Hannibal Rising (Hannibal Lecter 4)

Dieter released the woman’s hair and rummaged in the manifold contents of his pockets for a key. “Eva!”

The older woman came into the cabin and stood close to the wall.

“Clean that one up and Mueller will take her to the house,” Dieter said.

Grutas and Milko walked through the warehouse to the car. In a special area bound off by a rope were crates marked HOUSEHOLD. Grutas spotted among the appliances a British refrigerator.

“Milko, do you know why the English drink warm beer? Because they have Lucas refrigerators. Not for my house. I want Kelvinator, Frigidaire, Magnavox, Curtis-Mathis. I want all made in America.” Grutas raised the cover of an upright piano and played a few notes. “This is a whorehouse piano. I don’t want it. Kolnas found me a Bösendorfer. The best. Pick it up in Paris, Milko … when you do the other thing.”

47

KNOWING HE WOULD not come to her until he was scrubbed and groomed, she waited in his room. He had never invited her there, and she did not poke around. She looked at the drawings on the walls, the medical illustrations that filled one half of the room. She stretched out on his bed in the perfect order of the Japanese half beneath the eaves. On a small shelf facing the bed was a framed picture covered by a silk cloth embroidered with night herons. Lying on her side Lady Murasaki reached over and lifted the silk. It covered a beautiful drawing of her naked in the bath at the chateau, in pencil and chalk and tinted with pastel. The drawing was signed with the chop for Eternity in Eight Strokes and the Japanese symbols in the grass style, and not strictly correct, for “water flowers.”

She looked at it for a long time, and then she covered it and closed her eyes, a poem of Yosano Akiko running in her head:

Amid the notes of my koto is another

Deep mysterious tone,

A sound that comes from

Within my own breast.

Shortly after daylight on the second day she heard footsteps on the stairs. A key in the lock, and Hannibal stood there, scruffy and tired, his pack hanging from his hand.

Lady Murasaki was standing.

“Hannibal, I need to hear your heart,” she said. “Robert’s heart went silent. Your heart stopped in my dreams.” She went to him and put her ear against his chest. “You smell of smoke and blood.”

“You smell of jasmine and green tea. You smell of peace.”

“Do you have wounds?”

“No.”

Her face was against the scorched dog tags hanging around Hannibal’s neck. She took them out of his shirt.

“Did you take these from the dead?”

“What dead would that be?”

“The Soviet police know who you are. Inspector Popil came to see me. If you go directly to him he will help you.”

“These men are not dead. They are very much alive.”

“Are they in France? Then give them to Inspector Popil.”

“Give them to the French police? Why?” He shook his head. “Tomorrow is Sunday—do I have that right?”

“Yes, Sunday.”

“Come with me tomorrow. I’ll pick you up. I want you to look at a beast with me and tell me he should fear the French police.”

“Inspector Popil—”

“When you see Inspector Popil

, tell him I have some mail for him.” Hannibal’s head was nodding.