Thomas Harris - Hannibal Rising

"How do you like that?" Hannibal said.

Inspector Popil slugged him with a small rubber sap and he went down.

"How do you like that?" Popil said.

The larger of the two policemen crowded in behind Popil and stood over Hannibal. "Answer every question: I asked you how do you like that?"

"It's more honest than your handshake. And at least the club is clean."

Popil took from an envelope two dog tags on a loop of string. "Found in your room. These two were charged in absentia at Nuremberg. Question:

Where are they?"

"I don't know."

"Don't you want to watch them hang? The hangman uses the English drop, but not enough to tear their heads off. He does not boil and stretch his rope. They yo-yo a lot. That should be to your taste."

"Inspector, you will never know anything about my taste."

"Justice doesn't matter, it just has to be you killing them."

"It has to be you too, doesn't it, Inspector? You always watch them die.

It's to your taste. Do you think we could talk alone?" He took from his pocket a bloodstained note wrapped in cellophane. "You have mail from Louis Ferrat."

Popil motioned for the policemen to leave the room.

"When I cut the clothes off Louis' body, I found this note to you." He read aloud the part above the fold. "Inspector Popil, why do you torment me with questions you will not answer yourself? I saw you in Lyons. And he goes on." Hannibal passed the note to Popil. "If you want to open it, it's dry now. It doesn't smell."

The note crackled when Popil opened it, and dark flakes fell out of the fold. When he had finished he sat holding the note beside his temple.

"Did some of your family wave bye-bye to you from thechoo-choo?"

Hannibal said. "Were you directing traffic at the depot that day?"

Popil drew back his hand.

"You don't want to do that," Hannibal said softly. "If I knew anything, why should I tell you? It's a reasonable question, Inspector. Maybe you'll get them passage to Argentina."

Popil closed his eyes and opened them again. "Pétain was always my hero.

My father, my uncles fought under him in the First War. When he made the new government, he told us, 'Just keep the peace until we throw the Germans off. Vichy will save France.' We were already policemen, it seemed like the same duty."

"Did you help the Germans?"

Popil shrugged. "I kept the peace. Perhaps that helped them. Then I saw one of their trains. I deserted and found the Resistance. They wouldn't trust me until I killed a Gestapo. The Germans shot eight villagers in reprisal. I felt like I had killed them myself. What kind of war is that? We fought in Normandy, in the hedges, clicking these to identify each other." He picked up a cricket clicker from his desk. "We helped the Allies coming in from the beachheads." He clicked twice. "This meant I'm a friend, don't shoot. I don't care about Dortlich. Help me find them. How are you hunting Grutas?"

"Through relatives in Lithuania, my mother's connections in the church."

"I could hold you for the false papers, just on the con's testimony. If I let you go, will you swear to tell me everything you find out? Will you swear to God?"

"To God? Yes, I swear to God. Do you have a Bible?" Popil had a copy of thePensées in his bookcase. Hannibal took it out. "Or we could use your Pascal, Pascal."

"Would you swear on Lady Murasaki's life?"

A moment's hesitation. "Yes, on Lady Murasaki's life." Hannibal picked up the clicker and clicked it twice.

Popil held out the dog tags and Hannibal took them back.

When Hannibal had left the office, Popil's assistant came in. Popil signaled from the window. When Hannibal emerged from the building a plainclothes policeman followed him.

"He knows something. His eyebrows are singed. Check fires in the Ile de France for the last three days," Popil said. "When he leads us to Grutas, I want to try him for the butcher when he was a child."

"Why the butcher?"

"It's a juvenile crime, Etienne, a crime of passion. I don't want a conviction, I want him declared insane. In an asylum they can study him and try to find out what he is."

"What do you think he is?"

"The little boy Hannibal died in 1945 out there in the snow trying to save his sister. His heart died with Mischa. What is he now? There's not a word for it yet. For lack of a better word, we'll call him a monster."

AT LADY MURASAKI'S building in the Place de Vosges, the concierge's booth was dark, the Dutch door with its frosted window closed. Hannibal let himself into the building with his key and ran up the stairs.

Inside her booth, seated in her chair the concierge had the mail spread before her on her desk, stacked tenant by tenant as though she were playing solitaire. The cable of a bicycle lock was buried nearly out of sight in the soft flesh of her neck and her tongue was hanging out.

Hannibal knocked on Lady Murasaki's door. He could hear the telephone ringing inside. It sounded oddly shrill to him. The door swung open when he pushed his key into the lock. He ran through the apartment, looking, looking, flinching when he pushed open her bedroom door, but the room was empty. The telephone was ringing, ringing. He picked up the receiver.

In the kitchen of the Café de L'Este, a cage ofortolans waited to be drowned in Armagnac and scalded in the big pot of boiling water on the stove. Grutas gripped Lady Murasaki's neck and held her face close to the boiling pot. With his other hand he held the telephone receiver. Her hands were tied behind her. Mueller gripped her arms from behind.

When he heard Hannibal 's voice on the line, Grutas spoke into the phone.

"To continue our conversation, do you want to see the Jap alive?" Grutas asked.

"Yes."

"Listen to her and guess if she still has her cheeks."

What was that sound behind Grutas' voice? Boiling water? Hannibal did not know if the sound was real; he heard boiling water in his dreams.

"Speak to your little fuckboy."

Lady Murasaki said, "My dear, DON'T-" before she was snatched away from the telephone. She struggled in Mueller's grip and they banged into the cage ofortolans. The birds screeched and twittered among themselves.

Grutas spoke to Hannibal. "'My DEAR,' you have killed two men for your sister and you have blown up my house. I offer you a life for a life.

Bring everything, the dog tags, Pot Watcher's little inventory, every fucking thing. I feel like making her squeal."

"Where-"

"Shut up. Kilometer thirty-six on the road to Trilbardou, there is a telephone kiosk. Be there at sunrise and you'll get a call. If you are not there you get her cheeks in the mail. If I see Popil, or any policeman, you get her heart parcel post. Maybe you can use it in your studies, poke through the chambers, see if you can find your face. A life for a life?"

"A life for a life," Hannibal said. The line went dead.

Dieter and Mueller brought Lady Murasaki to a van outside the cafe.

Kolnas changed the license plate on Grutas' car.

Grutas opened the trunk and got out a Dragunov sniper rifle. He gave it to Dieter. "Kolnas, bring a jar." Grutas wanted Lady Murasaki to hear.

He watched her face with a kind of hunger as he gave instructions.

"Take the car. Kill him at the telephone," Grutas told Dieter. He handed him the jar. "Bring his balls to the boat below Nemours."

Hannibal did not want to look out the window; Popil's plainclothesman would be looking up. He went into the bedroom. He sat on the bed for a moment with his eyes closed. The background sounds rang on in Hannibal 's head. Chirpchirp. The Baltic dialect of theortolan.

Lady Murasaki's sheets were lavender-scented linen. He gripped them in his fists, held them to his face, then stripped them off the bed and soaked them quickly in the tub. He stretched a clothesline across the living room and hung a kimono from it, set an oscillating fan on the floor and turned it on, the fan turning slowly, moving the kimono and its shadow on the sheer curtains.