16
HOME OF BEAU BRECKENRIDGE MADDOX, FOUNDER OF GEN-CORE TECHNOLOGIES
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
LATE MONDAY AFTERNOON
Lister Maddox stood listening at the door of his father’s bedroom, his hand raised to knock. He heard Hannah’s sweet, patient voice cajoling his father to take his new medicine, promising him it tasted like peppermint, and didn’t he love peppermint? It was indeed new to him, a medication Lister had formulated personally to supplement his father’s infusions. His prayer, now his litany: Please let this one work.
He slowly turned the knob and stepped into the King’s Bedchamber, an exact replica of the King’s Bedchamber in Restoration House in Kent, England. The high white sculpted-plaster ceiling was set off by a black-and-white japanned cornice celebrating Charles II’s visit in 1684, and the walls below it were hung with gold silk damask. An antique ornate lacquer cabinet stood beside a mullioned window and a small harpsichord, its raised lid and gracefully curved sides painted with classical scenes. His father’s four-poster bed dominated the large room, with rare Polish needlework draped over its top and hanging over the sides, its medieval scenes all shades of blue. The four carved bedposts were covered in black silk damask, the counterpane strawberry silk bordered with gold. The walls were covered with copies of the original portraits in the King’s Bedchamber, of men and women dressed in seventeenth-century lace.
Lister remembered his first visit to Restoration House when he was a child, his father holding his hand as he led him from one magnificent room to the next, weaving tales about Charles II and Queen Christina of Sweden, and stories of the endless violence that had erupted near and within its walls, violence that had seeped into the very walls, leaving ghosts tied to this house—could Lister feel the stain of them? Lister hadn’t ever felt any ghost stain or seen a ghost in Restoration House, but his father said he had once, and he reveled in the telling of it. There’d been many visits, blurred together now, but he did remember it was in this house his father had given his small son antique Murano glass worry beads on his eighth birthday to keep his small hands occupied, worry beads very much like those held in his hand now.
Hardly anyone could tell the difference between the original King’s Bedchamber and his father’s re-creation, one of two rooms he’d built faithful to the original in England. The Willows, as his father had named his jewel, resembled Restoration House on the outside, too, with its three stories of dark red brick and the beautifully maintained English gardens surrounding the house. His father had elected to set the Willows in Anne Arundel County on the Patapsco River, only a fifteen-minute drive from the company he’d founded, Gen-Core Technologies, in the Carroll-Camden Industrial Area. The Willows was the crown of the whole wealthy enclave, standing in the middle of a large lush private park, the gardens surrounded by ancient thick oak and maple trees, with a high stone wall surrounding the property to keep the curious away. The back of the Willows fronted the river, and a rich, thick lawn sloped down to the water’s edge. As a child, Lister had dangled his feet in the water off the wooden dock while his flamboyant father entertained him, his mother, and their friends with his dives off the high platform at the back of his yacht, powerful dives, his form perfect. At least his mother had had the chance to live in this amazing house for a couple of years before she’d died, a skeleton in a morphine haze.
Lister shuddered now, remembering her claw of a hand dropping away from his when she breathed her last breath. He’d wondered over the years why his father hadn’t been at his wife’s deathbed, but he’d never had the courage to ask.
The Willows was large, well over ten thousand square feet, and his father would never know Enigma 3 was already in a room in the south wing. He’d decided against taking the baby back to the Annex, the bleak building near Gen-Core he normally used for his research. It was too dangerous to use now that Enigma 2 had escaped and Quince had failed in his assignment today. He’d threaded his worry beads endlessly between his fingers until Burley and Quince finally delivered Enigma 3 to Ella Peters, the pediatric nurse who would be his constant attendant twenty-four hours a day, even sleep in the same room with him. Ella owed his father her life, and she knew that he, his father’s son, was working to help him, and was owed her loyalty in turn. It wasn’t until much later his father told him how he’d stopped Ella’s abusive husband from killing her. A pity, his father had added, Ella’s husband was killed driving drunk a week later. Yes, it would all work out, everything would be back on track soon. Quince would remedy his failure.
Lister stepped forward into the King’s Bedchamber, his low boots loud on the naked oak planks, his father having refused to cover the floor because there was no carpet in the original.
His father was no longer the powerful figure who’d ruled Gen-Core Technologies brilliantly and with ruthless efficiency for more than thirty years. The once renowned genetic scientist was now sitting in a wheelchair, facing Lister as he walked toward him, no expression on his face. Hannah Fox, once his lover for more years than Lister could remember, was now his nurse. She never left his side, hovered over him, always touching him, kissing him, speaking to him as if he understood what she was saying. As she watched Lister approach, she held up the empty syringe, a smile on her still-striking face. “How long will it be before we know?” She left the words this time unspoken.
Lister picked up his father’s hand, remembered how strong it had been, how that hand had clasped his as a child, making him feel safe. He whispered, “Maybe by tonight.”
Lister always spoke in a whisper around his father, but Hannah didn’t. She said in a normal voice, “That soon?”
“It’s a new formulation, so I’m not sure, but if it acts, it should act quickly.”
Hannah raised her eyes upward as if she was praying. He knew she loved his father. It would take one of their deaths to separate them. Would the new formulation make a difference? Maybe, maybe it would. He wanted desperately to tell his father what he’d set into motion, what he hoped to accomplish, that there was still hope for him, but his father wouldn’t understand him, of course. But maybe soon, things would change, at least a bit. Lister walked to the wheelchair, leaned down, and kissed the cheek of the impossibly handsome man who sat there, his face wrinkle-free, not looking a day over fifty. “Hello, Father.”
There was no response.
“I’ve come to give you my weekly report on the status of our business.” Lister pulled a small tablet out of his briefcase and began his weekly recital. His father never looked away from his son’s face as he spoke.