Jesus the Extraterrestrial - Origins (8 page)

C
HAPTER 9

New York, 25th March 1992

It was a little past six in the morning and Thomas had spent the night in his laboratory. For nearly a year he had been trying, unsuccessfully, to clone Jesus Christ. He had tried more than three hundred times. He had used eggs collected from patients of his clinic, but without success. But a month earlier he had decided to try something different, remembering what his father had said about the angel’s instructions, which specified that the blood should remain in the family and that Jesus would be reborn through the blood of his family. Perhaps the proteins found in Sarah’s eggs were different from those in other women’s eggs. Bearing this in mind, some weeks earlier Thomas had asked his daughter to come in for him to collect some eggs, and, unbelievable as it might seem in the eyes of science, Thomas had succeeded in fertilizing Sarah’s egg with the genetic material of Jesus at the first try. This was the breakthrough he needed. ‘And here I’ve been wasting all this time, because I didn´t think of this before,’ he had told himself. He was right. The cytoplasm of Sarah’s egg must have special properties that an ordinary egg didn’t have. And so the angel’s instructions that Jesus should be born of his blood and through his blood made sense now.

The fertilized egg was left to rest for a few days. Thomas fertilized more than fifty eggs, all at the first attempt. If something went wrong with the insemination, he would have other embryos. Amazingly, all the fifty eggs turned into embryos, so fifty clones of Jesus Christ could be born. The time had come for Sarah to be artificially inseminated. Thomas made his final preparations for the all-important event, the cloning of a being. If it worked out, it would be the world’s first cloning of a mammal, though in fact it would be only for him and his family, as the world wouldn’t be told about it for now. Thomas wondered if there were other clones of animals, perhaps even of human beings, loose in the world. However no one could know for sure about human clones, as the fact would involve very complex questions, both from an ethical point of view in the scientific milieu, and from the legal standpoint. Thomas probably wouldn´t be the first to risk it. He rested for some hours on the sofa in his living room before starting the insemination process. He wanted to be completely rested so that nothing should go wrong. He woke up with an aching back from the hard sofa, then went to the laboratory to wait for Sarah and finalize his preparations. He could hardly bear his own anxiety and looked at his watch about once every minute. ‘Sarah late as usual. She must be nervous, poor girl.’

Minutes later, when he was about to phone his daughter, he saw her at the end of the corridor making her way towards the laboratory. ‘Hi, Daddy, I’m here. Am I very late?’ asked Sarah, giving her father a hug and a kiss.

‘Punctual as ever,’ replied her father ironically. ‘You nervous?’

‘Just a little, but I trust you,’ answered Sarah calmly, putting her bag on the sofa.

‘Let’s get started then. Have a shower, use this antibacterial soap, then put this on,’ said Thomas, giving her a surgical gown and pointing to the door to the next room.

The doctor started the insemination procedure. Everything went smoothly. The procedure was very quick and Sarah was very happy, as she had always wanted to have a child. And now she would be the mother of Jesus, the Mary of the modern age. Sarah rested for a few days, as her father told her to. Then she began to feel changes in her body. ‘Let’s hope it isn’t just psychological,’ she thought to herself. She made an appointment to see a gynecologist, wanting to do everything by the book. She took a blood test and went back to the surgery to get the result. She opened the envelope and saw ‘HCG hormone > 150 mUI/mL.’ ‘I’m pregnant, it’s a miracle!’ Right away she called her father, from the clinic, and he answered on the first ring.

‘Daddy, I’m pregnant!’

C
HAPTER 10

Washington DC, 1990

The black Jaguar stopped in front of 630 Pennsylvania Avenue. The driver and the passenger in front got out, both men wearing suits and ties and both well over six feet tall. One of them opened the back door of the Jaguar. A white-haired man of about eighty got out. While the men in suits looked carefully up and down the street, the old man took the side door into a cafeteria that was being renovated. One of the men got into the Jaguar and took off; the other followed the old man who was going down a wooden staircase. The old man came to a mahogany door. He knocked three times and a slit opened in the middle of the door to see who was knocking. The slit closed again and two seconds later the door opened. The old man and his bodyguard went through the door. They walked along a corridor for a few yards and began to go past rooms where naked women were packing cocaine in small phials. The old man reached the end of the corridor, where there was an open door.

‘What´s this shit you’re doing here? Packing cocaine right in the middle of the capital city? You really want to get locked up,’ grumbled the old man to a blond man who was sitting behind a large glass table, counting hundred-dollar notes.

‘There’s got to be some point in the pay-offs we make to the judges and the cops and anyway, we’ve got you to get us out of any trouble that comes along,’ retorted the blond man, who had a tattoo on his neck.

‘Where are the women of this whorehouse of yours, you give them a holiday?’

‘Of course not, we just moved to another place. You didn’t get the message? Our fault.’

‘Let’s get right down to business. What’ve you got for me that’s so important?’ asked the old man.

‘Mr. Jack, sit down will you? Would you like a glass of water or a cup of coffee, or something to snort?’ asked the man sarcastically.

‘Don’t joke with me, you worm, or tomorrow you’ll wake up with your mouth full of ants,’ shouted the old man.

‘Easy, Jack, I’m just kidding, no need to get all het up!’ replied the man, trying not to show he was afraid.

‘Out with it.’ The old man sat down on the sofa and took a cigar out of his jacket.

‘That Frenchman you told us to follow.’

‘I know. What about him? Did you find out anything?’

‘Yes. My people checked his phone bill and found he spent more than an hour on an international call, guess where to?’

‘Washington?’

‘Exactly!”

‘And you didn´t record the call?’

‘No, that was before we managed to bug his phone. Now it’s bugged he hasn’t made any suspicious calls.’

‘Incompetent fools! And whose phone did he call in Washington?’

‘The senator for New York.’

‘George Griffin? Are you sure?’ replied Jack, surprised.

‘Absolutely. It was his home number.’

‘But what possible connection could those two have?’ the old man thought aloud as he puffed out smoke from his cigar.

‘We don’t know yet, but you hired us to find out and we will soon know.’

‘I want to know everything about the senator. What time he gets up, what he eats, who he sleeps with apart from his wife. Bug his home phone and try to bug his office phone too.’

‘The office? That’s impossible. We’d be caught.’

‘That’s your problem. Use your secret service contacts, work it out. On second thoughts forget it, no need to bug the office. If they talked on his home phone they’re friends or something of the sort. If it was to do with work the senator would’ve used the phone in his office.’

‘You’re the boss.’

‘Send me a transcript of the important recordings. Always put the tapes in that post box I gave you. I’m off. I’ll be waiting for news.’

The old man left the room while his bodyguard, a sub-machine gun in his hand, looked the blond man up and down. The guard got a small radio out and told his colleague they were just leaving. The three got into the Jaguar and sped away. The old man, whose name wasn’t Jack, began to wonder what connection the Frenchman could have with the most popular senator in the US, his personal friend, thoughtfully running his hands through his white hair and lighting another Cuban cigar.

C
HAPTER 11

Washington DC, 22nd February 1991

Senator George Griffin got home at nine p.m. His wife hadn’t arrived yet, and he thought she might be at the club gossiping with her friends, or perhaps at the house of one of them. Griffin went into the living room with his bodyguard, John, and saw that the answering machine was flashing. There were two messages. George pressed Play:

New message, recorded at 7.46 p.m.

‘Dad, you´ve no idea what I´ve found out! I analyzed the blood in the cylinder and I found something sensational. It doesn´t belong to any species known on this planet. As a matter of fact the DNA of this blood has 48 chromosomes, while human blood has 46. Isn´t it fantastic? By the way, I´ve decided to try and create the clone. Call me as soon as you get this message. Bye.’ The senator gave a start. He felt a mixture of delight at the news and alarm and remorse, for not having told Thomas not to speak of the matter over the phone. ‘Damn it,’ thought the senator, ‘my son’s very naïve.’ George pressed the button to delete the message.

New message, recorded at 8.59 p.m.

‘Hi George, this is Arnold. I’m calling to invite you for our game of golf at the club. We’ve got a lot of stuff to catch up with. Call me and we’ll fix it.’

George was surprised at his old friend’s call. It was months since they had spoken and here he was calling out of the blue for a game of golf. His billionaire friend with the white hair must be over eighty now, he would hardly be up to playing golf with George. Arnold owned banks in the US and Europe and was one of the twenty richest men in the world, according to Forbes magazine. George and Arnold were university friends; they had studied and graduated together at the Harvard Economics faculty many years before. They hadn’t seen each other for years, because both of them had very busy lives, until two years before when Arnold had resurfaced, inviting George and his wife for dinner at his house.

George picked up the phone and called his son.

‘Hallo, son.’

‘Hi, Dad, get my message?’

‘I did. Son, please don’t phone me and above all don’t leave messages about these things. We must always discuss them face to face.’

‘Ah, I understand. Sorry.’

‘We’ll talk later. Keep going on the project, I’ll be there Saturday and we’ll discuss it.’

‘OK, see you Saturday then.’

George had never spoken to Thomas so seriously and so shortly, but it was the only way he would understand the message without more explanation.

‘John, come here!’ called George to his bodyguard and butler John.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘John, I need you to check the phone lines here at home to make sure they’re not bugged. Call those people you used before.’

‘Have you heard some noise on the line? Do you suspect something?’

‘No, it’s just to put my mind at rest.’

‘Very well, consider it done.’

‘Thanks, John. I’m going up to take a bath. Ask them to make a snack for me, tell them I don’t want dinner today.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘OK I’m going up. When Jane gets in tell her I’m in our room.’

George went upstairs. He’d call his friend another time, now he was very tired and also worried about the possibility that someone might have heard Thomas’ message.

When he reached his room he thought it better to be sure. He picked up the phone and called the kitchen extension.

‘John, one more thing: send two guards to New York and tell them to watch my son twenty-four hours a day, but without him knowing it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

John was absolutely trustworthy, having been the senator’s bodyguard for more than twenty years. He was an ex-Marine, a black belt in Brazilian ju-jitsu and aikido, as well as an expert in arms and explosives, his specialty when he was in the Marines. He was well over six feet tall and more than 260 pounds of solid muscle. He watched over the senator day and night and consequently knew all there was to know about him, including his deepest secrets. Apart from John there were another five guards or more who looked after the safety of George’s wife and their house.

‘Ask them to bring the snack to my room, I shan’t be coming down again tonight,’ said George, lying back on his bed and switching off the bedside light.