A King's Ransom

Начало книги

Dan Cahill didn’t realize just how many policemen there were in the world until he became an international art thief.

At this early hour, the Santa Maria Novella train station was crammed with travelers. Businessmen with briefcases, students chugging espressos, tourists with too much luggage, and two teenagers, one with a stolen priceless thirteenth-century book in a backpack.

That would be him.

Dan hung his thumbs on the straps of his pack, hugging it closer to him. He almost felt that Marco Polo’s original manuscript, Il Milione – the one that had been lost for centuries until he and his sister had found it hidden in the Colosseum in Rome – was actually emitting heat. Was that why he was sweating so badly?

Or was it the fact that there seemed to be a policeman every five feet?

“Polizia everywhere,” his sister, Amy, murmured.

“They’re checking passports at the boarding platforms,” Dan noted. He watched as a uniformed officer stopped two young students about to board a train. They were older than he and Amy, but the girl had brown hair to her shoulders like Amy, and the boy was wiry like Dan.

Читать дальше →