The Medici Dagger

by Cameron West

  I apologized to Emily and meant it. I knew I wasn’t right for her— or for anybody. She patted my cheek tenderly, saying she took full responsibility for her own mistakes. I listened carefully to the sound of her shoes on the slate pathway, then to her car door opening and closing and the engine revving once and fading as she pulled away. Then I heard nothing but the cardinal’s song, to my ears forever the sad sound of being someone’s mistake.

  I stepped over to the carpet dents and sat down cross-legged on the floor between them, cushioned by new Orlon and old grief. Tears pooled in my eyes. My gaze shifted to my framed print of Leonardo’s portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci—my dear friend Ginny—the only girl I’d ever been able to hold on to.

  “Ginny . . .” I said. “Help me.” I squeezed my eyes shut, massagingmy throbbing temples as tears trailed down around my nostrils and over my lip. Their saltiness saddened me even more. I began drifting back to before time had stalled, and landed in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., where my dad had been the curator of Renaissance Art, and I’d strolled with my parents through the oak-paneled Widener Rembrandt Room.

  In front of the luxurious paneling hung incredible treasures, each painting a burst of emotion, capturing forever the innermost feelings of the subject, rescuing all but the painter himself from the dust of time and forgotten bones. There amongThe Lady with the Ostrich Feather Fan,The Philosopher,The Girl with the Broom, and the portrait of his beloved wife, Saskia, sat Rembrandt himself.

  We’d stand there, my folks and I, three feet from the great master’s face—his doughy, wrinkled, sadder-than-the-weepiest-willow face— and my dad would point a long finger at different parts of the dense painting and tell us Rembrandt was fifty-nine at the time he’d painted it, Saskia had died, and he’d lost favor with the upper-crust, gone bankrupt, and was desperate. “But look at his hat,” Dad would say. “How delicate and soft it is, how the black isn’t just black, it’s fabric.”

  My mom would grab my hand, as she always did when we stood in front of the self-portrait, and a sorrowful wind would sweep through us from three hundred years ago. Mom and I couldn’t move our eyes away from Rembrandt’s; we both knew we were staring into the old man’s soul.

  I raised my wineglass. “To pain and loss . . . and ruination,” I said to Rembrandt and myself, taking a gulp. “And to you.” I nodded to Ginevra de’ Benci, remembering the many times I’d slipped away from my parents, my Beatle boots tick-tocking past all the tourists packed in like clumps of lobster roe, to see my Ginny.

  Her portrait, the only one of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings in the United States, had been the greatest acquisition of my father’s tenure as curator. He’d purchased her from the prince of Liechtenstein for fivemillion dollars, at that time the largest sum ever paid for a work of art. To Dad she was very special. To me, she was more than special; she had captivated my inquisitive heart long before I could touch the gilded, glassed-in frame that protected her from humanity’s grasp. And when I finally could reach her, Ginny became my sole confidante.

  She listened patiently to my secret Christmas wish lists, never provoking the least nip of conscience. She was waiting to greet me the first day I soloed in on the bus, after third grade let out. And she was there every day after that when I came to meet my dad. Ginny and I hung out while he finished work, the two of us owning the whole place. We were a spectacle.

  Leonardo painted Ginevra’s portrait in 1474 or so, when she was already twenty-six years old. My father told me that she called herself a mountain tiger, though Leonardo’s painting made her look as soft and sad as the last petal on a solitary rose.

  I wondered what she must have talked about with him out there by the juniper tree. Leonardo had probably painted her hands—hands maybe even more beautiful than Mona Lisa’s—and it made me furious to think that someone had wantonly sawed off the bottom seven inches of the oil-on-wood painting. No one had the right to commit an injustice to Ginny—or to Leonardo. Nobody.

  My scallops cooled. I pronged one, but laid my fork down, no longer hungry. I slugged the rest of the wine and a little dribbled down my chin and onto my shirt. The telephone rang. Setting my plate and glass down, I answered it.

  A raspy voice whispered, “Rollo Eberhart Barnett?”

  My first thought was Publisher’s Clearing House—a man with laryngitis.

  “Is this the son of Dr. Rollo Barnett who was the curator at the National Gallery?”

  “Yes . . .”

  There was a harsh cough and some throat-clearing. “I knew your father.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I have some things to tell you. Important things.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s a ticket waiting for you at the American Airlines counter at LAX.”

  “A ticket? Look, you’d better just tell me what this is all about.”

  “It’s about the fire,” he said.

  Bitter-tasting bile rose in my throat. My mother’s screams echoed through two decades.

  “What about the fire?” I managed.

  “At the counter,” the voice rasped, “under Rollo Barnett. Open ticket, but you’d better come first thing tomorrow.” The line went dead.

  I stood for a moment with the receiver to my ear, looking blankly out at the backyard, confused and frightened.

  A squirrel scampered up a tree by my deck. My eyes followed it.Squirrel, tree, darkness, stars. Where’s the moon? There it is.I peered at it till I saw the familiar face. The air filling my lungs couldn’t cool the embers in my mind. I realized I still held the phone to my ear and slammed it down.

  I got the number for American Airlines and made the call. A sales representative named Kayla told me I had an open-ended, round-trip, first-class L.A.-to-Denver ticket waiting for me.

  “Does it say who purchased it?” I asked.

  “A Mr. Harvey Grant,” she answered.

  “Harvey Grant,” I mumbled. “Who the hell’s Harvey Grant?”

  “Sir?”

  “Sorry. I was talking to myself.”

  “Would you like to make a reservation?”

  I finger-combed my hair; an uneasy tingle spread down my neck and shoulders.

  “Sir?”

  “Um, I’m just not that gung-ho a flyer is all.”

  “Actually, me neither. Can I help you with a reservation?”

  “Well, Kayla,” I answered slowly, “I guess you can. What’s the earliest-flight tomorrow?”

  At eight-fifty the next morning, my car was parked in the short-term lot and I was in the terminal, with a ticket tucked in the back pocket of my jeans and an American Airlines envelope clasped in my hand.I stood against the wall next to a nut stand with a red-and-white-striped awning and opened the envelope. My hand was shaking a little—early heights? Inside there was no note, just two faxes: directions to a Denver address and a photocopied article from the previous day’sDenver Post. The article read:

  Venice, ItalyIn what is being called an extraordinary tragedy, Fausto Arrezione, the owner of an antiquarian bookstore, was killed today in a fire that destroyed his shop and all of its contents, apparently including a priceless page of Leonardo da Vinci’s notes. Earlier this week Arrezione had placed a call to the Gallerie dell’Accademia, a venerated museum and art school, to report his discovery of the page that purportedly included a drawing of what Leonardo described as the “Circles of Truth,” which he has, in several of his notebooks, referred to as the key to the whereabouts of the legendary Medici Dagger.

  Mystery has surrounded the Medici Dagger since 1491 when Lorenzo de’ Medici commissioned Leonardo to produce the piece to commemorate the death of Medici’s younger brother, Giuliano, fatally wounded by enemies of the Medicis in an attempt to overthrow the family from Florentine power. Leonardo never delivered the Dagger. The legend surrounding it began with the discovery in 1608 of a manuscript called the CodexArundel, in which Leonardo wrote the following words next to a drawing of a magnifice
nt dagger:

  Through the din of the bustling airport I heard my father’s voice speaking Leonardo’s words in my head—words I’d memorized at my dad’s side, elbow to elbow on the living-room floor, his oxford cotton sleeve touching my flannel pajama top.

  “Something has occurred which I cannot explain. While casting the dagger for Il Magnifico I have chanced upon a mixture of metals which once formed became almost as light as the air. Try as I might I could not return it to liquid form nor could I cause it to be deformed or dented in any way. And there is an edge to this blade which is sharper than any man has ever seen. The world is little prepared to receive a material that could be transformed into indestructible weapons of death. No good purpose could come of it. War is bestial madness. But I see beyond us to a glorious future with science the benevolent ruler, when man, unencumbered by ill intent, could utilize this extraordinary discovery for the noblest of purposes. So I will hold the dagger for that man of the future. And the Circles of Truth shall lead him to it.”

  “The Circles of Truth,” I repeated aloud. The man from Vinci, who’d bought caged birds only to set them free, had discovered an indestructible alloy and felt a responsibility to keep it a secret for a man of the future. He’d hidden the Medici Dagger somewhere, almost five hundred years earlier, and had left the secret to its whereabouts in some sort of cryptic message he called the “Circles of Truth.”

  I glanced at the remaining paragraph of the article, although I’d already guessed its content.

  In 1980, another page, found in Amboise, France, thought to contain the “Circles of Truth,” was tragically destroyed when the private plane transporting it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing the courier who was piloting the plane, traveling alone. Since that incident, all hope of recovering the legendary Dagger had been lost until this recent find, which experts say might have included a duplicate of the “Circles.” A spokesperson from the Gallerie dell’Accademia maintained that while the notes had been viewed by one staff person, a photocopy had not been made. Apparently the notes were lost in the blaze.

  I fingered the envelope. There was nothing else in it but air. I folded the directions and the article, tucked them into my jeans pocket, and bought a small bag of roasted cashews. The bag was red and white, like the awning. I drifted over to a deserted gate, took a seat, and popped a few of the salty nuts in my mouth, grinding them into paste till my jaw hurt.

  Leonardo. My dad. The Circles of Truth. The Medici Dagger. Who was Harvey Grant?

  three

  Three hours and fifty minutes later I parked my rented Mustang convertible under the portico of a beautiful, turn-of-the-century gabled mansion in a quiet neighborhood near Cherry Creek Lake. A carved and painted wood sign read:THE WILLOWS~A PEACEFUL PLACE.Three wide brick steps led to a huge porch with maybe a dozen flowering plants in glazed ceramic pots, standing like sentries. I rang the bell next to the double oak doors. Moments later a middle-aged woman with a freckled face and half-glasses perched on her pointy nose appeared. She wore a white nurse’s uniform and rubber-soled shoes. Over her left breast was an ID tag that saidPEGGY.

  “Hi,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi, Peggy. I’m looking for . . . I don’t know, a patient?”

  “We don’t think of people as patients here,” she said politely. “This is a hospice. Mister . . . ?”

  “Reb Barnett,” I said.

  “People come here to finish their lives in a tranquil atmosphere, Mr. Barnett.”

  “I’m looking for Harvey Grant. Is he here?”

  “Mr. Grant. Yes. He’s here.”

  “Who is he?” I asked. “What do you know about him?”

  Peggy covered her nose and mouth, and sneezed. She asked if I’d excuse her for a second. Before I could answer she stepped around adesk and returned holding a Kleenex to her nose. “Allergies. Happens to me every year.”

  I stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind me. It was a large, cheery room that must have looked more austere at the turn of the century, when rich men in dark coats and derbies crossed its threshold. I repeated my question about Harvey Grant.

  Peggy dabbed at her nose. “I’m not allowed to discuss our guests,” she said. “Sorry. It’s against policy. I’ll take you to his room.”

  I accompanied Peggy up a wide wood staircase with lush gray carpet-and an ornately carved baluster. At the end of a long hall, she stopped in front of a room with a partially opened door, knocked, and walked in. Her white nurse shoes squeaked on the wood floor until she hit the Oriental carpet. The shoes looked brand-new. I stepped in behind her.

  The curtains were drawn, the room dimly lit. Fresh-cut flowers stood carelessly in a vase on a table next to an old man lying in a brass double bed in the corner.

  He was mostly bald save for a few scattered tufts of silver hair; pallid-skin covered the fragile bones of his face and shoulders like the membrane of a bat’s wing. His eyes were closed and still. I thought he was dead until his rib cage moved and a wheeze issued from his open mouth.

  “Mr. Grant?” Peggy said, lightly touching the man’s shoulder. “Harvey?” The dying man’s eyelids lifted like garage doors on rusty hinges, and he looked at her with a milky gaze. She said, “Your visitor is here.”

  Harvey Grant slowly turned his head till his eyes met mine. “Please go now, miss,” he rasped.

  She withdrew without looking at me, but I was grateful for the faint scent of her perfume. I moved closer to the man.

  “I’m Henry Greer,” he said. “The courier.”

  I shook my head as if a bug had flown in my ear, then swallowed hard. My throat was dry and there wasn’t enough air in the room.

  “You remember,” he said.

  “But . . . your plane crashed. You were . . .”

  Greer drew a deep breath, summoning energy. Then he raised a hairless arm from under the covers and laid it on his chest. A thick scar sliced diagonally across his forearm. He pointed a long-nailed finger toward a chair. “Please sit down. I have some things to tell you.”

  I reached behind me, felt for the chair, and sat. Greer scanned me for almost a full minute.

  I began to fidget. “I’m waiting.”

  “Have you ever heard the name Werner Krell?”

  “German billionaire. Munitions manufacturer.”

  “Nolo Tecci?”

  “No. You’re supposed to be dead, Greer. I was there when my father got the call from the Coast Guard.”

  “Tecci worked for Krell,” Greer said. “Still does.”

  I pulled the curtain back a little. A foot-wide band of sunlight cut across the bed. Greer squinted. His skin looked almost powdery in the light. I let go of the drape and it swished back in place.

  “The day your father sent me to collect the Leonardo notes from France, Tecci approached me,” Greer said. “Krell wanted those notes, was obsessed with them. Had been for years. Was convinced that the Dagger was out there, just like your old man. Tecci offered me a great deal of money for the notes.Seriousmoney. It was my shot, kid. I took it and staged the crash.”

  “You staged the crash?” My mind flashed back to my dad on the phone getting the news. It was the first time I’d ever seen him cry. The last time, too.

  “I met up with them on a train,” Greer continued, licking his parched lips.“Krell had his own Pullman at the back. I was standing on the platform waiting for him to come out, but he didn’t. Instead, Nolo Tecci was there. Black hair, cut like Caesar’s. Tattoo of a cobra wrapped around his neck. He had the briefcase with the money. We were crossing a bridge—a high bridge in the Alps—through the St. RoddardPass. I was nervous. It didn’t feel right. And it wasn’t. Tecci pulled a knife and that was it; I knew I’d had it. I spit in his face and grabbed the briefcase.”

  Greer lifted his arm an inch and dropped it. “He slashed me, right through the artery,” he said. “I kicked him, got a leg up on the railing, and jumped. Two hun
dred feet to the river. Crushed my legs.”

  I observed what must have been a twisted mess under the blanket as the man restocked his decrepit lungs.

  “I’d spent two years in a prison camp in Nam,” Greer said. “Knew how to survive. Got away down the river. They never found me. You were right, kid, when you said I was supposed to be dead. I stayed dead.”

  Greer coughed, a sound like coal spilling down a chute. Almost a minute passed before he caught his breath.

  “So I’m here for the confession before you die?” I said, barely containing my rage. “Or did you just get the urge to cheer me up? You bastard.”

  Greer half-smiled. “Do you believe in destiny, Reb?”

  “I’m here because you said you knew about the fire. What about it?”

  “I believe in destiny,” he pushed on. “I’ve been keeping track of you for a long time. I was glad that widow college professor adopted you after your parents died. Mrs. Tucker, right? Martha Belle Tucker. She must have raised you right.”

  “Yeah?” I seethed. “Why’s that?”

  “You haven’t strangled me yet.”

  “The fire, Greer . . .”

  Greer’s smile vanished.

  “I think Nolo Tecci came for your father and set fire to your house.”

  Instantly, time cracked and I was sailing toward the ground through the smoke-filled air. I squeezed my eyes shut trying to focus, to stitch it back together. Voices pecked at me—whispering voices from rooms in neighbors’ houses.Arson? Do you think? I don’t know. Remote possibility, I suppose. That’s crazy. These old houses, they go uplike tinder. Besides, who in the world would want to harm the Barnetts? That’s absurd. Shh. Quiet. We don’t want the boy to hear us.