genetics was the only hope to prevent another mutation of the original virus returning and claiming the rest of humanity. Genetics gave hope. Genetics was the future. And Jason was at the forefront of that future.

Ever since then funding for Genetics had rocketed, and governments and venture capitalists rushed to support any company that had the word 'genetic' or 'genome' in its title. It was like the 'dot.com' revolution of 1999 and 2000. Fortunes could be made in a matter of weeks as new companies reported successful genetic trials and their stock soared ten or a hundred times its true value in a single month.

Since then, the treatment of diseases and physical disabilities had been revolutionized with the use of genetic stem cell technologies for growing replacement nerves, muscles, organs and human tissues. Processes for which Wainright held many of the commercial patents.

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Jason too, had done well for himself, although it had admittedly taken years of struggling for him to get where he was now.

His mother had never been able to cope with his father's spasmodic binges of drinking, and had left them when he was only five. He had never seen her again.

When his father had died of the 'SARS 2' virus at fifteen, Jason had gone to stay with an uncle in London. For years he had been an angry teenager, experimenting with drugs and roaming the streets at night, working through a hidden, suppressed anger at the world...and at God for allowing his father to die...only days before the cure had been found.

Jason had almost become an atheist, denying the existence of God, but secretly wanting to believe in something.

In the end, with the help and support of a good teacher at school, Jason had turned to science, finding comfort in the knowledge that although the vaccine had been too late to save his father, through studying genetics Jason might be able to help and save others...and prevent them from going through the hell he had.

For many years Jason had become an introvert, studying hard and playing little. But after a couple of years at Oxford University, he had begun to mellow and soon found a better balance between working and enjoying life.

After graduating from Oxford he had gone to work for Professor Wainright at the I.G.E.G.G.M. and over the years Jason had become close to the old man. To a large extent the Professor had replaced the father Jason had lost to the terrorist's biological attack, but now Jason worried at how quickly Dr Wainright's health was deteriorating.

Until just last year Wainright was fully independent, mobile and vibrant. But within the past twelve months he had found it increasingly difficult to walk without a large amount of discomfort, the pain of a slow growing cancer beginning to cripple him and restrict all but the most necessary of movement.

The Professor's brain was as sharp as ever, but Jason knew that his time was limited. The Professor's spirit had turned increasingly to flights of fancy and to wondering what his legacy on this planet would be. Professor Wainright had always been a romantic, and Jason knew that the project to create a clone of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Rahipti-Ani, was his last great romantic gesture. Something to capture the imagination of a world that had long since lost the ability to romance and dream.

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### Chapter 3

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Professor Wainright had met Dr Simons at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Sweden, when Wainright had picked up an unparalleled second Nobel prize for his successes in human cloning and his contribution to the development of stem cell technology. Dr Simons was there receiving his own Nobel Prize for his contribution to archaeological achievement.

The two had got on famously, and over dinner Dr. Simons had told a rapt Professor Wainright all about his dream to find the tomb of Rahipti-Ani, the long lost Pharaoh of the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Dr Simons had argued that there was every reason to believe that once found, wherever it was, the Pharaoh's tomb would be sealed and intact: a virgin tomb, never touched by grave robbers or modern day archaeologist alike.

It was Dr Simons use of the words "sealed and intact" that had inspired the romantic within the geneticist Professor Wainright.

"A sealed and intact tomb would...", Wainright later explained to an excited young Jason back in Oxford "...likely contain a virgin mummy, untouched by the air and genetic material of the twenty-first century. And within that mummy," he continued, "you would find the genetic material of a man mummified in the OLD ways, before they introduced the oils and acids into the mummification process which destroyed the cell-structure we need..."

The meaning of the professor's words had immediately been clear to Jason.

"So..." Jason interrupted the professor, "...if we can get a fresh sample of the Pharaoh's mummified flesh before it is exposed to the air of today's world, with all of its intrinsic pollutants and floating genetic dust, we would have everything we need to..." Jason paused as the enormity of the plan hit him.

"Yes, my boy...you've got it. With a tiny portion of the newly found Pharaoh's cells we would have enough genetic material to clone a Pharaoh! Once again Rahipti-Ani will walk again. 'The Mummy will return'...so to speak!"

Dr Wainright's words had remained with Jason, rattling around in his head and conjuring up pictures of tacky B-movies, starring a badly bandaged corpse with outstretched arms stumbling through the Egyptian desert searching for his next victim. Try as he might he couldn't get rid of the image, and he hated it.

The thing was, although Wainright had cracked a joke about it, the whole thing belittled what the great man was trying to achieve. Taking a sample of DNA, thousands of years old and recreating a long lost member of the human species was going to be no small feat. Even four years ago such a thought would have been laughed out of town by any serious geneticist. But thanks to the recent discoveries made by Wainright's team, now such things were entirely possible.

And when, through a combination of luck and painstaking archaeology, Dr Simons had finally found the location of Pharaoh Raphiti Ani's tomb, it was sealed and intact just as they had hoped for. Hidden deep beneath the ground in the barren desert outside the old Egyptian town of Timseret, the Pharaoh's tomb had remained undiscovered and forgotten by the rest of the world.

Outside of the tomb's walls civilizations had spawned, grown and flourished, then withered and died; kingdoms had come and gone, mankind had evolved and the world had changed. But inside the cold and dark burial chamber, the Pharaoh's mummy had lain undisturbed and alone, surrounded only by statues of four large golden warriors who stood patiently in the darkness, protecting their charge and watching over their Pharaoh.

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As the plane made a slow bank to the north, a brief cackle of radio traffic between the pilot and Cairo interrupted Jason's train of thought. When the plane leveled off again and the only sound was once again the monotonous pulsing of the twin engines, Jason cast his mind back to the excitement of the past weeks, reliving once more the moment in his mind when the group had finally broken through the false wall which had sealed the Pharaoh's burial chamber.

As the wall had fallen inwards into the intact tomb, the team of excited archaeologists had gathered round the entrance, each peering into the dark empty space ahead.

At first their torch lights had struggled to cut through the cold dry air, their beams blocked by swirling columns of dust swept upwards by the collapsing tomb wall. As they stood in silence waiting for the dust to settle, their eyes had strained through the darkness ahead, searching for their first glimpse of what lay beyond.

Gradually, the seemingly impenetrable curtain of dust had thinned, and for the first time in three thousand years, light had filled the tomb of Rahipti-Ani, the long lost Pharaoh of the Old Kingdom of Egypt.

In front of them was a large room, their torch lights bouncing off shining, golden panels, which covered the walls and floor of the chamber.

Colored hieroglyphs, painted and embedded with semi-precious stones ran along the walls, the jewels embedded in the hieroglyphs diffracting the torch lights into colored beams that crisscrossed the chamber and filled it with beautiful colored light.

Flashing their lights upwards, golden suns and bright stars had shone down from a painted blue ceiling, embedded with small gold discs and large semi-precious stones. As the torch lights caught the precious stones in their paths, the stones had come alive and twinkled back like stars, casting reds and greens and blues around the room.

In each of the four corners of the room a seven foot tall golden statue had stood brandishing a spear and a shield. Each of the warrior's heads was slightly bowed, facing towards a raised golden platform in the centre of the chamber upon which lay the immense golden sarcophagus of the Pharaoh.

Brightly colored and inlaid with colored stones and jewels, the top of the golden coffin bore the three-dimensional likeness of the king's face. He wore the traditional head-dress and the long black curved beard of the Pharaoh, and the arms that crossed his chest held the symbols of Egyptian power and authority: the flail and the scepter.

Dr Simons had walked across to the side of the Pharaoh. Resting his hands on the outer coffin lid, he had looked down onto the Pharaoh's face and announced,

"Rahipti-Ani, Pharaoh of Old Egypt, we have come as friends."

Jason had looked up at Lydia then and caught her eyes. They had both noticed that Dr Simons was crying, but Jason had been moved himself to find that Lydia was crying too, the tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched Dr Simon's moment of glory.

Dr Simons had waited all his life for this, searching for over fifty years in the desert wastelands of Egypt to fulfill his lifetime's dream of finding Rahipti-Ani's tomb. Truth be told, without Lydia's encouragement, Dr Simons would probably have given up, and would have abandoned the search.

Lydia had been his first graduate student at Edinburgh University, and had spent the past four years since graduation working at his side. Jason knew that just before Dr. Wainright had agreed to finance the current expedition, and when their existing funding had all run out, she alone had believed in him when no one else had.

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For a few minutes no one had spoken. Then one by one they had removed their shoes and walked across to join the Dr, stroking the cool smooth gold of the outer coffin lid, and using the sensation of touch to convince them that what they were seeing was real.

They had stood in a group around the sarcophagus of the Pharaoh, each person capturing the moment and storing the sensations they were going through so that in the future they could replay in exact detail to their children and their children's children, the moment they found the body of Rahipti-Ani, long lost Pharaoh of Kemet, the Old Kingdom of Egypt.

### Chapter 4

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The next day, the team had risen early. Over breakfast they had excitedly discussed the events of the night before, and made plans for the day ahead.

By 8am they had all assembled in the tomb below, where it was agreed that the most important thing to be accomplished was to open the sarcophagus and help Jason get his genetic samples from the dead Pharaoh.

When moved from the dry and barren desert, the risk to the ancient mummy of genetic contamination from the 21st century would be far too great. Therefore, though reluctantly, Dr Simons had agreed to opening up the Pharaoh's mummy as soon as it was found and allowing Jason to take a number of in situ samples from the corpse before closing the sarcophagus again and shipping the finds to the city.

The plan had been to insert an especially developed sample retriever directly through the bandages of the mummy. The sample retriever would penetrate the layers of bandages doing minimal damage to the mummy's wrappings, and take a number of shallow core samples of the mummy's flesh from several different locations on the corpse.

But before they could work in the tomb without damaging the soft golden panels which lined the floor of the burial chamber, they first had to lay down several layers of hastily improvised thick rubber matting, onto which a number of wooden planks were placed to create a new artificial raised floor. This had taken the best part of the morning.

By mid-afternoon they had set up their hydraulic lifting devices and proceeding slowly they had managed to gently raise the lid off the outer sarcophagus, revealing a golden gilt wooden coffin within. The weight of the golden outer sarcophagus had been immense and it was another hour before the outer coffin lid had been carefully lowered onto the floor in the corner of the tomb, with Lydia photographically documenting the progress as it was made. It was four o'clock in the afternoon before the team was finally ready to raise the inner coffin lid, and after Dr Simons had nodded the signal to proceed, the hydraulic lifters had taken the strain and it had begun to move.

Slowly but surely, for the first time in thousands of years, the death mask of the Pharaoh Rahipti-Ani came into view. As beautiful as the mask of Tutankhamen, but significantly larger, the golden death mask rested serenely on the linen wrapped mummy of the king.

This time it was Lydia's turn to cry.

"It's so beautiful!" she said softly.

"Can we move it?" Jason had asked quietly, not wanting to destroy the moment, but eager to proceed. He had been looking forward to this for months. He had come here with a job to do, and now he just wanted to get on with it.

Wearing special padded gloves, he and the rest of the team had slowly lifted the mask away from the mummy and had moved it onto the special padding they had placed on the floor to support the mask.

Jason's job wasn't too difficult and it hadn't taken long to complete. The tools developed for the job did minimal damage to the mummy wrappings, penetrating through them cleanly leaving only the smallest of holes.

In total, Jason had inserted five probes into the mummy's wrappings, gently pushing each one home until he had felt the slight click which indicated that the head of the probe had penetrated the mummy's wrappings and taken a small core sample from the mummified flesh and body of the Pharaoh. Then slowly he had withdrawn the probes and inserted them into the specially designed airtight protective containers.

The first sample had been taken from just behind the head of the mummy, the second from the muscles in the arm, and a third from the chest cavity. The other two came from the buttocks of the king, and from where Jason anticipated the calf muscle should be.

When Jason's work was complete, and Lydia had taken all the photographs she needed, the death mask and the outer coffin lids were replaced. It was ten o'clock in the evening, and without realizing it, except for taking a few necessary breaks on the surface to change respirator cylinders, quench their thirsts or visit the toilet, they had worked from 8am in the morning without stopping to eat.

### Chapter 5

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Even though Jason had completed his work, it was another two days before the supply plane had been able to come and pick him up from their airstrip.

As his last day on the site sped by he had realised just how much he was going to miss the team. He had finished packing early in the morning and spent the rest of the day helping below ground, erecting the air pumps and extraction fans which swept out the old poisonous stale air from the underground chambers and replaced it with fresh air from the desert above.

In the late afternoon, with special extraction fans continuing to cycle the air and remove the moisture their breathing created, they were at last allowed to enter the treasure chambers without their cumbersome respirators, enabling them to start the long and laborious yet exciting process of cataloguing the finds.

Although Jason would soon be speeding back to civilization and the land of hot baths, television and large, cold beers, the work of the others had just begun.

The burial chamber of the Pharaoh was only one of many rooms they had discovered in the underground tomb. In total there were ten rooms, six of them leading off from the main tunnel that led up to the last sealed door, behind which they had found the final resting place of the Pharaoh.

The other rooms in the tunnel were the treasure chambers of the Pharaoh, containing gold and silver objects too numerous to count, along with objects from the everyday life of the Pharaoh which would help him on his journey into the afterlife: piles of metal and ceramic objects which were probably once contained in wooden chests, but which now littered the floor untidily, their containers long since rotten and decayed.

In one of the rooms there was a full size chariot and a large jewel encrusted throne, surrounded by a collection of golden statues and hundreds of carved and decorated small clay models of servants, all ready to serve the Pharaoh and escort him on his journey.

Without doubt, there was at least four to five years of work to be done within the tomb of Rahipti-Ani, and Dr Simons had spent most of breakfast on Jason's last day telling him excitedly how much there was for mankind to learn from the finds they had made.

"It's a shame you're leaving Jason, my boy. This is where the fun really starts. Forget the gold and the diamonds, and the rest of the treasure, this is about knowledge. Learning. Understanding..."

The Dr was in his element. The years which had begun to creep up on him had fallen away and with the discovery of the Pharaoh and the realization of his life's dreams, he had suddenly found a new lease of life, jumping here, running there, issuing instructions left, right, and centre, his arthritis apparently no longer a problem! For the team it had been a joy to watch the transformation from old man to young archaeologist.

While the others had continued in their work, Jason had spent a few hours going from one treasure chamber to another, just looking at and examining some of the finds. The Colonel had numbered each of the treasure chambers, and just inside the doorway to the third room, amidst the dust on the floor, Jason had found a small golden ankh amulet.

"Ah, the Egyptian cross of life!" The Dr had seen him examining it and came up to him, saying, "Take it to Lydia and let her photograph it, then put it on a chain and hang it around your neck. When you touch it in the years to come, think of us and of your time spent here. Don't worry. It's a common object and it won't be missed, anyway, as part of the agreement for funding the expedition, the Egyptian government agreed that Dr Wainright is entitled to a tenth of everything we find here. I'm sure he won't mind. He's going to be a very, very rich man."

### Chapter 6

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That night, the team had held a 'farewell' dinner in Jason's honor, and Dr Simons had got so drunk that he fell asleep at the table, and they had had to carry him back to his tent. Afterwards the others had also soon drifted back to their own tents, exhausted from the day's work. But Jason couldn't sleep, and before midnight he had wandered over to the entrance of the tomb.

Ahmed, the guard at the entrance, nodded politely in greeting, his smile revealing a row of black spaces between his few remaining front teeth. Jason returned the smile and slipped past him, making his way slowly down the steep shaft into the cool tomb beneath the ground.

Entering the burial chamber he found himself alone with the old Pharaoh. It was the first time he had been alone with the once great king, and in the darkness lit only by his torchlight Jason suddenly felt very scared. A chill passed through his body and he shivered.

Special low-intensity lighting had been erected in all the rooms, and Jason had reached for the switch nearest the door. There was a soft whirring sound and the room came alive with light, the four statues in each of the corners immediately losing their threatening sinister power.

He approached the outer sarcophagus of the king, which had once again been placed back on the plinth where it belonged. Thoughtfully, he had stood looking down at the golden carved likeness of the Pharaoh, wondering what the king would have looked like in real life.

"He's remarkable, isn't he?" Lydia's voice had drifted softly across the room, and when Jason looked up, he found her standing in the doorway.

Tonight at his farewell dinner she had worn a dress, the first time he had seen her in anything other than khakis. And now, as she stood in the doorway, her long blonde hair falling across her shoulders, Jason had realised just how beautiful Lydia really was.

Lydia smiled. As he watched her move towards him, Jason noticed that she was carrying two large ancient Egyptian golden goblets and a bottle.

Her eyes twinkled in the soft light of the chamber. "Do you want some wine?" she said passing him a drink.

Jason had taken it from her, his hand brushing slightly against hers, a little twinge of sexual excitement sparking in his body.

They each took a sip from their golden goblets, the first people to drink from them in over three thousand years. As the warm red wine slipped easily down Jason's throat, he had moved towards Lydia. She had anticipated the move, reaching out and taking the goblet from his hand and placing both of them down beside the bottle of wine on the Pharaoh's sarcophagus.

Her lips were soft and cool, but her tongue was hot and wet, the taste of wine mingling with the smell of her perfume. They had kissed passionately, and when she pulled him gently to the floor, Jason followed.

.

.

In the warm glow of the soft chamber lighting they made love for the first time on a bed of gold, at the feet of a Pharaoh, surrounded by four golden warrior statues who looked on passively as two people found each other for the first time.

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### Chapter 7

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Afterwards, they sat with their backs resting against the raised golden plinth of the Pharaoh's sarcophagus. With his arm around Lydia's waist, Jason sipped wine from the goblet and studied the ceiling above.

When they had first entered the burial chamber, Jason had thought that the pattern of semi-precious stones embedded in the ceiling was a random affair, but now he realized that the sparkling jewels were mimicking the patterns of the stars in the night-sky above the desert outside!

Lydia followed Jason's gaze and saw him studying the ceiling.

"It's beautiful..." She whispered.

Jason nodded back. "Have you realised yet that they're not random? They are a map of the constellations...look..."

Jason reached forward and switched off the lighting. Lying with his back on the cold rubber mats on the chamber floor, he drew Lydia down beside him, and shone his torch upwards. Suddenly the ceiling came alive and the night sky twinkled and shone, the constellations of Orion, Monocerus, Canis Major and Canis Minor, Taurus and Lepus appearing magically before their eyes. It reminded Lydia of the Planetarium she had once visited at Madame Tussauds in London.

For a moment they had lain together in silence. Lydia studying the artificial night sky, and Jason studying Lydia. Slim, with long, curling, blonde hair which fell lightly across her shoulders, her smile lit up any room she entered, her gentle blue eyes capable of charming a smile out of even the hardest of men.

Lydia was twenty-five now, about four years older than Jason. The life and soul of any party she was invited to, she was also respected by all her colleagues for her knowledge and skill. She belonged to a new generation of archaeologists, and although she had only been working in Egypt for four years, she was well known by all the leading academics working in the country, and was a favorite and popular guest at dinner parties wherever she went.

"...See how the diamonds and the jewels are arranged in patterns to re-create the night sky above the desert outside." Jason flashed his torch across the ceiling, sweeping the torch beam across the constellations, depicted by the light reflected from the jewels embedded in the plaster. "Look, there's the hunter Orion, facing the red eye of Taurus...and look, there's his two hunting dogs following behind him...the big dog, called "Canis Major", and his little dog, "Canis Minor"...and look, see that big diamond glowing so brightly there in the constellation of Canis Major, well that's Sirius, the brightest star you can see in the night sky. And that one there...that's Lepus, the hare. Orion loved to hunt rabbits...and Lepus is lying dead at Orion's feet."

Lydia was impressed by Jason's knowledge of astronomy. She kissed him again, and then as they lay on the floor together in the darkness, Lydia whispered softly:

"It seems so incredible that the Egyptians went to so much trouble to build tombs like these, so that their Pharaohs could make it to the afterlife...but this time it might just have worked. Perhaps the old Pharaoh will have his dream come true after all. With the DNA samples you've taken, you'll be able to clone him, and Raphiti-Ani will get to live again, just as he hoped for!"

.

The rhythmic drone of the engines suddenly changed pitch, and Jason was ripped abruptly from his memories, turning to look out the window just in time to catch sight of the pyramids of Giza, as the supply plane started to descend for landing at Cairo airport. Yes, Jason remembered the words of Lydia again, 'perhaps the old Pharaoh will have his dream come true after all!'

As the tires of the plane bounced for the first time on the roasting tarmac, Jason prayed silently that somehow Wainright would live long enough to see the Pharaoh king be born. Time was of the essence. And there was still so much to do.

### Part Two

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### Chapter 8

The Senior Common Room

Christ Church College

Oxford University, England

.

"I'm sure you've all heard the rumors by now, so I'd like you all to raise your glasses and welcome Jason Dyke back from his expedition to Egypt!"

Professor Wainright raised his glass in salute to Jason, and the Dean of Christ Church joined in and shouted ' _Hear, hear_!" loudly above all the other voices in the Senior Common Room.

They had eaten at High Table in the great hall of Christ Church College and as was the usual custom, had just retired for Port and cigars.

Jason had missed Oxford, especially his old student life.

" _Christ Church_ " thought Jason, " was still the best college in the world", and he was immensely proud to be a ' _member of the House_ '.

He had been back a week now, and already life had begun to return to normal. His flat in the Botley road was 'home' once again, and it was beginning to seem like he had never been away and that it had all been a dream.

Yet, in spite of being glad to be back at home, he also missed his time in Egypt. More than a few times he had caught himself gently stroking the Ankh hanging round his neck, drifting off and daydreaming about treasures in some far off land, about a woman with blonde hair, beautiful eyes and salty lips, and about a Pharaoh waiting to be reborn.

.

"Jason..." , the Dean of the College was talking to him, and Jason shook himself back to reality once again. "I hear that you have taken part in one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time? I'm really looking forward to hearing more, but the old buzzard won't really tell us anything!" the Dean laughed haughtily, waiving his glass of Port towards Dr Wainright.

"I'm afraid I really can't say any more sir. But I hope I will have made the college proud of me...and of the work Dr Wainright is doing. He is a genius, sir."

"So what exactly is it that Dr Wainright is working on just now, down in that new fangled lab of his?"

"Be patient Alex! And stop giving the boy such a hard time...you know he's not allowed to tell you anything!" Dr Wainright added, coming to Jason's rescue from across the room. He had seen Jason being collared by the Dean, and had made his way as quickly as he could through the other college Dons to be by Jason's side.

"Mathew..." the Dean and all the Dons were on first name terms with each other. " I think in the light of the promise this young man is showing, the college would be willing to offer him a fellowship. What do you think? Do think he's got it in him to do a DPhil?" He said jokingly.

"Oh, I think so..." The Professor replied, slapping Jason lightly on the back.

A smile burst upon Jason's face. To be offered a fellowship by the Dean himself was a great honor.

"Jason," the Professor continued. "As I've already told you, you have a lot of potential and it's high time you pursued your doctorate. You need to get those letters after your name lad. And soon. If you want me to be your Professor, we can't wait too long. You know I haven't got as long as I would like..."

"Nonsense Mathew, you're going to be with us for quite a long time yet. I know it!" and with the uncomfortable reference to the cancer slowly killing the professor, the Dean decided to 'circulate' and see 'how the _other old buggers_ were doing!'.

Picking up another two glasses of Port, Professor Wainright motioned towards an adjoining room and Jason followed behind him as they went in search of a little more privacy. The other room was empty, in spite of the roaring log fire in the stone fireplace. They sat down in the leather couches around the fire, and for a second Wainright said nothing, just swirling the Port around in the glass and puffing on his cigar. He coughed lightly.

"Nasty habit...don't know why I bother."

Jason smiled. The professor said that every time the cigar smoke made him cough. He had been saying it for years.

The old Professor didn't look bad for his age. About six foot tall, although he wasn't fat, it would be fair to say that over the years he had acquired a little extra padding around the waist. He still had a complete head of hair, which had turned a rather charming silver. In stark contrast, his eyebrows had almost magically, remained completely black. Soft blue eyes and well worn laughter lines around his eyes gave the effect of a kind, thoughtful man who had seen a lot of life, but who had enjoyed it all.

"Jason, you've done a wonderful job! The news from the lab was good today. All your samples from the Pharaoh's mummy have offered up prime DNA material. I want to start the process tomorrow, and I want you to follow very closely everything I do. This is as much your baby as mine. I want your name on the White Paper right up there beside mine."

"How long do you think?"

"For what? Until we have a live and kicking little Pharaoh?" the Professor sipped his Port and puffed heavily on his cigar. "Well, we already have a couple of potential host mothers lined up, and a number of eggs waiting to be fertilized. If everything goes well, I would guess we could have a couple of little bouncing blighters within a year. Fourteen months at the latest. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to discuss with you. Fact is Jason..." The Professor coughed, and leaned forward in the red leather chair towards him. "Fact is, that if you want to go for the DPhil., you can't use this for your work. You have to come up with something of your own, something new and original. The DPhil. is only awarded for something that hasn't been done before..."

"I know...and that's partly why I've never done the DPhil. yet. I can't think of anything new and original to do!" Jason admitted, slightly embarrassed.

Both of them sat in silence staring blankly into the flames. Then the Professor spoke, his voice a little quieter than before.

"While you've been away we've refined the process. We've not published anything on it yet, and we probably won't. At least, not yet. It's too sensitive. Too...well, shall we simply say that we can do more now than we ever dreamed of a few years ago. If you come to the lab on Sunday afternoon I'll go over it all with you. Then I want you to think about everything we can do... _or could do_ ...put all of the pieces of the jigsaw together and then come up with a NEW idea...your own idea. I know you can do it my boy. I know you can..."

.

\---------------------

.

It had been a week since Lydia had heard from Jason. The last time they spoke Jason had told her excitedly of the fellowship and funding he had received from his college at Oxford, and she had felt a tremendous sense of pride towards him. It was a bit worrying. Although there had always been a steady stream of admirers, she hadn't really fallen for many men in her life.

Since their night of passion in the Pharaoh's burial chamber she had thought a lot about him, especially in the quieter moments when she was sitting alone in the tomb beneath the ground, cataloguing the dead king's immense treasure.

She had only ever known five lovers, and the encounter with Jason had been the most erotic and exciting she'd had so far. And after several days thinking about it, she had made a decision that she wanted more. She had to see Jason again.

Not that it had been hard to persuade him to see her again. It had been a simple phone conversation.

"Listen, I'm coming to Paris next weekend to deliver some artifacts to a Professor there who's going to do some research for us, and to do some research in the Louvre. I would love to see you again... Do you fancy meeting up for a drink and a chat in Paris?" she had asked nervously.

"Hmm..." he had toyed with her. "Maybe...but only if you promise to throw in a night in a romantic Parisian hotel!"

He drove a hard bargain.

Jason had aroused a sleeping warrior in her, and sexually she couldn't wait to be with him again. She couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was about him that had captured her mind so completely, but it was probably something to do with his 'little-lost-boy' look, combined with a fantastic smile and a pair of wonderful green eyes.

At five foot ten, Jason was just over three inches taller than she was. Although Jason looked quite thin, he was surprisingly strong. Far from the stereo-typical image of a scientific geek, Jason took pride in his appearance, always dressing in the latest trendy clothes.

When she closed her eyes, she could quickly recall his jet black hair, the dimple in the centre of his chiseled chin, and his broad shoulders. And those eyes...

She couldn't wait to see him again.

.

The next week flew by, and when they met again on the Friday night at the Charles de Gaulles airport just outside Paris, she flew into his arms and smothered him with hugs and kisses. Jason held her tightly, smelling her perfume and capturing the sensation of her skin against his as he kissed her neck.

The taxi took an hour to get them to their hotel in the centre of the city, and they talked excitedly, kissing and cuddling in the back of the cab like two excited teenagers.

Jason was eager to hear news of the dig, and listened glassy eyed as Lydia told of the latest finds and treasures they had uncovered in the tomb of the Pharaoh. As she told him the latest news about the impending visit of the Egyptian President to the tomb in two weeks time, Jason found himself completely caught up in the pictures she was building for him.

For a moment he wished he could be back there with her, working together on uncovering the secrets of the past, but then he remembered the inspiring words of Dr Wainright the week before, and he realised just how exciting his own opportunity was.

"So all you have to do is find and think of a topic that no one else has ever thought of, and Wainright and the college will support you in your research, so that you can get your doctorate?" Lydia made it sound simple.

"Yes, just like that...just come up with a brand new idea...no problem at all...I'll probably do it before lunch tomorrow...in fact, why not now on the way to the hotel?"

"Don't be so sarcastic...It doesn't suit you. Seriously though, what about your work on cloning the Pharaoh? How's that coming along?" Lydia asked, realizing she had spent ages talking about herself and her work, and not asking anything about his.

"It's all coming along very nicely, thanks. The genetic samples I brought back are all great, and we started the process immediately. Things are looking good." Jason replied.

"So how long will it be before the old Pharaoh sits on his throne again?"

"I don't know about thrones, but if things carry on the way they are going, and there are no last minute problems, we'll probably have a few little Pharaohs sitting on 'potties' by the end of next year. The first mother will be given a fully fertilized egg next week, and two others are being prepared for the week after. It's all go!"

"So, when you start studying does that mean you stop working at the institute on the Pharaoh project?"

"No. I'll still be working on the project part-time while I do my doctorate. It'll help me earn some extra cash from the institute. I've got quite used to earning money, and I don't know if I could just be a poor student again." Jason replied.

The taxi pulled up outside their hotel in the _Rue de Jardin_. Jason had chosen it because it was close to the centre of town, just a few minutes' walk away from the Louvre.

As it turned out, as far as Saturday was concerned the hotel may as well have been on the outskirts of Paris. They never left the hotel room the whole day. Jason had once seen the film ' _Last tango in Paris_ ', and since then he had always wanted to spend a weekend locked away in some Parisian hotel with a gorgeous woman making love for hours on end. Now his dream had come true.

.

\---------------------

.

On the Sunday morning, guilt overcame them both and they decided that while they were in Paris they had to see something of the city. It would be a sin not to. So after a long leisurely breakfast they left the hotel and ventured out into the sunlight, walking aimlessly hand in hand along the banks of the Seine, passing the stalls of artists and booksellers, and having lunch in a little café in the shadow of the cathedral of Notre Dame.

Afterwards they strolled around the streets and came across an English lady waving an umbrella in the air and being followed by about twenty English and Japanese people on a guided tour. Tagging along behind the group, they eavesdropped on the guide, who proved to be incredibly knowledgeable about the city and very entertaining with it. Like little children following the Pied Piper of Hamlin _,_ they followed her through the streets of Paris, until they found themselves inside a large church with the most incredible set of stained glass windows they had ever seen.

"I'll meet you all outside in twenty minutes" the guide shouted to her group of tourists, " and remember...no flash photography!"

"Wow..."said Lydia, walking round the church with her head straining backwards so that she could see the tops of the tall windows. "It's beautiful!"

They had entered through a small dark chapel on the ground floor and climbed a set of curving stairs that wound its way up the inside of a narrow tower, opening up into a larger chapel above which was completely surrounded by enormous, beautifully colored stained glass windows, each about forty five feet tall.

The light from the outside world flooded through the windows and exploded into a myriad of bright colors, casting beautiful sets of colored shadows onto the floor. It was fantastic. Neither Lydia or Jason had seen anything like it before.

When the rest of the tour party moved on, Jason caught Lydia's arm and motioned her to a seat in the corner of the chapel so that they could sit for a while longer and absorb the beauty of the place.

"Here", said Lydia leaning across to one of the empty chairs beside her, where someone had left a tourist leaflet giving information on the church.

They looked at it together, discovering that they were in the church of Sainte Chapelle. The leaflet explained about its history and described the stained glass windows, outlining what the pictures in each of them represented.

Bored with reading, Lydia handed the leaflet to Jason and started to wander around the chapel again.

When she returned five minutes later, Jason was looking directly at her, an excited look on his face. But Lydia also recognised another emotion, one that surprised her.

She saw fear in his eyes.

"What's the matter. Are you okay?" she asked concerned.

"Lydia, I've just had an idea. For my doctor's DPhil thesis..."

"So why are you shaking? You should be happy!" She asked, reaching out to touch his arm reassuringly and sitting down beside him.

"I've just had an idea...and if I'm right and it works, not only will I get my doctorate, but the world will never be the same again!"

.

### Chapter 9

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"What do you mean?" Lydia asked, reaching out to take his other hand. His pupils were tiny pinpricks in the centre of his eyes and beads of cold sweat had appeared on his forehead.

"Read this, the last paragraph..." he said, handing the tourist leaflet about the Sainte Chapelle back to Lydia.

She took the pamphlet and read the words through slowly. It described how long ago in the thirteenth century the French church had become aware of the existence of the Crown of Thorns, the wreath of thorns that Jesus Christ had worn on his head during his crucifixion _._ Sometime during the Middle Ages the French Catholic Church had raised an enormous sum of money, the equivalent of billions of euros nowadays, and had bought the Crown and built the Sainte Chapelle to house it in. Not grasping the significance of the words, she looked up at Jason questioningly.

"So... _I don't get it_?."

"Last week I met with the Professor and he told me about the progress they have made in the past few months, developing and further refining the cloning process," Jason started to explain.

"Although the Professor didn't say so explicitly, I believe that by combining his latest work with some recent discoveries made by one of his colleagues in Sweden, it may be possible to take a sample of ancient blood residue, and treat it with a variety of newly developed genetic processes, so that we can regenerate fresh genetic samples containing the _original_ genetic coding of the blood's owner...effectively regenerating the original blood, and from that genetic material we could clone the person the blood came from...even if that person died thousands of years ago!"

Jason studied Lydia's face to see if she had grasped the natural conclusion of what he was saying. She hadn't.

"But where does that take us...? What's the connection?" she asked, angry and frustrated with herself that she couldn't see what he was getting at.

"Sorry, maybe I'm going too fast..." he said, leaning forward and clasping his hands over hers.

"Well, first of all, essentially my idea is that by combining the two sets of work from Sweden and Oxford, I may be able to develop an entirely new process to create a clone from ancient blood samples. No one else has done that before. That would be original work which could get me my DPhil. at Oxford!" He paused to take a breath.

"...but, okay, _and this is the thing,_ this whole church was built in the middle ages to house the Crown of Thorns. The Crown of Thorns was a crown made out of thorn bushes that was stuck on Jesus Christ's head by those mocking him when he was crucified."

"Think of it! In all the pictures you see of Christ on the Cross, he's bleeding from his head. Now just imagine for one moment that the thorns of the Crown penetrated his skin and drew actual blood, which they almost certainly did, I mean, that would be unavoidable, and imagine just for a moment that the Crown of Thorns that the Sainte Chapelle church had bought was the _REAL_ one, I mean the _ACTUAL_ one that had been on Christ's head at his crucifixion! Well, if I could get my hands on it, then I may still be able to find some traces of Christ's own blood on the thorns...and with that..." Jason paused, looking up at the stained glass pictures above and looking directly at a picture of Christ on the Cross.

"...and with that I could clone Jesus Christ himself! Don't you see? I could help bring Jesus Christ back...the Second Coming of Jesus Christ _...the return of your Messiah!"_

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### Chapter 10

"So where is it now?" Jason asked nervously, holding Lydia's hand as he questioned the tourist guide with the umbrella.

It was lucky that they had found her again. The lady behind the information desk at the entrance to the chapel hadn't been able to speak much English, and they had raced out into the street trying to find and catch up with the tour they'd been following. Hopefully the guide would know something about the Crown of Thorns.

They found the group a few blocks away, and impatiently Jason had listened to the tour guide drone on about the French revolution and the Louvre museum, before she had let the group take a thirty-minute tea break at a café overlooking the river Seine.

"I've never seen it personally," she said, taking off a pair of brown horn-rimmed glasses and fluttering her eyelashes at the young man standing before her, "but I'm reliably informed that the Crown of Thorns is now kept in the vaults of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. It's brought out once a year and paraded around the cathedral and the city. Quite a spectacle, or so I'm told...but you just missed it...it was last month. You'll have to wait another year to see it, I'm afraid."

"Is it actually the _real_ one?"

"I should hope so young man. The French paid a fortune to buy it. The modern equivalent of billions of euros. If it's not the real thing, then it would be the biggest fraud in history!" she smiled back, laughing slightly.

Jason's heart was pounding. He had to think. Could he really clone Jesus Christ? Would the artifact in Notre Dame be the real Crown of Thorns or just some elaborate hoax? What would be the possibility that there could actually still be minute traces of blood residue on the thorns? How could he get hold of it for examination and to take a sample from it? Was it really in storage in the Cathedral of Notre Dame?

He thrust a twenty Euro note into the lady's hand and thanked her profusely.

"Thanks. You've been most helpful!"

He turned to Lydia nodding towards the nearest Metro station.

"Let's go back to the hotel. I need to think."

.

When they got back to their hotel room Jason's heart was still pounding. He had hardly said a word to Lydia on the Metro ride back, but she could see that he needed time to think in peace.

After a quick shower and a cup of tea Jason started to relax a little. He lay on the bed beside Lydia. For a while neither of them spoke, then Lydia broke the silence.

"Jason, I don't understand why you want to clone Jesus Christ. You're Jewish! Jews don't believe in Christ!"

"True. I am Jewish. My mother came from a good Jewish family in England, but my dad was a Christian, Church of England actually. Although he pretty much didn't bother about the church, or respect anything it stood for. I suppose you could say he was an agnostic, or just very disillusioned. I was brought up by mum to be a good little Jewish boy, and she forced me to go to the Synagogue twice a week. But when she left my dad, I never went back, and at school I got a lot of Christian religious education. Anyway, the thing is, I've grown up with both sides of the argument. Christians believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, and blame the Jews for killing him..."

"...But the Jews just think he was another prophet. We don't doubt that he existed, but we don't believe he was the Messiah. But think what an opportunity this would be to end all the thousands of years of arguing. We could clone him, bring him back, and then see, once and for all, if he is the Messiah or not!..."

"...And if he was? Just imagine it!!! After two thousand years of persecution, war and hatred, the Jews and the Christians will come together, and worship the same Messiah! It'll be the dawning of a new age..."

"And if you're wrong?" Lydia asked softly.

"Lydia, I mean,... even if I'm wrong and it's not possible, just having the _thought_ that it might be possible is dangerous enough in its own right. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, part of the Holy Trinity... _God_ the Father, _God_ the Son and _God_ the Holy Spirit. To them, Jesus Christ is not just the Son of God...in some ways, He _is_ God..."

"...Imagine that it got out that we were working on a project to clone Jesus Christ, to bring back the Messiah? There would be world-wide international outcry..."

"... Of course, you'd get some religious groups who would be totally against it, but others would look forward to and encourage it ...Just imagine, whole new religious sects would be created awaiting the appearance of the cloned Christ! And that's not to mention what the various Christian superpowers around the world would do..."

"...Think about it...they clone Jesus Christ, bring him up in their country, make him part of 'their team', the leader of their country or the leader of their army. Imagine fighting a war with Jesus Christ on your side? _You couldn't lose_! You'd be invincible..."

Jason was lying with his back on the bed, his hands behind his head, speaking freely as a myriad of thoughts flooded his mind. Lydia propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at him, listening as he spoke. Both were very calm, but what he was saying stirred fear in them both.

"But if you did have Jesus Christ on your side...as a clone...you couldn't brain wash him into doing what you wanted...he'd be the ' _Son of God'_ for goodness sake. _He wouldn't take sides!_ He wouldn't lead you into battle or help kill people _._ He'd bring peace, not war...and he'd do whatever was best for humanity!" Lydia tried to argue.

"Come on, _you and I_ might see that, rational human beings who might believe in God, but try explaining that to a military General ...he'd just see a Christ clone as a weapon of war! Think about the Crusades in the Middle Ages, about most of the wars throughout history. Soldiers always marched into battle carrying religious relics at the head of their army, or praying that God would help kill their enemies. It didn't matter that the other side was doing exactly the same. Everyone wanted God on _their_ side...it'll be the same again...honestly. I know how _they_ think! My dad was in the army, and I spent four years living on a military base."

".. _but what if it's not possible to make a clone...I mean, I know you think you might be able to, but what if it's not possible...It'll be okay then won't it_?" Lydia asked again, almost innocently.

"No! _That's the whole point!_ It almost doesn't matter whether it's possible or not. As soon as any other geneticists or government officials hear about the idea, they'll all react the same way. They'll think to themselves -' _wow, I wonder if it is possible? With the most recent advances in genetics either it's already possible now, or it will definitely become possible in the near future_ ...' - The geneticists will do their best to get hold of the Crown of Thorns to find out if there's any blood residue on it or not, and if they find any, then they'll keep the blood samples until _that_ point in the future...either today or tomorrow, in ten, twenty or fifty years...when it _will_ be possible to make a clone using the genetic material that can be extracted from it ..."

"...I'll bet you a million euros that if the idea ever got out, the Americans, the British ...we'd all be sending in secret agents trying to steal the Crown from the French...and if I were the French...I'd bloody well hide the Crown somewhere good, so that no one will ever find it again...but only after first letting their own scientists go to town on it and start working on a cloning program for themselves!"

They were silent now, thoughts racing through both their heads. Then Jason spoke again.

" _So what do I do_? Maybe I'm the only person to have ever thought about this...but if I do nothing now, it's surely just a matter of time before someone else has the same idea. It might not be the Crown of Thorns...maybe there could be another artifact in the world that also has Jesus Christ's blood on it, and once my discovery is public, other people will be able to do what I can ..."

" Which means that now I've had the idea, even if I _am_ Jewish, that means I _have_ to do something about it...In fact, maybe even more so _because_ I am Jewish. I have to develop the technology and do it first, before anyone else does! And we have to get hold of the Crown of Thorns before anyone else has a chance to take samples of any blood residue that Jesus Christ may have spilt on it when he was crucified!"

They lay on the bed in the darkness, the light from the world outside dimming fast now as the evening drew on and the sun went down.

They both knew that their lives had changed course that afternoon. Something had happened that they could not walk away from.

Instinctively Jason knew that his destiny had been laid before him.

### Chapter 11

Professor Wainright stared at him with a look of total astonishment on his face. For the first time since Jason had met him, the Old Prof. was actually speechless.

For a good few minutes the Professor said nothing. He raised himself carefully out of his seat beside one of the benches in the laboratory and walked slowly towards the window. He looked down into the public park at the back of the _I.G.E.G.G.M_. laboratory beside the Pitt Rivers museum in the Parks Road in Oxford. It was a Monday afternoon and some children were playing on the swings, and a young father was in the field on the opposite side of the river flying a kite with his small son. Without turning the Professor spoke slowly and sternly.

"You realise that you can't tell anyone about this idea, and I mean no one. For Pete's sake Jason, I sent you away to get some air, to think of an idea for a PhD project. I didn't expect you to come back with a bloody revelation and a plan to change the world!"

At first Jason thought the Professor was angry, and he was beginning to wonder if the Professor was going to turn him down. If he did, it wouldn't be for technical reasons. Since returning to Oxford from Paris two weeks before, he had contacted the Professor's colleagues in the University of Stockholm, and had integrated their recent findings into the new work the Professor had completed in the past few months. He had worked all day and late into the night for ten days straight, before concluding that his idea was sound. In those ten days he had outlined a new genetic process which combined the Stockholm developments with those from Oxford, and all his calculations seemed to confirm his ideas. It _should_ work.

Then through contacts in the Department of Theology he had confirmed that the Crown of Thorns was indeed still in the vaults of Notre Dame. Even the most respected theologians in Oxford believed that there was every possibility that 'it' was real.

The only problem that remained now was how they were going to get hold of it. That had been a stumbling block for the last few days, but as fate sometimes has a habit of doing, the solution was thrown in front of Jason's face, materializing as if from nowhere.

In yesterday's copy of the "ISIS" university magazine, there had been a photograph of a French Priest called Cardinal Laurentin, with the caption underneath running " _Christ Church welcomes back a former student_! **".** In two weeks time there was going to be the _Conference of the World Religions_ taking place at Christ Church College, and religious leaders from all over the world would be attending. Excitedly, Jason went on to read that Cardinal Laurentin, now one of the top Catholic priests in France and responsible for the catholic church in Paris, was a former student at Christ Church and would be attending the conference in two weeks time. Which immediately gave Jason an excellent idea, but while Jason was still rehearsing the next part of his little speech in his mind for the nth time that day, the Professor turned round and looked at Jason with a massive smile on his face.

"Genius. Genius my boy. Nothing short of pure Genius." The professor moved slowly towards him, his hand outstretched. "Let me shake your hand, young man. It's the best idea I've heard in years..." the Professor paused and Jason's heart almost stopped. "..but one which will probably bloody work! Incredible! And the process you outlined is first class stuff...fantastic....we have to patent it immediately...or rather... _you_ should patent it immediately. The new process is your idea lad, and it could just make you a fortune."

The Professor was thrilled and pleased. He had always known that Jason had the potential for great things and now he had proved it. Only one month into his DPhil. Jason had come up with a new genetic process that no one had ever thought of before. True, given the new pieces of the jigsaw puzzle someone else would have thought about it in the next year or two, but the fact was that Jason had done it. All by himself. It was maybe even Nobel prize winning stuff.

And the idea of cloning Jesus Christ himself was a stroke of genius.

"Incredible..." The Professor shook his head again, moving towards the door and checking that it was securely locked. "Have you told anyone else?" he asked returning to his chair.

"Just Lydia..." Jason had told Dr Wainright all about Lydia before he went to Paris, and anyway, the Professor had already heard all about the romantic liaison between the two of them from his good friend and partner Dr Simons. He was happy for the boy. It was time that he found someone nice.

"Ok...we can trust her. Fact is though lad, this idea of yours is dynamite. We must not tell anyone what we are about to do..."the Professor raised his hand to prevent Jason from speaking. "..and yes...before you say anything, we're going to go for this in a big way...with the full resources of the _I.G.E.G.G.M_. You've sold me. But no one must know about it! If anyone finds out what we're about to do, there will be hell to pay..."

"I know Sir, I've thought of nothing else for the past two weeks...I know exactly what could happen....We have to do it ourselves and make sure the clone, if we are successful in creating one, will be brought up in a free democratic society, free from government influence. Free from the indoctrination of the Christian Church, or the Jewish faith. Free to be whoever he really is!"

"You know I used to be a Catholic when I was younger? Still am, I suppose. I tried my best to be good for years. Never thought that I'd be instrumental in the Second Coming though..." The professor's voice tailed off as he thought for a moment. "Okay, first things first, have you thought how we might get hold of the Crown?"

"Ahh...well, you see, I have an idea...but I need your help..." Jason started out on his little speech.

"Anything lad, we're in this together...it's your baby, but I'm your backroom partner, if you'll let me help you?" the Professor waived his hand in front of his face, feigning subservience.

"Thanks. I'll need your guidance. You're the expert. Anyway, you're on great terms with the Dean of Christ Church...and next week Cardinal Laurentin, one of the highest ranking Catholics in France is coming to Christ Church for the Conference on World Religions. The Crown of Thorns is stored in the vaults of Notre Dame, which is under the direct auspices of the Cardinal. Perhaps you could persuade the Dean to introduce you to him...and then you could volunteer to co-ordinate a scientific authentication of the Crown of Thorns by all the leading labs in Oxford, doing lots of tests on its age ...the type of thorns, where they originally came from etc...and then volunteer to write a paper bolstering the importance of the relic, and emphasizing the role that Notre Dame has played in its preservation. Heap on the scientific flattery etc."

"Of course, we don't tell them why we _really_ want it,...and as soon as we get it over here, we analyze it for blood samples and take any genetic material we can for scientific preservation...and later cloning!"

"So when does he arrive, this Cardinal of yours?" The Professor smiled and clasped his hands together in anticipation. "I'd better brush up on my French."

.

### Chapter 12

Senior Common Room

Christ Church College,

Oxford

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Professor Wainright was looking forward to meeting the Cardinal.

He felt quite sure that the Cardinal would agree to lending them the Crown of Thorns for a few months. In fact, he was very sure.

When Jason had shown him the photograph of the Cardinal from the ISIS newspaper, his face had been very familiar. For the rest of the day it had troubled him. And then he had remembered.

Cardinal Laurentin had been a freshman when Wainright had first come to Oxford as a Don, and Wainright had been his tutor for two semesters. It had been twenty years ago, but once he had remembered, it all came back.

The whole thing.

Yes, Wainright felt sure the Cardinal would agree...to anything he asked.

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On the evening of the first day of the conference the Dean of Christ Church held an ecumenical mass in the Cathedral for those who wanted to attend, followed by a welcome dinner in the Great Hall for all the attendees.

It was a grand affair. _Christ Church_ always excelled at such things, and tonight the College was honored by the presence of King Harry of Great Britain himself, his visit being only the second time the King had attended the college since commencing his reign after the death of his brother to the _SARs 2_ virus.

When Wainright had called the Dean and requested to meet the Cardinal, his old friend had immediately agreed to set it up. He'd told the Dean of his plan to authenticate the Crown,... naturally missing out any details about his ulterior motive..., and the Dean had been excited about the whole thing. It was, as he described it ' _a jolly good idea_!'.

"Glad to help, old boy. Unfortunately the dinner in Hall is full, but I can invite you to the Senior Common Room afterwards for Port and Cigars? I'll see you at 8.30pm then?"

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The Professor had just lit up his cigar and emptied his second glass of Port, when he spotted the Dean making his way through the throng towards him.

"...and this, _my dear Cardinal_ , is Professor Wainright, one of the leading biologists and geneticists in the world. A Nobel prize winner no less!..." The Dean announced, having successfully steered the Cardinal by the arm around the Senior Common Room and introducing him to several colleagues en-route before finally ending up at the Professor.

"It is an honor, Professor. I have read of your work and know of your Nobel award. It was richly deserved for your services to humanity!" the Cardinal bowed his head lightly as a mark of respect, offering his hand loosely to the Professor.

"Welcome back to the House, Cardinal Laurentin. I hope it brings back some pleasant memories for you." It was only for a second, but as the Cardinal looked at the Professor, Professor Wainright saw a momentary flicker of recognition in the Cardinal's eyes, before he quickly hid it away. The Cardinal had obviously remembered him, but clearly wasn't going to admit it.

"Oh yes...it is very pleasant to walk around the college once more. It seems so long ago...but the memories are so strong..."

"Oh, Rabbi Ben-Israel!..., _excuse me please Gentlemen_..." said the Dean, waiving at someone and politely making an exit.

Wainright immediately took over from the Dean, touching the Cardinal's elbow lightly and guiding him to a corner of the room.

"I'm glad the Dean has introduced us, Cardinal Laurentin...I would like to discuss something with you that could be of particular interest to the Catholic Church..."

As they sat down in the deep leather armchairs in a corner out of earshot of the other guests, the Professor swept two fresh glasses of Port from the tray of a passing waiter and offered one to the Cardinal.

"...You see, one of my graduate students is about to start his DPhil under my supervision, and he has suggested that he could write his dissertation on the modern application of biological, genetic and physical sciences to the verification of ancient religious relics. He was in Paris a few weeks ago and by chance he learned about the _Crowns of Thorns_ during a tour of the city. From the research he has done, it would appear that the Crown is currently under safekeeping in the vaults of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. He has discussed his proposal with the university...well, myself really...and he has suggested that he would very much like to base his DPhil work on the Crown of Thorns." The Professor stopped to take a sip of Port, smiling at the Cardinal as he did so. The Cardinal had cocked his head to one side, listening attentively to the Professor's proposal.

"Do continue Professor..."

"Thank you...you see, I think this is a very fortuitous meeting, perhaps more than coincidental...but since I heard you would be coming I have given the project a lot of thought and I am very excited about the proposal. Imagine...just think what a stir it would cause in the world if we could prove, well... if we could scientifically authenticate the Crown of Thorns as an object that comes from the time of Christ, and which was present in Jerusalem at the time of Christ's death...The renewed interest in the Church would be huge! It would cause a reawakening in Catholicism....a resurgence of the Faith...It's a fantastic opportunity to put the French Catholic Church right at the forefront of every believer's mind...Notre Dame would become the most popular church in the world!...Can you see it?" the Professor sounded very convincing.

"Indeed I can, my Professor, but you see, it would be extremely unusual for the Crown of Thorns to leave France. Extremely unusual. It would need direct authorization from myself to achieve it..."

"Exactly...and that's why I think it is perhaps even divine intervention that we are meeting by chance here tonight...I think it's ordained to happen..." The Professor took another sip of Port. "I'm a catholic too, and if you can help it happen for me, this would be the most exciting piece of research I will have been involved in for years. And of course, can you imagine how pleased the Pope will be once it is announced to the world? I'm sure that it will bring you a lot of credit!"

"I am sorry, Professor, but there is also a risk to your proposal. What if you were to discover that it was not authentic?"

The Professor had thought of that one in advance. It was crucial that the Crown of Thorns should be verified as being authentic. If blood was to be found on the thorns, they had to be sure that there was a genuine chance of it being Christ's blood before they could proceed with any further research. If carbon-dating, or comparing pollen samples, or any of a myriad of other tests showed that it wasn't old enough, or that it didn't come from the correct geographic area, then it wouldn't be worthwhile proceeding. On the other hand...if the tests came back positive...

"Let's not focus on that, but just in case, I would suggest that you simply do not tell anyone of the research before the results are known. For that reason I would like to suggest that we borrow the Crown from Notre Dame in relative secrecy, and only announce the findings IF they show it to be real.."

"Which they will..." the Cardinal nodded.

"Which it will..." the Professor smiled in agreement.

It was a good suggestion. In fact a very good one. It would suit everyone concerned if they kept the whole project as quiet as possible. The Professor didn't want to draw any attention to the presence of the Crown in his laboratory in Oxford, just in case another geneticist somewhere else put two and two together and guessed what they were up to.

"It is a sensible suggestion" The Cardinal nodded... "but I'm afraid I still can't agree to it. Excellent idea that it is. You would first need to try harder to persuade me of the benefits of this research to the Church..."

For a moment they both sat in silence, each thinking their own thoughts.

The Professor was hesitant to commit himself, but the stakes were so high that failure was not acceptable.

The Cardinal had to be made to agree.

"My _dear_ Cardinal, I hear from my learned colleagues in Oxford that you are _well_ liked in the Church. One even suggested that you would be looked upon with favour for succession to...well, should we say that if Pope James was to die, you would be a popular choice to replace him. It's no great secret that his health has not been too good recently. Would such positive publicity from your diocese not help you, I wonder, in the choice of a successor, should we verify the authenticity of the Crown?"

"Indeed it would, but..." The Cardinal tried to reply but was cut short by the Professor, who looked briefly around him and then leaned forward in his chair, committing himself completely.

"You have come a long way _Pierre_ ... a long way since you were a student in my tutorial class at the college." The Professor saw a flicker of panic in the Cardinal's eyes as he realised he had been recognised by the Professor,...in spite of his flowing robes and his much rounder physique and having put on a lot of weight since his student days. The Professor continued. "I am an old man now Pierre, and I am proud of the achievements of my students. I am happy that you have successfully put the scandal of your youth behind you now, and that none of your colleagues would seem to know of the work you and your partner David performed for the gay rights movement in the nineties. I'm glad, because I would be very sad if the misdemeanors of your youth...should they be known nowadays...were to so negatively affect your hopes and chances of becoming the next Pope...By the way, how is David nowadays?" the Professor asked innocently. The implication was clear.

It was a threat. A threat, loud and clear.

The Cardinal said nothing, the smile temporarily wiped from his face.

"Would you like another glass of Port, Cardinal Laurentin?" The Professor asked.

"No thank you, Professor..."He replied, pausing for a few minutes longer before continuing. "With regard to the matter we were discussing a moment ago...It has just occurred to me, that perhaps there would be a great deal of benefit to the Church if I were to authorise your suggested research on the authenticity of the Crown of Thorns. It is a brilliant suggestion Professor. I'll have my assistant call you tomorrow to discuss the details....now if you will excuse me, I'm afraid I shall have to leave now. I feel very tired and I still have rather a lot of paperwork to catch up on this evening..."

The Cardinal got up to go, not offering to shake the Professor's hand. After a few steps towards the nearest door, he turned back towards the Professor.

"About that other matter..." he said quietly.

"And what matter was that? I seem to have forgotten the conversation. It seems that I too must be tired." The Professor replied.

For a moment, the Cardinal looked at the old Professor, as if he was about to say something more, but then with a loud swish of his robe, he turned and left.

Professor Wainright swiped another Port from a passing tray, and sat back down in his chair. Smiling.

### Chapter 13

There was a lot to be organized. The Professor and Jason met the next day and started to plan the activity that would unroll before them. It was important to establish the age and origin of the Crown as soon as possible, to ensure they would not be wasting their time in conducting further genetic research, should they be successful in finding any blood residue on the thorns. To authenticate the Crown, they would need to co-ordinate various activities and pieces of analysis with the Biology, Physics and Chemistry departments, in each case requesting the utmost security and secrecy.

.

There was a great deal of work to be done, and since it was unlikely that they would have the relic for an indefinite period of time, they would have to work fast and furiously. Professor Wainright and Jason determined that in the creation of a potential clone, only a few select people should be involved and each of them had to be completely trustworthy. In the end the choice easily came down to two people, each of whom had been working for the Professor for between five and ten years. They were like family to him, he knew their backgrounds, their parents, their life stories. He knew they could be trusted completely.

First of all there was Louisa, thirty-five years of age, jet black hair and too attractive for her own good. Not exactly the typical, unattractive, white coated scientist you would expect to find hiding behind a microscope. She was outgoing, witty and a joy to be with, combined with a scientific mind and a genuine desire to change the world.

Wainright had jokingly teased her on more than one occasion, that apart from her excellent qualifications, the main reason he had hired her was for her looks. Afterwards though, he had come to wonder at her intelligence and the insight she brought to difficult and seemingly intractable problems. She was one of the cleverest people he had ever met, a rare combination of beauty, intelligence and charisma.

Then lastly there was Don. Don was a quiet, rather small, round-bellied man in his late thirties. Solid as a rock, no humor, but reliable and a genius. His accent betrayed his origins from the north of England, and his only love in life apart from genetics was beer and darts.

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The Cardinal's assistant called the Professor's office late the next afternoon, informing Wainright that he was acting with full authority in the name of the Cardinal with respect to the ' _Cardinal's request to the University of Oxford, regarding the verification of the authenticity of the Crown of Thorns_.'

"Naturally, you will appreciate that this is a matter of the greatest delicacy Professor, and the Cardinal, although extremely pleased that you have accepted to conduct the work in his name, would greatly appreciate the utmost secrecy concerning this. He would appreciate if no one came to know that it had left France." The assistant had explained. The Professor loved the way the Cardinal had turned it around, and that this was now officially _his_ idea. No doubt, should they prove it was authentic, the Cardinal would now be able to claim full credit for the whole project. It didn't matter though. The point was that the Crown would be arriving in Oxford in three weeks time, and would be staying with them for between four to six months, depending upon how fast they could complete their investigations.

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The next three weeks in the I.G.E.G.G.M. were a blaze of activity. The _Pharaoh_ project was turning out to be incredibly successful. One fertilized egg had already been implanted in the first surrogate mother, and the other two implantations would be performed in the next few weeks. That project was running smoothly.

With the _Pharaoh_ project running independently in the background, Wainright brought a new group together, dedicating a complete lab on the third floor of the north wing of the institute for the 'Haissem' project, as he had begun to call it - _Haissem_ being the word _Messiah_ in reverse, a subtle attempt at providing a relevant pseudo code-name for the project.

The Haissem lab was the most secure of the I.G.E.G.G.M labs, with three levels of decontaminating airlocks that had to be crossed through before entering the main working area of the clean lab, and with two armed guards stationed permanently on guard outside the lab twenty-four-hours a day. Such security was standard practice for all _Class A_ genetics projects and was mandated by the government regulations, so in itself the guards wouldn't draw any extra attention to the project. Everyone else in the building who worked on other projects at the I.G.E.G.G.M. just thought it was another of the Professors many new projects and didn't give it a second thought. They had their own work to get on with.

.

The preparations were complete two days before the Crown arrived, and the night before its arrival the Professor called everyone together for dinner. Lydia was also in Oxford for the weekend, visiting Jason while on a week's leave from Egypt, and she was immediately accepted by everyone as an honorary founding team member. It was a great evening, the wine flowed freely, and everyone was inspired and excited. The next day couldn't come fast enough.

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It arrived rather unceremoniously in a blue _Securicor_ van, escorted by the Cardinal's assistant, who watched the Professor sign a document of receipt and then promptly disappeared, without so much as a " _God Bless_ " or a " _Hail Mary_ ".

The group gathered in the air-purified lab, each member wearing their full Class A biological protective 'bunny suits' with protective face masks to prevent contamination of the samples in the lab.

As they removed the Crown from its velvet lined heavy duty metal container, which Jason suggested would probably have survived a nuclear attack, they stared in wonder at the small object in front of them.

Jason and Don were both not Christians, but as they looked at it before it was placed in the airtight-humidity controlled safe in the laboratory, they both felt something which they couldn't immediately describe.

_Something_...there was ' _something_ ' about it. Jason felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end, and Don felt a wave of emotion running through his body. The first real emotion he had probably felt in years. Where it had come from he didn't know. Just that suddenly it was there, and that he felt awe, sadness, joy, and expectation all at once, conjured up from nowhere by the simple object before them.

Neither of them really knew what to expect, but Jason had imagined something round, with a patchwork of thorns interwoven to form a sort of "thorn tiara", like he had seen sitting on Christ's head in the religious pictures in the art galleries. Whatever they had imagined, what they had in front of them now didn't exactly match their expectations. The Crown turned out to be a rather simple affair, more triangular in form than round, with numerous large thorns sticking out at obscure angles from several coarsely interwoven branches. Jason's first thought was that it was ugly, and would have been very painful to wear.

It was a dark brown in color, and the surface of the thorns were smooth in some places but rough in others. In places it looked dirty, and the surface of the thorns had begun to peel back revealing the inside of the plant stem underneath.

The Professor and Jason examined it with magnifying glasses as it sat on a dish before them, hoping to be able to see some obvious signs of some blood on the surface of the thorns. Unbelievably, two of the thorns on the inside of the crown gave them immediate hope. The tips were pointing inwards and were discolored at the ends, being slightly darker than the rest of the surface.

The Professor was quick to point out though that they shouldn't get their hopes up. If there were any samples to be taken they were most likely to get them from inside the thorns, from blood soaked up into the membranes of the plant, and not from the outside surface.

But as they locked away the Crown and returned to their own homes that night, each person could not help but think of the discolorations they had seen on those thorn tips, and sleep didn't come easy to any of them as they lay in the darkness of their rooms wondering what the months ahead would contain.

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### Chapter 14

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"Louisa, I've made an appointment for you to go to the Science Engineering Lab and have several spectral-holograms made of the Crown. They're expecting you at ten, so you'd better get your skates on." The professor announced at the first of their team meetings: whenever Wainright was working on a new or an important project he had a team meeting at 8.30am every Monday morning to get an update on the week before and plan the week ahead.

"Why a hologram?"

"They're not just holograms, my dear. They are _spectral-holograms_. The object in question is recorded using multiple wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, the images formed by the interference patterns of the different wavelengths being recorded on the recording crystal on different lattice planes. A computer can then scan the images from the recording crystal into the computer and we can generate holograms of the object at any wavelength of light we want. We can then view the holographic image in the infra-red, ultra-violet or even the X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum." The professor explained enthusiastically.

"How can that help us?" Jason asked.

"First of all, we need to know exactly what the object looks like. To get any blood samples we may have to conduct destructive testing on the material of the Crown...i.e. remove bits or even whole thorns from the branches that make it up...Of course, using the digital holographic maps we will be able to use other thorns to make exact replacements for the ones we test destructively, so that later on no one will be able to tell that any are missing."

"Secondly, _and this is the neat thing_ , dried blood cells resonate at a certain frequencies when stimulated. By irradiating the Crown with that range of frequencies, electromagnetic radiation will be reflected back from the Crown at those frequencies only where blood residue is present, and we will be able to get a holographic mapping of all the areas on the Crown where blood samples exist!"

"If there are no blood samples on the surface of the Crown, what then?" Jason asked.

"Then the next step is to conduct Nuclear Magnetic Resonance scanning of the Crown on a spread of different frequencies. I've arranged for this to be done at the hospital. NMR scans allow us to see the inside of the Crown at any depth or level we want. From that we can build up a map of the _inside_ of the thorns, and that will allow us to pinpoint exactly where any blood may have been soaked up into the membranes within the thorns! Jason, that will be your job..."

".... And remember, whenever you handle the crown, you must use your laboratory gloves. Never, on any account, should you touch it without wearing gloves!"

.

When transporting the Crown from department to department they had agreed to used minimal security to avoid drawing attention to themselves, carrying it in its secure metal box in one of the laboratory's small white vans.

Later that morning Louisa arrived at the Engineering Science lab and was met at the entrance by a tall, good looking young American in his early thirties.

"Hi...you must be Louisa. I'm Mike Sanderson!" he introduced himself, smiling ear to ear, and revealing a perfect set of white teeth.

"Hi Mike..." Louisa replied, nervously shaking his hand and trying to hide the immediate attraction she felt to him. It was a long time since she had felt so drawn to a man. She had very high standards which were seldom met.

Mike was extremely good looking, but Louisa matched him in her beauty, and Mike felt drawn to her in return...in spite of his training.

In general, he was not attracted to English women, finding them too weak minded and white. The sun never shone in the UK anymore, the skies being almost permanently covered by grey, depressing clouds. Climate Change had a lot to answer for. He preferred sun-tanned American women, who invariably took a lot more pride in their appearance than the English ladies.

"Let me help you with that!" Mike took hold of the containing box for the Crown and carried it up the three flights of stairs to the laboratory. The elevator in the Engineering department never worked.

.

The laboratory had been set up in advance and was ready for them when they arrived. 'Officially' the object that was being examined was a religious relic from Russia from around the turn of the first millennium, and they were researching the likelihood of it having belonged to one of the Saints who lived in the tenth century. Not interested in religious relics, Mike handled the container carefully but didn't pay much attention to it.

Instead, he paid a lot of attention to Louisa. He flirted with her throughout the day, and by the end of the afternoon she was obviously beginning to warm to him, even accepting his invitation to dinner one night the next week. When the work in the laboratory had been completed, Louisa gave him her telephone number and left with the Crown in its protective metal box. Mike promised to call her in the next few days, once the data was ready for handing over.

.

It was standard practice on all commercial holographic projects to hand over all the computer data, holographic plates and holographic crystals, and any exposed recording medium used. All rights and copies belonged to the commissioning party. For the analysis of the Crown, Professor Wainright had agreed with Mike's boss, Prof. Smythe of the Engineering lab, that _all_ the images and data would be handed over to Jason, who was Wainright's student and who was basing his doctorate's DPhil. on 'the analysis and application of computer techniques to the verification of historical artifacts using genetic coding'.

Prof. Smythe's team had developed a software program that enabled the analysis of the holographic images at all the different wavelengths, and to assist Jason in his research they had agreed to provide a copy of the program so that Jason could do further analysis in his own time.

.

It took two days for Mike and his lab assistant to complete the imaging and package all the data up in a suitable database, integrated with their software program so that they could hand it over to Jason for them to run on their own Cray computer in the I.G.E.G.G.M lab.

The images that had come out were good, and although it was not allowed, a gut instinct told Mike to make a copy of one of the holographic images to keep secretly for himself. He had a hunch that there was more to the project than he knew about, but didn't know what...yet.

Unfortunately, because of the secure encryption tagging system that they used on the data, it wasn't possible to also copy the actual raw data from the holographic analysis without Jason knowing it, so when Jason came to collect the data two days later he handed over the complete package he had prepared for him. The data, the images, ...everything.

.

There was something about the project which troubled Mike. He had once been trained how to spot when a person was lying, and once he knew the physical telltale signs, he found it quite easy to spot when a person was not telling the truth.

And Louisa had lied when she had described the history of the religious artifact and their reason for conducting research on it. It hadn't bothered him at the time, but afterwards when she had left, he remembered it, and it disturbed him.

So why had she lied? And what was it really all about? He had to know, and he knew the person who could tell him. Louisa.

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### Chapter 15

Mike was a hard worker. He had always been a good student, conscientious, loyal and extremely patriotic. When he graduated from Harvard with his degree in Physics, he met all the criteria laid down by the CIA for the ' _Good Citizen_ ' program, his good looks being a special bonus which would come in very handy in his future career: five foot ten, tanned skin, brown hair, smoldering dark brown eyes, high cheek bones with dimples in both cheeks. When Mike smiled, women melted in response to his irresistible Latin looks, and firm, strong body.

They had recruited him when he was doing his doctorate in Physics at MIT, and after graduating he had spent twelve months undergoing specialized field training, which qualified him to act as an undercover field agent in the coming years. Everyone who had worked with him on the program agreed that Mike was going to be a very rewarding investment and would make an ideal agent for the United States of America.

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Apart from having the fees and expenses for all his college education reimbursed to him, Mike had welcomed the opportunity to serve America. His vision was to help restore the country to its former glory.

When the _SARs 2_ virus had swept across America, society had started to collapse and it was only by the temporary imposition of martial law that total anarchy had been avoided.

When the president, vice-president and a third of the Senators in the Senate had been infected with the virus and died, the military had stepped in and taken control of the country for a few months, until the next elections had swept General Jamieson into power as the new President of America.

General Jamieson was regarded as being the architect behind the successful ongoing war against terrorism. Surprisingly, no one had blamed him for not being able to prevent the terrorist attack that had seen the release of the Flu virus into the subway of New York.

However, the swift arrest and subsequent military executions of the terrorists responsible had helped raise his profile even higher amongst his fellow Americans. It was no surprise therefore that Jamieson was considered by the American public to be the one leader who could best lead their weakened country back to its former strength.

He was the right man in the right place at the right time. What people didn't realise until too late, was that the man behind the public image was a very different man indeed. President Jamieson had few enemies. Who were alive. Those close to the man, knew him as a ruthless egotist, powerful, strong, and determined. No one stood in his way. No one dared to.

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Although Mike hadn't wanted to move abroad the CIA had persuaded him that with his skills he would make the ideal plant, and he had finally accepted a posting to Oxford University. Officially he was just a normal Fellow of the University, with a specialization in Holographic Analytical Techniques, his field of specialization at MIT. In reality though he was an undercover agent, gathering information of any sort that could be useful to the CIA.

Oxford was still one of the intellectual centers of the world. Part of his job was to gather as much information as possible on the new research that was being conducted in the university, and ensure that the CIA was kept aware of any new developments that American industry could benefit from commercially.

The other part of his job was to socialize with the rich and famous who visited the university, to make friends and influence the sons and daughters of the important and wealthy who studied at the colleges, and to gather any information that could be of interest to the American government. And he got a bonus for every person he recruited as a spy for the Agency.

.

His funding from the CIA allowed him to be one of the most 'popular' people on the Oxford social circuit, always able to buy champagne for his 'friends'.

He also proved to be very popular with the ladies.

Although he probably didn't need it, during his CIA field training he had spent several weeks being taught how to seduce women, and had been shown all the techniques how to make women blissfully happy in bed.

Not surprisingly Mike had found this to be the most enjoyable part of the training, and had been taught personally by some of the most attractive women he had ever met. Although he had scored highly in all parts of the field training, the lead instructor on the course had decided that Mike required an 'extra week of personal tuition'.

At the end of the week she had admitted to her colleagues that even she had learned a few more tricks from the young man.

.

Mike was interested in Louisa. She aroused him, of that there was no doubt. But why had she lied about the religious relic? There was something about her story that didn't ring true. He decided that apart from having pleasure with Louisa when they next met, that he was going to do his best to find out what was really going on.

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.

Louisa was already sitting in an alcove at the back of the pub when Mike walked in. She was wearing a knee length dress, and had her hair up. Her dress hugged her figure and Mike was impressed how sexy she was. He smiled to himself. "This was going to be a good evening."

After a drink or two they moved onto dinner at Browns. They were both relaxed with each other, and the attraction between them was mutual.

"So...tell me a little more about the project you're working on? Where did you get the relic from?" Mike started to probe for answers just about when the desert course arrived during dinner. Hopefully, having had a few drinks, Louisa would open up a little about her work.

"Just like I said earlier, it's a relic from Russia that's supposed to belong to one of the Catholic saints. It's from a private collector and comes from abroad...I really can't say much more because he, the owner that is...has sworn us to secrecy and he contributes quite a lot financially to the running of the lab, so we value his trust...Oh...maybe I've told you too much already. I'm never very good at keeping a secret..." Louisa pretended to blush. She was sticking to the cover story they had concocted regardless of how much she wanted to tell him the truth!

Mike knew better than to push it at the wrong moment. He knew that later that evening he would get the truth from her.

He hated 'working' on people he liked...and Mike was surprised just how much he genuinely liked Louisa.

.

Switching into work mode, he spent the rest of the evening focusing on Louisa, establishing as deep a rapport with her as possible. It was essential to his plan that she invited him back for coffee and asked him to spend the night with her. That part should be easy though.

One of the most useful and powerful techniques that he had learned during his field training was how to use Neuro-Linguistic Programming to seduce and hypnotize women. Already he had led Louisa into a powerful mental state where she felt incredibly attracted to Mike, and now he was slowly programming her to sexually desire and want him.

It always surprised him how incredibly simple and effective it was to do.

From carefully observing her responses to several key questions which he asked her during their conversation at the pub, he had been able to identify the type of person she was. When he had asked her : 'What does your house look like then?' and 'Describe the most favorite time in your life, ever?', he had watched her eyes, and had noticed that for a moment before answering each question her eyes moved upwards and to her left. From his training he knew that this showed him that she was a very _Visual_ person, and throughout the rest of the evening, he established a strong rapport with her by slipping in words and phrases like, "appears to me", "paint a picture" "sight for sore eyes", "image", "glance", or "see" into their conversation. Her subconscious immediately related to him and his use of visually descriptive words.

During dinner he had "matched" her, by following and mimicking her body movements, her gestures, her eye movements. When she'd leant forward across the table, he had leant towards her. When she had taken a drink from her glass, he had drunk from his. When she laughed, he laughed too. And each time she laughed he leant forward across the table and touched her lightly on the arm or hand, thereby "anchoring" her good mood and happiness to his touch. By repeatedly doing this, rather like "Pavlov's Dogs" he would later be able to just lightly touch her on the hand or body, and she would respond, her subconscious recalling the sensation of feeling good whenever he had touched her earlier and instructing her body to feel good again in response to his touch now.

He had also been very careful to follow her breathing pattern, and had been breathing at the same rate as hers. Over a coffee at the end of the meal, he had slipped a number of semi-hypnotic suggestions into the conversation.

"You like me, are very interested in our work" with the emphasis and intonation on 'YOU LIKE ME', and "...when you are REALLY EXCITED after work, how do you SLEEP. WITH ME its always the same...I can't sleep for ages...I'M TOO AROUSED...and need to read a book..." Mike knew it was all about running several unrelated words together in a conversation, casually, with special intonation on the key words. Over the years he had become expert at it and it came naturally now. When he had first learned the techniques he had been completely amazed at the results and that it actually worked.

The key to the whole thing was to get the other person into the correct mental state before trying the word sequences on her. Louisa was in exactly the right mood now, and as he worked through several auto-suggestive hypnotic suggestions, he could see them taking effect as her face and neck flushed and her breathing changed. She wanted him now, and he wasn't about to say no!

"So...I don't know how to thank you for such a nice meal..." Louisa said as the waiter took away Mike's credit card to pay the bill.

"No problem...it was my pleasure!" he said back, smiling, oozing calculated charm out of every pore.

"...I was wondering...instead of me calling a taxi, would you like to walk me home? I'm not too far from here, and then if you wanted you could come in, and have a night-cap before you left... _if you want_."

"Was that, ' _if I want to leave_?' or ' _if I want to walk you home_?' Mike replied playfully.

"Shall we just see what happens...?"

### Chapter 16

Louisa knew that she'd drunk quite a lot over dinner, but she couldn't believe how strongly she was attracted to this man. She felt so comfortable with him, as if they were lovers who had known each other for a long time. His animal magnetism was incredible. Over dinner the longing for him had grown more intense, and at one point she'd had to go to the ladies bathroom, just so that she could take a break from him. She had never experienced anything like this before. She had never, ever, slept with a man on their first date, but tonight she was going to do her best to change that. She wanted him, and she was already ready for him.

.

On the walk back to her house, she couldn't resist the temptation to reach out and hold his hand. He gave it to her eagerly, and she'd responded by hanging on to his upper arm with the other hand and cuddling up into his side as they walked. She couldn't believe how forward she was being, but didn't feel in the slightest bit bad about her brazen behavior.

When they reached her door, she opened it with her key, and before any moment of embarrassment could arise between them, she turned to him and kissed him passionately on the lips.

"...that's just to entice you into my lair, and if you keep being as charming and seductive as you have been all evening, who knows what will happen?"

.

Mike knew exactly what to do from here on in. He knew now that she was responding to his hypnotic suggestions, and he was confident that once they had made love and she was completely relaxed, it would be easy for him to hypnotize her and find the answers to the questions he wanted.

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\---------------------

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Her breasts were beautiful. Soft and heavy but incredibly well formed. They kissed passionately, and in spite of his professional training, Mike was beginning to lose control of his emotions. He was really attracted to Louisa, and it took a lot of conscious effort to regain control of himself.

He had been taught many skills and he knew how to make a woman happy. How to send her to the heights of pleasure, how to make a woman's orgasm more intense than she herself would have believed possible, and how to exhaust her senses so that as her orgasm rushed through her she fell headlong into the deepest achievable state of relaxation.

And then, as the woman would lie satiated on the bed, Mike would prop himself up on an elbow and start to stroke her cheek and speak gently to her, all the time watching her breathing. This was the optimal time to take her into 'trance'. By simply matching her breathing pattern and by phrasing his sentences and varying his voice tones to the rise and fall of her chest, and by using a selection of words chosen to have maximum impact on a _Visual_ or an _Auditory_ type person, depending how he classified them, Mike could on average take a woman into trance within five minutes. He knew a hundred different hypnotic induction patterns, and he was a master at each of them.

Once induced into a state of trance, from there it was another simple step to take her down further to an even deeper state of relaxation, to a level where he could talk to her subconscious mind and plant commands or extract information without the conscious mind ever being aware that it had happened.

Within ten minutes Mike could make any woman his, for good. From that point on he could control her, and have her anytime he wanted.

Hypnosis had many applications for good, and in the hands of a trustworthy person it could be used to really help people. But Mike was not good. He was bad and he knew it. He used his well-learned skills to devastating effect, without morals or any scruples.

As a result he was never short of female company, sex, and valuable information. In the past few years he had slept with over a hundred woman, including students, doctors, lawyers, nurses, politicians, even the proverbial rocket scientists. Married or single, it made no difference. He had had them all.

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.

Louisa was no different. If anything, she went under faster than normal, probably due to the natural physical attraction and the subconscious trust she had already placed in Mike.

Her orgasm had been intense, and Mike had enjoyed that part of the process enormously. She lay on the bed beside him, her cheeks flushed and her eyelids flickering violently, and as Mike talked to her deliberately confusing her conscious thought patterns, so that he could insert his own suggestions into her mind, a classic induction routine, she slipped easily into a deep trance from which she would be powerless to resist any of his questioning.

The fun part over, Mike became the true professional agent. He had a job to do.

"Louisa, you are now in a place of deep, deep relaxation. _As you_ listen to the sound of the rain on the window outside, and _as you_ feel the warmth of your body, content and happy from the love making you just enjoyed, and _as you_ listen to the sound of my voice, _you will_ let your conscious mind start to talk backwards from 2000 to 1. And as your conscious mind begins to count backwards...let me talk to your subconscious mind alone, so that when you later wake up, your conscious mind will have no recollection of the questions I will ask you and the _answers_ _you will_ give me. Now start to count backwards, 2000, 1999, 1998...yes, that's _right_ ... _that's good_...now, when your sub-conscious mind is ready to talk to me privately, then just nod...." Mike spoke softly but authoritatively, casting his inflexion downwards at the end of each sentence in the mode of commanding someone gently to do something. He waited patiently for Louisa to nod, her eyelids continuing to flicker as she slipped deeper into trance. Then suddenly her eyes stopped moving and she nodded.

"That's good Louisa. You are a very, _very_ clever and attractive girl. You feel really good now...very happy...you feel just great. And you _really like me_ and _trust me_ ...you know you can trust me...you know you can tell me anything you want...yes, that's right... _I'm a friend_...a good friend... _someone you can trust_ ...are you my friend Louisa?"

There was a moment of silence before Louisa replied quietly but positively. "Yes...Mike, I am your friend. And you are mine. I feel I can tell you anything..."

"That's good...that's right...now as you listen to the sound of my voice, you will continue to feel fantastic and _so_ happy...and because you trust me so much, you will realise that you want to, yes... _you really want to tell me_ all the details about the object you asked me to record holographically. _Don't you Louisa..._ "

Louisa nodded.

"And now when I touch your hand you will feel very happy and relaxed and I want you to tell me about the _real_ project that you are working on and why the ring of thorns in the hologram I was asked to help make is so important...."

This was the moment of truth. Would she tell him? Was she really under far enough, and responding to his every command? He hoped so. Leaning forward he tapped her lightly on the back of her left hand. Immediately Louisa smiled, and still lying on the bed with her eyes tightly closed, she began to speak slowly.

"Oh Mike, I feel so great...I'm just wonderful! Are you ok? Listen, is it ok if I tell you something...I feel as if I've known you for ages, and oh...I feel bad, because last week I lied to you. I don't know why, but I did..."

"How did you lie to me Louisa?" Mike lowered his tone deeper and spoke very clearly.

"Remember you asked me about the ring of thorns that you holographed for me...you asked me where it came from..."

"Yes, Louisa, I remember asking you."

"Well, you see, I didn't want to, but I had to lie to you. To hide from you the truth behind the project..."

" _Which is Louisa......?_ "

"...because the truth is that it never belonged to a German prince as we have told the world. Actually, it belongs to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It's not a relic belonging to a monk from the turn of the first millennium, it's really..." And she paused, and Mike could see that her closed eyelids had begun to flicker again...

"Come on Louisa...that's fine...don't worry...I'll forgive you, but only if you tell me what it really is, and why you wanted a hologram of it so badly...!" He encouraged her and coaxed her along.

"Good...I feel so bad for lying to you. It's really the "Crown of Thorns", the ring of thorn branches that the Roman soldiers forced onto Christ's head when he was crucified..." Her voice began to tail off...

Mike's heart skipped a beat. This was incredible, but he knew there was still more to tell.

"That's right Louisa. It's the Crown of Thorns... That's true... But why did you want me to capture it holographically?"

"...because we are looking for traces of blood, _CHRIST's_ blood, on the thorns, so that we can take a DNA sample and create a clone of Jesus Christ!"

Mike sat bolt upright on the bed beside her. It all made sense now. That's exactly why Dr Wainright's lab was leading this research. He was the world's leading expert in human cloning...and now he was going to clone Jesus Christ Himself!

Mike had just struck gold. He could feel a trip to London coming on.

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### Chapter 17

The American Embassy

London, England

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"Lemon, or milk?"

The Ambassador enquired politely as he played 'mother' and poured Mike a cup of tea. It was eleven o'clock in the morning and inwardly Mike smiled, laughing at the ridiculous levels some diplomats went to, to be 'diplomatic'. In the four years he'd spent in the London office Ambassador Johnson had become more English than most English people. He never missed morning elevenses, and always drank his Darjeeling from the finest China.

The Ambassador was about fifty years old. He had developed expensive tastes since he had arrived in England five years before. He only wore the best suits from Savile Row, today's blue and white pin-stripe being complemented perfectly by the folded white handkerchief in the front chest pocket. Completely bald, the Ambassador's pate shone like a polished bowling ball in the bright lights of his office.

Although he claimed to be a direct descendant of the twentieth century president Lyndon B. Johnson, Mike knew that in reality he came from New Jersey and a very different and more humble background. His sources were seldom wrong. Nevertheless, he was the Ambassador of America in England, and that made him the most senior ranking American in the country.

As a ranking Colonel in the CIA, the Ambassador was Mike's senior field agent, and Mike reported directly and only to him.

"What brings you here again Mike...it's been five months since we last met hasn't it?" the Ambassador launched a very subtle dig at Mikes recent track record, having failed in the past year to get his teeth into anything really interesting. The last time he had met him was when Mike had copied some research papers on the latest plasma engine the physicists at Oxford had been developing. True, that information had been worth a lot to the CIA, and to American industry in general, but for the budget he made available to Mike, he expected a little more.

Mike shifted uneasily in his chair. In the quiet embassy overlooking Grosvenor Square in the heart of London, sitting in the oak paneled and brown walnut furnitured antique office with a history that went back hundreds of years, what he had to tell the Colonel seemed so unreal. Maybe unbelievable. Yet it was imperative that the Ambassador believed in what he was just about to say.

"Are you a religious man, Ambassador Johnson?" Field agents never addressed each other by their rank, no matter where they were. In the field, that would be tantamount to stupidity.

"Yes, well, I think it would be fair to say I was. Although my wife may disagree at times. Why?"

"Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" Mike enquired.

"Yes, I do as a matter of fact. This is all rather personal. Where is this leading to young man?" the Ambassador stirred his tea with an antique silver teaspoon.

"Would you like to meet Him?"

"Who? You mean ' _Him_?'...as in Christ?..." The Colonel pushed back in his chair and looked at Mike directly. "Have you taken leave of your senses, boy. Explain what you mean. Give me a clear, succinct report. Now."

"I'm sorry Ambassador, it's just that what I have to say may sound rather far-fetched, but I believe it to be true. It has come to my attention that a group in Oxford, financed by the Institute for Genetic Evolution for the Greater Good of Mankind, and led by a Professor Mathew Wainright, is planning to take genetic samples of the blood of Jesus Christ from a religious artifact known as the Crown of Thorns. Are you familiar Ambassador, with what the Crown of Thorns is meant to be?"

"Yes, I am. Continue. Please."

"From this material their plan is to create a clone of Jesus Christ. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, even maybe part of God himself, and call him their Messiah. At the very least, the effect of cloning Jesus Christ is to try bringing the Messiah back to a world that has predicted and awaited his return for two thousand years. In summary, if the Oxford team succeed, we could be looking at the start of the Second Coming of Christ, the return of the Messiah..."

"Enough! _You are a CIA agent, not a religious zealot_. Stick to the facts, not conjectures." The Ambassador shook his head, putting his cup of tea down gently into his china saucer and raising himself from his chair and crossing to the window, his hands behind his back. He peered through the curtains into the park in the middle of the Square, waiting for Mike to continue.

"I have a contact within the team proposing to do this. They genuinely believe that they have the capability to do it. There are only two issues to hinder them. Firstly, although they believe they have the genuine Crown of Thorns, they have not yet established if there are any traces of blood on the thorns of the Crown. Secondly, if they do find some blood, they cannot know for certain whether or not it will belong to Jesus Christ..."

"And thirdly, if I may give a comment of my own, as an atheist, even if there was a man called Jesus Christ, who is to say he was not just an ordinary man, and has nothing to do with God, or any god?"

"Thank you for your personal observations Dr Sanderson, however, you must realise that that debate is one which is already two thousand years old, and not one that concerns us. History and God will be the judge of that. What concerns me now are the facts!"

Mike remained silent. The Ambassador was clearly rattled, and Mike knew the best thing to do was stay silent while his commanding officer considered what he had just been told.

For a few moments the Ambassador continued to look out off the window, seemingly staring far out into space. Then he returned to his desk and faced Mike again.

"Do you have a recommendation, Mike? You normally do......" He asked, a little more amiably than before.

Mike leant forward, placing his tea cup and its china saucer carefully onto the desk top with both his hands, and pausing for a moment before continuing his report.

"Yes, I do. Over the past few days since I learned of this project I have given it a great deal of thought." He paused momentarily, to give emphasis to what he had to say next. "I believe that the CIA must immediately approve an operation to snatch the Crown of Thorns from the laboratory in Oxford and must implement its own program to clone Jesus Christ. It is unacceptable to the future of our country that a member state of the European Union should be allowed to create and grow a clone of Jesus Christ before we do..."

"...Who can say what the political and religious implications of such a program would be, were it to be successful? What effect would it have upon the balance of power, if Great Britain was able to clone Jesus Christ? I'm not a religious man myself, and I'm not going to suggest that the British would be able to enlist any supernatural powers from a cloned Jesus Christ which would help their nation, but realistically we have to recognise the positive effect his presence would have on the focus they would receive from other countries and corporate investors. I could easily see how it could be extremely detrimental to the American trade..."

"...No, if we cannot prevent the Oxford group from creating a clone, we at least must take the lead in the clone war and create and grow our own first...and prevent others from doing so in the future. If Jesus Christ is going to come back for a second time, this time round he's going to be an American!"

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### Chapter 18

I.G.E.G.G.M. laboratory

Oxford, England

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Jason couldn't believe how well the project was going so far. Since he had the idea in the Chapel of Sainte Chapelle everything had just happened as if it were meant to be. Resources, funding, equipment, support...it had all just fallen into place. And Mathew, as Professor Wainright now insisted Jason called him, was being just incredible. His support was total, including additional fellowship money from the I.G.E.G.G.M. coffers. The project had become almost full-time now, and he hardly had any time to devote to the Pharaoh project, which had now already advanced into the second phase. All three fertilized eggs had been placed in their surrogate mothers, and the pregnancies were advancing well.

Professor Wainright had started to spend all the available hours he had with Jason and the others in the lab, working on the Haissem project. As the days passed the team had integrated well together, bound by a growing and profound awareness that the work they had embarked upon could be the most important scientific project ever undertaken by mankind. Or at least, should it become public knowledge what they were doing, it could certainly become one of the most dangerous ever undertaken.

Each member of the team realised the importance of secrecy and except for Lydia, not a single person outside the project had the faintest idea of the true nature of their work.

Although Prof. Wainright was the official 'front man' for the project, there was an unspoken understanding, that when and if the authenticity of the Crown was proven, Jason would take charge of the future of the project, directing the others as he believed necessary. It was Jason's project. In the meantime Prof. Wainright was in charge of coordinating and directing the first phase, that of proving the Crown's authenticity, determining the presence of any blood residues, and extracting them correctly.

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"Jason, have you got the results from the NMR scanning?" the Professor asked at the early Monday morning meeting.

"Yes...and they're excellent...they were completed on Saturday afternoon, and I compiled the results on Saturday night, and ran an analysis of them yesterday. And this is what I found..." Jason swiveled round in his chair and pointed the remote control at the large plasma display on the wall opposite. It immediately sprang to life, a wall of colour filling the little room they were gathered in. The others all turned to the screen onto which the compiled image of the Crown's NMR analysis was being relayed from the computer.

"..as you can see," Jason continued, "...I've compiled the data from the run over a wide spectrum of frequencies. In the old days, NMR depended upon the resonance set up from water molecules, but modern scanners can scan across the resonances produced by a much wider range of chemical structures. For this run I set the NMR to scan at the frequencies of the amino acids and proteins which build up blood cells. Theoretically, if there was any blood absorbed by the material in the membranes of the Crown I would be able to map the location of it three-dimensionally..."

" ...At the moment what you can see is just the Crowns image compiled in three dimensions from the scan produced at a number of different frequencies, none of them blood related. As you can see the image we get appears transparent, and we can see through the surface of the thorn's structure and inside the thorns and out the other side...but if I superimpose the frequencies that interest us, we should be able to see everywhere where blood has been absorbed...Before I do that though, the places you now see marked by the arrows on the screen are where we visually saw discolorations on the thorns when we first examined them and we hoped it could be due to blood absorption...and now...here we can see if the NMR detected any blood samples..."

There was a small gasp from the room. The image on the screen had been a white ghostly three-dimensional skeleton of the Crown against a grey background. But as Jason pressed another button on the remote control, the computer superimposed the next set of data on the existing images and several blue patches appeared on the white skeletal areas, two of them relating exactly to where the arrows were pointing.

"What you can see here is confirmation that on the two thorns we were highlighting, two of the discolored areas are caused by blood absorption. But also, there are four other areas underneath the skin of the thorns where blood has been absorbed into the plant material itself. Two of these patches are found on another thorn. In total, we see that blood samples can be found on three separate thorns."

There was silence in the room. The news was more than they could have hoped for.

"...If I may continue..." Jason said smiling. "I have also done the analysis on the holographic images Louisa obtained. If you will look at the screen on the desk in front, you can see the standard hologram of the Crown at normal light frequencies." Jason leant forward and pressed a button, and the screen came alive.

Although it was a flat screen, projected out from it was a three-dimensional image of the Crown. It was identical to the real crown, the same size, colour...everything. A person just walking into the room at that point would have seen the Crown of Thorns floating in mid-air and thought that is was the real thing somehow floating in space. The hologram was amazing. Don couldn't help but reach forward and try to touch the image, and as his fingers wafted through empty space in front of the screen he whistled aloud.

"It's unbelievable. It's _sooo_ real!"

"...If you think that's good...watch this..." And slowly the image of the Crown began to rotate in free space. " ...and now... for my _piece-de-resistance_ , feast your eyes on this..." And Jason pressed another button on the keyboard of the computer. Some red patches immediately appeared on the surface of the Crown in the hologram in front of them.

"I've colour coded it for effect...but when I compile the hologram at the expected resonance frequency of blood residue, I get a hologram only of where blood is to be found, and by superimposing that image on the hologram obtained at normal visible frequencies, we can see where the blood residue would be...

He paused for a moment to let the impact of what they were seeing sink in, then continued.

"Okay, if you compare the images you can see now on the screen with the ones from the NMR on the plasma screen, you can see they're almost identical...they match!"

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\---------------------

.

This was exactly the news they had been hoping for. They had found blood samples, and knew exactly where to retrieve them from.

The only question to be answered now, was whether the Crown of Thorns was authentic or not. _Was it real?_ If it wasn't real, the blood samples would be meaningless.

"Truly excellent, Jason. Fantastic work. But what time frame in history does the Crown originate from and where does it come from geographically? These are two equally important questions that we need to answer...Don, what are your conclusions from the carbon and chemical dating?"

Don swiveled in his chair. It was his turn to give his report. He hoped he wouldn't disappoint them. He had worked long and hard with the physics, chemistry and biology departments of the university to ensure that no mistakes had been made. They had run extensive carbon dating analysis, and had analyzed and dated several of the chemicals that were found in the make-up of the thorns. The chemical analysis used a new dating technique that had been pioneered in Oxford only three years before, so as such, his report was state-of-the-art, based upon the latest techniques available. Don leant forward and slipped a micro-disk into the computer and instantly a series of charts appeared on the overhead plasma screen.

"First of all we did some carbon dating. As you can see from the graph, all the points came back indicating a time frame of about AD 27-35, during which time the thorns would have died and stopped absorbing any fresh carbon. Next, we did tests on three chemicals found in the constituent make up of the thorns, focusing on the decay of several radioactive isotopes found in one of the proteins in the thorns...a new technique developed here in Oxford...and these all point to a time frame of AD 28-34 for the death of the plant. These results are all shown on the next chart."

The screen went dark for a second, and then was instantly refreshed with a fresh set of data from the other research.

"I sent you electronic copies of all this information earlier this morning, so you can draw your own conclusions later if you wish. But from the work I did with the other departments, I would conclude that the Crown of Thorns comes exactly from the period in which we would require it to, were we to postulate that it could in fact be the Crown of Thorns which sat upon Jesus Christ's head at his crucifixion!"

"Don. Brilliant. Truly brilliant. Of course I expected nothing less from you, but it's nice to know you're still as good as ever...", Mathew Wainright praised the second member of the team.

Everything was coming together. The data looked too good to be true, but it was all there. The only thing that remained was to try and establish where in the world the Crown of Thorns came from.

"Louisa. It's over to you. Have you got any good news for us?"

"Thanks Professor. It turns out that I do," Louisa beamed. She was the last one to report, but her information was just as important as anyone else's.

"I took the Crown to the biology department and we examined it under the microscope and cross-matched it against all known types of thorns. Both past and present. It turns out that the thorns we have in the Crown are fairly unique and come from a single variety of the thorn plant that historically was only to be found growing in the land now known as Israel. We took some pollen samples from where one of the thorns was broken, where pollen had blown into and become embedded in the split in the thorn, and we cross-matched and dated the pollen samples to historical records of other samples of pollen found in clothes taken from tombs throughout the regions of Egypt, Syria and Israel, dating back to the middle of the first century before Christ's birth. In the samples taken from the Crown we observed two distinct types of pollen. One quite prolific at that time throughout Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Israel..."

"...The second, however, was of a type fairly unique to the area around Jerusalem. The fact that we could observe this type of pollen indicates that the plant from which the thorns were taken, either grew or was present at some stage in or around Jerusalem. Basically, there is little doubt that the object tested, i.e. the Crown of Thorns... once spent part of its history in or around Jerusalem, between AD30 and AD70. We couldn't get more accurate than that, I'm sorry. I haven't put together my final report yet, but I'll send it to you as soon as possible. All I can say now in summary, is that...well, we have proven it comes from the same area that Christ would have been in when he was crucified. And we have also shown that it was there _about_ the time Christ was crucified!" Louisa beamed. She hadn't been expected to tie down any dates, just the geographical origin. That last part had been an extra.

The Professor smiled at her. He was very proud of her. He had selected the best for this project and he had got the best.

"So, team...what we have shown in the space of the past month...with the help of all our colleagues here in Oxford, is that the object we have is made of a type of thorn that originates from the area around Jerusalem, and that it comes from the time when Christ was crucified. Whether or not it is _the_ Crown of Thorns that sat upon Christ's head we may never know. However, in addition to determining its age and origin we have also found several samples of blood on the Crown." The Professor paused, looking around the faces of his team.

"On the basis of the information we have before us, I am prepared to declare that this project has a green flag. With all the necessary funding it will take. Jason. It's your project now. You're in charge. If there's a God out there, or in there..." he said pointing to the image of the Crown of Thorns still floating in the air in front of the screen, " ...then it's up to you to find Him...and clone Him!"

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### Chapter 19

The White House

Washington D.C., America

.

Tim Curts put down the phone and sat at his desk, contemplating what he was going to do for the rest of his day. His two o'clock had just been cancelled, and since it was the _Redemption Day_ holiday everyone else that had any sense was at home with their families. Nowadays, Redemption Day held more significance than the traditional Thanksgiving Day holiday. It certainly had more relevance, the purpose of the day being to celebrate the day the vaccine for the _SARs 2_ virus had been discovered.

That's where he should be too, at home with his family, except that the 'two o'clock meeting' was not something he could have said no to. When the President of the United States of America, asked you personally to be in his office in Washington for 'a two o'clock', you didn't say no.

And then when the President subsequently calls you at one o'clock to tell you that he won't be able to get out of his golf game in the afternoon after all, and that the meeting can wait till the next week, well, what could you do?

"No problem Mr President. Enjoy your game. How's the weather?" Tim had said biting his tongue and cursing under his breath.

"Excellent. The weather's brilliant here in Florida! Got to go...my caddies waiting. See you next week Tim."

Florida? What the hell was he doing in Florida? And why had he dragged Tim away from his home and family on the most important day of the year, to a meeting he could never have made? Tim swore again under his breath and stood up and moved across to look out of the window into the garden at the back of the White House. He knew better than anyone that it wasn't a good idea to swear oaths about the President aloud in any office in the White House. All the rooms were bugged. No doubt even his own. He should know. It had been his idea to bug them. He had done that in the second month of his new role as Head of Security at the White House, a role which was now almost secondary to the myriad of other functions he also fulfilled for the President.

Of course, his day job, his _real_ job...was as a Senior Operative and Field Agent, reporting directly to the Director of the CIA, ...but he hadn't done much for the CIA in the past five years. Nowadays, it was all about protecting the security of the President. Making sure that no one outside, or even inside his team, took a shot at the President and killed him. The irony was that sometimes even he was tempted to take a shot himself.

Tim Curts was a fair man. Forty five, sandy haired, green eyes, five foot nine, slim and muscular, and very fit. Likeable. Friendly. Sincere. Honest. And fiercely loyal. With an IQ that bumped the top of the scale, he had been an obvious choice for recruitment to the CIA when he graduated from Berkley with a top degree in Biology.

His career had started off slow, but had really got going during his intelligence stint in Syria during the final years of the first Bush administration.

America wasn't half the superpower it used to be. The economy was shot to hell, and manufacturing output was way down. Nowadays America was just a shadow of its former self. Self pitying, weak, without pride, and constantly on the edge of bankruptcy.

When the SARS pandemic hit America, the economy had collapsed and never really recovered. Even America's military might was now under threat. There just wasn't the money to continue funding it on the same scale as before.

Over the years, Tim's opinion of his President had changed dramatically. During the first days of the President's administration, when Tim had been appointed to his position, he had really believed in the Presidency. But over the years he had seen the truth behind the administration. President Jamieson was a brutal man, godless and greedy. The title _President_ had never been able to hide the 'General' behind the blue suit and tie, a soldier with a soldier's military mind.

Yet, it was the ' _President'_ that yielded ultimate power in America and Tim had taken the oath many years ago to defend his land, and to support and obey 'the President', whoever that President may be.

Tim was loyal to the core, and he wouldn't change now. But it didn't stop him looking back fondly upon the days when Clinton, the Bush Boys and Powell had ruled America. The old America had been a great land then. A good place to live. Decent, free...

The phone rang and Tim pulled himself away from the window to pick up the red receiver. It was the security phone, so he knew immediately that the call would be important. Probably either the President again or his boss calling from the Pentagon. It was the latter.

"Tim. Sorry to hear that you were called away from your family. How is Mrs Curts and that gorgeous little girl of yours?"

"Fine Daniel. Very good. I spoke to Regina an hour ago and they were about to go for a walk in the forest to work up an appetite for the family dinner..."

"She's a good woman Tim. You're a lucky man..." Daniel was a good boss. Director and Chief of the CIA for the past ten years, he cared about his employees and took a genuine interest in their family lives. No wonder that he commanded respect, friendship and even a small degree of love from those who worked for him. He was a rock, a giant of a man, and Tim had always thought that if fate had not thrown America such an unlucky curved ball, Daniel would have made a great President. A real President. Like the ones in the past. Not like the one they had now.

"And you? What are you doing in the office?" asked Tim. He knew that Daniel preferred to work hard, rather than sit at home alone in his huge empty house. Daniel had never married.

"Something came up...something that I want you to take a look at. It's a _Code Green_. For your eyes only. But I think you may need to get an opinion from some others. If you do, just use your judgement in who you choose, okay? You know the ropes."

"So, what is it?"

"I sent the file over thirty minutes ago. It should arrive in your office in about ten minutes. When you're ready to advise me on your opinion, give me a call. Day or night. You know where to reach me. I'll leave it to you to brief the President. I don't think we have much time to waste..."

"Sure thing Daniel. As soon as I know what's going on. In the meantime, get yourself off home and fix yourself a brandy!"

"Roger that Tim. Sounds like a good idea. I think you'd better fix yourself one too, you'll want one when you read what I've just sent you!"

.

The green file arrived ten minutes later exactly, escorted by two heavily armed escorts in blue striped suits. Standard CIA garb nowadays. All very cosmopolitan and European.

Tim fixed himself the brandy as his boss had suggested. Daniel wouldn't have suggested it unless he meant it. He didn't mess around.

Tim laid the box on the oak desk in front of him and first typed his personal password into the small keyboard, then pressed his index finger onto the security reader on the front of the file. There was the slight sound of a "click" as the container disarmed itself, having correctly scanned in his finger print and recognised the owner, allowing Tim to open the box without it self-destructing and destroying the contents.

Inside there was a green folder containing a field report from Ambassador Johnson in London. Tim had never met the man, but he had heard good reports of his work. He knew that the Ambassador would never send in a _Code Green_ report unless it was something really important.

The field report contained a long type-written report in clear text, with a set of photographs, and very strangely, a hologram of a thorny branch wrapped into a circle, like a wreath of some sorts. The hologram fascinated Tim and for a few moments he played with it, holding it up to the office light and watching how the wreath projected itself into the space in front of his eyes as the light shone through it from behind. It was amazing. After a few minutes he put it back on the table, took a sip of his brandy and sat back in his large leather chair to read the report.

.

He had only got to page two when he realised that his hands were beginning to shake. He took another sip of his brandy, read another page and then finished the rest of the glass. He needed it.

.

### Chapter 20

The Chesapeake Room

The White House

Washington D.C.

.

Two days had passed since Tim had first read the report on the ' _Haissem_ ' project. Its content had both scared and inspired him, and had filled his every thought for the past forty-eight hours. That evening he had placed some calls to a few of his colleagues, and the next morning a select group of people had been sent copies of the file. They had each reviewed its contents, and had flown down that night to meet with Tim in a Code Green meeting at 8am the next morning.

.

"First of all, may I thank you all for coming so soon, and I'm sorry if I disturbed your holiday celebrations. But, as you have all read the report I think you will agree that we have something here that requires our complete and immediate attention." Tim spoke directly to the team gathered around the round table in the Chesapeake Room of the White House. The room had been swept for bugs and listening devices immediately before the meeting began, and it was now secure. In the centre of the table, the hologram had been laid upon a light box, casting the three-dimensional hologram up into the space above it, so that the entangled wreath of thorns hung mysteriously in the air above the table.

Tim rose to his feet and walked around the table, resting his hand briefly on the shoulders of the people as he passed them.

"I want you all to speak openly here. Honest opinions. Straight talk. Whatever you say is for the benefit of this team only. Nothing said here goes beyond this wall. I think we all understand that." It was a statement not a question.

"Jim, you lead the best genetics team the government has got...what's your opinion?" The question was given to Jim Stuart, head of the governments Genetics Research Core, or 'The _GRC'_ for short, as it was more commonly known. Tim didn't approve of most of the programs Jim was working on, investigating how to use genetics in creating genetic and biological weapons of mass destruction, but he was the expert.

"Scary. Very scary. Incredible. But possible. Very possible. We don't have the capability yet. But it sounds like the graduate student Jason has combined several existing processes to invent a new one. We need to find out what that is." Jim replied in his deep voice. He was a giant of a man, overweight and over tall, and when he spoke he stroked his long black beard. Tim didn't like him. Quite frankly, he looked weird.

"Okay, and how long will that take?"

"About six months. Maybe a year if we have to do all the work ourselves, but we can't be far behind. We've been trying in the GRC labs to clone people for years, since the turn of the millennium."

"...but you haven't succeeded yet. Have you?"

"No, not yet. They have all died in their infancy. Well, actually before they were born, but we _can_ do it. We're very close."

"You'll have to get closer. But, if I am understanding you correctly, you are telling me that technically this project may be completely viable, as in something we have to take seriously?"

"More than that. This is genius. I wish I'd thought about it."

"...But you didn't. A graduate student did."

Tim turned his attention to the man sitting opposite Jim. " ..and what is your opinion Dave?"

Dave was one of the country's leading biologists from Caltech University in California. He chaired many of the government committees on genetic and biological research, and Tim had always suspected his involvement with the government didn't stop there.

"Completely doable, although probably about five years ahead of its time. They've stolen the lead."

"What do you mean ' _stolen the lead_ '?" Tim replied immediately.

"...just that there are lots of groups all round the world _trying_ to clone humans successfully. Unfortunately, no one has ever been able to publicly repeat the success of Professor Wainright from Oxford, the man who is really heading up this project."

"What do you mean 'stolen the lead'?" Tim repeated the question.

For a second Dave said nothing, looking briefly out of the window as if contemplating if and how he should reply.

"Dave, may I remind you that I am head of security here at the White House, and that I have the complete trust of the President, and report to him directly. I have his full authority. If there is something going on here that I don't know about, you had better damn well tell me now, ...and I mean now!" Tim put both hands on the table and leaned across towards Dave, staring straight into his eyes.

"Okay, I thought you would have known. We've been trying for a number of years to clone President John F. Kennedy. He was never buried in Arlington. Weird though it may seem, he was really put into cold storage...frozen in one of the crazy cryogenic programs of the late twentieth century. There isn't a hope in hell of bringing him back to life, but we might be able to clone him. So far we've made two little boys, but they both died when they were four. Don't know why. Just died one day. No reason. But from what I read in the report it sounds like the Oxford group are way ahead of the game. Way ahead. If I wore a hat, I'd take if off to them."

"JFK? Bloody hell!!! What the hell has the world come to when you can't even die in peace, once and for all!" Tim shook his head. "Dave, I want you to give me a full report on that project, whatever it is, and I'll circulate it to the others. But from now on, this one will take precedence."

Tim turned to the last member of the team who until this time had been quiet. Unlike the other two who were dressed in civvies, Colonel John Smart was in his full dress uniform.

"Colonel Smart. Your report please?"

Colonel Smart was well known to Tim. He was a top soldier but was also one of the smartest men Tim had ever met. He'd 'done' several other 'jobs' for Tim in the past, in his role as Security Chief at the White House. Over the years Tim had come to trust his judgement, and a couple of times he had taken his counsel on international security issues. Colonel Smart had grown up in Europe and spoke five European languages, and had a deep understanding of international and cultural issues.

"Having heard the reports from our learned friends, I believe we have no choice but to obtain the Crown of Thorns, to give it its proper name, and to advance our cloning program rapidly so that we can make our own clone of Jesus Christ as soon as possible. We cannot, under any circumstances allow the Europeans to take the lead in this race. America was once a God fearing nation. And now is our chance to put Christ at the head of the nation once again. It is our duty to make sure that Christ is born and brought up in America. An American!"

"And how are we to ' _obtain_ ' the Crown?" Tim asked, knowing full well that Colonel Smart would have already drawn up a plan to steal it from the Europeans.

"According to our Oxford source, who as you can see from the report is a member of the team undertaking this research, the project is going well. The original agreement with the French Catholic church was for a loan of the Crown not to exceed six months. But the work is already ahead of schedule and if things continue on track, our contact has told our agent in England that the Crown will be due for return to France in two months time. This gives us a maximum of seven weeks to obtain the Crown. Our agent in England has been very thorough. He has made a full hologram of the Crown and has provided it with his report. From this hologram we are able to view in every aspect a life-size image of the Crown. Using this information an exact replica of the Crown must be constructed using materials similar in origin to the object being replicated. As soon as we have an identical copy I will arrange for the duplicate to be swapped with the original. Ideally, this should be done after all the examinations are complete at the laboratory in Oxford, and just before it is returned to France to its current home in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris."

"If we miss the window of opportunity to obtain it while it is at Oxford we will have to take it from its vault in Notre Dame, however the logistics of doing that would be significantly harder. While it is in Oxford it is under minimal security so as not to draw attention to itself. Very few people even know it has left France."

"Once we have the Crown I will deliver it to the new G.R.C. labs in the underground _CIA Biological Warfare Institute_ deep in the mountains in Vale, where it will be up to our scientists to discover how to clone Jesus Christ."

"The immediate problem I face is how to swap the Crown with a duplicate when we have it ready. It will be a few weeks before I have made all the arrangements and have put together a couple of back-up plans, should the first go wrong, but by the time we have a duplicate made I will be ready." Colonel Smart finished his report.

"Thanks Colonel Smart. For now I'm putting you in charge of arranging for the duplicate to be made, and for arranging all the details of the operation to make the swap in England. In the meantime, Dave and Jim, I'm looking to you two, to provide the smarts on how you're going to make the clone. Make the necessary arrangements for preparing the lab in Colorado. Code Green too. This whole project is Code Green. We'll meet again in a week for an update. Any questions?"

.

\---------------------

.

The visit to his boss in the CIA building the next day was like a trip down memory lane. Nowadays he didn't make it over to the old building as much as he would have liked, but today he had the perfect excuse. Before he briefed the President he wanted to brief Daniel, his real boss. As he had expected, Daniel gave him full authority to proceed as he thought fit, and later that day Tim sat down in the big leather chair in his office and dialled the President's private mobile number. It would give Tim the greatest pleasure to call up the President and inform him there was a full blown _Code Green_ operation on. Top Level National Security and all that.

"I'm sorry, I know it means that you'll have to cut your golf trip short, but I think you will appreciate the reason when I brief you. Tomorrow at two? ...That's fine sir...And you sir...and enjoy the rest of your game!" Tim enjoyed the subtle irony that after the President had ruined his Redemption Day holiday, that he had just cut the President's holiday short, and summoned him to a Code Green in Washington.

The President stormed into the office the next day, still smarting from having lost the game the day before. President Jamieson hated to lose. At anything. He always did his best not to lose. And sometimes Tim knew that clouded his judgement, which was dangerous.

As he walked across the room towards Tim's desk, he threw his suit jacket onto one of the chairs. His dress sense today was fairly typical of his everyday clothes; dark blue trousers held up by dark red braces; a light blue Oxford shirt with a yellow tie; gold cufflinks and black polished shoes. President Jamieson wasn't very tall, only about five foot seven, but his muscles were overdeveloped from years in the army gym and his large chest strained to burst out of the shirt. His bristly blonde hair, still crew cut in the typical army regulation style, complimented his piercing blue eyes. A two inch scar, the result of a bullet wound in Desert Storm, added to the character of his tanned face. The man was small, but he oozed power and quickly made his presence felt wherever he went.

"So this better be good Tim. Do you realise how good the weather is down there today? It's perfect! And it's bloody raining here again. What the hell has happened to the weather these days?"

Tim thought momentarily about pointing out the latest report on Climate Change effects, but realised this wasn't the time. Anyway, the President didn't care about anything that would penalize his plans to rebuild their industries. Thanks to the coal burning factories he had authorized all along the Canadian border, Washington now spent most of the year in a semi-tropical climate like the rain forests of Brazil. And everyone knew it was directly attributable to the President's cheap energy program.

"As I said, I think you'll be interested in this one. This could be just what you've been looking for to put the country back on the road to greatness."

"What do you mean? For fuck's sake Tim, I've told you about that before. I will not, I repeat, I WILL NOT hear you talk negatively of this great country of mine. America is still the greatest country in the world, and always has been..."

Out of the corner of his eye President Jamieson suddenly saw the holographic image of the Crown floating above the table in the centre of the room.

"...and WHAT, if I may ask, what the hell is that?" he said pointing at the rotating three-dimensional image.

"That's what you're here to see. It's a three dimensional hologram of the Crown of Thorns. _The_ Crown of Thorns that Jesus Christ was forced to wear on his head when he was crucified." Tim's voice was calm and matter of fact.

The President glanced at Tim and then returned his attention to the floating Crown. He crossed back to the big round table and leaned forward over the hologram, supporting his weight on two-balled fists planted firmly on the table top. He put his nose as close to the hologram as possible, and then he lifted one hand off the table and tried to grab the image with his fingers. His hand met thin air and passed through into the space beyond.

"Bloody hell...I've never seen anything like that before! How do they do it?"

The President had forgotten his anger and was now behaving like a teenage kid, wafting his hand back and forward through the image hanging in the air above the light-box, which lay flat on the table top beneath.

It took an hour to brief the President on the rest of the details, and by the time he was finished the President was completely mesmerized. Tim had never really seen him like this before, and for a second or two he was frightened by the President's reaction. The President was NEVER lost for words. This had been the first time it had ever happened, or at least, the first time in all the years Tim had known him. Unfortunately the silence didn't last long, and two minutes later the President was back on his feet pacing round Tim's office issuing instructions.

"I want you to report to me directly on this every time there's a development. This project takes precedence over all the others. Funding...whatever it takes...just make sure you keep me informed. I'm putting you in charge of the whole project. I'm looking to you Tim, to bring the Messiah back to America, and then together we will lead the world's premiere nation back to glory and freedom, and its rightful destiny!"

Tim hadn't seen that glazed look in the President's eyes for years and to be quite honest, he didn't know if he liked it. It made him feel uneasy. But the important thing was, Tim had got the Presidential blessing. The project had been approved.

.

### Chapter 21

Institute for Genetic Evolution for the Greater Good of Mankind

Oxford, England

.

Don had waited patiently while Jason and Louisa spent the past week recovering samples of the blood residues from each of the thorns on the Crown. Exactly how they did it Don didn't know. All he knew was that during the day they spent most of their time working with the Crown in the biology lab in the University, only bringing the Crown back to the confines and protection of the I.G.E.G.G.M. lab late at night time.

Under the pretext of working late, Don was always the last person from the group to leave the lab in the evening. As soon as the others left, he found himself drawn to sitting and staring at the Crown for hours on end, thinking and pondering the meaning of life.

Just being in the same room as the Crown filled Don with a host of emotions he couldn't quite understand.

From the moment he had seen it that first day it had arrived in Oxford he had felt drawn to it. It made him feel strange. There was just _something_ about it. And it wasn't a bad feeling. Don had decided it was actually quite a good feeling.

In an attempt to understand what it was he felt, he had even been to Blackwell's, the big bookshop in the centre of Oxford, and had bought his first and only ever copy of the Bible. He had taken to reading it at night time in his cluttered and messy bedsit before going to sleep, and on two occasions he'd actually cancelled a darts evening so that he could read and digest as much of the book as possible. It was as if the Crown was trying to tell him something and the Bible held the key.

Late one night when no one else was around he had felt compelled to touching the Crown of Thorns, picking it up and holding it in his gloved hands. He had felt electricity running through his hands, a rush which spread through his body from head to toe, followed by a feeling of great sadness which in turn was replaced by a tremendous sense of peace.

Don had never been a religious man. He was only a child when both his parents had died and he had been brought up by his elder sister. He was a quiet man, had few friends and mostly kept himself to himself. His only real love in life was a good pint and a game of darts, and when people saw him standing at the bar on a Sunday afternoon playing with the local team, no one would ever have realised that he was one of the cleverest people in the country.

About two years ago, he'd had a girlfriend, but that had only lasted six months before she had moved to another part of the country and it had slowly fizzled out. She had been a member of a rival darts team, and it had been love at first sight when they'd met at a league match. When Don had looked at her for the first time, a little voice in his head had shouted ' _one hundred and eighty_!' and that was it, he was in love. Making love to her that night after the match had been the closest he had come to having a religious experience.

Until now that is. As he looked at the Crown for the hundredth time through the protective glass surrounding it in its case, Don felt totally at peace with himself, and a knowledge that what they were doing was _right_. He would even have used the word "blessed", but since he had never ever been to church he didn't really know what the word meant.

.

\---------------------

.

It was Don that had worked with the Prof. in developing the latest cloning techniques, and his name was on the original published paper that had announced to the world their first success in creating a cloned human baby.

But Jason's insight into how to take dried blood residue, treat it and generate genetic material for the cloning process was pure brilliance. He took his hat off to the young man, and he looked forward to working with him over the next stages of the Haissem project.

.

When Jason and Louisa came back with the Crown that Sunday evening, they brought with them the hermetically sealed box containing the extracted blood residues. Don and Jason immediately set about analyzing them together.

They worked late into the night, and it was two o'clock in the morning before they realised how late it actually was.

"I think we'd better call it a day...we can't afford to make any stupid mistakes through tiredness. Let's go home and meet back here in the morning at 10am?" Jason suggested.

"You go ahead, you've had a long day already. I'll just lock up and put everything away." Don replied. He didn't feel at all tired, and he didn't want to go home. When he was sure the others had left the building he returned to his work. He knew exactly what he had to do, and the process was relatively simple from now on. The blood samples had been prepared and samples from each had been put in solution. Before going home that night Don wanted to identify the blood group of the samples.

It was another two hours before the results were clear. He checked his work twice before he had satisfied himself that his conclusions were right. There was no mistake. They had samples of two different types of blood.

In itself, this wasn't a major problem. It was an annoyance, because now they would have to split the project into two separate streams, working both as if they could each be a sample of blood from Christ, if indeed, either of them was. However what had made him check his results several times, and question whether or not he was really so tired that his judgement was becoming impaired, was the fact that although one of the samples was of Type 'A' blood, the other...well, it was of a type he had not been able to identify. He had never seen anything like it before.

It was to all intents and purposes a completely new category of blood type.

Which was impossible.

"Or was it?", Don said to himself while staring out of the window as the first rays of the morning sun broke over the horizon and filled the room. "What type of blood is God meant to have?"

At six am in the morning, Don wrote up his notes from the evening, summing up in the last line the most momentous discovery of the twenty-first century. "... _Today at 4am in the morning I identified a brand new and hitherto unrecorded new classification of blood type. For the purposes of this project I have called it Type G. After "G" for God."_

.

\---------------------

.

" _What? A new blood type? Show me!"_ Prof. Wainright demanded excitedly at the Monday meeting later that morning. Don had gone home, showered, shaved, had breakfast and returned by 8am. He was buzzing, adrenaline still shooting through his veins, the true significance of what he had discovered only now beginning to dawn on him.

The team huddled round the microscope each eager to peer down the eyepiece themselves, even though the image was simultaneously projected onto the large plasma screen on the wall at the end of the lab. As each person in turn took their turn in looking at the G-type blood for the first time, a reflective mood fell on the group.

Each of them knew what it was they were looking at, but it was Don that broke the silence.

"I've checked and rechecked and I've also done a computer scan of all known blood types. The result is negative. No known animal has this type of blood, and it resembles human blood most of all. The last thing I did last night before I left was to start a DNA scan, and as you can see from the screen now..." Don flicked a button on the computer keyboard, "...the computer has completed the assembly of the first DNA base...and it is human. There's no doubt now that what we are looking at is a form of human blood. But it's a type never seen before, or even thought possible."

"Which in a way is what you would expect if we really are looking at the blood of Jesus Christ!" Jason interrupted.

" Exactly. What were we expecting? I would say that even though we've got two different blood samples, the 'G' type is the one most likely to be the blood of Christ..." Don beamed, his eyes alive, and beads of sweat glistening on his forehead.

"Okay, let's all sit down for a minute and think about this..." The Prof. tried to calm them down, and bring some order back to the meeting.

"Let's think rationally. We've now identified two blood types. One normal one, and one very unusual one. Very unusual I'll grant you that, but that in itself doesn't prove that it is the blood of Christ. We can't be sure of that. And likewise, even though the other sample is normal, we can't discount it completely. We have to ask ourselves if there is the slightest possibility that the G-type blood is actually a legitimate blood type that has simply died out over the past two thousand years. I can't say for sure that _that_ isn't possible. We also have to consider if the situation could actually be reversed, i.e. that the normal 'A' type sample is the blood of Christ and the other type could just be the blood of a very special man that medicine has never seen before? Could that not also be so? And of course, there is still the possibility that neither sample belongs to Jesus Christ."

The group was silent.

"Okay, so we have to proceed with both samples. I think we all know that." Jason agreed, trying to take control of the meeting. From now on, it was his responsibility to lead the group, and he was desperate to prove himself to the others and gain their respect.

"So what do we do next Jason?" Don asked, giving Jason the opportunity to tell him what to do, even though he already knew.

"Well, I would like you to complete your work on constructing the DNA bases, and I'll prepare for the next stage. Professor Wainright, can I ask you to work with Louisa on getting the embryo's we need ready for three weeks on Thursday? Once I get the DNA bases from Don later today, it'll take me three weeks to create the chromosome set, and then we'll be ready to rock and roll..."

"No problem, Jason...it'll be my pleasure." Prof. Wainright nodded, and Louisa smiled back at him.

.

### Chapter 22

Oxford, England

.

In spite of the distance between them, the relationship between Jason and Lydia had been getting stronger week by week. Lydia had managed to rig up a satellite connection and now they could speak and view each other almost every night on their Polycom video conferencing app on their iPads. Lydia had been able to come back to Oxford to meet Jason once every three weeks, and in the coming months she was hoping to spend a month or two working in the British Museum, helping to supervise the recording and preservation of some of the items recovered from the tomb which had been allocated to Professor Wainright as part of his share of the treasure. At least that would give them the chance to see a little more of each other.

Lydia's latest visit coincided with Don's great discovery, and when Jason got back to his flat later that night, Lydia was waiting expectantly for him. While she had been waiting she had whipped up an incredible meal from the contents of the cupboards, and as Jason walked in through the door she handed him a rather large glass of Cabernet Shiraz.

"To the Haissem project!"

"And you!" replied Jason before taking a mouthful of the red wine.

"So...how did it go today? Any progress?" she asked.

"A little. I'll tell you about it later. Afterwards... "

"After what?"

"...After this..."

Taking the glass from her hand and placing it on the dining room table, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her through to the bedroom. Like most new couples, they couldn't get enough of each other, and spent vast amounts of their time together in the bedroom making love. Only afterwards, as they finished the glasses of wine and they lay in bed propped up beside each other on the pillows, did Jason tell Lydia what they had discovered.

"You're kidding...you're bloody kidding...no pun intended, but that's, well, that's bloody incredible!"

"Please Lydia, I've dealt with enough blood today," said Jason laughing at Lydia's enthusiasm.

"Sorry. So what happens next?"

"We make two different clones from the blood samples we've got, hoping that one of them is the blood from Jesus Christ."

"But, it's obvious. It's the G-type blood. It's got to be!"

"Okay, Dr Lydia. If you say so." he said, making a little face at her, to which Lydia responded by jumping on top of the bed and hitting him hard with her pillow.

After dinner they made love again, and as they lay in front of the open gas fire in his living room, the light from the flickering flames casting a golden orange glow across Lydia's beautiful naked body, she looked up at him with a question in her eyes.

"Explain it to me Jason. Tell me how you're going to do it? How do you make a clone? I want to understand."

"Okay, if you really want to know..."

"I do."

With his arm around her and her face resting on his chest Jason began to explain the process of genetic cloning that they had mastered in Oxford at the I.G.E.G.G.M.

"Here goes... _Cloning Class 101 for Beginners_...The first thing to know is that cloning is an entirely natural process that takes place all the time in nature. About one in every 75 human conceptions results in natural clones being produced...we call them identical twins...or _monozygotic_ twins to give them their correct name. To get twins, the fertilized egg, or ovum, splits and produces two separate humans, each with the identical genetic makeup of the other. All we do is mimic that natural process."

"Yes, but how?"

"Did you do biology at school?"

"No"

"Okay, so, if you let me take a little bit of liberty with the truth so that I can try to explain it simply and help you understand it...Humans are made up of millions of little building blocks. Those building blocks are called _Chromosomes_ and are big enough to easily look at under the latest microscopes. In each human being there are just twenty-three different chromosomes. The chromosomes always pair off, so in a human there are twenty-three different sets of chromosome pairs, which combine together in lots of different ways to produce all the genetic material in our bodies. So, in a human cell, that means there are forty-six chromosomes paired off into twenty-three chromosome pairs. Got it? Good, now each of our cells contains the full set of chromosomes that makes up our bodies. Chromosomes are there to tell our cells how they should build our bodies..."

"...Now chromosomes are themselves made up of building blocks which create the instruction sets which tell the cells how to multiply and what they should become. We call these genetic instruction sets ' _genes_ '." He took another sip of wine, and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"Still with me? Good...now, these 'genes' determine what type of cell, a cell is going to become. A chromosome may contain many different genes, but not all of the genes will be genetically active, or ' _switched on_ '. Some genes will be inactive, or ' _switched off_ '. It's the genes which are 'switched on' in the cells that determine the future of _that_ particular cell, and what it will be. So, depending on the active genes within the chromosomes, one cell will become an "eye" cell, and another will become a "leg muscle" cell, another a "tongue" cell...and another a "breast" cell..." He said leaning forward and licking the nipple on her naked breast. Lydia retaliated by swiftly smacking him lightly on the top of his head...

"Stop that! Get on with it..."

"So what's a cell, you may ask? Well, the human cell, or any animal cell for that matter, is really a little chemical factory made of three separate parts. There's the brain part in the centre of the cell, called the ' _nucleus_ ', and there's the fluid surrounding the brain which protects it and contains the chemical soup, called the ' _cytoplasm_ ' and then there's the cell wall which keeps it all together. What we're really interested in is the thing in the middle, called the ' _nucleus_ '. The nucleus is really just a chemical bag containing all the vital parts and it's full of all the chromosomes. ...oops, I missed out a bit...the chemical soup called the 'cytoplasm' that surrounds the nucleus is really not empty at all. It's full of little chemical units called ribosomes..."

"...The ribosomes are the workers in the cells. They get told what to do by the brainy nucleus, and spend most of their time ripping apart chromosomes, and rebuilding them according to the new instruction sets sent out by the brain."

" ' _And what are they building?'_ you may ask?" Jason waited a minute for Lydia to ask but she didn't.

"Well, _if you did ask_ , you would find out that the ribosome factory units spent most of their time building other cells. And when they've made a new cell, they spit it out through a hole in the cell wall, and then start building a new one. Bored yet?"

"No...I like the way you're explaining it...sort of makes _some_ sense..."

" _Well, thank you young lady!_ ...Okay...So where were we?...Right, the cells can make new cells if they want. That's what happens when an egg is fertilized...the egg spends the next nine months making millions of new cells, and each time a new cell is formed the original cell splits in two, and then you have two cells making new cells, then four, then eight, then sixteen, etc, until after nine months you've got all the cells necessary to make a little human being..."

"...so what is DNA?"

" _DNA? ..._ Remember how I said that the building blocks were called Chromosomes. Well, it turns out that each of the chromosomes can be further split down into tens of thousands of other smaller building blocks or molecules, which fit together in long strings. Each cell is made up of about 3000 million of these building blocks."

"So what does DNA stand for?"

"Well, the strings are called nucleic acids, because they are chemically slightly acidic, the 'nucleic' part coming from the fact that they are used in the nucleus of the cell. The full name for the acids are _Deoxyribonucleic Acids_ ..."

"...Now, I said just a second ago that DNA is a string made up of smaller building blocks. Actually, it turns out that a DNA string is made up of various combinations of four basic blocks which fit together in many different ways to make the strings. These smaller blocks are called the ' _bases_ ' of the DNA."

"Stop! It's too much!..." Lydia got up and stretched, walking away from the bed towards the fireplace and the open fire. Bathing in the warmth from the flames, she clasped her hands behind her neck and stared into the mirror above the mantelpiece.

Jason's eyes wandered down the curvature of her back, admiring the softness and roundness of her buttocks, and the sweep of her thighs downwards to her knees.

She turned around, a question jumping from her tongue.

" _Okay...okay_...so I remember that I once read in a magazine article that DNA is a helical chain...What's does that mean?"

"Good question. Remember, I just told you that the DNA was made of four basic building blocks that combine in different ways. Actually, DNA consists of two parallel strands that run together like railway tracks. The rails are made up of long strings of the DNA bases which combine together in special sequences. The bases are called 'A', 'C', 'G', and 'T'. As an example, one string might be made up of bases in the order ATGCCTA. The interesting thing though is that there is a relationship between the order of the bases in one string, and those in the string running alongside it. The bases pair up together, so...for example if you look at base 'A' on one side of the track, you always find 'T' on the other...'C' always pairs with 'G' etc. It's this pairing that links the two sets of strings like a railway track, and the fact that they are linked together somehow induces a natural twist in the double track, making it curl around like a spring, which we call a 'double helix'. "

"Right...right..." Lydia jumped off the bed again, both hands tugging at her hair as if just by pulling on it her head would somehow open up and let all the facts sink in.

"There's more..."Jason tried to continue. "Do you want to hear it?"

"Yes."

"...Well, what you have probably heard me called 'genes' are really just 'sets' of chemical instructions. Let's look at that for a second...The bases link together in pairs to form long strings, or nucleic acids...and the order in which the bases link together determine what instructions and information the nucleic acids contain. BUT, what we know is that in a long string, not all the instructions are switched on...some parts of the instructions in the strings are somehow deactivated...and as a result, the 'instructions' these genes pass onto the developing cells are different."

"Why?"

"Well, as I said before, it's the genes which determine what type of cells they should become as they divide and multiply. Now imagine that we are looking at two genes, which on the face of it appear to be very similar, both of which are arbitrarily made up of three bits...'A', 'B' and 'C'..."

"...When we look closer, we see that in the first of these two genes, two parts, 'B' and 'C' are deactivated. As a result, it is the 'A' part in the first gene which will influence any developing cells it meets to become kidney Cells, for example..."

"...Now, if we look at the second gene, we see that parts 'A' and 'C' are deactivated, and so in this gene it is the active information from part 'B' that will instruct the other cells which it meets in their development cycle to turn, for example, into breast cells. And lovely little cells they are too!"

"Pervert"

" _It's only natural._ "

She leant forward and kissed him on the nose.

"So how are you going to make your little clone then...."

"Right, _that's the big one_...Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I'll begin again... Basically, there are a few _different_ types of cells. You get the ' _somatic_ ' cells which have a complete set of all the genes and chromosomes contained inside them within the nucleus, and you have the ' _germ_ ' cells which have only _half_ of the information needed to make a human, each germ cell only having twenty three chromosomes, and where each chromosome is looking for their opposite chromosome to make a matching pair...Now, when a germ cell finds the other twenty-three chromosomes that fit, the cell ends up with twenty-three chromosome pairs, all the information it needs to become a proper cell. So guess what we call these "germ" cells?"

" _Dunno_...what do we call them?"

"Well, basically, they're better known by you and me as sperm and eggs..."

". _.yes...yes_ ...so when the sperm meets the egg, you get two different sets of genetic information, each containing twenty three 'half ' sets of chromosomes which then pair up with each other and form the complete library of chromosome information!"

"Exactly. _You're not as thick as you look after all_!"

"So, how do you make a clone?"

"Well, an egg is basically a cell with only half of its chromosomes. It spends its time just looking for the rest of its chromosome set, so that it can start multiplying and become something. That's how a baby is born, you take half the chromosome set from the father and give it to an egg cell containing half the chromosome set from the mother. Now...when we make a clone, this is where we change things a little...We sort of cheat... We take the egg, and take out all the chromosome half-pairs from its nucleus, just leaving it as a bag of cytoplasm contained in the cell wall. So the egg cell is basically now not just missing _half_ of the chromosomes necessary to make a proper nucleus, _but in fact, it hasn't got a nucleus at all_!..."

"...The chromosome set we just stole from it contained genetic information from the mother. Now it has no genetic information of its own at all. Nothing...And all the poor little cell wants to know is what it's meant to be! It's crying out for a complete set of chromosomes..."

"... Instead of providing half of the chromosome set from the father we now take the _complete_ set from a genetic donor. We do this by taking a cell from the other person, remove the nucleus which contains a full set of chromosome information from the centre of that cell, and then insert that nucleus directly into the egg cell..."

"...Suddenly the egg cell has everything it needs...it has a wall, the cytoplasm fluid, and a little happy complete nucleus. The next thing it does is then to start multiplying. In fact that's all it does for the next nine months...and before you know it you have a little baby...with one big difference... The baby's cells all contain the exact same nucleus as the one taken from the donor cell. So there is actually no difference to the cells of the baby and the cells of the donor who provided the nucleus. In other words, the baby will be identical to the person who provided the donor cell. Identical. A clone."

"Bloody hell...it's all so complicated, but so easy at the same time... Is that what you're going to do with your clone then...Is that how you are going to make him?"

"Not quite. We have a small problem. We are going to make the clone from the blood cells we got from the blood samples. Unfortunately, blood cells are the only other type of cells that don't contain a full set of chromosomes. But, I have found a way around that. I realised that so long as we could extract some DNA from within the blood cells, we would effectively be able to extract from that DNA, all the information we need which tells us how to build the complete chromosome set."

" ...In the past, no one knew how to access this information. Now we do!...You see, I discovered that the DNA has a blue print contained within it of how all the chromosomes are made. So if we are missing some of the chromosomes, we can learn from the DNA itself how all the other missing chromosomes _should_ be made and what they would look like..."

"...We start with the blood cells from the donor. What we do next is to genetically interrogate the DNA obtained from the red blood cells, to obtain the information we need which tells us how to build the full chromosome set belonging to the donor."

"... Then the next thing we do is to actually manufacture all the chromosomes that are missing, as well as new sets of the ones we already have, and we put them all together to make our own complete chromosome sets and cell nucleuses..."

"... Each artificial nucleus then contains the complete set of the all the chromosomes that would naturally be found in the nuclei of the persons cells that we wish to clone..."

"...The final step is to put one of these 'artificial' nuclei into a egg cell which has had its nucleus removed...and there we have it...empty egg meets full chromosome set...becomes happy egg...makes millions of little identical cells and turns into baby clone. Simple, isn't it?..."

.

### Chapter 23

Oxford, England

.

"So when do you start?" Mike asked a naked Louisa, who lay beside him in his bed, deep in trance.

"Probably next week...everything is well ahead of schedule."

"And when will you be returning the Crown of Thorns to the French?"

"In a month. That gives us time to take more blood samples from the Crown if we need them. But we probably won't. Everything is working brilliantly. We solve all the problems we meet just as soon as we find them. We've been incredibly lucky so far!"

Mike looked down at Louisa's body as he stroked her cheek, and pumped her for the latest information on the project. They had just made love after a pleasant evening out in London. He knew he shouldn't be getting involved with Louisa. This was a mission he couldn't afford to mess up. It was probably the most important one of his career so far, and hopefully his ticket home to America.

Strangely enough, even that thought began to stir conflicting emotions within him. Did he really want to go home? Where was home now? England? With the possibility of returning home looming over the distant horizon, it only now dawned on him exactly how much he really loved living in England and Europe. In so many ways it was a far better place than the country he came from, and to which he had sworn allegiance.

And there was Louisa... Aside from the fact that he loved to sleep with her, and that she had a body to die for, he had got used to her. She was kind, caring, gentle, and wildly passionate, intelligent, funny and beautiful. More than once he had found himself thinking about her when he shouldn't have been. If he didn't know how stupid it sounded, he could be forgiven for thinking that he may be falling in love with her.

On top of that, for the first time in his career he felt guilty about hypnotizing someone. Every time he took Louisa into a trance and asked her questions, it was like he was raping her mind. Whereas before that thought might have stirred some weird erotic feeling of power within him, with Louisa it just made him feel bad.

She trusted him and the more he fell for her, the worse he felt.

He shook himself out of it.

He was a professional...and he had a job to do...Forcing himself to focus, Mike flicked a switch in his mind, and the warmth in his eyes disappeared and was replaced by a cold, steely hardness.

"Louisa, without waking, and while still feeling very relaxed and very happy, I would like you very much to take this pen and paper and draw me a map of the laboratory, and to write down the access codes for all the security gates. _Would you do that for me_?"

She nodded. Her eyes now open, but her conscious mind not seeing anything.

When she had finished, Mike held her hands and looked into her eyes, speaking very slowly.

"When is the laboratory empty? Tell me a time when you could arrange to work in the laboratory alone?"

"Every Friday night. No one is ever there after nine o'clock. Everyone goes out and winds down from the week's work. Drinking, or spending it with their families."

"Good. That's very good Louisa. I am very interested in your work. So interested in fact that I want you to help me. You really want to help. I can tell. _You really do_."

"Yes, Mike, I do."

"Good...Next Friday night I want you to arrange to work in the lab alone. When it's ten o'clock I want you to feel very relaxed and return to the trance you are in now. You will be able to do everything you normally can do while you are awake, even talk to other people normally, but the next day you will not be able to remember any of it. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, I do."

" _That's good_. At 3am in the morning I will come in my car and meet you outside the lab. I want you to bring the Crown of Thorns down to the car and show it to me. When you meet me, I want you to step into the back of the car, and fall asleep for three minutes while I examine the Crown of Thorns. Then after three minutes I will wake you and then I want you to take the Crown of Thorns back into the laboratory, and replace it exactly where you found it. Then I want you to lock up securely and normally, making sure everything is safe, and then I want you to go home and sleep. When you wake up in the morning as normal, I want you to feel very happy, but not to remember anything at all about what happened from 10pm onwards the night before. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, I do...At 3 am you will bring the car. I will bring the Crown of Thorns to show you, and I will get in the back of the car and fall asleep for three minutes..."

"Very good. That's _exactly_ right", he said, touching her firmly with two fingers on the shoulder. "...And now...when I count back from three to one you will slowly awake, and when you awake you will not consciously remember any of the instructions I have given you, but subconsciously you will remember every detail, and you will carry out my instructions in full when the time comes." He paused for a second, then almost as an afterthought he added. "You are a very good person Louisa, a very special person, and you should be very happy with yourself. No matter what anyone else says to you in your life, you will be positive and strong and happy. Always. And now when you awake you will be very, very, happy. _Three, two, one_..."

Mike didn't know why he threw in the last sentence. It wasn't very professional of him or part of the standard hypnosis. But he couldn't help himself. He wanted her to be happy. In spite of himself.

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### Chapter 24

Curly Iron Ranch

Texas, America

.

President Jamieson sat alone in the study at his ranch in Texas, looking out of the window at the distant setting sun.

Clara, his occasional 'hired' companion, had just left to be flown back to Las Vegas in his private jet. He had enjoyed her visit very much and the President was feeling very mellow now. It had been a very 'interesting' few days.

Expensive, but Clara had always been expensive, and silence didn't come cheaply nowadays. The last girl who had threatened to say something to the papers about his personal tastes and extra-curricular activities had become a problem and it had become necessary to silence her. Since then he had learnt his lesson.

You paid for what you got.

Over the years he'd had to deal with many such problems, and he had long ago got used to the guilt and the nausea that accompanied the occasional necessity to kill someone. President Jamieson was no angel, and he had no illusions about himself. He knew what he wanted and as a rule, he never let anyone stand in his way of getting it.

He had been President for many years now. Terrible though it had been, he had immediately recognised the _SARS2_ virus as a friend and ally, and he had swept to power in its wake. Since then he and the CIA had reigned with an iron fist, but he was proud of his achievements of restoring civilization to a land that had become ruled by chaos and anarchy. He knew himself to be the savior of his nation, but he also knew that his job was not yet complete.

Behind closed doors when he was alone he pondered and thought about the old America, the one that had ruled the world and been the envy of every other nation on the planet. One day, he would make America great again. And with the help of the Crown of Thorns project, that day could be coming sooner rather than later. The Crown of Thorns project fascinated him. Since the day he had learnt of it only a few weeks ago he had followed it in every detail. For two reasons.

Firstly, because he had immediately realised the potential it offered his country. He had given full funding to the project, and made it clear to all those concerned that failure would not be acceptable. The scientists at the new CIA Biological Warfare Institute (CBWI) in Vale, Colorado, the new home of the GRC, were under no doubts as to the rewards that would be theirs if they succeeded in cloning Christ...and also understood completely what their fate would be if they failed. Failure was not an option.

Secondly, because the President had recently become aware of his own mortality and for the first time in his life he had wondered about the future, and the possibility of death.

It had all started the month before with that little 'incident' on the golf course. It hadn't even been a proper heart attack, just a spasm in his chest, but the doctors were so worried that for a few hours he had genuinely thought that he was going to die. Okay, at the end of the day it had just turned out to be some sort of muscular contraction in his chest, but as he had lain on the hospital bed with wires strapped to his chest and arms monitoring every nerve impulse and heart movement, he had become acutely aware how thin the thread to life actually was. If one muscle in his body stopped working, if his heart just decided to stop for a while, _just for a few moments_ ...then he would be gone.

And where would he go? He had never really ever given it a proper thought before, even though he had sent hundreds, maybe even thousands to their deaths in various conflicts around the world. Even though he had personally pulled the trigger and shot many people dead himself, as the colour had drained from their faces and their blood had run on the ground in front of his eyes, even then he had never wondered where it was that he was sending them to. But now he did. Suddenly it had become all so much more personal.

Death had come to knock at his door, even though he had not been at home. But when would the Grim Reaper pay him another visit?

It was this recent thought of death, and the questions he had begun to ask himself about where he would go when death did come for him again, that had started him to search for his soul.

"Was there a heaven? Shit, if there is, I'll never get in. How did it go?... ' _thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal... That shall not covet thy neighbor's wife'_ ...thou shall not do this or that... _I've done them all!"_ he thought to himself as he drank some twenty year old Scotch and stared out at the sun finally dipping behind the distant hills that marked the boundary of his expansive ranch.

He didn't regret how he had lived his life, but he knew that if any of the stuff he had heard from the Sunday School preachers and ministers when he was a kid was actually true, then he wouldn't have a chance of sneaking past those pearly gates into that great big Las Vegas in the sky. Not unless he had a friend on the inside. Not unless he was part of the organizing committee. Not unless he had a personal invitation from the Big President himself.

He knew instinctively what he had to do. Once the team in Vale had successfully cloned a new baby Jesus, he would bring up the little Christ himself, as his own son. He congratulated himself on his plan. It was an excellent one. As the kid's adopted father he would surely get automatic forgiveness and exemption from judgement of any of the bad things that he had done in the past or was to do in the future. Even better was that as his son, he would ensure that the Christ child would have automatic right of succession to the Presidency. With all his experience and knowledge he would bring up his son to rule America wisely and strongly, with a view to expanding the country's sphere of influence so that it once more ruled the world. With Christ on their side America would once more be strong. That day was coming soon.

.

\---------------------

Washington D.C.

America

.

Tim Curts was excited. The news from the underground research centre in Colorado was good. Everything was ready. The group there had added a few more experts to the team: using the Presidential backing for the project, they had sent out invitations to some of America's leading geneticists all over the country, asking for them and their families to come and join them in Vale.

Not surprisingly, nobody had turned down the invitation. Probably because the invitation that was sent out was done in such a way that rejecting the offer was not an option. Not if the invitees had a family to worry about, or if they didn't want to be sent a subsequent presidential posting to a research unit in north Alaska.

Since the dedicated team had come together over the past few weeks, the progress had been good. Before the team members had arrived they had known nothing about the true nature of the project, only learning what the challenge was when they were on site and under close security. Scientists all of them, the incredible challenge and opportunity that lay before them excited them all, and within a few days they became enthusiastic and eager to get on with the work they had been chosen to do. In fact, within forty-eight hours of them arriving, it would have been difficult to get them to leave even if Tim Curts had wanted them off the project. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, an opportunity no scientist in his or her right mind would miss!

They were a few days into the project and already the team had come up with some breakthroughs in how they would approach the challenge, and only today they had announced in a video call with the rest of the core group that they had an idea how to emulate the work and progress being made by the Oxford team, led by the graduate called Jason. Tim had also just got off the phone with Colonel Smart who had proudly told him that the duplicate Crown of Thorns was complete.

"You should see it...I've got it in front of me, with the holographic one floating beside it. They're identical! Damn, our guys are good...they can forge anything. Give them whatever you want, a brand new banknote, a Faberge egg, or an oil painting by Monet, and they'll copy it within twenty-four hours. All I can say is thank goodness they're on our side. We've got the best crooks in the world working for us."

"Okay, so let's go to the next stage now. I'll meet you and your boys at Dover Air Force base tomorrow afternoon and we'll fly to England tomorrow night. As far as I know, the latest news from our man in Oxford is that the switch is happening next week. I want the whole team in there a week in advance. That'll give us all the time we need to map out the area, familiarize ourselves with the territory, the layout of the lab, and the streets around it, and to prepare your backup plans just in case anything goes wrong."

"Don't worry Tim, I've already made the arrangements. Your car will pick you up at 11 _am_ tomorrow morning. The only thing you have to bring is your umbrella. It's always raining in England."

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### Chapter 25

Banbury Church

Oxfordshire, England

.

The last time Don had been in Church was at his best friend's wedding two years before. He couldn't remember anything about the service, except that when they arrived at the wedding ceremony in the quiet country church, he and several of the other people who had been on the Stag night were still drunk or nursing thunderous hangovers from the night before.

He'd never felt the urge to explore the spiritual side of life, so he was as amazed as anyone else to find himself walking up the leaf strewn autumn path into the twelfth century Saxon church at 10.45 am that autumn morning.

Was this not the best time of the day still to be in bed on a Sunday? What was happening to him?

It was like there was something struggling within himself to come out, or maybe it was just the other way round...maybe there was something outside of himself that was struggling to get in. Whatever it was, his mind had suddenly become open to another side of existence that he had never noticed before.

Belief. Faith. Even Spirituality.

The past year had been a good year for Don. He had been very happy. Content. No major problems. No major stress. Yet this thing with the Crown of Thorns had got him spooked. But not in a way that he found uncomfortable or unpleasant. It was something that he couldn't touch or see, and whatever it was, it fascinated him. Whenever he was in the lab with it he felt something...something powerful...something wonderful...yet beyond his touch and understanding. The others hadn't felt it. It was only him that had been affected so profoundly. Even before he had discovered the G-type blood he had known it was special, and now he was convinced.

Don had been dreaming strange dreams. He dreamt he was going on a journey to find something, looking for someone ...or something...but whenever he got close to whatever it was he was looking for, he would wake up. The dream didn't scare him, but it annoyed him more and more each time it happened, and he always woke up just before he could see what it was that he was chasing after. He had even started to read the bible, the New Testament and the Old Testament, in an effort to try and understand more about the guy called Jesus Christ. Of course, he had heard the Christmas story, and the basics of the crucifixion, but he was hungry to learn more about the man behind the legend, to understand what it was that made this man die wearing a wreath of thorns wrapped around his skull. To understand the man they were trying to clone.

He felt he was being led to something, led to draw a conclusion, led to find something out. Just like in the lab. At first he had felt nervous working on the Haissem project, but increasingly he was coming to believe that they were _meant_ to be doing this work. Yes, ' _meant to_ ', as in ' _this was his fate_ '.

"So, what the hell is going on?" he had sworn at himself in the mirror the night before as he reasoned with himself whether or not he should go to the service the next day.

.

He sat in the church pew that Sunday morning riveted by the sermon the vicar preached to them. He told the story of Lazarus and how Jesus had brought him back from the dead, and Don spent the rest of the day wondering if what they were just about to do was also so miraculous. Jesus was dead, and they were planning to bring him back from the dead. Or was _He_ dead? What was the resurrection thing all about anyway?

.

\---------------------

.

It was Sunday afternoon and Don was back in the lab.

The rain was pouring down outside, and the windows were beginning to steam up on the inside. He could hear the sound of thunder in the far distance, and as he watched a gap opened up in the clouds and a shaft of sunshine burst through into the children's play-park below. A multicolored rainbow cascaded down through the thin mist rain, and Don stood in awe of the beauty.

.

He turned back to the microscope he had spent the past two hours preparing and setting up. He had already worked on the first strain of blood to be found on the thorns, and now it was time to look in detail at the makeup of the G-type blood from the second sample.

He put his notebook down beside the base of the _Smithsonian 250_ , the newest and most powerful microscope the lab had, and bent over the eyepiece trying to focus on the object below. The Smithsonian 250 was an amazing piece of engineering. With it they could see right down to the level of intact, complete DNA stings: on the highest magnification it was even possible to see the molecules which made them up.

Over the next couple of days Don was hoping to map out the DNA from the blood cells taken from the Crown. Then he would begin the process of dissecting the strings and extracting the genetic information which would enable them to create and reproduce each one of the twenty three different chromosomes that would have been present in the nucleus of any cell taken from Jesus Christ's body.

Over the past few days Jason had been working on isolating the blood residue samples into its DNA constituents. If Jason had succeeded, Don should now be able to examine the actual DNA constituents of the G-type blood under the microscope.

With his eyes peering into the double sight he flicked a switch on the desk and the lights in the lab dimmed. As Don peered through the sights of the Smithsonian he discovered Jason had succeeded. Brilliantly. It took his eyes a few seconds to adjust before the first DNA string from the G-type blood sample came into view in the sights of the microscope, 'suspended' in a special protective molecular solution which allowed Don to view each individual string in isolation from the others. As the microscope focused on the helical chain, Don felt his heart constrict with shock and simultaneous awe. Awe because what he was just witnessing for the first time was truly amazing.

Amazing and _beautiful_.

The large DNA string he was looking at swept round itself in a magical helical dance, the myriads of molecules that made it up baffling the viewer with their complexity. But as he watched it, the DNA string shimmered before his eyes, and a wave of multicolored light swept up and around the helical string from one end to the other. Then just as the light wave reached the other end of the string, it started again at the beginning, another wave of magical light sweeping up and round and following the previous one in its path.

As Don watched the magical rainbow of light dance along the helical chain of DNA, it reminded him of a string of Christmas tree lights, or the wave of phosphorescence he had once seen passing through transparent plankton floating in the sea at night, which had been filmed and shown on a sea-life documentary on television.

The minute light displays started off with a little flash of red, followed by the next molecules in the string emitting a subtle orange glow, before they too were outshone by a sequence of neighboring molecules letting out little flashes of yellow, green, blue, and violet. It was both beautiful and totally mesmeric.

Don knew that normal blood didn't do this. He knew that this was impossible! Yet, something in his subconscious told him this was what he was meant to see. This was real. This was how Jesus Christ's blood looked like under a microscope!

Just how the blood samples were still emitting energy in wave after wave of magical light, two thousand years after the blood was spilled during the owner's death, was a mystery he knew he would never solve. Where did the energy come from? _Why_ were the DNA strings emitting light? _How_ was the light emitted and _what_ was emitting it?

Did he really care? Perhaps it was just better to accept that it was so.

.

\---------------------

.

At four o'clock the phone in the lab rang, and Don finally managed to pull himself away from the microscope. He had been watching the multicolored molecular light show for over two hours. Just staring, observing, watching...He had never seen anything so beautiful. _So peaceful._

He made his way through the airlock and picked up.

"Hi! Is that you Don?"

It was Jason on the phone.

"Yeah...I'm just doing a bit of work on the blood sample..."

"Don. It's Sunday afternoon. You should be at home, or out, or something. You're working too hard mate. Time to get some R&R!"

"So what are you doing calling me then? You must have been thinking about work as well."

"No...Lydia and I were just driving past on our way back from town, and we could see the lights on in the lab from the street. Just wondered what's going on!"

"What's going on? ...I think you'd better come up and have a look..."

"Why? Have you got something?"

"Jason, ...I _THINK_ you should come and see this for yourself!" And Don hung up.

About ten minutes later Jason and Lydia walked hurriedly into the entry lab, Jason throwing his jacket at the coat stand on the way in, missing it and ignoring it as it fell to the floor. Lydia came up behind him, scooping it up and hanging it properly on the stand.

It was another ten minutes before they had donned their bunny suits and decontaminated and passed through the airlocks into the high level clean lab.

"So what have you got then?"

"See for yourself. I'm looking at a single DNA string. See if you can spot anything unusual." Don stepped aside and let Jason and Lydia step up to the eyepiece of the microscope. Jason leaned forward and peered into the eyepiece. After two seconds he looked up and stared at Don, then glanced swiftly at Lydia before gazing back into the eyepiece of the Smithsonian.

"Good grief..." his voice trailed off into nothing.

"What is it? What are you looking at?" Lydia leant on his arm, giving him a gentle nudge to move out the way.

"Here. Just look down through here..."Jason stood up making way for Lydia. As she peered into the microscope sights, Jason turned to Don. "I think we'd better call the Prof. and Louisa. They should be here to share this and see it for themselves. If it were to suddenly stop, whatever it is... they would never believe us."

"I'll call them. You take another look."

Don called the Professor first, then Louisa, instructing them both to come as soon as possible. Forty minutes later they joined the others in the lab, each taking a turn to look at the DNA of Jesus Christ.

"Wow..., or rather, I think the technical term is ' _EUREKA!._ '..." The Professor chuckled as he looked at the blood specimen on the slide below. " We're on to something big here...something way beyond our understanding. Something... _miraculous_."

Lydia's reaction was more scientific.

"It's beautiful. Almost serene..." She paused for a second. "Don, you prepared the sample, is there any way you could have somehow affected it...some accidental radiation dose, or perhaps some phosphorescent effect caused by passing the sample under a UV bulb or something. Any simple explanation that we shouldn't overlook?"

"Good question...but while we were waiting for you to arrive we've been through all the possibilities. We can't think of anything we can attribute this to, apart from the obvious. If it's the blood of Christ, we would expect it to look _slightly_ different wouldn't we...and perhaps this is just what it looks like."

"Slightly? ' _Slightly_ ' my boy is the Nobel-prize winning understatement of the year. Do you realise what you are looking at? The atoms themselves must be emitting light. Over and over again. What we're seeing here isn't really possible. It's impossible to make a molecule repeatedly sing with light like that...it's supernatural...beautiful, almost hypnotic." The Professor spoke in broken sentences, still looking through the lens of the Smithsonian, his eyes following the patterns of light and trying to take it all in.

For the next couple of hours the team stood around the microscope discussing what they were seeing. The air was thick with excitement, and several times the group burst into simultaneous laughter, with each of them returning over and over again to the microscope to see if what they had seen was real, and to check that it was still happening.

They were experts in this field and they knew the significance of what they were seeing. The team were standing on the edge of something so vast that whatever it was they were discovering would change the world for ever. First G-type blood, now DNA strings that sang with the light of Life. What would the rest of the program have in store for them? Where was the Haissem project taking them all?

### Chapter 26

The Lamb and Flag

Oxford

.

Laughing, thrilled, and incredibly excited the team finally succumbed to their pangs of hunger and left together to go for a 'celebratory' pub meal in the _Lamb and Flag_ , the pub where they traditionally celebrated all their 'ups', and drank to forget their 'downs'.

They managed to get the last of the Sunday Roast and washed it down with several bottles of decent wine. Laughing and joking together properly as a team for the first time outside of lab hours, the Prof. smiled on at the group as he surveyed them coyly from the bar while fetching yet another round of drinks. He was pleased to see them having fun. Pleased to see Jason taking the lead naturally now that he had been formally handed the group's reigns. Pleased to see Jason and Lydia so obviously in love with each other. And pleased also to see Louisa so happy and Don slowly coming out of his shell. Yes, what with today's discovery there was an awful lot to be happy about. An awful lot.

More than anything though he was pleased that he had been able to keep his sadness from destroying the moment. It would be fair to say that as much as everyone else had the right to be happy, the Professor had the right to be sad. And yet it wasn't till he had seen the last member of his team stagger into a taxi and had ushered them all off home to bed, that he let the sadness overtake him and the wall of despondency and anger engulf him.

_Anger_? Probably a natural reaction to the news he had received.

Sadness...that was understandable...there was so much he was going to miss now. So much.

It was two weeks ago that he had heard the news. Two weeks since he had sat in the doctor's surgery in Broad Street and been told that the cancer had spread, and that the prognosis was not good. Two months at the most.

Anger!

Yes, he deserved to be angry.

After all the years of fighting the disease, after all the painful treatment, after having been given so much hope of a recovery, and now, just as he had found the true reason to justify his existence on this wonderful planet...just then was he going to have it all taken from him, or rather, he would be taken from it.

Taken from the discovery of a lifetime, and taken from each and every wonderful day where just to see a raindrop fall, or to hear a bird call from a tree, or see the sun shine from behind a cloud, would fill his sight and senses with the awesome wonder of life.

Life.

Boy, had he lived in his time! The best thing was that Mathew Wainright, scholar, playboy and adventurer and now long-time philosopher had not wasted a second of his life. _But two months_?

No, he needed more...Some people lived their life stuck in a room in front of the television, but Wainright understood the value of life! Why not take someone who didn't know how to live? Why take someone who valued what it was all about? Why? Why? _Why_?

After two days of raining, at last it had finally stopped. The Professor paid the bill for the evening, signing for the receipt with a scan of his left-hand index finger at the bar. He always preferred to pay cash.

"Shall I call you a taxi?" the bar manager asked.

"No thanks...I need the exercise" Mathew replied. He refused to let the cancer turn him into an invalid.

Wrapping his long blue woolen scarf around his neck, and buttoning up his long tweed jacket, he picked up his silver capped cane and started the pain-ridden walk home through the empty Oxford streets.

The streets were surprisingly quiet for a Sunday evening.

He decided to try and fight off his sadness by splashing his way slowly through the puddles on the way back to his house, just like he used to do when he was a kid. The road took him past the I.G.E.G.G.M. and as he passed he stopped for a second to rest and look up at the building which signified the greatest achievements of his life.

Yes, in spite of everything, he had a lot to be proud off. At the very least, he could be proud of the fact that because of his efforts there were a number of infertile couples in the world who were now happy parents, bringing up beautiful children full of laughter and life.

.

He looked up at the Haissem lab, in the building above him half expecting to see someone, but the rooms were dark and unlit. Then suddenly it started to rain again, this time heavily, and without further thought he found himself driven into the shelter of the building.

.

"Good Evening Professor Wainright? Going up to the lab are you? Can I help you?" The voice of one of the security guards caught him unawares as he came to the door to open it for him.

"Oh, good evening Jonathan...yes, ...well, actually I was just thinking about going up and taking another little look at the experiment we're doing..." the Professor mumbled quickly, making up the answer as his lips mouthed his reply.

"Well, if you want me to call a cab for you later when you want to go home. Just give me a buzz down?" the friendly guard replied.

"Okay, thanks Jonathan. I will...." And before he knew it the Professor had stumbled his way into the lift and was heading up to the lab.

Why, he didn't really know.

.

The lab was dark and quiet, save for the hum of the ventilation and air filtration systems which worked continuously to keep the air clean and dust free. Opening his locker, and putting away his scarf, coat and walking stick, he pulled on his bunny suit and stepped into the first airlock. As the air rushed over him, cleaning off the tiny invisible dust particles he suddenly felt the tremendous sense of sadness returning to him.

How many more times would he be able to do this? In two months time he would be dead. Gone. Maybe even sooner.

The cancer was out of control now, and according to the doctor the headaches he had been suffering were due to a rapidly growing tumor in his brain. Who knows how that would affect him in the weeks to come! In two weeks he could maybe lose control of his own body...

Blindness, deafness, loss of memory? All the expertise and knowledge he had build up over the years would simply disappear. And then he would be gone too, and people would begin to forget his name. Soon it would be like he had never existed.

There was a rush of sound as the airlock opened and he stepped into the next clean area beyond. There were three different airlocks, each leading to a progressively more 'clean' area, where the amount of dust in each cubic inch of air decreased tenfold each time. There were two more airlocks to go. All the DNA experiments took place in the third clean area, where the risk of outside genetic or viral contamination to any research was minimal.

The professor stepped into the second airlock. The air jets washed over him, and the sadness engulfed him again. Then suddenly a thought occurred to him. He had led a life of science. He had never really been very religious, and had never ever accepted the fact that everything was just there by chance. He had spent his life investigating and trying to understand the rules which governed mankind's existence, trying to guess at the knowledge by which all things existed. Someone must have made the rules he was trying to understand? Someone...God? A great master scientist in the sky?

He had never really spent much time pondering the "Why?", mostly being too busy trying to figure out the "How?".

Yet, the rest of mankind, well at least the culture in which he was brought up in, believed the answer came from one Man, one God, ...and, incredible as it may seem, everything pointed to the fact that he, Mathew Wainright was one of a small team that had reproduced the blood of that Man, and it was now sitting in several containers in the third and final clean area. The blood of Christ.

_The actual blood of Christ_.

As Wainright stepped out of the second airlock he quickly crossed the second lab area, passing rows of test-tube covered benches. He entered the third and final airlock, where again he immersed himself in the purifying air, letting it wash over him and cleanse him of all the worldly contaminants.

It occurred to him that it was almost as if he was going from the outer temple to the inner sanctum, through the progressively more privileged areas where fewer and fewer people were allowed to tread, until they finally reached the inner sanctum where only the high priests were allowed to stand before God and ask for divine deliverance for their people.

A temple. Yes, that's what it was. Except his was the temple of Science, and he was the High Priest of Genetics. And as he had this thought, he knew what he had to do. And why he was here. The answer to all his problems lay here, in the final clean zone. Something had brought him up here tonight to stand in the inner temple of science and ask God for his own deliverance. After all, he was the high priest, and he could ask for anything, could he not?

There was a click, the red light above his head went out and the green light came on, and the door swept open in front of him. He was in the inner sanctum. Most big temples had some sort of religious artifact at its core, and theirs was better than most. Theirs was ' _The temple of the Crown of Thorns_ '. Only the high priests would get to stand before the Crown, and he was the highest priest of them all.

He crossed the room to the large walk-in, airtight, indestructible, fireproof, bombproof, 'everything-proof ', metal safe on the far wall in which viral cultures and spores were normally kept. He opened it and removed the metal padded box containing the Crown. He carried it from its place of safekeeping and put it down on one of the tables in the middle of the room, opening the box and removing the Crown and its protective padding and placing it directly on the table in front of him.

So what was the plan now?

For a good few minutes he just stood there staring at it, thoughts rushing through his head, and his heart pounding, the dull headache he had felt for the past two months hurting more and more as the blood pumped faster through his skull. He didn't know what to do next.

He drew up a chair, turning it round and sitting astride it cowboy style, resting his arms and head on the top of the chair's back, staring intently at the Crown.

His thoughts turned to his life, his childhood, his first wife and their son, now living in France somewhere. He remembered the first time he made love to a woman when he was seventeen, being seduced by an older woman who he had subsequently followed round like a puppy for weeks.

He remembered his first true love, his first car, the cry of his first baby as it was born, the smile on his wife's lips as he had gazed at her at the altar, the pain of the divorce, the years of studying, the achievements of his career, and finally the certainty that he would be dead in two months time and unable to complete this, the most important of all his life's works.

Unless...unless the God that he had never sought or spent time with would now suddenly forgive and cure him.

No...not even cure him, just give him his health and clarity of mind to see the project through, to see the baby Christ cry his first tears and take his first breath of air, to know that he had succeeded in this, his life's greatest task.

A blinding white pain suddenly erupted in his skull, and pain, far worse than anything he had experienced so far, engulfed his body, his senses strained to their maximum by the severity of the attack. Wainright gripped the edge of the chair and rode out the storm, the pain lasting for a few minutes before subsiding and leaving Wainright sweating and gasping for breath.

It was getting worse each time. And every time it happened the dull pain that it left in its wake was more unbearable.

How much more time did he have before it became so unbearable that he would have to take the mind numbing morphine, which he was resisting as much as he could? He needed to be able to think clearly for his work.

"God..." He heard himself crying aloud, his voice spreading throughout the empty lab and echoing back off the far wall. "Why? It's not fair... _Just not fair_."

Then suddenly there was clarity. A clarity that he had never experienced before. A clear, defined certainty and knowledge. The truth. What his life had been about. And why.

In a moment of stunning self realization Wainright realised that his whole life had been a search for the truth. _The_ Truth. The answer to all questions. The _BIG_ question.

He had spent his life looking for and investigating the rules of life, without looking directly at the simple question of " _Who made the rules and gave us Life_?" He had been skirting around the edges, scared to look at the centre. But now, with certain death facing him in the weeks to come, with time running out and his ability to think coming to an end, he turned all his attention to answering that one big question.

He opened his eyes again and looked directly at the Crown of Thorns.

Up till now he had looked at the Crown purely as a scientific object. The focus of his latest experiment. The source of his next white paper and future academic acclaim. With sudden fresh new insight Mathew looked at the Crown and saw it truly for the first time.

With his eyes open he saw in his mind's eye the hill in Jerusalem, three crosses upon it, three deaths, the thunder and lightning, the Centurion, the anguish, and oh...suddenly the pain...terrible, terrible pain,...the pain in his head, in his hands and ankles...in _His_ head...and _His_ ankles...

A wave of indescribable, intense pain swept through his body again, and Mathew felt the wrists in his arms twitch, and a burning sensation in his side as if he had been pierced with a sharp object. The pain in his skull grew and grew and involuntarily Mathew swept his hands up to grasp his temples...but as he did so, almost subconsciously he felt his hands reaching for the Crown and sweeping it up onto his head. As he put the Crown on, the pain once more erupted inside his brain and swept over him in a wave. White light flashed in his eyes, and Mathew cried out aloud.

"Lord, _let it stop_...."

A tremendous heat swept down from the Crown on his head, through the fabric of the bunny suit covering his head, engulfing his skull and passing on down through his neck, sweeping down over his shoulders into his body, washing down through his torso, and into his arms and legs. His feet and toes tingled, and his muscles relaxed throughout his body. His body became alive with a sensation of power and electricity, warm heat engulfing him and passing into and through his bones. From tip to toe Mathew felt a warmth, a quiet warmth...a sense of peace.

Then suddenly it all went dark, and he slipped from the chair, sprawling on to the floor below.

The Crown of Thorns fell from his head and rolled onto the ground beside Mathew's inert body.

.

### Chapter 27

I.G.E.G.G.M laboratory

Oxford

.

The sun's rays swept over the edge of the laboratory bench and spilled out onto floor, coming to rest on Mathew's eyelids. His eyes flickered, and slowly opened.

"Ouch... _that's bright..._ " He muttered aloud.

For a second he lay there on the floor trying to figure out where he was and what had happened. Then he remembered it all. He drew himself up into a kneeling position and raised his hands to his head to help ride out the expected wave of pain that he'd recently felt every day upon waking from an always troubled sleep.

There was nothing. The pain didn't come. In fact the dull, ever present pain that he had come to live with constantly had gone too. His mind was fresh and clear.

He looked across the floor and saw the Crown of Thorns lying a few feet away. He reached over for it, and realised with alarm that one of the thorns had been damaged by the fall and was now hanging half-detached from its branch.

Concerned, he carefully picked it up, then slowly stood up to place it back in its padded metal container. He looked at his watch. It was 7am. An hour before the others would start to arrive for the morning meeting. He picked up the box and moved towards the wall-safe, half ready to wince at the pain he always felt when walking nowadays. His lips gathered themselves into a wince, and he automatically got ready to mutter 'ouch' under his breath as he took his first step.

There was no pain.

He took a few steps forward.

Nothing.

He walked quickly and freely to the wall, covering twenty or thirty steps. Nothing. No pain.

He placed the Crown in the safe, closed the door, and walked to the mirror in the corner of the room, pulling down the edge of his face mask so that he could see his face properly in the mirror. His eyeballs were white and clear, and the darkness under his eyes had gone. He looked remarkably well. Not bad for a man half his age! Even the lines on his temple were relaxed.

He reached up to touch this head, as if he would be able to touch inside his brain and feel the pain from his tumor. Again, he realised the pain was gone. And still there was no pain in his legs.

For the first time in seven years he was pain free.

Instead of the pain he felt a tremendous inner peace. A certainty about things, a calmness and a warmth in his chest and heart, that welled up into his head and spread throughout his soul. He felt good. Very good. He didn't need any doctor to tell him what he was suffering from now. He knew...Mathew _knew_ that he had been healed.

Given a second chance.

The poisoned, corrupt, malignant cells in his body that had infected and torn his body apart with cancer were gone.

.

### Chapter 28

Sunday Evening

.

The plane touched down at the English air force base and rolled to a stop beside the large camouflaged green hanger, disgorging its cargo of people. Nowadays American military airplanes only flew into English bases with the special permission of the English government. The last of the European American airbases had been closed down two years before, and now only service flights were allowed in to cater for the embassy and the large American ex-pat community in London and the South of England.

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.

.

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.

.

### Chapter 29

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 favorite 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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

### Chapter 30

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.

.

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.

.

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, apologizing 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 Friday 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 apologized, 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.

Don looked up at Louisa. She was still working hard at something over in the corner.

"How's it going? Are you going to be long?" he asked, probing gently to find out how long she would still be working for. Don liked Louisa, but tonight her continued presence was beginning to annoy him. He just wanted her to leave as soon as possible, so that he could get on with taking the damaged thorn from the Crown.

"Oh... I've got quite a lot to do yet..."

"That makes two of us..." Don tried to hide the disappointment and annoyance in his voice.

For the next two hours they crept round each other in the lab, each trying to find extra work to do to make it look like they were really busy. Don was getting more and more agitated, and even began to get wound up by Louisa's continual calmness. It was almost as if she were so focused on her work that she didn't notice Don was there. By nine o'clock he could take it no longer.

"Listen, Louisa, I was wondering if you could do me a huge, huge favour. It looks like you're not working on anything incredibly time dependent. But I'm really stuck at the moment...I can't leave my samples until they've settled down, and that could take another hour or so...The thing is...I'm absolutely starving, and I can begin to feel my sugar levels dropping...you must be hungry too...is there any chance of you popping down to the chippy and bringing us both back some fish and chips...I'm paying! _Please_?" It was a long shot, but the way he said 'please' so pathetically made it difficult for her to say no.

Louisa looked up. Although her conscious mind couldn't tell why, she felt an overwhelming urge that she had to stay and work late in the lab that night. She was not at all aware of the hypnotic program that Mike had laid in her mind, but all the time her subconscious was preparing for ten o'clock when she would fall back into the trance, as Mike had pre-programmed her to do.

Consciously, for whatever reason it was, Louisa knew that she must work hard. She knew she had to get her work done. She knew she would probably be working all night until the small hours of the morning, but it was only 9pm and she was hungry! She needed to eat. And the way Don had asked she couldn't really say no. Could she?

' _Why would I want to say no anyway? In fact, why am I working so hard_?" For a second her conscious mind began to question what she was doing, but the power of the hypnotic program running in her subconscious took over, and reinforced her instructions. "No, I do have a lot to do..." she thought to herself, " but I can eat dinner then come back later, when Don's gone...I can work late afterwards..."

"Okay Don...sure...No problem. Don't worry about the cost...and I'll treat you. It's on me."

"Thanks...you're a star." Don replied gratefully. Genuinely gratefully.

"I'll be back in half an hour. Hold the fort!" said Louisa as she disappeared into the first airlock.

.

Excellent. He only needed ten minutes alone, tops.

As soon as he heard the third airlock open and close behind Louisa, he went to the wall safe and opened it up, taking out the metal box protecting the Crown and placing it down on top of one of the nearby work surfaces he had earlier cleared for this purpose.

He bent down and reached underneath one of the benches and pulled out a small protective metal vial full of non-genetic padding, which he had hidden there earlier. He opened up the big metal box and carefully lifted the Crown out of the box, putting it down on a pad of protective matting he had laid on the worktop surface beside it.

Working quickly but accurately, he took a new scalpel from one of the drawers, slid off the plastic top which protected the blade, and proceeded to quickly cut the dangling thorn away from the rest of the Crown. The blade was sharp and it sliced easily through the dry matted material of the thorn's branches. The thorn came away cleanly and Don let it fall directly into the vial he held underneath it. He quickly sealed the vial and pulling open the top of his bunny suit he squeezed it through a gap around his neck and let it fall into his suit underneath, shaking himself so that it continued to fall down the contours of his body until it came to rest in the folds of cloth around his sealed ankle. Then he sealed up the top of his bunny suit again and put the Crown back in its box and back into the wall safe. He put the cap back onto the scalpel and threw it into the "Hazard" waste disposal bin. It was his duty to take the trash out with him when he left the lab at the end of the week.

All in all it took him only eight minutes. Faster than expected. He returned to his work, and when the buzzer on the intercom went a few minutes later, it was the voice of the Professor that greeted him, not Louisa.

"I bumped into Louisa on the way down to the chippy. Forget the bloody fish and chips Don, I've got something to celebrate tonight. Get you and your backside out of that lab, we're all going to Browns. I've booked the table...and that's an order!"

Don smiled. He could hear that the Prof. was slightly drunk, but he had got what he wanted now, and a direct order from his boss was the perfect excuse he needed to get out of the lab. Otherwise he would be stuck with Louisa for another couple of hours still pretending to be working hard.

"Okay, you're the boss. I'll be out in a minute!"

As he stepped through the final airlock, not forgetting to carry the bag of rubbish out with him, he was met by the Professor and a nervous Louisa who made a gesture of apology behind the Professors back.

"Give me a second...I need to change. I've been stuck in this bunny suit all day!" Don spoke as he walked straight to the toilet immediately outside the airlock door. Once inside it took him only a few seconds to find the vial in the folds of his trouser legs and slide it safely into the left hand pocket of his trousers.

He flushed the toilet, took off the rest of the bunny suit and joined the others outside.

"And where do you think you are going with that?" the Professor asked sternly, pointing wildly in the direction of Don's trouser pocket.

"What?" he replied, a hot flush rising on his forehead, and panic blossoming in his chest. The Professor must somehow know he had the vial in his pocket!!

"The rubbish....You can leave that here young man. We won't be needing it in Browns!"

Don laughed nervously, realizing that he was still carrying the trash from the lab in his left hand.

"Oh..." Don tried to muster up some sort of excuse. "It's Friday night...I thought the idea was to go out, celebrate and get trashed!"

.

### Chapter 31

Browns Restaurant

Oxford, England

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Laughing and joking they made their way over to Browns, finding Jason already sitting at their table with a round of drinks in front of him. Both Jason and the Professor were several pints ahead of the others, but Louisa and Don were both good troopers and could quickly make up for lost time. That wouldn't be a problem. Don picked up his pint and waved it in the air at the others, signifying that one of his famous toasts was coming along.

"Okay, team, I would like to propose a toast to the Professor, and to the success of his treatment. I don't know what on earth they've been doing to him, but it certainly seems to be working. We've all noticed that you've stopped limping, and you're looking about twenty years younger. So...raise your glasses and join me in wishing ' _Good Health_ ' to the fat old bastard at the end of the table!"

Everyone laughed and there was a general murmuring of 'Good Health!" around the table.

The waiter came across to them, hovering in the background for a few seconds then stepped forward quietly and attentively.

"So, does everyone know what they are ordering?"

"No, not yet. Can you give us a few more minutes please" said Don, hurriedly picking up the menu.

"Wow, I didn't realise it's so late. I've almost lost my appetite." Jason chirped up from behind his pint.

Louisa glanced hurriedly at her watch. It was five past ten. For some reason that time seemed very significant to her. It was after ten o'clock.

"Oh no" she thought to herself. "I've got so much work to do...I really should be in the lab."

Without realizing it Louisa automatically slipped back into the hypnotic state that Mike had placed her in the last time she had seen him. She could suddenly hear his voice in her ears, smell his breath on her face, sense his touch on her skin, and she knew that she had to do something for him. Something very important. But first she _had_ to go back to work. She looked around the table at the others all burying their heads behind their menus trying to choose what to order. She knew she couldn't tell them she was going back to the lab. They would never allow that.

"Ouch...ooowww!" she let out a little whelp of pain, and grabbed hold of her stomach.

The Professor looked up.

"What is it Louisa, are you okay?"

"Yes...ouch...no, actually I'm not. I'm sorry, I think I'm going to be sick...I must have got that virus that my sister's kids have got. Excuse me..." Louisa jumped up and hurried to the ladies bathroom. She locked herself in one of the cubicles for a suitable amount of time, then came out and dabbed some cold water on her face from the sink in front of the mirror, and rubbed her cheeks until they were slightly flushed. Then she went back to the table, and picked up her jacket from behind her chair.

"I'm really sorry everyone, but I'm just going to catch a cab home just now. I'm not feeling too great. Sorry."

"Do you want me to take you home?" Don asked, genuinely concerned.

"No, it's okay. Thanks. I'll just take one of the cabs outside. I'll see you on Monday."

She waved at Jason and the Professor, and left the restaurant quickly before anyone else offered to take her home. She opened the door to the nearest taxi and jumped in, leaning forward to talk to the cab driver.

"Sorry, it's not very far but could you take me to the I.G.E.G.G.M labs in Parks Road beside the Pitt Rivers Museum?"

The cab driver snorted something behind the glass panel, obviously annoyed that after waiting for ages, his fare wasn't going very far, but when they drew up outside the lab a few minutes later, Louisa stuffed a twenty pound note into his hand and told him to keep the change.

The guard at the door greeted her warmly.

"Working late tonight, Louisa?" He was used to the nocturnal comings and goings of the lab teams and never paid it much attention. His job was to watch the building and make sure that only authorized personnel came into the lab.

"Yes...I'm doing an overnight run. Need the results by Monday." She walked past the guard, and just before she got into the elevator, she turned to the guard and said.

"Oh, and by the way Jonathan, my boyfriend will be getting back from London later tonight and I've asked him to stop by the lab on the way home. It'll probably be about 3 o'clock. If you see him pull up outside can you give me a call on the Inner Lab phone? It's his birthday and I've got a present for him!...thanks."

The two permanent guards on the floor outside the lab greeted Louisa as she walked past, and she feigned small talk with them for a moment or two. Entering the lab area, she made her way through the airlocks after putting on the bunny suit, and made her way over to her bench. She switched on a couple of things, to make it look like she was busy, then sat down on one of the seats and started staring into space. She felt very relaxed, even wonderful, ....and very content. She looked at her watch. It was 10.45pm. Plenty of time to get her work done before her boyfriend came.

The hours sped by, and Louisa worked hard. Although completely in a hypnotic state she was behaving and functioning almost completely as normal, able to get on with her work and focus clearly on the task at hand with no problems at all. She had completely forgotten how hungry she was, and was so focused that she was rather startled when the phone in the lab rang at 2.55am. It was Jonathan from security.

"Your boyfriend just pulled up in the car outside. He's parked on the opposite side of the road, but I kept an eye open for you just as you said."

"Thanks. I'll pop down to see him."

She went to the wall safe, and opened it quickly, removing the big metal security box containing the Crown. She made her way through the airlocks, hurriedly stripped off the bunny suit, and scurried out past the security guards. They looked briefly at the big metal box as she walked past, but since she was one of the key managers in the building, they had no reason to be suspicious of her. When she got to the ground floor, she scurried past Jonathan out into the street, spotting the car on the other side of the road where Jonathan had said it was.

Mike leant across and opened the passenger door as she approached.

"Hi Louisa. Are you feeling good? Excellent...is that for me? Why don't you get in the front seat for just now...I think the security guard watched you crossing the street..."

He reached out and took the metal box from her and gave her a long slow kiss, so that the security guard would be able to see them in their lovers' clinch.

"You're doing great! We'll drive round the corner and then you can get in the back seat. You look very tired. _Maybe you should sleep for three minutes_."

They drove around the corner, and obediently Louisa climbed into the back seat, closed her eyes and went straight to sleep. She couldn't see anything as Mike reached his padded gloved hands under the passenger seat and took out a flat box, from which he extracted an identical copy of the Crown of Thorns. He opened the metal box, and replaced the real Crown with the copy, tucking the original securely into the flat box under the passenger seat. It only took two minutes.

Mike turned around in his seat and looked at Louisa fast asleep on the back seat. She looked fantastic and a sharp pain of regret shot through his chest. He wanted to reach out and kiss her, to hold her, and to tell her how sorry he was for doing this to her. He hated himself for treating her like this. And he realised that which he had feared for some time was true. He had fallen in love with her. There was no way that he could keep hypnotizing her like this. He wanted a normal relationship with her, one where he could return the trust she put in him. This game had to end.

Mike made up his mind that he was only going to hypnotize her once more, to deprogram her. He couldn't treat her like a doll anymore. He was going to have a _proper_ relationship with her, and he didn't care about what the Ambassador in London was going to say! He had got the Crown for them, and from now on that was the end of the affair. Louisa's eyes flickered open. The three minutes were up. She climbed out of the car and got back into the front seat.

"Hi there beautiful. You must have been really tired. But you feel fresh now, so you can go back up to the lab and complete your work. Thank you for showing me the Crown of Thorns. It's amazing. But look, I'm giving it back to you now, and I want you to take it back to the lab, and put it away exactly where you found it this evening, locking it up securely. Then, after about twenty minutes, I want you to go home to bed and sleep. When you wake up tomorrow morning, you won't remember anything about this. Nothing. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mike, I understand you."

"Good, I'll drive you round to the front of the lab, give you a kiss then you can get out of the car, taking the Crown with you."

He pulled up outside the lab, leant across and gave her a big kiss. Mike knew that the security guard had seen them before, so now he wanted to make it look very obvious, as if he wasn't hiding anything.

When Louisa got out the car, he waved to her and drove off, taking the real Crown of Thorns with him.

.

It was eleven o'clock in the morning when Louisa woke up in her flat. The phone was ringing. It was the Professor asking her how she was.

"I was worried about you young lady...you left the restaurant so fast. You didn't look well..."

"Restaurant...oh, yeah...sorry, I felt terrible. I came home and went straight to bed. I'm ok now though. I'm feeling much better."

"Good...you take it easy today though. Have a good weekend, and I'll see you on Monday morning."

Louisa hung up the phone. She could vaguely remember leaving the restaurant feeling unwell the night before, but after that it was a complete blank. Mind you, she felt absolutely great now. In fact, she hadn't felt this great in years. And hopefully she would be seeing Mike later on that evening. She hadn't seen him for days!

.

### Chapter 32

Dover Air Force Base

Delaware, America

**5** th **November 2018**

.

Tim Curts and the team flew into Dover air force base on the Sunday evening. The trip had been successful, much easier than anyone had expected. It was simply a matter of picking up the package from their contact in Oxford on the Saturday afternoon, then flying home on the Sunday morning.

Tim had called President Jamieson the night before, to let him know that they been successful and that all was well. Unfortunately, the President had insisted on coming to meet them personally at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where they would land and refuel before flying onto Vale, to deliver the Crown personally and safely to the lab in the mountains.

Tim had enjoyed his little trip to England, and although he hated to admit it, he was almost sorry to be returning home. Sure, he would be glad to see his wife and daughter, but England had something special that Tim regarded highly.

Just walking down the streets in Oxford and interviewing people it had been immediately obvious how much more relaxed the Europeans were. They were free people. Free to do whatever they wanted. Free to live a decent, normal life. A life uninhibited by rules, and ten o'clock curfews in the evening, where 'pubs' served real beers and people laughed and cried, and played 'soccer' in the streets and watched decent television.

He prayed that one day, his own country would be like that again, because he knew that one day, not so very long ago, it had been.

.

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 refueled 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.

.

### Chapter 33

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 maximize our chances for success 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 34

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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.

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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 artifacts 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 impossible 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 favorite 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?

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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 artifact. 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.

As he had discussed with Jason earlier on, even the simple belief... _just the belief by itself_ ...even if it wasn't backed up in any way by any facts, would be enough to drive some nations to war in an effort to obtain samples of the blood of Christ for themselves so that they could make their own Jesus clone.

The Professor thought back to the old cinema film called " _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ " that he had seen as a child. In that film the Germans during the Second World War had fought to find the ancient Ark of the Covenant, because they believed that whichever nation controlled or owned the Ark would be victorious against all other nations. Apparently that film was based on Hitler's real attempts to track down real religious artifacts so that he could "harness" their power! How much more victorious would a nation be with a clone of Christ on their side? Surely a nation that went to war with the Messiah as its general in chief would be victorious over all its enemies? That country would surely rule the world? Of course the argument didn't stack up if you understood that God would not favour any one nation against another, but the intention of the military generals would be to brainwash and indoctrinate the cloned Christ so much during his childhood that he would believe in the supremacy of his mother nation over all others.

The Professor wasn't a politician but he understood how politicians thought. He was very aware of the potential for global catastrophe if the ability or the _imagined_ ability to clone Jesus Christ was not handled in the proper way.

There was one more piece to the jigsaw that he had to figure out. Who would have the capability to make a replica of the Crown in such a short period of time? The ability to duplicate it so exactly would take a big team with extensive resources and a large budget. In the space of a few weeks they would have to source identical thorns of the same dimensions as the ones used in the Crown, and hand-craft them into an exact replica.

The Professor realised he had just hit on an important point. To copy the Crown so exactly you had to have a detailed plan to copy and make the replica from...Suddenly something that Jason had said to him earlier that morning while they were waiting for the others to arrive for the 8am meeting sprang back into his mind:

"... _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 him to conduct the holographic analysis on it_ ..."

That was it. It all fitted. Louisa must have somehow told the American about the Crown of Thorns. He had made a hologram, a complete three-dimensional map of the Crown, from which it would be relatively easy to reproduce a replica. He must have kept a copy for himself. AND...the Professor suddenly realised...he's an American!

Which nation would place the most value on ensuring a clone of Christ was brought up on their soil?

_AMERICA_!

And who would have the capability and resources to make a copy of the Crown in such a short period of time?

AMERICA!

....and, unfortunately, who was the second most advanced nation in the world in the field of genetics?

America was.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

Shit, and more shit.

The Professor swore under his breath a dozen times. It all pointed to the fact that Louisa had betrayed them to the Americans.

But why?

And how could he prove it? And when did she get the chance to make the switch?

There was no way she could have done it during the day when everyone else was in the lab with her. She would have had to have made the switch at night during the last three or four days. The Professor had last looked at the Crown close up on the Thursday afternoon, so she would have either made the switch on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday night. Four possibilities. It would be easy enough to check them all out. All he had to do was look at the video security disks for the past four nights.

.

With so much mental activity, there was no way he would be able to fall asleep now. He knew he would never be able to sleep wondering whether or not he had got it all wrong. He really liked Louisa, and had hand-picked her himself for the project. He began to feel guilty about having such negative thoughts about her.

"Shit! Can an old man not get any peace!" he swore to himself as he pulled himself out of bed, and threw on some clothes. He looked at his watch. It was three thirty in the morning. He would be in the lab in twenty minutes.

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He pulled up in his car directly outside the front of the lab, and jumped out. He smiled to himself as he realised that he hadn't been able to jump out of a car so nimbly in years. The true impact of the miracle that God had performed on him the other night was still sinking in.

"Good evening Professor." the happy Welshman at the security desk greeted him as he swung his way in through the big glass doors of the I.G.E.G.M.M. entrance.

"Good evening Jonathan. How are you tonight?"

"Fine. That must be some important experiment that you guys are working on this week?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well...recently you've all been coming in at all hours of the day and night to get on with your work. David Roberts has only just gone home, and last night Peter Johnson didn't leave till two am, and I think that Gary Harrison actually spent the Thursday night at his desk."

"Has anyone from the Red Team come in recently at night time?" Professor Wainright had many teams of scientists working for him at the I.G.E.G.G.M. and he had colour coded them all for simplicity. The Egyptian Pharaoh project was the Blue Team, and three of the other teams who shared labs on the second floor were the Yellow, Green and Indigo teams.

Jonathan looked down at his chart to check off the names in the Red Team. Without a chart he could never keep a track of who was in what team.

"That would be either yourself, Don, Jason or Louisa...Why yes, Don and Louisa were working late only last Friday night, and then you came to pick them up, from the pub, if you can remember."

"Yes, I remember. I wasn't that drunk. Is that all?"

"Yes, ...well, no actually. Come to think of it, about an hour after you left with Louisa and Don, Louisa came back."

"What? What time was that?"

"I can tell you exactly if you want? ...Now let me see, yes, here we are...According to my notes it was ten twenty when she came in. But then she left again at three am. To see her boyfriend. It was all very romantic, it was."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, see, it was like this. Her boyfriend was coming back from London and Louisa told him to come and visit her on the way home. He pulled up over there in his car, he did, and I watched her get in and give him a big kiss. Then they drove off, see. But I think they had a row or something because about twenty minutes later she came back in, and brought his present back with her. Either he didn't like it or she forgot to give it to him!"

"What present?"

"The one in the big black box. It must have been something good, because the box looked awful heavy!"

" _The_ Crown of Thorns _security box_!" The Professor thought to himself. " _She must have taken the real Crown out to the car, swapped it for the fake one, and brought it back into the lab_."

"Jonathan, I would like you to lock the front door for just now, and go and find the video disks from Friday night to Saturday morning which cover the hallway outside my lab, the hallway here, and the elevator to Level 3. Give me a call on my pager when you have found them. It's important. I want to look at them now. I'm just going up to speak to the security guards outside the lab on Level 3."

"Will do. Sounds important . I'll get right to it Sir!"

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The Professor caught the elevator up to the third floor, and had the same conversation again with the two mandatory government guards stationed permanently outside the main lab. They checked their notes and confirmed that Louisa came back at 10.20pm, left at 3am with a large metal box, reappeared at about 3.30am with the same box, and then left again at about 4am.

"Mind you, she looked a little odd, if I may say so, sort of distant. As if she wasn't all there..."

"What do you expect at four in the morning Charlie?" the other guard scolded him. "She was probably walking in her sleep. I would have been by that time if I'd been working all day long like she had!"

The buzzer went on his pager, and the Professor called the front desk.

"Hi Jonathan. Are you ready?"

"Yes. I'm in the security room. Would you like to come down?"

"Thanks. I'll be there in a minute."

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The room was dark, and the video flickered slightly as they played back the mini-disks containing the video footage from the previous Saturday night. There was no doubting it. That was Louisa, and that was the metal security box which contained the Crown of Thorns underneath her arm. The final confirmation saddened the Professor tremendously. He had trusted her, and over the past few years had become quite close to her. He had even co-signed a security deed with her when she had applied for her mortgage a few years back. Why would she want to repay him back like this?

"Thanks Jonathan. Can you burn me a CD with all this footage on it? By tomorrow morning? And keep the originals in the safe. We may need them later."

"Has Louisa done something wrong?"

"No. Nothing." The Professor didn't want to alarm anyone until he had decided what he was going to do about it all. "Don't tell anyone about this. It's going to be a surprise for Louisa. I'm going to give her an award for working so hard recently. She's always denying that she puts in so many hours, but thanks to you I've got the proof. Remember, keep it quiet."

"I like surprises, you can trust me Professor!"

### Chapter 35

Oxford, England

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Louisa lay in the bed beside Mike. Her tousled hair cascaded down across her breasts, and her face was flushed and red. Her breathing was fast and deep, and as she reached her orgasm she cried out aloud, digging her nails deeply into his back. Afterwards, she held him tightly and stroked his hair with one hand, the other wrapped around his back, her two legs still entwined around his. She had never known a man that she had felt for so strongly as Mike.

She trusted him with her very life, and at nights she would lie awake and alone in her house, and it seemed as if her chest would burst, so much was the love she held for him in her heart.

Mike lifted himself up, resting on his elbow and extracting his legs from her grip. He looked into her eyes. In spite of himself he had fallen in love with Louisa. He had tried to resist it, but he couldn't. He had made up his mind, resolutely, that he was going to end his clandestine manipulation of her. In fact, yesterday he had sent a coded report via the internet to his superiors in London, telling them exactly why he could no longer continue with this subject. His love for her was clouding his judgement and jeopardizing his operation in Oxford. The truth was simply that there was no way he could carry on 'using' her as he had been doing. He wanted her for _her_ ...to have a proper relationship with her, maybe even to marry her.

In as much as he had hypnotized her, she had hypnotized him, and now he could not imagine a life without her. He needed her.

He hated what he had to do next. He had to hypnotize her one more time, and deprogram her. He had to remove all the hypnotic suggestions he had given her in the past, and set her mind at peace. From now on he wanted to relate to her as a woman, not as a contact he controlled. He wanted to know the real Louisa.

He stroked her cheek. She looked over at him, and he softly mentioned the code word.

" _Daedalus_ , Louisa... _Daedalus_."

Her eyes glazed over and she went into trance. Over the years Mike had learned that it was possible to create a dormant state of deep trance within a person, to which you could return very quickly just by the mention of a pre-planted hypnotic cue-word. The word would only have effect when uttered by the voice of the hypnotist, so there was no danger of the hypnotized person overhearing the word in casual conversation on the street and suddenly falling into a trance state.

In the next thirty minutes Louisa gave Mike a complete update on the activities of the group in the past few days since the switch of the fake Crown for the real Crown had been made, outlining also the arrangements for the return of the Crown to the French on the Tuesday afternoon.

Mike looked down at her and fought with the temptation to kiss her soft lips. There would be time for that later.

"Louisa...you are a very good person...a very good person. You have done really well. You must be proud of yourself. I want you to be happy, always. You have so many things to be happy about. Even when times may be difficult in the future, if they ever are, I want you to be confident in yourself and your body, to be positive and to see the good in everything. Feel happy. Smile at others, and they will smile back at you. When you encounter problems believe that you have the capability to overcome everything. Believe in yourself. You are a great person. Do you understand me Louisa? Do you agree with this?"

" _Yes Mike, I do_."

"Louisa, I have something to say to you...something important..."

The phone rang.

"Shit!" Mike muttered under his breath. He jumped from his bed and ran for the phone trying to reach it as soon as possible. Normally he made it a rule to always unplug the phones before he hypnotized anyone, to avoid the risk of the shrill noise bringing the person out of trance at an awkward time. He had forgotten to do it today, because he was so pleased that he was going to see Louisa that he wasn't thinking straight.

As he reached the phone on the table in the hall just outside the bedroom he cursed himself for making such a stupid unprofessional mistake. But it drove the point home, that it was impossible to behave professionally around Louisa. His feelings for her were beginning to jeopardize his operation.

"Hullo?" Mike half bellowed into the phone, before correcting his volume so as not to wake Louisa.

"Mike, it's Ambassador Johnson in London."

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\---------------------

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Louisa was dreaming that she was on holiday in the Caribbean with Mike. They had just made love in the ocean, and were now lying side by side on the cool, wet sand. She heard a shrill bird calling overhead, calling repeatedly, and she began to wake up.

The room around her was foggy, and her eyelids were twitching uncontrollably. At first she struggled to open her eyes, almost as if they were glued shut, but then they opened. She couldn't see clearly, but she recognised the wallpaper and immediately realised she was in Mike's bedroom. Her eyes were twitching for some strange reason, and there was a grogginess in her head, as if she had just been forcibly woken from a very deep sleep. She closed her eyes again, and tried to wake up slowly. Then she heard Mike's voice speaking to someone, and she relaxed and listened to him, half hoping she would return back to the Caribbean where she'd been lying in the afterglow of making love with him on the sand.

"Ambassador, how are you? Listen, it's a difficult time to talk just now..."

Mike peered quickly round the door and looked at Louisa. Her eyes were still tightly closed and she was laying just as he had left her. The telephone had not woken her from her trance. "... _I'm in the middle of hypnotizing my contact in the Haissem team_. You know the one I wrote to you about. I'm just debriefing her."

"That's why I'm calling you. I've read your report and your conclusion but I cannot allow your personal feelings to interrupt your duties. You must continue your contact with her, and control your own feelings. That is an order!"

"Colonel, there is more involved here than you understand!"

"Are you mad? You must never address me by military title. This is a public line!"  
"Sorry...but that's just another example how much my feelings for Louisa are clouding my judgement!"

"Listen Mike, I'll make it clear to you. If you don't maintain contact with the girl, I'm going to close you down and send you back to the States. Then you won't see her at all. The only way that you will be able to continue seeing her, is if you carry on with the project! Do you understand me?"

Mike hesitated, not knowing how to answer.

" _DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME_?"

"Yes, sir. I do."

"Good. I'm glad we've got that straight. Now tell me, are they still on target to ship the Crown of Thorns back to France tomorrow?"

"Yes sir, as far as I know, the switch we did with the Crown of Thorns was completely effective. No one suspected that Louisa swapped the real one for a fake. Even Louisa is totally unaware of her involvement or her actions...I hypnotized her to do it for me...The operation has been a complete success. The fake Crown is due to be picked up tomorrow afternoon by the Cardinal."

"Excellent. Our team in the States has received the Crown and has started working on a similar project at their end. I want you to give me a weekly update on the progress the Oxford team is making. Every Tuesday evening. Call me at home. You have my private business number. Is that clear?"

"Yes sir."

Louisa's eyes were firmly shut but she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Mike had been hypnotizing her? She had helped him steal the Crown of Thorns? _When? How_? How come she had no recollection of it?

What was going on? A cold fear swept over her and she fought with the urge to stand up and scream. She forced herself to be calm and controlled, and with all her senses now alert, she continued listening to Mike's voice coming from the hallway.

"...Okay, and one other thing. The team in the States need you to get a copy of the details on just how the graduate Jason's proposed new methodology works for 'breaking down the DNA to reproduce the complete chromosome sets.' I don't know exactly what that sentence means, because I'm not a scientist. I'll leave that side of things up to you. Please get it within the next two weeks."

"I'm sorry, but that's asking too much! It'll be far too difficult to hypnotize Louisa to get that information for me, or even for the bloody CIA!"

Mike knew that it was in actual fact totally possible to program Louisa to do anything he wished, but he was trying to protect her.

"Don't give me that Mike. I don't want any ' _no_ 's or ' _can't's_ '. Just do it. Understand?"

Mike hesitated, wanting to argue, wanting to protest...

"I _repeat_ , do you _understand_?"

"Yes sir, I do."

"Good, then get on with your work. Speak to you next week."

Mike hung up, and turned towards Louisa. For a few quiet moments he watched her lying peacefully asleep in his bed. Before the phone rang he had been on the verge of deprogramming her. To setting her free. Now he had to go back in there and ask her to betray her friends even more. How could he do it?

Mike sat on the edge of the bed beside her, and stroked an almost invisible hair out of the corner of Louisa's eyes. His throat was tight, and he found it difficult to speak. But somehow the cold professionalism that had been installed in him from years of clandestine operations resurfaced and buried once again the human emotions that Mike had begun to enjoy over the past couple of months. He hated himself. He was nothing. Just a little cog in a big machine. With no personal feelings.

"Louisa, I am so jealous of the knowledge that you have...of the fun you have in your group with your colleagues...I love you so much that I really want to understand everything about you. Especially about your work, which I know means so much to you. I would love to know and understand what the process is that Jason has developed to break down the DNA, and just how he can reconstitute and create a complete set of chromosomes of the person from which the cloned blood cell came. Next Saturday night, at 3 o'clock in the morning, just like last week, I want you to slip down from the lab and give me a complete set of Jason's notes on how to do this. Can you do this for me?"

Louisa was listening with horror to everything that Mike was suggesting. This was all the confirmation she needed that the bastard was abusing her in a way she could never have imagined. Instinctively she knew that the absolutely wrong thing to do just now would be to show any sign that she was conscious. She had to pretend that she was still hypnotised, for it was clear to her now that that was exactly the state she was in before the ringing telephone had disturbed them. Mike had hypnotized her!

"Yes Mike. I can do this for you."

"Good...good...that's _very_ good...now after you have given me the papers on Saturday I will drive you home and drop you off at your apartment, so make sure you have switched everything off in the lab before you leave it. When you get home you will go to bed normally, and fall asleep. When you wake up the next day, you will remember nothing from the night before. But you will miss me and your desire for me will be stronger than before ...Louisa, I want you always to know exactly how much I love you..."

The last part caught her off guard. She hadn't been expecting that.

"Right, now I'm going to count back from three to one, and when I reach _one_ I want you to feel very happy, and wake up feeling as if you had just been asleep. A long good sleep. ...three...two...one..."

Louisa pretended to wake up.. She fluttered her eyelids a few times, and yawned.

"Oh...Mike, sorry I must have fallen asleep...hey, I feel _GRRREEEEAAAATTT_!! I don't know what you do when you make love to me...but it certainly makes me feel good!" she said.

That was on the outside. On the inside the first seeds of hate germinated within her and she made herself a solemn promise.

"How could you have done this to me? Made me betray my friends and my country? Made me let you rape me? Made me think I loved you. I'll get you back for this you bastard... _if it's the last thing I do.!_ "

### Chapter 36

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She left Mike's flat about thirty minutes later, making some excuse that she had to sleep at her house that night, because she was expecting her mother to call her first thing in the morning.

When she got home she poured herself a large brandy, and took it with her into the shower, where she tried to wash and scrub the lies and filth and betrayal from her body, to cleanse her skin, and her mind.

She banged her head against the wall of the shower and pulled at her hair, and cried uncontrollably while the water poured over her and washed away her tears.

When standing seemed too much of an effort, she sat on the floor of the shower, coiling her legs up into her chest in the fetal position and wrapping her arms around her legs, hugging them as tight as possible. She began to rock back and forward, all the time the tears flowing from deep within her and the hot water pouring down on her head and washing away her sorrow.

She must have been in the shower for almost half an hour before the tears stopped and she realised the water had become cold. She was shivering. Slowly, she stood up and towelled herself down. She knew she had to call the Professor immediately.

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\---------------------

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It was five forty nine in the morning when the phone rang. He had just got into bed about thirty minutes before and after the hectic evenings activities he had only just been able to doze off. The Professor tried to ignore the ringing phone, hoping it would go away. But it didn't. For a few moments he thought about simply unplugging the phone but he knew that anyone calling at this time of the night would have a good reason to do so. The call had to be important.

"Hullo? Whoever you are do you know what time of the morning it is?"

"Hi Mathew... I'm sorry to disturb you...but I have to speak to you...now..."

The Professor sat up, pulling the pillows up behind his back in the bed. It was Louisa on the phone, and the Professor could hear that she was crying.

"Calm down girl. Can't it wait until daytime?" He was puzzled. What did she have to tell him? How could she have found out so quickly that he was on to her?"

"No. It can't. I need to speak to you now...face to face...I'm sitting outside your house in my car."

"Okay, okay. Give me five minutes to pull on some clothes and I'll let you in."

A wave of emotions swept over the Professor as he searched for some trousers, and a shirt and jumper. How could he face the girl now, knowing what she had done? The anger started to boil beneath the surface of his skin, threatening to explode at any second. On the other hand, when he had heard her crying on the phone, he had felt sorry for her, and he had fought hard to prevent himself for trying to console her as they spoke.

He switched the lights on in the hall, and walked slowly down the old curving stone staircase while fighting with a thick woolen jumper. As he threw back the latch and opened the door Louisa poured her way into the hall and was inside his house and at the bottom of his staircase before he'd had a chance to say " _Come In_."

He looked her up and down. Her hair was a mess, and she made a pathetic figure standing there. She looked like a lost child, her hands hidden in the arms of her long, purple jumper, which clashed violently with her black track-suit trousers. Her training shoes had seen better days, and as the Professor looked at her she erupted into a mountain of tears.

"Oh Professor...I've done something terrible...something unbelievable..."

"Hush now child. Perhaps we'd better go into the kitchen and make a cup of tea. You can tell me all about it in there!"

Unable to fight the nice, old man syndrome that welled up within him, the Professor put his arm around her shoulders and walked her through the back of the house into the kitchen. It was obvious that the woman had come here to confess her crime, and before he passed any further judgement on her, he was going to listen to every word she had to say. He sat her down at the big old oak table in his large kitchen and while he made a fresh pot of Earl Grey, she wrapped her arms around herself inside the big jumper and rocked herself back and forward on the edge of the chair, an obvious sign that the woman was in terrible mental distress. She wasn't acting.

He filled the pot with hot water, and brought it to the table with the cups, fetching some milk and some digestive biscuits and placing them on the table beside her. He poured the milk into the cup and then filled it up with tea. Louisa wrapped her both hands round the cup, took a sip and slowly started to tell the Professor what had happened.

"I've been such a fool. _Such a fool_ ...I thought I was in love...I thought it was real..."

"Louisa, start at the beginning, and tell me slowly and clearly what's happened."

It was thirty minutes before Louisa had finished telling the Professor everything. She told him all about her love affair, and the events of the evening, and the realization that she must have stolen the Crown of Thorns and handed it over to Mike and the Americans. And how only two hours before Mike had asked her for details of the process that Jason had discovered. The Professor listened carefully, and by the end of it he was both pleased and ashamed. Pleased that Louisa was really just an innocent bystander in the whole thing and that she had come to him to confess immediately she had found out what she had done. Ashamed because he had believed that she'd had a part in it. Ashamed, because he hadn't trusted her.

When she was finished, he comforted her in the best way he could, gave her a hug and took her up to the spare bedroom where he left her to find some sleep.

Closing the bedroom door quietly behind him, he returned to the kitchen to make himself another cup of tea. He had some more thinking to do.

The Haissem project had now become an international affair, a power play which superpowers would play against a backdrop of national security and international politics. _From the outset this was exactly what he'd wanted to avoid!_ From here on in it could get very ugly.

Regrettably, the time had come to tell the British government the full details about the Haissem project. He couldn't hide it much longer. He would have to tell them soon.

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### Chapter 37

CIA Biological Warfare Institute

Vale, Colorado

America

.

The team now stationed at the _CIA Biological Warfare Institute (CBWI)_ in Vale was headed up by Jim Stuart, head of the government's _Genetics Research Core_. David Calvert had agreed to act as his second in command.

Each man was equally as clever as the other, but Jim was senior in terms of years spent on the planet, and was a good stabilizing influence on the younger more adventurous David.

Together they had assembled a truly impressive group of the intellectual elite of American biologists and geneticists. It would be fair to say, that the last time such a well respected team of scientists had been pulled together for delivering a key project would have been for the Manhattan project during World War Two in the Twentieth Century. The result, the atomic bomb, has shown that such think tanks could and did work.

The only difference was in the way the team was formed. In America the group had been forced together under unspoken threats from the CIA. The threats such as they were, had been obsolete and unnecessary, since to a man, the whole team would have volunteered for such a project anyway.

In the past month the progress they had made had been incredible. They believed that they had already caught up with the work that the graduate student Jason had theorized, and were eager to start experimentation as soon as possible. One of the team had requested that their intelligence should try to get hold of the theoretical papers from Jason in Oxford, just to check they were on the right track and had not missed anything. The CIA had agreed and instructed their London branch to deal with the request.

The amount of resources allocated to the project allowed the team to be split into two different groups. Each group comprised of ten lead scientists, and both teams were instructed to proceed independently of the other.

The idea was to not to put all the eggs in the same basket. This strategy encouraged different approaches to the same problem, which should double their chances of taking the lead away from the English. If either team came to an obstacle that they could not overcome they were allowed as a last resort to consult with the other team to see if they had already encountered and overcome the same problem.

Jim Stuart headed one team, the 'J' team, and David Calvert the other, the 'D' team. Each knew that the likelihood of one asking the other for help would be minimal.

The only time the two teams would be working together was at the very beginning, when blood samples would be taken from the Crown and sufficient quantity of the genetic material would be recreated and reproduced for both teams to be able to proceed alone with all the material they needed.

They had awaited the arrival of 'the shipment' expectantly, and when it finally came they all gathered in the main laboratory to witness its almost ceremonial unpacking and placement into a new sterile, secure, super clean and regulated environment. Afterwards, they all stood around the Crown of Thorns in its new transparent, cylindrical, fire-proof, temperature and humidity controlled casing and looked on at it in awe.

The team was made up of a mixture of Jews, Christians, and a couple of complete agnostics, but to a man the presence of the Crown had a strange and calming effect on them. The Crown affected each man in a different way. With the Crown physically now in their presence, the project suddenly crystallized and became real, and overnight the attitudes of the teams changed. Whereas the team under Jim Stuart became very serious and almost religious in their commitment to success, the team under David Calvert became more lively and happy, full of excitement and jovial banter. Both teams were committed to success, but their commitment materialized in different ways.

.

The Crown had been there for seven days before the first rumors began to spread of the Crown's ability to heal. Apparently, there had been two reported incidents of miraculous healings in the team led by Jim Stuart.

The first had been a simple acid burn, where one of the 'J' team had burned himself very badly by accidentally spilling acid on his wrist. The careless scientist had the wound chemically treated, and wrapped in surgical gauze and bandages, but the pain had been excruciating. His skin had been scarred for life, and the doctors had warned him that a skin graft would be advisable in the months or years to come. The scientist in question was a practicing Christian, and one evening he had entered the lab where the Crown was being kept and had paused for prayer in front of the glass security case where the Crown had been housed. He had prayed for peace from the pain, and had reached out his left hand to touch the glass casing of the Crown. As he touched the glass he had felt a warmth spreading up through his finger tips to his hand and wrist, and the pain had vanished. In the morning when the doctor had removed the bandages to dress the burn, the skin was found to be intact and whole, the burnt skin having vanished without a trace.

The second healing was more significant, and one which had both scared and impressed all those in the 'J' team. The 'D' team had denounced it as a trick, and as a subversive tactic to throw their group off focus. But secretly they were also scared and several of the team had started to read their holy books in the evening during their relaxation periods.

The 'miracle' as it had come to be known, was performed on an unsuspecting younger member of the team, who had been wheelchair bound since being involved in a car accident eight years before. During the accident his spinal column had been damaged and nerve signals no longer got through to his legs and feet. As well as confining him to a wheelchair, the accident had removed him of his ability to perform as a man, and there had been no signs of life in that department since the day he had come out of the coma. It was two months before he had opened his eyes, and the doctors had said it was a miracle that he had regained consciousness.

The 'miracle' had left Ronny Witterstand both angry and suicidal, and he had sworn often and publicly that he would rather have died than become the shell of the man he now was. His mother had nursed him for over a year, and it was only after his former employer, the Institute for Genetic Research at Irvine in California, had offered him his old job back that Ronny had regained some of his self respect. Since then he had lost himself in the world of genetics, and had spent years determined to find a way to re-grow the damaged nerve cells so that he would be able to help himself and people like himself regain the use of their limbs.

During all this time his mother had prayed for him daily, praying that one day the miracle would be completed and her son would walk through the door of her house unaided and cured.

The 'miracle' itself had manifested itself in a strange way, and had led one of the more cynical members of the team to quote the saying _' God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform_ ". The rumor went that Ronny had been working with the Crown to prepare it for the extraction of some residue samples. Wearing suitably padded gloves he had held it momentarily in his hands, as it was transferred from one special padded container to another. Although he'd reported nothing untoward at the time, about an hour later he had been pushing his wheelchair down the hallway and had passed the entrance to the women's changing room.

As one of his female colleagues had come out of the door he had momentarily been able to see inside the women's toilet area and had seen one of the other female scientists adjusting the stocking top on one of her legs.

The simple sight of her long exposed thigh had caused a reaction within Ronny's trousers that he hadn't experienced in years. A full-blown erection had appeared which to his eternal embarrassment had refused to go away. After three hours he had tried to encourage its rapid departure by taking a cold shower. However as he had pushed himself into the shower of cold water, erection and all, he found he had misjudged the temperature of the water and with a sharp intake of breath and a loud scream he had jumped to his feet and sprung quickly away from his wheelchair.

Astounded that he was once again on two feet he had pushed his wheelchair himself into the common room of the Team 'J', crying profusely, naked and still carrying the largest erection the other team members had ever seen.

With special permission the next day he had flown home to his mother's house and on his own two feet, without crutches and with no sign of a limp or any disability, he had walked through her front door carrying a bouquet of flowers.

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### Chapter 38

The Meeting Room

Level 3, I.G.E.G.G.M Laboratory

Oxford, England

.

The Professor and Louisa were first in the lab on the Tuesday morning, and amid a few more tears and consolatory words from the Professor they waited for the others. Jason was first to arrive and was just about to 'bunny up' when the Professor stuck his head out of the meeting room door and called,

"Emergency meeting. Don't bother with that for just now. Any idea where Don is?"

"No, but he's always here before 8.45am. Should be here any minute now!"

Almost as if on cue, Don walked out of the elevator at the end of the corridor and passed the security guards, smiling and waving briefly as Jason acknowledged him and pointed at the meeting room. He was a minute behind Jason, and as soon as he had his seat the Professor announced rather gravely.

"We have a problem. We've been found out and spied on by the Americans..." Jason started to interrupt, but the Professor lifted a hand to intercept his questions. "...Since you're going to find out eventually, the truth is probably best from the start. The fact is, Louisa's boyfriend over at the Physics lab turns out to be an undercover agent for the States. He hypnotized Louisa, and following his instructions, she gave him the _real_ Crown last weekend, and he swapped it for a fake. So, the one we're giving back to the Frenchies this afternoon is not the real one. The real one is probably in America by now!"

He left it a moment for it to sink in, and Louisa started to cry again. The Professor put his hand briefly on her shoulder to console her, then continued.

"The first thing to make clear is that under no circumstance must we tell the French. The fake Crown will go back with all the reports that I've compiled from your work, and these documents will declare that it is does indeed come from the time period and geographical location that we understand to be where the crucifixion took place. After that, as far as I'm concerned they can stick the fake Crown in a glass case in the Louvre and have a million tourists look at it every year just like the Mona Lisa. I hope that's clear."

A round of nodding heads.

"The important thing is what we do now...I think we have no option but to tell the British government what has happened. MI6 and MI5 need to know what the American bunch have done."

Silence for a moment. Then the first murmurings of revolution came from Don.

"Why? Let's think what we're trying to achieve here. I think this project has gone beyond mere science. Over the past few months, well, this isn't just an experiment to make a clone anymore. This is about something far more important...something spiritual..."

Don had begun to blush, scared he was about to say something that would make him look foolish in front of the rest of the group.

"Go on Don, what is it you're trying to say?" The Prof. urged him on, flashing him one of his encouraging smiles.

"Okay, fact is, before the Crown arrived I was pretty much an agnostic, but over the past couple of months something has changed within me. I can't tell you what, but well, basically, I think I've found God!" He waited for a big reaction from the others, laughter or something, but there was just silence. Don continued.

"...God...as in I've found a faith in something bigger and more meaningful than science. And it's all because of the Crown. I'm pretty much convinced now...no, let me be straight here, I'm _certain_ , that the Crown really was the Crown of Thorns, and that it really did sit on Jesus Christ's head, and that the guy called Jesus _did_ exist! Which means that we are not just messing around with chromosomes and DNA. Our group is involved in something bigger than anything we could possibly have imagined. This little core team is trying to bring back Jesus Christ...It's almost as if everything we do is blessed. So far, it seems as if we can't go wrong! This thing _IS_ going to happen you know, I can feel it in my bones. Last thing before I go to sleep at night, first thing when I wake up. What we're doing here has real purpose! You Mathew, Louisa, Jason...and me...we're going to make the Second Coming happen! And now we have a responsibility not to any government or church, but to ourselves and to mankind, and to God!"

Whether the others were just stunned by the passion with which Don had spoken, or by the content of his little speech, Don didn't know. But no one said anything for a while. It was Jason who spoke next.

"I think that Don has something. Being Jewish, I can't say that I've been affected in the same way that Don obviously has, but I have felt _something_. I think we all have. Okay, so let's think for a second about what Don just said. I agree, this work goes beyond national boundaries. It's about creating a clone of Christ. Jesus Christ. Which for Christian Western society means ' _the_ _most important person in human history'_..."

"....Even if it doesn't all work, or we find out that we're just living in cloud cuckoo land... _which we're not_ ...and we end up just producing a perfectly normal human clone from blood from some unlucky Centurion or some other person crucified round about the same time as Christ...even if that happens, we still owe a duty to the life we bring into the world. We can't hand him over to the authorities to be brain washed and controlled and put in a cage to be examined all his life by other scientists like ourselves. No, we simply can't do that!..."

"...So what if the Americans have stolen the Crown? There's no guarantee that they will succeed in making a clone of anything. And if they do, the poor little guy will get the full indoctrination thing from the CIA and the NSA or whatever they call themselves nowadays...No...when our clone is delivered into this world, we've got to give the little guy a chance to grow up normally, free from any outside influences. Free to experience the world as it is..." Jason looked around the room to see if the others were still following him.

"... If he is just a normal little boy, then he'll play in the streets with a tin can like any other and grow up and become an accountant or something, but if, and just imagine Don's right, ...if we're lucky and the little guy does turn out to be the clone of the Son of God or the Messiah we Jews have been waiting for for thousands of years, then we've got to make sure He'll grow up to fulfill His destiny, experiencing the real world as it is, and not be warped by the politics and the international pressures, and the crap that the government agencies would fill His head with. No, the fact of the matter is that we would achieve nothing by telling the authorities about our cloning programme. Nothing. But there could be a lot to gain from _not_ telling anyone."

Everyone turned to the Professor. This was his lab, and he was the senior and most respected person there. He had the most to lose. The choice was his. Louisa turned to him.

"I'm sorry I've done this... _I'm really sorry_ ...but I agree with Don and Jason. We've got to think of the baby that we'll create. I've never really had any strong maternal instinct before, but listening to Jason and what he just said stirred something within me. We can't let the authorities know what we're doing, because they'll take the child when he's born. And no parent could ever hand across a baby to a life of being manipulated and molded to their master's voice like that. We have to ensure the baby clone will be given a fair chance in life... _or we stop the program right now_!"

"That's not an option," the Professor immediately replied. "Now the Americans might be making their own clone, we've got an even greater obligation to make a clone that will grow up free in a _free_ society, and I agree that that won't happen if we tell the British Government what we're just about to do. And anyway, I agree with Don. The work we're doing is something that we are _meant_ to be doing. What we're doing is something special. Very special. It's not often that I'd admit it, but you young guys are right. My old age must have dulled my brain. So, we won't tell anyone about this then, will we?"

Everyone smiled. Then Louisa shifted nervously in her seat and stood up, pacing round the room.

"We've still got a problem though...I'm meant to be providing the Americans with a copy of the process that Jason has developed for isolating the DNA from blood and reproducing the full chromosome set from it. I'm meant to hand it over next Friday!?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Mike hypnotizes me when I see him, and he gives me instructions to carry out...except the last time when he was doing it, the phone rang in his flat and woke me up mid session...he didn't realise I was out of the trance and he carried on...I was fully awake and heard everything he said to me. Anyway, while he thought I was hypnotized, but wasn't, he told me to get a copy of all Jason's notes and hand it over to them...That's when I realised what I'd done and went straight to the Professor!"

"...yeah...At five o'clock in the morning... _this_ morning!" the Professor added.

"You guys must be knackered!"

"...is the understatement of the year. Anyway, what do we do now?" Louisa asked, sitting back down in her chair.

"So, my take on this is that you have to be straight up with the guy and tell him he's been rumbled, that it's all over and that he won't get anything more from you. Otherwise, what's the point in carrying on the illusion? He'll just keep pushing you for information...once you start, there'll be no end to it!"

"I agree, we can't ask Louisa to keep seeing the guy. I'll go with her to meet him and tell him the game's over..." the Professor volunteered. "Don't worry Louisa, we'll sort it out together."

### Chapter 39

The Department of Engineering

Oxford University

Parks Road, Oxford

.

The Professor and Louisa marched into the University Engineering lab, and finding that the elevator still hadn't been fixed, climbed the stairs to Mike's office. It was twelve o'clock and Mike was just coming out of his office and heading off to lunch. He was in the process of locking his office door when he turned and saw Louisa and the Professor heading towards him down the corridor.

"Oops...I smell trouble..." He whispered to himself. It didn't take a highly trained agent to see that the look on Louisa's face meant business. Serious business.

"Louisa, it's great to see you...." he said, trying to kiss her.

"Mike... _don't_ " she whispered back, turning her head to the side so that his kiss glanced off her ear. "I've brought my friend Professor Wainright along. We want to talk to you. Alone..."

"I guess we could use my office." Mike replied, recovering his composure quickly from the spurned kiss.

"This won't take long." The Professor spoke, his voice dry, quick and very serious.

"So, take a seat. Fancy a coffee, or something a little harder?" Mike said, ushering them into to his room, and waiving at the chairs.

"No thanks." The Professor waited for Mike to sit down.

"We're not here to waste your time young man, so I'll just get straight to the point. Louisa came to me last night after she left your flat. She told me everything. What you don't know is that when you tried to hypnotize her last night she was wide awake. Woken by a telephone call from one of your CIA buddies."

"What are you talking about?" Mike replied, panic immediately rising in his chest. He glanced towards the door to check if it was completely closed.

"Mike, I heard every word you said to me...I know you made me tell you everything, and that you hypnotized me to swap the Crown with a fake that you gave me...the Professor has even got it all on video disk, including some from an outside camera with you seen clearly sitting at the wheel of the car, waiting for me to get in and give you the Crown of Thorns." Louisa started to cry. "... _How could you do that to me_? I was in love with you! You cheated me...you lied to me... _raped me_ ...abused me! _How could you do that_? How?" and she burst into tears as once again a wave of emotion rushed over her.

Mike sat there without saying a word. His face had gone bright red, and if the Professor hadn't known better, he would have thought that tears were beginning to form in the corner's of Mike's eyes.

"Louisa..."

"Don't even start to explain young man. We don't want to know. We just want to tell you that you can just forget about the information you asked her for on the Haissem project. From now on you'll keep away from Louisa. Away. Not a word. If she ever sees you again, or if you come within ten feet of her, MI6 will pick you up the same day, and you will disappear. Just disappear. _Cappito_?" The Professor could be a hard man when he wanted to be. "And you can tell your buddies in the NSA or CIA or whoever you are, that they have forty eight hours to get you out of Oxford and on a plane back stateside, or I'll blow the whistle on you and the British Government will take over..."

The look of shock and pain on Mike's face appeared to be genuine and for a second, just a fraction of a second, the Professor wondered if they were missing something or had somehow got it all wrong.

"No...no...I can't do it..." And Mike looked at Louisa, jumping from his chair and hurrying around his desk to kneel beside her chair. "Louisa, I love you. I need you. I'm telling you the truth..."

Louisa appeared confused. For a second she hesitated and Mike saw the opportunity and went for it.

"Louisa, I'm sorry...so sorry. I was just obeying orders. I didn't know I was going to fall in love with you. That's real. _I'm crazy about you_. _I need you_."

The anger came from nowhere, a tidal wave which swept through her body, carrying power and energy to every cell in her muscles. One minute she was sitting there listening to him tell her just how much he loved her, the next she was an animal, jumping at him and hitting him hard, her arms flaying and lashing out at his chest. Screaming. Shouting. Crying.

"You bastard...you _bastard_ ... you lied to me...you raped me...you _RAPED_ me! You cheated me... "

And then before the Professor could reach forward and pull her back, she was a pile of rags on the floor in front of Mike, weak and empty.

"I loved you Mike...I loved you....why? WHY?... _I loved you_ ..."

Mike reached out and tried to spread his arms around her shoulders to embrace her, but she pushed him back violently.

"Leave me alone... _leave ME ALONE_!"

She scrambled to her feet and ran out of his office. Mike started to move after her but suddenly the Professor was there, between him and the door. He was an old man now, but in the past week since his miraculous cure, strength had returned to his weakened bones and when he drew himself up to his full height of six feet he was still a force to be reckoned with. The hand that reached forward and pushed on Mike's chest was strong and powerful, and sobering. Mike stopped and stared into the Professor's eyes.

"...let me go to her...I love her..."

The Professor spoke slowly, his words clear and enunciated.

"I will say this only once. If you ever try to see her again..." He left the threat hanging in the air and turned and walked away without looking back.

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\--------------------------

The Ambassador's Office.

The American Embassy

London, England

.

"What? What do you mean you've been found out? She woke up in the middle of the hypnosis? Be in my office first thing tomorrow morning. Without fail."

The Ambassador slammed the phone down. He couldn't believe his ears. He knew only too well the importance of this mission. The President himself had taken a personal interest in the whole affair.

He was also acutely aware that the whole thing had got such high visibility within the CIA that failure to carry out the rest of the mission successfully could seriously affect the rest of his career. He only had another two years to run before he was due to retire.

If he messed this one up, or at least if Mike messed it up, he could end up spending those two years in some hell hole like South Africa or Australia.

"They say the death toll from AIDS in South Africa is one in three nowadays!" He thought to himself. He would be lucky to make it back alive. The Ambassador was not a happy man.

.

The next morning Mike dragged himself into his office at 8am as ordered. His hair was drab, and his youthful good looks seemed to have evaporated. The man who sat before him now was not the same man that had brought the news of the Haissem project so enthusiastically to him just a few months before.

"What the hell has happened to you man? You look as if you've been dragged through hell and back? Pull yourself together!"

The debriefing was a nightmare. Just trying to get any good information out of the man was like pulling teeth. Mike was in a bad way. It was now obvious to the Ambassador that Mike was suffering from a broken heart: Mike had been telling the truth when he had insisted that he had fallen for his contact in the Haissem team in Oxford. For a second he considered going easy on the man, then he remembered that South Africa was not a safe place to go nowadays, especially not for someone used to luxury and fine English living.

"Your orders are clear Mike. You will return to Oxford and you will get the information we need. I don't care how you do it. It's vital we have it. This is a _Code Green_ project. _Do you have any concept of what that means?_ No? Well, it means that you won't get a second chance. If you fail to get the information we need within seven days, I will call you in and send you home. I'll close the Oxford operation down. You'll spend the rest of your days pushing a pen in some office in Washington. _Understand_?"

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\---------------------

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It was mid afternoon by the time Mike got back to his flat. It was raining again, and the sun hadn't shone all day. He had stopped by the off-licence on the corner on the way home and bought himself a bottle of thirty year old Scottish Whisky. He had finished his last bottle of Bourbon the night before and on the way home he had decided that the time had come to get hammered in style. So why not on some of the world's finest malt?

.

They say that you never know what you've got until you've lost it. Well, in the space of the past twenty four hours he had lost the best person he had ever met, his career was coming to an untimely end, and he had been given a week left in the country that had become his home.

He had lost his heart, his job, and was just about to lose his home.

How could he start again? Go back to America? Two weeks ago he had thought it was his home. Only two weeks ago, but in that short space of time he had come to realise just how much a sham his whole dream had been. How stupid and naive and how brainwashed and childish he had become. _America_? What a joke that was! There was _nothing_ for him there. His life was here... _here..._ with Louisa...and without her? ...Without her, he had nothing!

Yes, now that he had lost it all, he knew exactly just what it was that he had lost. And without it there wasn't much point in going on.

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### Chapter 40

### Oxford, England

.

Louisa didn't come back into the lab for the rest of the week. The Professor told her to rest, and take some time out to look after herself. He stopped by her house twice a day to see how she was, and by the Friday she was ready to join the others for drinks in the Lamb and Flag after work. The rest of the team rallied round her, and through the whole thing they became even closer than they were before.

As planned, Jason had handed the Crown of Thorns back to the Cardinal's assistant on the Tuesday afternoon, and as soon as the assistant had checked the contents of the big metal security box, and the paperwork was signed and secure, he'd left without so much as an ' _Adieu_ ' or an ' _Au Revoir_ '. The only positive sign of gratitude or acknowledgement had come when Jason had handed over the files containing the reports verifying the Crown's authenticity. The Cardinal's assistant had smiled in spite of himself.

"Ah, I told you it was real. You English do not believe anything we French say!"

"The Professor has asked that you pass his regards on to the Cardinal. With his best wishes for the Papal election, when it comes." Jason replied, but couldn't help but smile at the irony of what the Cardinal's assistant had said.

No, we believed that the Crown of Thorns you gave us was real. It's just that the one we gave you back wasn't!

Apart from that, the rest of the week had gone past without incident. The work had progressed well. Jason and Don, working together, had first managed to create the full chromosome sets from both the A-type and G-types of blood, and had then created several artificial nuclei for each blood group. They would be ready to try and combine them with the enucleated egg cells the following week. By Monday they would know whether or not the process was going to work. And by Thursday they would have their first clone of the A-type blood implanted in a host 'surrogate' mother.

They had agreed to start with the A-type blood first and perfect the process on a blood group they understood and were familiar with. Then when, and only if, the process worked well and they completely understood what was happening, would they apply the process to the G-type blood chromosomes.

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The Saturday dragged by. Don spent the day walking along the canal on the outskirts of Oxford, which ran between the two famous pubs, The Perch and The Trout. He was trying to fight the restlessness within himself but try as he might he couldn't get himself to relax. He was completely swallowed up by this project now. Even though they no longer had the Crown in the lab, he still felt its presence. At nights he slept with the vial containing the thorn stolen from the Crown under his pillow, and whether or not it was connected or not, his dreams had become vivid and emotional. He now dreamt each night that he was moving towards something...a light of some sort...and the closer he got the warmer and happier he felt...Each morning came too soon and he looked forward to falling asleep again that night and returning to that feeling as soon as possible.

Don pulled out the phone from his coat pocket and selected a number from its memory.

"Jason, it's Don. What you are doing?"

"Hi Don! I'm not doing anything...watching television...just trying to kill time. And you? Where are you?"

"I've just had lunch at the Trout. I can't stop thinking of work. Do we have to wait till Monday? Why not start tonight?"

"My thoughts exactly. I'll see you at the lab at eight."

"Great."

"And Don, bring that micro disk with you, you know that one of that old group called Queen? I love that album. We can stick it on the MD player and have some fun while we work!"

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Don picked up some fish and chips from the take away near his flat in Jericho Street and washed it down with a can of ginger beer. He could have done with something a little stronger, but he needed his wits about him if they were going to start the next stage of the project that night. Alcohol was a complete no-no. He showered, searched through his piles of micro disks and eventually found the MD that Jason loved. A good choice. _Queen_ was one of his favorite groups. Slightly 'histo' or 'historical' as the young geeks called twentieth century music nowadays, but excellent all the same. The walk to the lab was only about fifteen minutes. Not too far, and it was a clear crisp night. He would leave the car at home.

As he approached the lab down past Keble College he noticed the man for the first time, standing quietly on the opposite side of the road opposite to the entrance to the lab. He didn't think anything of it at first, but as he got closer the man turned towards him slightly and watched him come. Don crossed the road, and as he passed him on the opposite side of the street he looked over his shoulder at the dark figure watching him from the opposite pavement . He hadn't moved and was just standing there quietly. He smiled at Don, and Don looked away.

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"Did you see a man standing on the pavement outside the lab on the other side of the road?" Don asked Jason when he came through the third airlock a few minutes after himself.

"No. There wasn't anybody there. Did you bring the MD? Good! Why? Who was he?"

"Don't know. He must have been waiting for someone...it doesn't matter."

They worked late into the night, starting the work on the first egg cell. By eleven o'clock they were ready to proceed.

The Professor had completed Louisa's work for her, and the enucleated egg cells were all ready for them. Jason went to the wall refrigerator and opened it, removing the first of the prepared egg cells. He carried it across to the bench and inserted the container into the apparatus especially designed and built for the Professor several years before. The container with the egg went in one side of the ventilated hood, and the artificial nucleus with the full chromosome set went in the other.

Jason inserted his arms into the robot grips which controlled the mechanical arms inside the hood, and peering through the sights of the microscope, he carefully manipulated the container with the egg, removing the lid and taking the egg cell out. Slowly he lifted the micropipette and after increasing the magnification a thousand times, he carefully sucked up the donor nucleus and moved it across to the egg cell. The artificial donor nucleus they had created was in an artificial genetic state very similar to the ' _GO state'_ of the treated egg cell, which meant that both donor nucleus and recipient egg cell were synchronized with each other. The process should now be quite simple.

With the sharp pointed tip of the micropipette, Jason pierced the wall of the egg cell and released the donor nucleus inside the wall of the cell. He slowly withdrew the pipette, being careful not to further damage the cell membrane.

Earlier on in his career the Professor had discovered that a small electric charge applied just after the nuclear transplantation was complete would provide a useful little kick-start to the cell which could help to turn it into a living embryo. Without it, the embryo may still develop, but it would take longer.

"Don, here goes!"

Jason pressed the little green button on the outside of the equipment and a minute pulse of electricity flowed across the cell. It only lasted a millionth of a second.

"That's all we can do for now!" Jason said quietly, with Don nodding in acknowledgement.

After the nuclear transfer had taken place, it would normally take up to seven hours for an implanted cell to divide, if it were going to divide at all. After that the new cells would continue to divide at seven-hour intervals.

In the old days the same process would have taken up to two days, but over the years the Professor had speeded up the rate of cell division considerably, by finding a way to stimulate the cell chemically and priming it by bathing it in a genetically enhanced solution of key nutrients which allowed the cell to absorb more of the 'genetic nutrients' that it would need.

"Okay, so let's get back here first thing tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed and it'll work!" Don suggested.

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At six o'clock in the morning both of them were back in the lab, after having slept fitfully during the short night. Both Don and Jason's eyes were glued to the plasma screen on the wall above, scanning the magnified image of the cell for the first signs of cell division taking place. The seconds ticked by and the time came which marked the normal seven hour period at which cell division would most often be seen. For another fifteen minutes they watched, hoping the cell would divide any second soon, but nothing happened.

"I always think that little pulse of electricity is like the little slap you give to a baby when it's first born... you know, the one that makes it cry and burst into life!" Don whispered quietly as they watched the screen.

A few more minutes passed, and still nothing happened. There was no movement. Nothing. The little cell seemed to be totally unimpressed by all the effort that was being focused on it.

Then suddenly, there was movement. Neither Jason or Don breathed. Before their eyes, and as if by magic, the cell split into two and divided.

"Look! Can you see that? _LOOK_!" Don screamed aloud.

"Incredible!...It's working!" Jason screamed back.

On the big plasma screen on the wall, where previously there had just been one cell, there were suddenly two.

"It works! _It actually works_!" Jason repeated, standing mesmerized before the projected image of the dividing cells.

Don walked across to the MD player and flicked a button on the display panel, scanning quickly through the tracks on the album. He turned the volume up. A second later the lab was filled with best Queen track of all.

"We are the champions, my friends... _We are the champions_ ..."

The _Jason-Wainright_ Process worked.

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End of Book 1

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To read the rest of "Crown of Thorns : Book 2"...

1.

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You have now completed "Crown of Thorns - **Book 1** ". To read **Book 2** , where the story continues and concludes, please return to your browser and search for " **Crown of Thorns –The race to clone Jesus Christ : (Book Two).".**

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In Book Two, discover what happens as the Haissem Project proceeds.

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Does the Haissem project succeed? Is the Oxford Team successful in cloning Jesus Christ?

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Is President Jamieson successful in his dream of creating a clone of Jesus Christ for the USA? And if so, what is the effect on world politics and the future of mankind of the creation of two clones of the Messiah?

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Book One of the 'Crown of Thorns' has set the scene. In Book Two the pace picks up. The reader is swept along with a sequence of events that once initiated, cannot be stopped until the book reaches its surprising conclusion.

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As you follow the scientific description of how it is all made possible and come to learn the secrets behind the Haissem project, you may find yourself asking a single question: "Could this _actually_ happen?"

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What initially may just seem to be a story, even science fiction, soon evolves into something slightly more, and only you can decide whether or not you may chose to believe...

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Other Books By Ian C.P. Irvine

Please look out for these others books by IAN C.P.IRVINE and see below:-

### Haunted From Within

### Haunted From Without

### The Orlando File

### London 2012 : What If ? ( A Romantic Mystery Adventure )

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### The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Medical Thriller

### Time Ship

### Alexis Meets Wiziwam the Wizard

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