The Medici Dagger

by Cameron West

  I let Pop take off the bandage. “Looks clean. I believe I missed my true calling. Should have been a tailor.” He removed fresh dressings from the first-aid kit and applied them.

  Think positive, Pop had instructed. I was positive I didn’t knowwhere Ginny was. I was also sure I’d had some sort of insight into Leonardo’s Circles last night. I desperately wanted to find her, but didn’t know where to look. I had to do what I could, not what I wanted. And what I could do was try to unravel the code.

  That meant Mona.

  Pop had driven back from the inn in his Range Rover. I slipped into the rear seat and lay down out of sight, knowing better than to show my face. We headed down Highway 1, me feeling a tad queasy. I never liked riding in the backseat, even sitting up, and certainly not with a hangover. When we got off the main drag, Pop instructed me to hop up front, which I gladly did.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Ukiah Road on the way to Comptche. Be at Mona’s in a minute.”

  “How’d you get to know her, anyway?” I asked, watching the scenery—tall, wise trees, happy squirrels with plenty of holes to climb into and not many tires to get squashed under.

  “I know all the babes around here,” he said, with a sideways grin. “I was a regular Sir Galahad. Plenty of steel in the little jouster. You know, making merry with the old maidens. Dispatched ’em all forthwith at one time or another. But none of ’em come close to Mona. Now she’s a diamond, all right. I mean a night-sky-star kinda winker. That doesn’t quite get the point across. She’s celestial. That’s it! Mona’s celestial. Don’t you think? Even if you were a youngster last time you saw her, you must have known that.”

  I remembered Mona, clogs clopping up the streets of the old neighborhood. She always paused at the house next door, if the lady was outside, to compliment her on the scrawniest yellow rosebushes in all of Berkeley. There was definitely something celestial about Mona. And I was the guy who hadn’t responded to her cards.

  “Yeah, Pop,” I agreed. “Celestial.”

  “Damn tootin’,” he said. “Okay, here we are.”

  He pulled up a steep gravel driveway within feet of a tiny sky blue house with dark shutters. The front screen opened and out cameMona, plumper than before, with long silver hair that used to be brown. She wore a flowery dress and cork-soled denim sandals.

  I felt a flutter in my belly, a tug on my heart.

  Pop jumped out of the car like he was eighteen and made his way up the porch with a sprightly step. Mona kept her eyes on me as I followed. Pop hugged her tenderly, then stepped away from her as I approached.

  “Reb,” she said, hands on her full hips.

  “Sorry I’m a day late,” I said self-consciously, stopping in front ofher.

  She cupped my face with age-spotted hands.

  “You’re not late,” she said. “You’re right on time.” Then a look of sorrow crossed her face. “I feel guilty, as though I let Martha down. I tried to—”

  “I saved your cards,” I told her. “Every one. You didn’t let Martha down. I did.”

  “Well . . . now is no time for regret. You’ve come to me with great urgency. And after some terrible trouble at the inn. Tell me how I can help.”

  Her little house was filled with the scent of freshly baked cookies. Mona guided us upstairs to a small, brightly lit office adorned with framed logos of what I guessed were local businesses. I pulled the two pages of Leonardo’s notes from my backpack and handed them to her without a word.

  She held them gingerly, staring at them with a puzzled look. “Oh my Lord,” she gasped, her eyes opening wide. “Are these what I think they are? Am I holding something of Leonardo da Vinci’s? Is this . . . could it be . . . the Circles of Truth . . . the Medici Dagger?”

  “I can’t explain the whole story now, but—”

  “You owe me no explanation,” she said, studying the Circles. “Just tell me what you know about them.”

  “They’re some sort of code Leonardo devised to send a message. They go together somehow. I know that. Maybe they’re a symbolic alphabet. Remember your Sherlock Holmes?”

  “The Dancing Men!”

  I told her about the insight I’d had the previous night and explained that I wanted to eliminate the spaces between the rings, enlarging each one until they all touched, forming a solid image.

  Mona understood instantly. She examined the pages, looking from one to the other. Then, spinning in her chair, she switched on her computer and flatbed scanner.

  “Let’s find your dancing men, shall we?”

  First Mona scanned Ginny’s translation and each page of notes just to have them on disk, then captured the image of each Circle. Next, focusing only on Circle One, she scanned the rings of the design individually and put one within the next. I watched carefully as her fingers worked the mouse, clicking and dragging.

  When Mona finished, all the rings touched. We sat shoulder to shoulder searching for a pattern, an obvious design, symbols— anything. No dancing men. Nothing distinguishable.

  I was surprised at the level of my disappointment. As if Leonardo would invent something simple.

  Mona didn’t seem to mind. “They could still go together like that,” she said. “But maybe they’re in the wrong order. Maybe it’s not outside ring to inside ring. Maybe it’s inside to outside. Some other pattern. I think Leonardo was having a little fun.”

  Her eyes shone like blue beach glass. “You know what we’ve got to do now, don’t you?”

  “We’ve got to scan each ring and blow it up to every possible size so that each ring could fit in any position in the bull’s-eye.”

  “Exactly!”

  We set about printing out ten transparencies for each ring, one for each position in the circle, labeling them #1 through #10 and dividing them into piles by size, so each could be fitted together with the others in every possible way. When we were done, we had a hundred sheets each for Circles of Truth One and Circles of Truth Two. The first combination, outer to inner, hadn’t worked. So, next we lined up the ringsinner to outer, with the original smallest circle on the outside, largest on the inside.

  Nothing. We continued to try different combinations as Pop sat nearby with a yellow pad and pencil, making copious notes, recording the results.

  An hour later and still nothing. Frustration crackled in me.What am I doing? Ginny’s out there somewhere, and I’ve got a couple hundred Circles of Truth and no clue how they go together.

  Pop said, “I could very well be the hungriest bastard ever been to Comptche. I’m going downstairs, fix us all something.” I looked at him, overwhelmed with anxiety. He patted me lightly on the shoulder. “She’s sparkling out there, Reb. She’s sparkling.”

  Mona looked at him quizzically. “There’s tuna in the cupboard,” she said.

  I heard him hobble out and down the stairs. Mona laid a hand on my knee. Emotion spiked.

  “Look at me,” she urged.

  She peered into my eyes, her gaze caressing every crevice in my rocky cave.

  “Martha was a good woman,” she said softly. “I knew her for a long time before she adopted you. Knew her husband, George, as well, and how you filled in the space after he died. I knew all about you and your parents. I watched you grow and then you were gone and I wondered what path you chose.”

  I started to choke up. “Leonardo laid a path for a mighty traveler to follow, Mona. I’m that traveler.”

  After a moment of hushed silence, she breathed, “I appreciate what it took for you to come to me after all these years. I feel your desperation. I want to help. It’s my duty to help you. We’re not making sense of Leonardo’s shapes and we’re missing his pattern. If these are Leonardo’s dancing men, we must let them dance.”

  Her face next to mine, she whispered, “Close your eyes, young man, and tell me what their next step is.”

  I let my lids fall. Mona moved behind me. She whispered again in my ear, “Now try to clear your mind of all the past
and all the future. You are alone with Leonardo. What do you see?”

  I felt her fingers massage my temples and let my mind wander.

  No clue. The past and the future. Leonardo. No clue.

  Suddenly the master’s words flashed before me. Ginny’s flowing script of Leonardo’s notes. “Out then in back and forth one to the other the seer will wander the path and the truth of the past will lead the wise one to the dagger.” Out then in. Outer inner. Mona’s fingers massaged my temples. In circles, back and forth. And there I was at the combination lock by the road to the Baby Face Nelson Suite where I saw a white-haired Leonardo kneeling, turning the dial. Something profound clicked inside. When I’d touched the lock, more than school memories had been triggered. I hadn’t known what. Now I did.

  “The Circles rotate.”

  A big smile crossed Mona’s lips. “Of course,” she said crisply.

  She quickly marked a page with an X, printed it out on a transparency, and handed it to me along with a plastic-tipped pushpin.

  Out then in. Outer inner.

  I grabbed two transparencies from Circle One: #1 the largest, and #10, the smallest, but in the second-ring size so that it would butt up against #1. Placing the X transparency over them, I stuck a pushpin through dead center and slowly started rotating #10. Mona leaned in, her warm breath on my ear.

  “Stop there,” she gasped. “Do you see?”

  The ice of recognition chilled me like a polar wind. The two rings lined up. They connected.

  “Oh my God,” I said, “they fit together. But what are they?”

  “I know exactly what they are,” Mona said. “It isn’t symbols. Not dancing men, but calligraphy! It’s Leonardo’s alphabet. This is a circle of words! You picked the biggest then the smallest, #1 then #10. How did you know to do that?”

  “Um . . . this is going to sound weird, but I don’t know how else tosay it. Leonardo told me. I don’t mean I heard his voice say it to me. That would be crazy.”

  “Not to me. But I understand. You received the information.”

  “Yes.”

  “How far did you spin it? This can’t be haphazard.”

  “Of course not. This is Leonardo.”

  “Right. Each Circle of Truth is comprised of ten rings.”

  “That’s it, Mona!” I shouted. “Ten rings, three hundred and sixty degrees. One ring, thirty-six degrees.” Another flush of excitement tingled my toes. “What’s next in the layout if they’re outer inner?”

  “Well, outer inner would be one, ten, two, nine, three, eight, four, seven, five, six. The next would be number two in the third from the largest size.”

  I fished through the transparencies until I found it, stuck it under the pile, poked the pin through the center and spun it clockwise, thirty-six degrees past where the first one had stopped. The marks connected with the others. I swallowed hard, feeling my Adam’s apple rise and fall like a pile driver.

  Mona sat down next to me, a look of fascination on her wrinkled face. “Leonardo wrote a message, sliced it in horizontal pieces, put them in a circle, and spun them.”

  To Pop she shouted, “Rodney Norcross, get your old self up here. Don’t miss this!”

  I heard Pop creaking up the stairs as I rifled through the transparencies till I found the fourth-largest ring. I attached it to the others, spinning it another thirty-six degrees. It fit!

  Pop entered the room carrying a tray of sandwiches. I started singing to the tune of “La Cucaracha”: “I’m a gen-ius, I’m a gen-ius, I’m a really coo-ool duuude. I’m a gen-ius, I’m a gen-ius, and that’s a winning attitu-u-ude.”

  Pop and Mona laughed as I fished out the fifth-sized ring with a clammy hand, stuck it on the back, and spun it what I thought was thirty-six degrees past the fourth ring, or one hundred and forty-fourdegrees. Yow! I sang my little tune again. Pop grabbed Mona and danced to it.

  I was doing it. It was working out.

  I dug out sixth-position #8, laid it on the back, fanned it out so it was at one hundred eighty degrees and . . . and . . . nothing. I moved it back and forth in small increments. Still nothing.

  Pop and Mona stopped dancing.

  “I only have the top half of the words,” I said, thoroughly deflated. How fast I had fallen from grace. Pluto to Pittsburgh at the speed of stupidity.

  Mona picked up the pad and read, “One-ten-two-nine-three, rings one through five, top half of a line. Try the same thing with Truth Two.”

  They went together as the others had.

  “By jingo,” Pop howled, “you got the outer halves of two messages. Nice work. Now all you have to do is solve the inside.”

  I puzzled it out. “The inside of Truth One should be eight-four-seven-five-six, but number eight doesn’t work. They obviously go together some different way. What way?”

  “Reb,” Mona said, “what were you thinking about when I told you to close your eyes?”

  “The combination lock.”

  “Go back there. Say aloud what you see, any pattern you detect.”

  I shut my eyes and drifted.

  Up and down, light and dark, high and low. Happiness and sadness, strain and relief, man and woman, lift and separate.

  Antonyms rained on me like wedding rice. My mind arrived back at the chained-off road to the Baby Face Nelson Suite as I unlocked the padlock. “Right, left, right, pull down, success,” I said. “Right, left, right. Leonardo said ‘back and forth, one to the other.’ ”

  I opened my eyes. “Back and forth. That’s it! Number eight from Truth One, Mona. I need it in the sixth size.”

  She quickly handed it to me.

  Back and forth.

  I attached it to the five sheets of Truth One already connected with the pin, but this time I spun itcounterclockwise. Nothing. “I’m wrong,” I said, dejection dripping from my tongue. “I can’t get it. I’m not the mighty traveler. I’m nothing.”

  “Shh,” Mona said, kneeling down next to me. “You also said ‘one to the other.’ ”

  I listened to her words—Leonardo’s words. Of course. It had to be. Onecircleto the other.

  I grabbed #8 from Circle of Truth Two and attached it to the sheets of Truth One. I spun it counterclockwise, making little adjustments. The piece fit! I quickly attached rings 4-7-5-6 from Truth Two to Truth One, fanning them out counterclockwise. They all connected. I was holding a circle of Leonardo’s words.

  Somewhere in the distance I heard Pop say,“By jingo,” but I was no longer in the room. I was on the path with Leonardo.Wewere the dancing men. I repeated the process with Truth Two. The inner circles of Truth One fit counterclockwise with the outer circles of Truth Two.

  I was holding a second complete circular sentence.

  I had done it! Two sentences in Leonardo’s backward script, from two separate notebook pages. Two circles, twenty rings, 720 degrees, outer inner, back and forth, one circle to the other. Leonardo’s complex mind, his stunning intellect, at play. The twenty-circle path. The path to the Medici Dagger.

  “Iamthe mighty traveler,” I said to Leonardo.

  “But what do they mean?” Pop asked.

  “I’m going to find out. And when I do I’m going to tell you. Ginny,” I said, my mind suddenly filled with her.

  Pop said, “Oh nerts, where’s my memory—Iowa? I just talked to Mary at the inn. Said she got a weird call from a dame who said nothing but ‘Tell Pop A.F.B.B.’ Said it sounded like she was in a phone booth. That ring a bell?”

  “Jesus!” I said, jumping out of my chair. “It sure does. Archie Ferris. I knew it was him in the woods.”

  “Who the hell’s Archie Paris?” he asked.

  “Ferris,” I said, “like the wheel at a carnival.”

  “Oh yeah, your buddy,” Pop said. “Your guardian angel. How come he sounds like a broad?”

  “He picked her up. Thank God.”

  “What’s B.B.?” Mona asked.

  “Big Bear,” I told her, relief flooding my heart. “Arc
hie Ferris, Big Bear. Why the hell’d they go all the way to Big Bear?”

  “And who’s Ginny?”

  A smile crossed my lips. A hopeful smile. A Hope Diamond smile.

  “Your sparkler,” Mona said.

  I nodded.

  “I’d say it’s time for you to go,” she told me, packing the transparencies in a box. She handed them to me along with the original notes and asked if I wanted her to assemble the rings into the completed Circles on the computer.

  “No time,” I told her. “Just make a backup disk of the files. Besides,” I said, waving the box, “I’ve got these.”

  Mona copied the files and gave me the disk. I wrapped her in my arms. She reminded me that it was still in her will to let me know when she died. “White it out,” I said. She pressed her cheek to mine.

  “Thank you, Mona,” I said, brimming with emotion.

  I turned to Pop. “The Baby Face Nelson Suite. And step on it.”

  We left Mona standing on the porch, grasping her hair in one hand to keep it from blowing in the breeze and waving to us with the other. Pop winked at me and said it would be inconsiderate of him not to go back there later to personally show his appreciation for what she’d done.On the ride back to Little River it occurred to me that I didn’t have Archie’s address in Big Bear, nor was there a phone in the cabin.There’d be no message leaving me directions; Archie was too smart for that. His cell phone number was in my car. All I could do was head for Big Bear and hope he had it with him. Worst case, somebody would be able to direct me to his cabin.

  At least Ginny was safe.

  Back at the Baby Face Nelson Suite I quickly packed. I removed fifty thousand dollars from the satchel and tried to force it on Pop, but he wouldn’t have it. I stashed the money in the trunk of the Jag and had one foot in the car when I looked up at the old guy. There were tears in his eyes.

  A rush of gratitude welled as my own eyes got misty. Pop held his arms out to me. I crunched across the gravel and hugged him. He patted me right on the stitches.

  “Pop,” I said, ignoring the pain. “Pop . . .”

  He took out a hankie and blew his nose so hard I figured a flock of geese was on its way. “I like you way better’n Baby Face. And about you not having a place to live? Well, here ain’t so bad.”