The Messiah Secret

5

As befitted the founder and major shareholder of NotJustGenetics Inc., JJ Donovan’s office was on the top floor of the building. It occupied most of the top floor, in fact. Two of the walls were almost entirely glass, offering spectacular views of Monterey and the ocean beyond, but these days Donovan rarely bothered looking out in that direction. He’d even had his desk moved closer to one of the inner walls and positioned a couple of couches and several armchairs by the picture windows in its place.

His desk was a wide expanse of bird’s-eye maple supported by a stainless-steel frame and legs, his chair a futuristic combination of chrome, steel and leather. Opposite the desk, about half of one wall was entirely given over to video displays. Eight digital plasma screens displayed a selection of domestic and international news feeds. In the centre of the desk, a smaller digital screen displayed exactly the same feeds, but was touch-sensitive, so Donovan could simply press the tip of his finger on any of the video pictures to select the sound for that particular channel.

Also on the desk were three telephones and two computer screens, one displaying the logo and the status of the NoJoGen network, and which showed the progress of any of the development programmes being run by the company’s scientists. The other was just a regular PC hitched to a broadband router, which allowed him to surf the web or do anything else he wanted. This machine was an obvious area of vulnerability, so it was separated from the company network, which was shielded behind a physical firewall, and the most powerful software firewall, antivirus and anti-intrusion programs money could buy. Jesse McLeod had stated that even he couldn’t hack his way inside the system and if he couldn’t do it, he’d added modestly, nobody else could.

The only incongruous note in Donovan’s hi-tech office was a large display cabinet positioned beside the door, containing a collection of old books. Really old books. Or, to be absolutely accurate, old copies of really old books. And in a locked safe set into the same wall, a safe that incorporated sophisticated thermostatic controls and devices to regulate the humidity, lay his most prized possession. It was little more than a scrap of papyrus that he’d privately named the Hyrcania Codex, based upon the single name he’d found in the text.

In complete contrast to the work his company did, which was arguably beyond the cutting edge of the science of genetics, Donovan had long had a fascination with ancient manuscripts and codices. As his business had blossomed, he’d had the finance to indulge his passion, and he’d bought relics at auction and from specialist dealers. He’d even learned a little Hebrew and Aramaic along the way, though he usually employed specialists to produce translations of the works he had purchased.

Over two years earlier, a single phrase he’d read in the translation of one part of the Hyrcania Codex had electrified him, and it was this discovery that had driven the non-medical searches that he’d tasked Jesse McLeod with.

That morning, Donovan arrived early at the building and followed his usual routine. He slid his Porsche 911 into his named slot in the underground car park and took the stairs to his office. He never used the lift because he got little enough exercise during the day, and he had never seen the point of sweating away pointlessly on some machine in a gym. Climbing six flights of stairs non-stop every day would, he hoped, give him a short but regular cardio-vascular workout.

Anyone looking at him would probably agree that it was working. Donovan was tall, just over six two, and slim, with thick black hair that he kept trimmed close to his scalp — not a crew cut, but not far off. Dark brown, almost black, eyes and a large straight nose dominated his face, and even when he’d just shaved he still seemed to sport a five o’clock shadow. When he smiled, which he did often, because JJ Donovan was a man with a lot to be happy about, he showed two rows of brilliant white teeth, which he sometimes referred to as his ‘forty-grand smile’, because this was exactly what they’d cost.

He put his briefcase down on his desk and switched on both of his monitors. On the PC connected to the internet, he pulled up a classical music broadcast and pumped the sound through the desktop’s built-in speaker system. Then he flicked the switch that powered up the wall-mounted monitors and watched CNN for a few seconds. Finally, he looked at his network computer and checked the internal message system.

The note from Jesse McLeod was the third one he read. He read the text twice, then reached for the internal telephone.