The Miracle Strain (18 page)

Mother Clemenza extends her right arm toward her and Mariainstinctively leans into it, anticipating the embrace--needing thisfat old lady to hug her and tell her everything will be all right.

The slap when it comes is so shocking that although the blowfrom the toad's hand hits her full on the side of her face, Mariadoesn't feel it. She is completely numb.

The toad's face is now as gray as rolling thunder. "How couldyou say such a thing about Father Angelo--in front of FatherAngelo? Maria, ever since you were a small child we have enduredyour fanciful stories and lies, but this... This is too much. You willapologize to Father Angelo immediately; then you will be punished."

"But it is true."

The toad's face is purple now. "You will apologize immediately,or your punishment will be worse."

Maria says nothing. Nothing on earth will make her apologize.

Then Father Angelo speaks. He has a pained smile on his face."The poor girl is clearly disturbed and needs our help. Perhaps Ishould see her on my next visit?"

"You are too understanding, Father Angelo. Maria has alwaysbeen a liar. I fear even you can do nothing to change her ways."

"We can but try."

Maria is in shock when she is led down to the old cellars. Surelyany moment now one of the nuns escorting her will tell her theybelieve her, and that Father Angelo is the one who is to be punished. But when she sees the steel door at the foot of the stairs sheknows it's she who is to be put in the lock-away, not him.

She's lost count of the number of times she's had to endure thelock-away, but the first time was when she was four. That waswhen, according to the nuns, she began telling her "lies." But theyweren't lies, not really--although she isn't sure anymore. As theyears have gone by, she hasn't lost her fear of being locked in thecompletely dark and silent room. If anything her terror has increased. Although the punishment lasts only a few hours thedemons unleashed in the dark stay with her long after she's beenreleased.

This time as the door closes on her and Maria hears the keyturn in the lock, she knows she will be here all night. She's neverbeen in the lock-away longer than five hours before. Fighting backher panic, she feels her way across the stone floor to the cornerwhere the small camp bed is. She lies down and curls up into aball, hugging her knees to her chest, rocking herself from side to side. With wide eyes shesearches for any strand of light in the suffocating blackness.

To her surprise her fear is not as great as usual. She is so incensed by the injustice of what has happened that her mind doesn'ttake its usual dark turns. She welcomes the feelings of anger thatsurge through her, and even the feelings of hate give her strengthand a sense of control. She decides then that God must surely demand the punishment of anyone as evil as Father Angelo, whoclaims to act in his name. And for the rest of the night she plansthe punishment she will mete out on God's behalf.

The pain from the fourth laceration on her thigh jolted Maria out of her reverie. She looked down at the spilled blood on the towels beneath her thigh and smiled. She felt better now. The letting of bad blood had released some of the anxiety and evil feelings pent up inside her.

She wiped the dagger carefully on one of the rough white towels from the stack beneath her bed, and dabbed the four neat cuts on her thigh with surgical antiseptic. Even the sting of the alcohol made her feel more focused, more controlled. Sheathing the kukri, she lay back on the bed and calmly recapped her meeting with Bernard and Helix, and their decision to freeze her out of the Carter kill. Now that she had everything in perspective it was obvious what she should do next.

She would visit the Father and resolve this issue face to face. Then she could put it behind her once and for all.

Yes, she thought, now allowing her eyelids to exclude the comforting light. She would return to the Father and together they would make everything right again. Then, even as Maria imagined how wonderful it would be, she fell into a deep, dreamfree sleep.

Chapter Fourteen.

GENIUS Headquarters

Boston

Jasmine wasn't as disappointed as the others sitting around the oval table in the Francis Crick Conference Room, but then, as her mother always used to tell her, disappointment hits hardest when least expected.

In the three weeks since Tom initiated Project Cana, she had done all that was expected of her. Despite her reservations she was satisfied that she could have done no more. The most advanced Genescope had been fully prepped and was now fully operational in the Francis Crick Conference Room, which along with the adjoining laboratory had been sectioned off from the rest of the Mendel Laboratory Suite. She had also searched through the entire IGOR database for individuals who might have unusual genes or a history of faith healing. A number of names had come up, but only one with a documented history. She had therefore conducted further research on the owner of that name.

Over the last two decades Mr. Keith Anderson of Guild-ford, Surrey, in England had apparently acquired a reputation for easing the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. No cures were attributed to him or claimed by him, but there were countless testimonials from doctors and sufferers of how, just by laying his hands on inflamed joints, he could bring immediate relief. By all accounts he was the genuine article but there were two problems: one, Jasmine couldn't find anything unusual in his genes, and two, he had died in a car crash last June and been cremated. Still, Keith Anderson wasn't the reason Tom and the others were disappointed.

Three days ago Carter and Jack had returned from Europe with their samples, and their mood had been buoyant--even triumphant. "Don't worry," Tom had said when Jasmine had told him what she'd found. "Searching IGOR was a long shot anyway." Yeah, right, thought Jasmine. As if traipsing around the world trying to find physical remains of a two-thousand-yearold corpse was a sure thing.

But now the Genescope analysis of the samples had come through. And Jasmine could see that disappointment had hit Tom hard, evaporating his early euphoria like yesterday's rain.

Jasmine glanced around the conference table. Jack and Alex sat opposite, Bob Cooke and Nora Lutz on each side of her. The blond Californian and the bespectacled lab technician still hadn't been told about Holly, but three days ago they had been given a confidential briefing on Project Cana. Both had proved invaluable in prepping the samples for the Genescope to scan. But now like everyone else around the table they were silent, watching Tom pace around the room.

Every third step Tom would look up and glare accusingly at the Genescope towering in the corner, and start to say something. Then he would shake his head and keep pacing.

If Jasmine was honest, she had mixed feelings about being unable to find rare genes in any of the samples. Naturally, she wanted to help Holly, but when she'd first seen the samples purporting to be remains of Christ she'd felt as if she was involved in some sacrilegious act. She'd dreaded having to come to terms with the possibility of Tom's thesis being proven correct. So for her at least the negative results, although disastrous, were tinged with guilty relief.

Eventually Tom spoke. "Okay. I can buy into the Michelle Pickard blood samples being bogus. Having AB blood in her veins and a different O-type blood in her wounds was too weird anyway. And now that Jack's uncovered she's running a scam, using blood from that nurse friend of hers, we can ignore her. The other samples and stuff I can also accept. Shit, I have to." He sighed then and looked again at the Genescope, as if willing DAN to admit it was wrong. "But are we absolutely sure about the Lanciano sample? Could we have made any mistake at all?"

Jasmine shook her head. "We've run it three times."

"But, Jazz, the age checked out; the gender tallied. It's got to be genuine. Perhaps DAN missed something?"

Jasmine looked to Bob and Nora. Both just shrugged and shook their heads.

She said, "I'm sorry, Tom, but there's no mistake. The scan was fine. It's the sample. There are simply no remarkable genes in it. Nothing that we haven't already seen on the IGOR database anyway."

"Then it must be a fake," said Tom emphatically.

Jasmine squared her shoulders and said what she knew Tom didn't want to hear. "Unless, of course, the sample was genuine, but the healing power wasn't in his genes in the first place?"

Tom stuck out his chin, and crossed his arms over his chest. "No, Jazz. If he had these powers, then wherever he got them from they would be in his genes."

Jasmine decided not to push it and sat back in her seat, while Tom looked stubbornly around the team. He seemed to be challenging each of them to argue with him, but they remained silent. It was obvious to her that they were now a lot less sure about finding and using the genes of Christ than Tom was. Even Alex, who had supplied the lists of where to search, looked ill at ease.

They all seemed to want to accept Project Cana as the madcap idea it was and move on to another approach. But Tom clearly thought there was nothing else to move on to. It was as if he had now invested all his hopes in Cana, and believed that if he couldn't make the project succeed, then Holly would die. Once Tom had made this simple connection, Jasmine realized he had no option but to condemn the Lanciano sample as a fake.

She felt torn between the need to make him see reason, and the desire to support him in his stubborn, doomed quest--even if she didn't agree with it. "But what can we do, Tom?" she said. "What else is there? Name it and I'll do it."

Tom stared at her for a long moment, his eyes suddenly vulnerable. "I just need one microscopic body cell that belonged to Jesus Christ. That's all."

Jack leaned forward then and said with surprising tenderness, "But, Tom, even if such a sample still exists, where and when are you going to find it?"

Jasmine watched Tom turn to Alex, who just shook his head. Her heart went out to him then. For the first time since she'd known him, her friend looked as if he didn't know what to do.

Saturday, Beacon Hill

Boston

The next morning brought one of those perfect blue-sky days in March that promise an early summer but herald spring. Tom took little comfort from the beauty of the day. On the contrary it mocked his despair, as if nature were telling him that the fate of one little girl, his little girl, was incidental to the passing of time and the seasons.

The watery sun felt warm through the glass as he sat in the conservatory with Jack. His friend had come around for breakfast and they had finished eating some time ago. Now they were watching Holly outside in the garden making giant bubbles with her two school friends. It was Megan's turn, and she was dipping a huge loop of pink fabric attached to a wand into a bowl of soapy water. He watched as she lifted out the pink loop, while at the same time retracting the slide on the wand. This action slowly broadened the opening, so the film of detergent spanning it didn't break. Then she waved the loop like a matador sweeping a cape over a charging bull, and a grotesquely bulbous, multicolored bubble billowed out behind her. The vast bubble, now complete, seemed to tremble in the cool morning air for a moment, then rose slowly up into the blue sky above.

He thought again of yesterday's results on Project Cana and that feeling of helplessness returned to his stomach. Ironically, when he'd checked on Hank Polanski in the ward that evening, the young man appeared to be making good progress with the HIV-delivered gene therapy. But although this delighted Tom Carter the scientist and doctor, it frustrated Tom Carter the father. If only he could find a similar treatment for Holly--one that offered at least the same 15 percent chance of a cure.

All last night he had lain in the dark willing Olivia to tell him what to do. But he was on his own. He had reread all of the literature specific to brain tumors. Apart from the groundbreaking work by Blaese in the mid-nineties, using pro-drug therapy to slow the advance of glioblastomas, there was still no prospect of a cure for at least five or six years. In effect nothing had changed since DAN had given his verdict three months ago in December, and time was fast running out.

He turned to Jack and said, "Perhaps I should try and accept the inevitable. And make the best of my time with Holly. It's just that I feel like I'm giving up."

Jack watched the bubble make its quivering ascent, and released a sigh. "Tom, the issue isn't whether you're giving up or not. The issue is whether you're doing what's best for Holly, not just what's best for you. If you feel better keeping yourself busy, avoiding having to think of Holly's situation, that's fine. But if it means you hardly ever see her, then that can't be good for either of you."

Tom nodded slowly. Jack was right, and he was beginning to realize he didn't have much choice anyway. "Even if the Lanciano sample is a fake, then finding an authentic sample of Christ's DNA--assuming against all the facts one even exists--could take me longer than the trials and experiments our teams are working on anyway."

Jack turned from the window and looked at him. "Perhaps now's the time to try and accept what's going to happen as inevitable. And try to come to terms with it."

"But it's so goddamned hard."

"The thing is, Tom, there's no one alive who's more passionate about saving Holly, or better equipped than you.

And if you can't help her, my friend, then no one can. As for Project Cana, it's at best an academic exercise if we can't find a sample. So the decision is made for you. All you can do now is try to speed up the conventional cures, and make the best of the time that's left."

Tom watched glumly as a laughing Holly deftly manipulated the loop to create an even larger bubble. He sat silently as Holly and her friends giggled and ran around it. Suddenly Holly turned to the house and ran to the door of the conservatory where she rapped on the glass. "Dad, Uncle Jack, look! The biggest ever," she shouted, her eyes bright with excitement.

Tom smiled at her and made a thumbs-up sign. Jack and he both stood and walked to the glass to gain a closer look. Holly waved and then turned to run back to her friends and the bubble, which seemed to hover just out of reach of the jumping girls. In the sunlight its surface acted like a prism, giving the obese structure a ponderous, rainbow beauty. Despite his black mood, Tom felt a small, but genuine smile crack the patina of his despair. He was so caught up with watching the girls that he didn't notice Marcy Kelley come into the conservatory behind him with the morning mail. It was only when she left that he turned and saw the pile of envelopes by the yucca plant.

Almost without thinking, he strolled over and picked them up. Walking back to watch the girls playing in the garden he idly flicked through the mail. There were two buff envelopes containing bills; a couple of invitations to talk at seminars; a letter from his cousin in Sydney; and a small black envelope bearing his name and address in red ink. This last envelope was sealed in red wax, stamped with a cross.

He turned the envelope over in his hand and looked at Jack. His friend raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Tom broke the seal and opened the envelope, revealing a black card, a plane ticket, and two photographs. Photographs of him.

The card was clearly an invitation, which he read with growing shock. When he'd finished he was so incredulous he had to read it through again. And only after the second reading did he allow his mind to consider the implications and possibilities of the words in front of him.

"What is it?" said Jack, seeing his shock. "You look like you've been hit by a thunderbolt."

Tom nodded numbly. That was how he felt. Trying to keep his voice steady, he read the invitation out loud, exactly as it appeared on the card.

Dear Dr. Carter:

We have photographic evidence of your quest to finda sample of the DNA of Christ--including the theftof certain objects from various churches. You havenamed this quest Project Cana, and your aim nodoubt is to unlock the power in our Lord's genes. Weare convinced that to date you have beenunsuccessful in your search. Our conviction stemsfrom one simple fact: only we have what you seek. Only we have a genuine biological sample of JesusChrist.

We are also aware of your illegal DNA database,IGOR, but as a gesture of our good faith have nointention of revealing its existence to the authorities. You don't need to know who we are at this stage butI assure you we can help each other. We have alinked but different objective, and if you help us toachieve it, then we will give you what you seek.

All you need do is use the enclosed ticket to TelAviv airport, where you will be met at 2:00P. M. Local time on March 13--the day after tomorrow. Naturally you must come alone. This proposal is notopen to any negotiations and any breach of theseinstructions will precipitate the end of our relationship. We would also be forced to reconsider our decision not to inform the relevant authorities of boththe blatant theft of sacred relics and the existence ofIGOR.

In the spirit of the Wedding at Cana, after whichyou named the project, I hope that we can enter intoa marriage of resources that bears fruit for both ofus.

"So these are the bastards who've been snooping around IGOR," said Jack, taking the card from him. "I don't suppose it's signed?"

Tom shook his head. "There's no clue at all to who sent it, apart from the seal, which isn't exactly unique." Tom turned his attention to the photographs: him leaving the small white church in Cittavecchia, and a more grainy one of him and Jack on the boat with Dutch and Irish. He opened up the plane ticket revealing an El Al Business Class voucher to Tel Aviv.

"Obviously you aren't going," said Jack, studying the wax seal on the envelope.

"I damn well am."

Jack looked up and frowned. "But this could be a trap from the Preacher. Think about it, Tom. Maybe she's been watching you since Stockholm, worked out what you're searching for, and then rigged this trap."

"I don't care. It's the chance I've been looking for. If it can help Holly, then I've got to take it."

"But this chance could get you killed. And making an orphan out of Holly won't help her."

Tom pointed to the invitation in Jack's hands. "Without a chance like this, she won't be an orphan for long."

"C'mon, Tom, what if it is the Preacher? What then?"

Tom felt his anger boil, remembering the hologram image of the Preacher he'd seen on his return from Sardinia. "Frankly, I'd welcome it."

"What?"

"Aside from saving Holly there's only one thing that I think about all the time: catching the witch who killed Olivia and making her pay."

"Okay. Okay. But then let's set a trap of our own. You don't have a hope in hell against her by yourself. Karen Tanner knows her job. We could tell her about this and together with the Bureau we could finish her for good."

Tom thought this through for a second as he watched his daughter laughing with her friends on the lawn. "But what if it's not the Preacher? What if the offer's genuine? Then I lose the one chance I might have to save her."

Jack groaned. "Tom, look at the odds. It must be the Preacher. Let's at least check it out with the FBI."

Tom turned and looked Jack straight in the eye. "It's decided, Jack. I don't want them involved. They could jeopardize everything. I'd rather die trying to save Holly than live to see her die. Particularly if I can avenge Olivia. Don't you see, as far as I'm concerned this is a win-win situation?"

"You're being fucking stupid now."

"I don't care, Jack. Are you going to help me or what?"

Jack shook his head and released a sigh of resignation. "I don't suppose I can persuade you to carry a gun. I'd teach you how to use it."

"No way. If the letter's genuine, then a gun could wreck everything."

Jack groaned and fell silent.

Out of the window Tom saw the bubble burst over the three excited and screaming girls. Despite Jack's reservations he felt a sudden rush of excitement. His despair of only moments ago had gone. He had something to work at and hope for again.

He heard Jack say, "At least let me keep track of you, so if anything goes wrong I know where to find you."

"Can you do that without them knowing?"

"No," said Jack, allowing his face to break into a weary grin. "But I know a guy who can."

Chapter Fifteen.