The Medici Dagger

“We’d know, yes,” Beckett concurred. He removed his hanky, mopped a few beads of sweat from his brow. “How is your leg, anyway?”

“It’ll be all right.”

“How about your neck? The middle of the bandage is dark with blood. It doesn’t look very good.” He looked genuinely worried. Tired, too.

“Neither do you,” I said. “What about all your pills? You said they don’t help. With what?”

“Tennis elbow,” he replied with a half-smile. “Afraid I won’t make Wimbledon this year. Now, about your neck . . .”

“I’ve been hurt a lot worse than this. Tell me, please, any word on Ginny?”

“Nothing so far, I’m afraid. Mobright has our best men on it.”

“This is terrible, Beckett. All of this is meaningless if she’s hurt, if she’s . . .”

“I understand your concern, but you simply must not think the worst. Where would you have gotten if you’d been preoccupied with her when you were soaring? You’d have crashed for certain.”

“All right. So . . . we get the Dagger and then what? We let Krell know that we’ve got it, that we want to trade it for Ginny?”

“You want the Dagger, too,” Beckett said, strapping himself in. “Your father wanted it, you want it. Remember the noble purpose.”

“If she’s alive and there’s a breath left in me, I’ve got to save her. That’s my noblest purpose. Everything else comes next.”

“Of course. I comprehend you now much better than I did before,” he sighed, patting my hand lightly. “You’re not the crass ruffian I first believed you to be.”

“And you,” I said, “are not the arrogant . . . well . . . yes you are.”

Beckett laughed. “That’s the spirit. A little jocularity. Now, I’ve given this some thought,” he said. “I believe we can meet both our objectives. Once we’re in possession of the Dagger, we’ll make it known to Krell. He will have to respond. He’s trapped. The man is an angstrom away from acquiring the Medici Dagger, the very thing he believes will ultimately save him. He’ll have no choice but to negotiate. And when he does, we will have him, and then you will have Ms. Gianelli.”

Beckett sat back in his seat and smiled. “Relax, young man,” he said. “You’ve done the impossible. We are now in the golden chair.”

eighteen

Fear and excitement had been my daily bread since I’d become a stuntman. But yearning, caring, passion, purpose, connectedness, they were all new to me. Something extraordinary was happening-—the reweaving of my torn fabric, thread by thread.

I looked at Beckett. One thin leg was draped over the other. He bobbed it confidently. The bottom half-inch of an ankle holster was intermittently visible below his pant cuff.

Weapons. I needed them.

“I want my guns back,” I said.

His leg stopped bobbing. “Oh yes. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that small one. Very interesting.”

“Where are they?”

Beckett turned away, leaned toward the window to catch the view. “You’re an unofficial guest. No name, no nationality, no guns. There is no latitude with this.”

I heard the usual shrill sound of tires hitting tarmac as we touched down at Leonardo da Vinci Airport.

We were met by a black Mercedes sedan chauffeured by the wide-shouldered Pendelton, whom I had last seen when I stripped off his blazer in Milan. Mobright climbed in the passenger seat. The two exchanged a brief blank glance.

No baggage claim, no customs, no waiting. The A12 Highway along the Tiber, left on the GRA, right on Via Aurelia to Mussolini’s

wide road into St. Peter’s. Past the basilica, Michelangelo’s monstrous dome, and Bernini’s four-deep colonnade, we zipped with grave officiousness around the throng to the Sistine Chapel.

Pendelton parked in a place where it seemed you’d either get a million-dollar ticket or be condemned to eternal damnation. He exchanged words in fluid Italian with a man wearing the cassock of a high-ranking official.

The priest shook hands hesitantly with Beckett and introduced himself in English as Cardinal Gaetano Lorro, the Vatican secretary. In his worldly eyes was the look of anguished anticipation, which no amount of formality could disguise. I was not introduced.

Pendelton waited by the car as Lorro led us through a huge doorway-up a staircase to the large guardroom. The sounds of our footfalls on the marble reminded me of the resplendency, the immeasurable importance, of the surroundings. I rose closer with every step to the imminent future and my appointment with Leonardo.

A thin man sporting wire-rim glasses and work clothes stood a few feet from the center of the floor, where nine blue chalk lines intersected. He held a translucent schematic in one hand.

A ten-inch-square marble tile had been pried up where the snap lines crossed and a high-powered, five-inch hole cutter stood over it mounted on a precision drill press.

We converged on the spot. “You’re sure this is the location, Elverson?” Beckett asked.

Elverson held up the schematic. One side showed a detailed outline of the ceiling below, the other displayed the layout of the room in which we stood. “Absolutely,” he said.

“And there is no possibility of causing structural damage?”