The Medici Dagger

Chapter One


I sank into the black leather sofa in my father's spacious office, leaning against a pillow that looked like a big, silky Chiclet. Tension rippled through the room. I glanced up at my dad, who was slumped forward in his chair, elbows on his leather-topped desk, forehead in one hand. His face was six inches from the speakerphone -- a boxy thing, separate from the telephone, that sounded even worse than they do today. Wedged between the fingers of his other hand was a number-two pencil that he nervously wiggled back and forth.

The voice coming out of the phone belonged to Ensign Hector Camacho, a representative from the Coast Guard. "I'm very sorry, sir," Camacho said with professional dispassion.

My dad winced as if he'd stepped on a thumbtack. "You're saying he could have gone down anywhere within a hundred-mile radius?"

"I'm saying that -- "

"Can't you find that plane? You cannot fathom the importance of this, the devastating consequences!" Sweat glistened on my father's upper lip.

"Try to calm down, Dr. Barnett," Camacho said. "I know how difficult this must be for you, losing, uh, Mr. Greer."

"Henry!" Dad shouted, and then, as if in an afterthought, he said, "Oh, God...Henry." I knew Henry Greer was the pilot and courier my father had sent to France to retrieve a page of Leonardo da Vinci's notes.

"Was he a relation?" Camacho asked.