Feldman nodded his head, beginning to comprehend.
“Needless to say, this would allow tremendous communications advantages. Instant mass troop mobilization and response to last-second field commands; mental maps by which every soldier could always be apprised of his or her position and direction; the ability for any soldier to immediately identify friend or foe; to instantly transmit exact coordinates for artillery telemetry, and so forth.”
She paused and lowered her eyes. “In order to save our daughters, Jozef and I broke the sacred vow we'd made. We offered our technology to the IDF.”
Her brow creased and she looked on the verge of tears. “We were so possessed of our dream, Jozef and I, we could no longer pull back from it. We had watched our three beautiful Maries develop from infants into little girls, all in less than a year! We had stared daily through the glass into each of those dark chambers, gazing at our daughters as they slept, unable to hold them or caress them or kiss them.
“Because of their sterile environment, we dared touch them only when absolutely necessary. To perform quick maintenance functions, like replacing their cranial monitors, or shaving the little electrode patches on their scalps. That's the only time we could see their sweet little faces. Not the accustomed, sentimental moments a parent treasures with a child, perhaps, but precious to us, all the same. We loved them so much. We would have sold our souls to keep them.
“But instead, we did something far worse. And for this, God cursed us.
“Shaul Tamin made Jozef a wicked proposal. He said he would allow Jozef to continue the project on one condition only: that Jozef agree to alter the current infusion process for military applications.
“The idea was abhorrent and appalling to us. After the horrible violence our first Marie had been subjected to, it was inconceivable that we should now turn our innocent daughters into soldiers.
“We had to think of something quickly or all would be lost. In desperation, Jozef struck a deal with Tamin. A devil's deal. Jozef knew that the defense minister was most interested in our daughter who carried the special reception-transmission microchip. In order to save the others, Jozef felt he had no choice but to offer her up to Tamin. We would give over this one special child, alone, to military intelligence infusion. And we would remove the other daughter from the infusion process and gestate her separately with her control sister. Tamin agreed to this.”
Anke and Feldman were stunned. No one said anything until Feldman finally broke the silence.
“Wouldn't removing the other daughter from the intelligence transfer halt her mental development?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Leveque confirmed. “At the time Tamin took control of our operation, she was perhaps seven years of age, intellectually. We'd have initiated her birth and that of her unaltered sister right then, except Tamin insisted they continue in the gestation process. That's how he kept Jozef tied to the project.
“Obviously, ending up with adult daughters with arrested mental maturity was a great concern to us, but at least we felt we'd have healthy minds to work with. Minds uncorrupted by Tamin's secret military schemes and conspiracies!
“As much as Jozef and I had been obsessed by our project, Shaul Tamin was possessed. To him, this program offered Israel an area of tactical superiority no other military force could hope to equal. Not even the United States. He was completely taken by the infusion process and its seemingly limitless applications. He had the IDF assume complete jurisdiction over the operation, under the strictest confidence and security. The bovine experiments were discontinued indefinitely, and from that point forward, the huge Negev Research Institute in its entirety was devoted to his project.”
“What became of Dr. Karmi?” Feldman asked.
“Because Tamin did not trust him, Giyam was removed from his directorship. It was a terrible blow to Giyam and, I'm sorry to say, he succumbed to a heart attack not long afterward.”
Feldman sighed. “So how close did you come to completion before the explosion?”
“A week,” the widow said. “Military encoding for our special daughter was to be completed the end of last month. Birth for her and her two sisters was set for the first day of the new millennium.”
Mrs. Leveque shook her head forlornly. “God allowed us to get that close, to come all that way, to be utterly convinced in the viability of our methods. And then, without warning, He brought down His hand upon us in righteous indignation, taking away everything in an instant!”
She paused and looked off in the distance for a moment of introspection, then returned her watery gaze to Feldman. “But God does work in mysterious ways, and I never lost my faith in Him. Thursday morning, January 6, in the most mysterious way imaginable, God restored some of what He'd taken from me. In your newscast at the Mount of the Beatitudes, Jon, I saw in the face of the New Messiah an undeniable resemblance to my Marie. Jeza, the lone survivor of the Negev disaster, is my daughter.”
This came as no surprise to Feldman. The moment Mrs. Leveque had mentioned shaving small circles in her daughters’ hair to attach electrodes, Feldman had made the connection. He'd recalled the little circular welts he'd seen in the Messiah's scalp at her Mount of the Beatitudes appearance. But to have the widow confirm his suspicions still set Feldman's adrenaline coursing. Another incredible scoop. And the credit for this one went to Anke. He squeezed her hand.
“You said a ‘resemblance’ to your Marie,” Feldman observed. “Isn't she identical to your original daughter? I thought they shared the same chromosomes.”
“They do. But even with identical twins, there are always differences. Sometimes very noticeable ones. In this instance, the distinctions were fairly pronounced. In the eyes, voice, demeanor.”
“Then, forgive me, Anne, but isn't it just possible that this Jeza is someone who merely resembles your daughter closely?”
“I knew it was my Marie from the moment I first saw her, as only a mother can know,” she responded with a calm of conviction. The widow then placed on the coffee table the album diary she'd been clutching and opened to photographs of a beautiful dark-haired young woman.
“These were taken before the accident, when Marie was approximately twenty-one years of age, the same age as her new siblings would be now.”
Feldman and Anke could certainly see the resemblance. The first Marie was most definitely an attractive woman. With features very close to those of Jeza. But the similarity was more familial than identical. The small young woman in the photographs looked more like a sister than an identical twin.
Not to be unkind, Feldman thought to himself, but Marie's eyes were not the least piercing or authoritative. She was a bit heavier, her complexion much darker. It occurred to him that perhaps the Messiah
“Anne,” Feldman commented after examining the photos, “I have to admit I see a strong resemblance, but in all honesty, I'd be hard pressed to identify them as identical twins. The eyes, the complexion. There's a questionable difference there.”
Mrs. Leveque nodded her head in understanding. “Beyond the often wide distinctions you will find in natural identical twins,” she explained, “you must also take into consideration the effects our unusual gestation process would have on the body.
“The skin of all of our gestated daughters possessed an unusual lack of pigmentation. Remember, in their entire existence, they had never been exposed to a single ray of sunlight. That, coupled with the artificial amniotic fluid, affected the appearance of their skin and their eyes.
“Recognize, too, that any normally aging person experiences the effects of gravity and the continuing erosion that life visits on physical features. These influences result in uneven distributions of body fat, and help accentuate an asymmetry of the face and body. These factors would account for any of the more pronounced differences you noted.”
“Still,” Feldman persisted, “how can you be absolutely certain this Jeza woman is one of your daughters from the Negev lab?”
The widow Leveque beamed with pride. “Because I met her.”
This took Feldman completely by surprise. “You met the Messiah? When? How?”
“Friday a week ago, the fourteenth. I had to leave Marie alone at home temporarily that morning while I went to the market. I was only gone about a half an hour, and when I returned I saw that our front door was standing wide open. I knew I had secured it before I left.
