Hannibal Rising (Hannibal Lecter 4)

“His stepmother, or something like that. She’s beautiful,” Ivanov said, touching the stone buttocks.

“Has she got an ass like that one?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The French police came around?”

“An inspector named Popil.” Grutas pursed his lips and for a moment he seemed to forget Ivanov was in the room.

Mueller and Gassmann looked over the crowd. They were taking coats and watching that none of the guests stole anything. In the coatroom Mueller pulled Gassmann’s bow tie away from his collar on its rubber band, turned it a half-turn, and let it pop back.

“Can you wind it up like a little propeller and fly like a fairy?” Mueller said.

“Turn it again and you’ll think it’s the doorknob to Hell,” Gassmann said. “Look at you. Tuck in your blouse. Were you never in the service?”

They had to help the caterer pack up. Carrying a folding banquet table down to the basement, they did not see concealed beneath the stairs a fat rubber glove suspended over a dish of powder, with a fuse leading into a three-kilo tin that once held lard. A chemical reaction slows as the temperature cools. Grutas’ basement was five degrees cooler than the medical school.

52

THE MAID WAS laying out Grutas’ silk pajamas on the bed when he called for more towels.

/> The maid did not like to take towels into Grutas’ bathroom, but she was always summoned to do it. She had to go in there but she did not have to look. Grutas’ bathroom was all white tile and stainless steel, with a big freestanding tub and a steam room with frosted glass doors and a shower off the steam room.

Grutas reclined in his tub. The woman captive he had brought from the boat was shaving his chest using a prison safety razor, the blade locked in with a key. The side of her face was swollen. The maid did not want to meet her eyes.

Like a sense-deprivation chamber, the shower was all white, and big enough for four. Its curious acoustics bounced every crumb of sound. Hannibal could hear his hair crunch between his head and the tile as he lay on the white floor of the shower. Covered by a couple of white towels he was nearly invisible from the steam room through the frosted shower door. Under the towels he could hear his own breathing. It was like being rolled in the rug with Mischa. Instead of her warm hair near his face, he had the smell of the pistol, machine oil and brass cartridges and cordite.

He could hear Grutas’ voice, and he had not yet seen his face except through field glasses. The tone of voice had not changed—the mirthless teasing that precedes the blow.

“Warm up my terry robe,” Grutas told the maid. “I want some steam after. Turn it on.” She slid back the steam room door and opened the valve. In the all-white steam chamber the only color was the red bezels of the timer and the thermometer. They had the look of a ship’s gauges, with numbers big enough to read in the steam. The timer’s minute hand was already moving around the dial toward the red marker hand.

Grutas had his hands behind his head. Tattooed under his arm was the Nazi lightning SS insignia. He twitched his muscle and made the lightning jump. “Boom! Donnerwetter!” He laughed when the woman captive flinched away. “Noooo, I won’t hit you more. I like you now. I’m going to fix your teeth with some teeth you can put in a glass beside the bed, out of the way.”

Hannibal came through the glass doors in a cloud of steam, the gun up and pointed at Grutas’ heart. In his other hand he had a bottle of reagent alcohol.

Grutas’ skin squeaked as he pushed himself up in the tub and the woman shied from him before she knew Hannibal was behind her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Grutas said. He looked at the bottle, hoping Hannibal was drunk. “I’ve always felt I owed you something.”

“I discussed that with Milko.”

“And?”

“He arrived at a solution.”

“The money of course! I sent it with him, and he gave it to you? Good!”

Hannibal spoke to the woman without looking down at her. “Wet your towel in the tub. Go over to the corner and sit down, and put the towel over your face. Go on. Wet it in the tub.”

The woman doused the towel and backed into the corner with it.

“Kill him,” she said.

“I’ve waited so long to see your face,” Hannibal said. “I put your face on every bully I ever hurt. I thought you would be bigger.”

The maid came into the bedroom with the robe. Through the open bathroom door she could see the barrel and the silencer of the extended gun. She backed out of the room, her slippers silent on the carpet.

Grutas was looking at the gun too. It was Milko’s gun. It had a breech lock on the receiver for use with the silencer. If little Lecter was not familiar with it, he would be limited to one shot. Then he’d have to fumble with the pistol.