by Brett King
Why do they keep him down here? Is the guy dangerous?
At the landing, Mack swiped his card, then led her into an elevator. He hit a button. The elevator rattled down a few floors. He had a somber look on his face.
“We’re going down to the secret ward. Hang back after we step out of the elevator.”
The doors parted. They entered an observation room. She peeked around the corner. An attendant hunched over a metal table, stuffing chocolate cake into his mouth. He was dressed in a white shirt and pants.
“Evening, Perez,” Mack greeted, heading to the table. “Today your birthday?”
“Nah,” he answered. “I bought this for two bucks. Sometimes people order a cake but never pick it up. The bakery doesn’t want the cake, so they practically give ’em away.”
“Big cake,” Mack said, leaning in to read the words spelled in blue frosting. “‘Happy Ninety-first Birthday Uncle Fred.’ That what that says?”
“I’m thinking Uncle Freddie never made it to the big day.” Perez grinned. “Poor bastard. His loss is my gain.”
“You’re a sick man. You understand this, don’t you?”
Perez dropped his fork. “Who’s that? You can’t bring a patient down here.”
“She’s not a patient.”
Wiping frosting from his mouth, Perez noticed the pajamas. “Looks like one to me. Doc Usher will go ballistic if he finds out.”
“Don’t tell him.”
“You idiot. Only a few people know about this ward. Why’d you bring her down here?”
“Easy now. She’s undercover, reviewing our hospital,” Mack lied. “Amherst wants a glowing report. She promises to not mention this ward. Right?”
She nodded, coming over. “I understand the need for confidentiality, Mr. Perez.”
“Get this. Cori’s grandfather was Simon Guthrie. The guy who founded Amherst.”
Perez huffed, moving to the console. “Guess you came to see Leo. You’ll have to search for him down there.”
She walked to a picture window. The darkened ward was the size of a basketball court, with walls reaching fifty feet. They stood in an observation room built high into the south wall like a stadium suite. “I’ve never seen anyone come down here.”
“’Cause we’re not supposed to use that door in the dayroom.” Perez shot a look at Mack. “We use the one below this window. We slip in and out without other staff knowing.”
From her vantage point in the booth, she saw thousands of books stacked atop each other forming seven-foot-tall walls. A labyrinth made from books.
“Look over there,” Mack said, pointing at the shadowy walls beyond the maze.
She squinted. Letters and symbols painted in different colors decorated the west and north walls from floor to ceiling. An obsessive and disciplined mind had poured itself onto the canvas of the hospital walls. It was beautiful, but in a way she couldn’t fully comprehend.
Outside the labyrinth, a man crouched near the northeast corner, surrounded by paint buckets. Gray hair drifted down his shoulders and mingled with his beard. His face conjured the look of a Greek philosopher, but his body suggested the rugged dimensions of a mountain man. He wore a paint-flecked sweatshirt, jeans, and ragged Converse tennis shoes. Facing the east wall with a brush in each hand, he painted with his right hand while tracing the mirror image with his left.
Mack grinned. “Blows your mind, huh?”
“How does he do that?”
“His brain works differently than ours.”
“That’s for sure,” Perez snorted.
“What’s he painting?”
“Italian and Latin words. Probably something about the Void.”
“What’s the void?”
“One of his crazy ideas. The Void refers to the moment you realize you’re losing your mind. Leo also calls it the Revelation of Madness. He fell into the Void eighteen months ago.”
“I’d love to talk to him,” she said. “Dig into his mind.”
“That’s one place you don’t wanna dig,” Perez said. “Leo doesn’t talk. He’ll say a little to Doc Usher about the Void, but that’s it. He blows me off. I talk anyway. I’m his babysitter. No one knows who he is. Well, people at the top know, but they’re not talking. Officially, Leo doesn’t exist.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t know. Wouldn’t tell you if I did. Whoever he is, he has important friends. We have orders to do whatever he wants. Leo writes it down and we do it. Including setting up scaffolding to reach the highest walls.”
“You called him Leo.”
“That’s our nickname. Guy thinks he’s Leonardo da Vinci. Part of his delusion. He has a personality only a psychologist could love.”
“Turn up the lights,” Mack urged. “Show her the other walls. Then we’ll go. Promise.”
Annoyed, Perez reached for a dimmer switch. The room awakened in the glow. Her jaw dropped. She moved to the window and pressed her hands against the glass.
From this distance, with the lights up, the words and symbols painted on the north wall formed a composite image of Jesus with disciples surrounding him. A forty-foot replica of da Vinci’s famous painting The Last Supper.
The west wall featured another da Vinci replica. Here again, words and symbols melded together to create a giant composite image of the Madonna clustered with an angel and the infants Jesus and John the Baptist in a foliage-laced grotto. During a trip to London with her mom, Cori had seen Leonardo’s The Virgin of the Rocks at the National Gallery.
“How’d he do that?” she asked. “I’ve seen composites where images combine to form a photomosaic picture, but the ones I’ve seen are computer generated.”
“It’s a mystery,” Perez confessed. “Dude has lots of free time. Sometimes he’ll sit down there cross-legged, staring at the wall for days. Then he’ll jump up and start painting like a wild man. Doc Usher said da Vinci did the same thing when he painted The Last Supper.”
“Uh, guys,” Mack interrupted. “Look down there. Check him out.”
Leonardo stood beneath the observation booth, staring right up at them. He had navigated through the book maze to the south wall. Eighteen months of exile in the clandestine ward had bleached his flesh as white as the stairwell. Madness sparkled in his coal-rimmed eyes.
He pointed up at the observation booth.
“I must speak to you,” he said in a bottom-octave rasp. “Come down here.”
Perez grabbed the microphone, his voice booming through speakers. “Yo, Leo, man. Be cool, okay? I’ll come down and talk—”
“Not you,” Leonardo answered. “The girl.”
She stared at the disquieting figure, frozen in his gaze. Why does he want to talk to me?
“You know him?” Mack asked.
“Never seen him before.”
He stood without moving, his finger poised in her direction. “Come down here,” Leonardo said, his words deliberate and commanding. “Alone.”
“Ah, man,” Perez moaned. “I don’t wanna piss you off, but that ain’t happening. Understand, Leo? The girl stays up here.”
“This guy’s hardly spoken,” she cut in. “Now he wants to talk. I’m going down there.”
“No way,” Perez said. “Ain’t safe. Shaw, get her outta here.”
“Stop,” Leonardo growled. “Come down here now. I must speak to you, Cori Cassidy.”
Part Two
Synchronicity
There is no good that cannot produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good.
—Carl Jung
Chapter Nine
Baltimore
8:00 P.M.
Cori peered through the window on the ward’s south wall. She stared down at Leonardo, surprise frozen on her face. The mental patient hardened his gaze as he pointed at her.
“How’d Leonardo know your name?” Mack asked.
“The microphone,” Perez said, switching it off.
“I never told you my name,” she protested. “He mu
st know me somehow. I could talk to him. Could be a big breakthrough.”
“Yeah?” Perez gave a bitter laugh. “Only thing that’ll get broken is your neck.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“Before coming here, he killed three people. Including a woman.”
She looked down, staring into Leonardo’s eyes. He hadn’t moved, still pointing up. Frozen like the catatonic man in the dayroom.
“I’ll be okay.”
“Let her go,” Mack said. “I’ll be responsible.”
“Oh, you will, huh?” Perez shoved her aside and got up in the big man’s face. “Can’t tell you how great that makes me feel.”
“Back off, Perez.”
He didn’t budge. “Okay, your girl goes down there and the crazy man tears her apart. Now we got us a fake patient murdered by a patient who isn’t supposed to exist. Baltimore police are gonna love that story.”
As they argued, she eased open the door to the ward, then slipped out. She hurried down the stairs, fueled with exhilaration. Leonardo waited at the bottom. She lingered on the last step. The eerie man was bigger than she’d realized. Despite his age, he looked intimidating, with broad shoulders and well-muscled arms. Maybe this was a bad idea.
Little too late for that, Cori, she told herself.
A faint smile raised Leonardo’s lips. “Follow me.”
He ducked inside the book labyrinth. She hesitated before going in. She looked back toward the observation room.
Perez hurried down the stairs. “Don’t go in there. You hear me, girl?”
Leonardo yanked on her wrist. Her head jerked as they moved inside the labyrinth. Perez chased after them. Inside the maze, they took a left turn, then a right, then another left. After two more corners, Leonardo released her hand. She bit her lip and staggered backward, inching against a wall of books.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said in a composed voice.
She glanced at the seven-foot walls. Each book was stacked with precision, forming seamless multicolored partitions. She noticed the book spines. Gulliver’s Travels. The Decameron. Theophrastus’s Historia Plantarum. Amazonia. Machiavelli’s The Prince. Collected Shakespeare. Al-Dinawari’s Kitab al-Nabat. Leonardo had crafted his maze with the same meticulous artistry as that on the walls surrounding them.
“I’ll find you,” Perez shouted, his voice sounding distant. “You know how many times I’ve sat up in that booth, tracing my way through this stupid book maze?”
“I know your mom,” Leonardo whispered. “She’s brilliant. Read all her books.”
“Have you seen her latest? It was published a month ago.”
“Her best yet. You helped her research it.” He tugged at his beard. “Are you familiar with the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung?”
She nodded. Jung had studied with Sigmund Freud before rejecting orthodox psychoanalysis to start his own school of analytical psychology. Defying conventional methodology, Jung had explored the depths of the unconscious mind through the analysis of dreams, mythology, art, philosophy, religion, and alchemy.
Leonardo clamped his big hand on her shoulder. “Jung is at the heart of understanding our puzzle. We must learn his secrets.”
“What puzzle? What secrets?”
“We’ll discuss it later. Synchronicity brought you here, you know? Our families share a bond, going back to Simon Guthrie.”
“You knew my grandfather?”
“My father had a nervous breakdown thirty years ago. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Your grandfather was my father’s psychiatrist. Dr. Guthrie helped my father. I felt a connection to this hospital. After I fell into the Void, I came here.”
“Don’t remember much about my grandfather,” she said. “I’m glad he helped your dad.”
“One day, I came to this place to visit my father. Dr. Guthrie stopped in. He introduced me to his daughter, Ariel. Beautiful girl. You look a great deal like your mother.”
“That’s how you recognized me?”
“I saw the photograph of you with your mother on her book jacket. We met years ago, when you were little. You wouldn’t remember. I came out to Princeton. You were playing in your mother’s office. I wrote her a while back. Haven’t heard from her.”
“You don’t know about Mom?”
Perez interrupted, yelling, “I want you two outta the maze.”
They both jumped as books toppled several rows away. Perez had pushed over a wall. He did it again, knocking over wall after wall like massive book dominos.
Leonardo frowned. “Let’s go before that idiot injures himself.”
He directed her toward a route different than the one they had taken in here. After a few turns, they stepped outside the labyrinth near the stairs where Mack waited.
“See you soon, Cori.” Leonardo winked. “Remember this: the Tree of Life blossoms in the Land of the Dead.”
“Why did you say that?” she asked, shocked.
Leonardo didn’t answer as he ambled back to his brushes and paint cans. Mack escorted her up the stairs. She saw Perez cursing and kicking a wall across the chamber. Books tipped forward—almost in slow motion—before thundering around him. He stepped over the rubble, slipping on a book cover as he slammed into another book wall.
“Perez. Up here.” Mack waved from the top step. “Hey, brother, thanks for an interesting evening.”
Astonished, Perez looked across the overturned books. Leonardo dipped brushes into paint as if nothing had happened. Cori followed Mack to the elevator, knowing she’d better get back to her room before staff reported her missing.
Chapter Ten
Glenwood Canyon, Colorado
8:04 P.M.
Brynstone was supposed to enjoy this moment. So why didn’t it feel right?
After getting a ride from Cooper Hollingworth, he had climbed into a GMC Yukon and burned his way out of Aspen. Heading eastbound on a ribbon of winding canyon road, he punched a number into his cell and waited for his operation supervisor. He cleared his throat, then said into the phone, “I have the Radix.”
“Are you certain?” Lieutenant General James Delgado asked. “You verified it?”
The director of the National Security Agency caught people off guard with his serene voice. Delgado didn’t sound military, no brusque growl or barking commands. His composed speech hinted that nothing ever bothered him. Maybe nothing did.
“It’s difficult to verify, given our limited knowledge.” Brynstone went easy on the brake to avoid sliding on the icy road. “We need sophisticated testing to determine its authenticity, but I believe it is the Radix.”
“I’m proud of you, son. Your father would be proud too. Call the minute you touch down in Baltimore. I’ll be waiting at Fort Meade.”
The Aspen blizzard had trudged southeast, leaving glacial roads in its wake as Brynstone headed through Glenwood Canyon. Clouds dipped low, giving the look of ghostly smoke between the three-thousand-foot canyon walls. Even at night, illuminated in flashes of halogen, the canyon vista was breathtaking. Forged in the Pleistocene era, dramatic slabs of rock loomed over a dozen miles of I-70. The Colorado River raged through the gorge, carving a serpentine chasm in the ancient stone. From time to time, he’d steal a glimpse out the window, looking over the cliff at rapids coursing around ice floes.
Snowpack covered the icy roadway. The good thing? Traffic was sparse as the blizzard and the holiday conspired to keep people off the road. Feathery snowflakes swirled along the windshield, riding the passing storm.
Brynstone’s cell vibrated on his belt. He was surprised to pull a signal inside the canyon. He checked the caller ID, expecting Jordan Rayne, but finding his wife’s number.
Kaylyn Brynstone knew he pulled dangerous government assignments, but she had no idea that tonight’s mission had brought him to Colorado. His superiors had ordered him to conceal his covert fieldwork. Expecting an emergency, he flipped open his phone.
“You said you didn’t want to miss this, John. Listen,
okay?” Kaylyn cooed to their daughter, “Tell Daddy. Can you say it?”
As a first-time father, he had hungered for this moment. Countless times, he had tried to imagine Shayna’s first words.
“She’ll say it,” his wife assured. “I swear she said it twice already.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror. Swerving headlights on the interstate caught his attention. In a reckless maneuver on the ice-streaked road, a vehicle darted around a Mitsubishi Galant. He could see the black Mercedes-Benz SUV now as it cruised into place behind an aging red Ford Windstar.
“Come on, sweetie,” Kaylyn begged in the voice of a desperate parent whose child refused to perform on demand. “Tell Daddy.”
“Shay, it’s me,” he added. “Can you talk? How’s my sweet baby girl?”
“Okay, let’s try this. I’m putting her on camera.”
He glanced at the road, then pulled back the phone. Curled on her mother’s lap, Shay’s bright eyes made his world halt. She tugged on her Pooh hat. Nothing made him smile like a baby in a hat. Any hat. Baseball caps, beanies, berets, straw hats, bonnets. You could stick it on his headstone: JOHN BRYNSTONE LOVED BABIES IN HATS.
He gave another quick look at the interstate before returning his gaze to Shay. Her hair had grown—honey blonde like her mother’s—and wisps poked out beneath her hat. He swallowed hard. She had grown so much. His daughter. His only child. Her eyebrows arched in concentration. Her small lips puffed. Then she said something like “Daa-da.”
He sank back. He was an expert at controlling his emotions. Not now. Tears stood in his eyes, blurring the image of his child. He blinked them away.
“We miss you, John.” Despair crinkled in Kaylyn’s voice. “It’s Christmas Eve. When are you coming home?”
“Soon,” he answered, training his gaze on the road. “I’m trying my best here, Kay.”
Only he wasn’t. This was a raw issue. Ever since his stint as an Army Ranger, he prided himself on doing his best. Not this time. Not with his family. He hated it when giving his best at work conflicted with giving his best at home.