hapter 79

KRENDLER caught the first squeal on the kidnapping. He called around to his sources and then he got Mason on a secure phone.

"Starling saw the snatch, we hadn't counted on that. She's making a flap at the Washington Field Office. Recommending a warrant to search your place."

"Krendler . . ."

Mason waited for breath, or perhaps he was exasperated, Krendler couldn't tell. "I've already registered complaints with the local authorities, the sheriff and the U.S. Attorney's office that Starling was harassing me, calling late at night with incoherent threats."

"Has she?"

"Of course not, but she can't prove she didn't and it muddies the water. Now, I can head off a warrant in this county and in this state. But I want you to call the U.S. Attorney over here and remind him this hysterical bitch is after me. I can take care of the locals myself, believe me."

Chapter 80

FREE AT last from the police, Starling changed her tire and drove home to her own phones and computer. She sorely missed her FBI cell phone and had not yet replaced it.

There was a message from Mapp on the answering machine: "Starling, season the pot roast and put it in the slow cooker. Do not put the vegetables in yet. Remember what happened last time. I'll be in a damn exclusion hearing until about five."

Starling fired up her laptop and tried to call up the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program file on Lecter, but was denied admission not only to VICAP, but the entire FBI computer net. She did not have as much access as the most rural constable in America.

The telephone rang.

It was Clint Pearsall. "Starling, have you harassed Mason Verger on the phone?"

"Never, I swear."

"He claims you have. He's invited the sheriff up there to tour his property, actually requested him to come do it, and they're on the way to look around now. So there's no warrant and no warrant forthcoming. We haven't been able to find any other witnesses to the kidnapping. Only you."

"There was a white Lincoln with an old couple in it. Mr. Pearsall, how about checking the credit card purchases at Safeway just before it happened. Those sales have a time stamp."

"We'll get to that, but it'll . . ."

". . . it'll take time," Starling finished.

"Starling?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Between us, I'll keep you posted on the big stuff. But you stay out of it. You're not a law officer while you're on suspension, and you're not supposed to have information. You're Joe Blow."

"Yes, sir, I know."

What do you look at while you're making up your mind? Ours is not a reflective culture, we do not raise our eyes up to the hills. Most of the time we decide the critical things while looking at the linoleum floor of an institutional corridor, or whispering hurriedly in a waiting room with a television blatting nonsense.

Starling, seeking something, anything, walked through the kitchen into the quiet and order of Mapp's side of the duplex. She looked at the photograph of Mapp's fierce little grandmother, brewer of the tea. She looked at Grandmother Mapp's insurance policy framed on the wall. Mapp's side looked like Mapp lived there.

Starling went back to her side. It looked to her like nobody lived there. What did she have framed? Her diploma from the FBI Academy. No photograph of her parents survived. She had been without them for a long time and she had them only in her mind. Sometimes, in the flavors of breakfast or in a scent, a scrap of conversation, a homely expression overheard, she felt their hands on her: She felt it strongest in her sense of right and wrong.

Who the hell was she? Who had ever recognized her? You are a warrior, Clarice. You can be as strong as you wish to be.

Starling could understand Mason wanting to kill Hannibal Lecter. If he had done it himself or had hired it done, she could have stood it; Mason had a grievance.

But she could not abide the thought of Dr Lecter tortured to death; she shied from it as she had from the slaughter of the lambs and the horses so long ago.

You are a warrior, Clarice.

Almost as ugly as the act itself was the fact that Mason would do this with the tacit agreement of men sworn to uphold the law. It is the way of the world.

With this thought, she made a simple decision: The world will not be this way within the reach of my arm.

She found herself in her closet, on a stool, reaching high.

She brought down the box John Brigham's attorney had delivered to her in the fall. It seemed forever ago.

There is much tradition and mystique in the bequest of personal weapons to a surviving comrade in arms. It has to do with a continuation of values past individual mortality.

People living in a time made safe for them by others may find this difficult to understand.

The box John Brigham's guns came in was a gift in itself. He must have bought it in the Orient when he was a Marine. A mahogany box with the lid inlaid in mother of pearl. The weapons were pure Brigham, well worn, well maintained and immaculately clean. An M1911A1 Colt .45 pistol, and a Safari Arms cut-down version of the .45 for concealed carry, a boot dagger with one serrated edge. Starling had her own leather. John Brigham's old FBI badge was mounted on a mahogany plaque. His DEA badge was in the box loose.

Starling pried the FBI badge off the plaque and put it in her pocket. The .45 went in her Yaqui slide behind her hip, covered by her jacket.

The short .45 went on one ankle, the knife on the other, inside her boots. She took her diploma out of the frame and folded it for her pocket. In the dark somebody might mistake it for a warrant. As she creased the heavy paper, she knew she was not quite herself, and she was glad.

Another three minutes at her laptop. From the Mapquest Web site she printed out a large-scale map of the Muskrat Farm and the national forest around it. For a moment she looked at Mason's meat kingdom, traced its boundaries with her finger.

The Mustang's big pipes blew the dead grass flat as she pulled out of her driveway to call on Mason Verger.

Chapter 81

A HUSH over Muskrat Farm like the quiet of the old Sabbath. Mason excited, terribly proud that he could bring this off. Privately, he compared his accomplishment to the discovery of radium.

Mason's illustrated science text was the best-remembered of his schoolbooks; it was the only book tall enough to allow him to masturbate in class. He often looked at an illustration of Madame Curie while doing this, and he thought of her now and the tons of pitchblende she boiled to get the radium. Her efforts were very much like his, he thought.

Mason imagined Dr Lecter, the product of all his searching and expenditure, glowing in the dark like the vial in Madame Curie's laboratory. He imagined the pigs that would eat him going to sleep afterward in the woods, their bellies glowing like lightbulbs.

It was Friday evening, nearly dark. The maintenance crews were gone. None of the workers had seen the van arrive, as it did not come by the main gate, but by the fire road through the national forest that served as Mason's service road. The sheriff and his crew had completed their cursory search and were well away before the van arrived at the barn. Now the main gate was manned and only a trusted skeleton crew remained at Muskrat: Cordell was at his station in the playroom-overnight relief for Cordell would drive in at midnight. Margot and Deputy Mogli, still wearing his badge from cozening the sheriff, were with Mason, and the crew of professional kidnappers were busy in the barn.

By the end of Sunday it would all be done, the evidence burnt or roiling in the bowels of the sixteen swine. Mason thought he might feed the eel some delicacy from Dr Lecter, his nose perhaps. Then for years to come Mason could watch the ferocious ribbon, ever circling in its figure eight, and know that the infinity sign it made stood for Lecter dead forever, dead forever.

At the same time, Mason knew that it is dangerous to get exactly what you want. What would he do after he had killed Dr Lecter? He could wreck some foster homes, and torment some children. He could drink martinis made with tears. But where was the hard-core fun coming from? What a fool he would be to dilute this ecstatic time with fears about the future. He waited for the tiny spray against his eye, waited for his goggle to clear, then puffed his breath into a tube switch: Anytime he liked he could turn on his video monitor and see his prize.

Chapter 82

THE SMELL of a coal fire in the tack room of Mason's barn and the resident smells of animals and men. Firelight on the trotting horse Fleet Shadow's long skull, empty as Providence, watching it all in blinders.

Red coals in the farrier's furnace flare and brighten with the hiss of the bellows as Carlo heats a strap of iron, already cherry-red.

Dr Hannibal Lecter hangs on the wall beneath the horse skull like a terrible altarpiece. His arms are outstretched straight from his shoulders on either side, well bound with rope to a single tree, a thick oak crosspiece from the pony cart harness. The single tree runs across the doctor's back like a yoke and is fastened to the wall with a shackle of Carlo's manufacture. His legs do not reach the floor. His legs are bound over his trousers like roasts rolled and tied, with many spaced coils, each coil knotted. No chain or handcuffs are used nothing metal that would damage the teeth of the pigs and discourage them.

When the iron in the furnace reaches white heat, "Buona sera, Dottore."

A crackle from the speaker on the TV monitor. The monitor lights and Mason's face appears . . .

"Turn on the light over the camera," Mason said. "Good evening, Dr Lector."

The doctor opened his eyes for the first time.

Carlo thought sparks flew behind the fiend's eyes, but it might have been a reflection of the fire. He crossed himself against the Evil Eye.

"Mason," the doctor said to the camera. Behind Mason, Lector could see Margot's silhouette, black against the aquarium. "Good evening, Margot," his tone courteous now. "I'm glad to see you again."

From the clarity of his speech, Dr Lector may have been awake for some time.

"Dr Lector," came Margot's hoarse voice.

Tommaso found the sun gun over the camera and turned it on.

The harsh light blinded them all for a second.

Mason in his rich radio tones: "Doctor, in about twenty minutes we're going to give the pigs their first course, which will be your feet. After that we'll have a little pajama party, you and I. You can wear shorties by then. Cordell's going to keep you alive for a long time-"

Mason was saying something further, Margot leaning forward to see the scene in the barn.

Dr Lector looked into the monitor to be sure Margot was watching him. Then he whispered to Carlo, his metallic voice urgent in the kidnapper's ear: "Your brother, Matteo, must smell worse than you by now. He shit when I cut him."

Carlo reached to his back pocket and came out with the electric cattle prod. In the bright light of the TV camera, he whipped it across the side of Lector's head. Holding the doctor's hair with one hand, he pressed the button on the handle, holding the prod close in front of Lector's face as the high-voltage current arced in a wicked line between the electrodes on the end.

"Fuck your mother," he said and plunged it arcing into Dr Lector's eye.

Dr Lector made no sound - the sound came from the speaker, Mason roaring as his breath permitted him, and Tommaso strained to pull Carlo away. Piero came down from the loft to help. They sat Carlo down in the cane chair. And held him.

"Blind him and there's no money!" they screamed in both his ears at once.

Dr Lector adjusted the shades in his memory palace to relieve the terrible glare. Ahhhhh. He leaned his face against the cool marble flank of Venus.

Dr Lector turned his face full to the camera and said clearly: "I'm not taking the chocolate, Mason."

"Sumbitch is crazy. Well, we knew he was crazy," said Deputy Sheriff Mogli. "But Carlo is too."

"Go down there and get between them," Mason said.

"You sure they got no guns?" Mogli said.

"You hired out to be tough, didn't you? No. Just the tranquilizer gun."

"Let me do it," Margot said. "Keep from starting some macho crap between them. The Italians respect their mamas. And Carlo knows I handle the money.

"Walk the camera out and show me the pigs," Mason said. "Dinner's at eight!"

"I don't have to stay for that," Margot said. "Oh, yes you do," Mason said.

Chapter 83

MARGOT TOOK a deep breath outside the barn. If she was willing to kill him, she ought to be willing to look at him. She could smell Carlo before she opened the door to the tack room. Piero and Tommaso stood on either side of Lecter. They faced Carlo, seated in the chair.

"Buona sera, signori," Margot said. "Your friends are right, Carlo. You ruin him now, no money. And you've come so far and done so well."

Carlo's eyes never left Dr Lecter's face.

Margot took a cell phone from her pocket. She punched numbers on its lighted face and held it out to Carlo. "Take it."

She held it in his line of vision. "Read it."

The automatic dialer read BANCO STEUBEN.

"That's your bank in Cagliari, Signore Deogracias. Tomorrow morning, when this is done, when you've made him pay for your brave brother, then I'll call this number and tell your banker my code and say, `Give Signor Deogracias the rest of the money you hold for him.' Your banker will confirm it to you on the phone.

Tomorrow evening you'll be in the air, on your way home, a rich man. Matteo's family will be rich too. You can take them the doctor's cojones in a zip-lock bag to comfort them. But if Dr Lecter can't see his own death, if he can't see the pigs coming to eat his face, you get nothing. Be a man, Carlo. Go get your pigs. I'll sit with the son of a bitch. In half an hour you can hear him scream while they eat his feet."

Carlo threw his head back and took a deep breath.

"Piero, andiamo! Tu, Tommaso, rimani."

Tommaso took his seat in the cane chair beside the door.

"I've got it under control, Mason," Margot said to the camera.

"I'll want to bring his nose with me back to the house. Tell Carlo," Mason said. The screen went dark. Moving out of his room was a major effort for Mason and the people around him, requiring reconnection of his tubes to containers on his traveling gurney and switching over his hard-shell respirator to an AC power pack.

Margot looked into Dr Lecter's face.

His injured eye was swollen shut between the black burn marks the electrodes had left at each end of his eyebrow.

Dr Lecter opened his good eye. He was able to keep the cool feeling of Venus' marble flank on his face.

"I like the smell of that liniment, it smells cool and lemony," Dr Lector said. "Thank you for coming, Margot."

"That's exactly what you said to me when the matron brought me into your office the first day. When they were doing pre-sentencing on Mason the first time."

"Is that what I said?"

Having just returned from the memory palace where he read over his interviews with Margot, he knew it to be so.

"Yes. I was crying, dreading to tell you about Mason and me. I was dreading having to sit down too. But you never asked me to sit - you knew I had stitches, didn't you? We walked in the garden. Do you remember what you told me?"

"You were no more at fault for what happened to you- "

"-than if I had been bitten on the behind by a mad dog' was what you said. You made it easy for me then, and the other visits too, and I appreciated it for a while."

"What else did I tell you?"

"You said you were much weirder than I would ever be," she said. "You said it was all right to be weird."

"If you try, you can remember everything we ever said. Remember-"

"Please don't beg me now."

It jumped out of her, she didn't mean to say it that way.

Dr Lecter shifted slightly and the ropes creaked.

Tommaso got up and came to check his bonds. "Attenzione alla bocca, Signorina. Be careful of the mouth."

She didn't know if Tommaso meant Dr Lector's mouth or his words.

"Margot, it's been a long time since I treated you, but I want to talk to you about your medical history, just for a moment, privately."

He cut his good eye toward Tommaso.

Margot thought for a moment. "Tommaso, could you leave us for a moment."

"No, I'm sorry, Signorina, but I stand outside with the door open."

Tommaso went with the rifle out into the barn and watched Dr Lecter from a distance.

"I'd never make you uncomfortable by begging, Margot. I would be interested to know why you're doing this. Would you tell me that? Have you started taking the chocolate, as Mason likes to say, after you fought him so long? We don't need to pretend you're revenging Mason's face."

She did tell him. About Judy, about wanting the baby. It took her less than three minutes; she was surprised at how easily her troubles summarized.

A distant noise, a screech and half a scream. Outside in the barn, against the fence he had erected across the open end of the barn, Carlo was fiddling with his tape recorder, preparing to summon the pigs from the wooded pasture with recorded cries of anguish from victims long dead or ransomed.

If Dr Lecter heard, he did not show it. "Margot, do you think Mason will just give you what he promised? You're begging Mason. Did begging help you when he tore you? It's the same thing as taking his chocolate and letting him have his way. But he'll make Judy eat the cheese. And she's not used to it."

She did not answer, but her jaw set.

"Do you know what would happen if, instead of crawling to Mason, you just stimulated his prostate gland with Carlo's cattle prod? See it there by the workbench?"

Margot started to get up.

"Listen to me," the doctor hissed. "Mason will deny you. You know you'll have to kill him, you've known it for twenty years. You've known it since he told you to bite the pillow and not make so much noise."

"Are you saying you'd do it for me? I could never trust you."

"No, of course not. But you could trust me never to deny that I did it. It would actually be more therapeutic for you to kill him yourself. You'll remember I recommended that when you were a child."

"`Wait until you can get away with it,' you said. I took some comfort from that."

"Professionally, that's the sort of catharsis I had to recommend. You're old enough now. And what difference would one more murder charge make to me? You know you'll have to kill him. And when you do, the law will follow the money -right to you and the new baby. Margot, I'm the only other suspect you've got. If I'm dead before Mason, who would the suspect be? You can do it when it suits you and I'll write you a letter gloating about how I enjoyed killing him myself."

"No, Dr Lecter, I'm sorry. It's too late. I've got my arrangements made."

She looked into his face with her bright butcher's blue eyes. "I can do this and sleep afterward, and you know I can."

"Yes, I know you can. I always liked that in you. You are much more interesting, more . . . capable than your brother."

She got up to go. "I'm sorry, Dr Lecter, for what that's worth."

Before she reached the door, he said, "Margot, when does Judy ovulate again?"

"What? In two days, I think."

"Do you have everything else you need? Extenders, equipment to fast-freeze?"

"I've got all the facilities of a fertilization clinic."

"Do one thing for me."

Yes.

"Curse at me and snatch out a piece of my hair, back from the hairline if you don't mind. Get a little skin. Hold it in your hand walking back to the house. Think about putting it in Mason's hand. After he's dead.

"When you get to the house, ask Mason for what you want. See what he says. You've delivered me, your part of the bargain is complete. Hold the hair in your hand and ask him for what you want. See what he says. When he laughs in your face, come back here. All you have to do is take the tranquilizer rifle and shoot the one behind you. Or hit him with the hammer. He has a pocketknife. Just cut the ropes on one arm and give me the knife. And leave. I can do the rest."

"No."

"Margot?" She put her hand on the door, braced against a plea.

"Can you still crack a walnut?"

She reached in her pocket and brought out two. The muscles of her forearm bunched and the nuts cracked.

The doctor chuckled. "Excellent. With all that strength, walnuts. You can offer Judy walnuts to help her get past the taste of Mason."

Margot walked back to him, her face set. She spat in his face and jerked out a lock of his hair near the top of his head. It was hard to know how she meant it.

She heard him humming as she left the room.

As Margot walked toward the lighted house, the little divot of scalp stuck to the palm of her hand with blood, the hair hanging from her hand and she did not even need to close her fingers around it.

Cordell passed her in a golf cart loaded with medical equipment to prepare the patient.