The next door was partly open. Hannibal could see shelves of toys and a big plush elephant. He looked into the room. Twin beds. Katerina Kolnas was asleep on the nearer one. Her head was turned to the side, her thumb touching her forehead. Hannibal could see the pulse in her temple. He could hear his heart. She was wearing Mischa’s bracelet. He blinked in the warm lamplight. He could hear himself blink. He could hear the child’s breathing. He could hear Madame Kolnas’ voice from down the hall. Small sounds audible over the great roaring in him.

  “Come, Muffin, time to dry off,” Madame Kolnas said.

  Grutas’ houseboat, black and prophetic-looking, was moored to the quay in a layered fog. Grutas and Mueller carried Lady Murasaki bound and gagged up the gangway and down the companionway at the rear of the cabin. Grutas kicked open the door of his treatment room on the lower deck. A chair was in the middle of the floor with a bloody sheet spread beneath it.

  “Sorry your room isn’t quite ready,” Grutas said. “I’ll contact room service. Eva!!” He went down the passageway to the next cabin and shoved open the door. Three women chained to their bunks looked at him with hate in their faces. Eva was collecting their mess gear.

  “Get in here.”

  Eva came into the treatment room, staying out of Grutas’ reach. She took up the bloody sheet and spread a clean sheet beneath the chair. She started to take the blood-stained sheet away but Grutas said, “Leave it. Bundle it there where she can see it.”

  Grutas and Mueller bound Lady Murasaki to the chair.

  Grutas dismissed Mueller. He lounged on a chaise against the wall, his legs spread, rubbing his thighs. “Do you have any idea what will happen if you don’t find me some bliss?” Grutas said.

  Lady Murasaki closed her eyes. She felt the boat tremble and begin to move.

  Hercule made two trips out of the café with the garbage cans. He unlocked his bicycle and rode away.

  His taillight was still visible when Hannibal slipped into the kitchen door. He carried a bulky object in a bloodstained bag.

  Kolnas came into the kitchen carrying his ledger. He opened the firebox of the wood-burning oven, put in some receipts and poked them back into the fire.

  Behind him, Hannibal said, “Herr Kolnas, surrounded by bowls.”

  Kolnas spun around to see Hannibal leaning against the wall, a glass of wine in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  “What do you want? We are closed here.”

  “Kolnas in bowl heaven. Surrounded by bowls. Are you wearing your dog tag, Herr Kolnas?”

  “I am Kleber, citizen of France, and I am calling the police.”

  “Let me call them for you.” Hannibal put down his glass and picked up the telephone. “Do you mind if I call the War Crimes Commission at the same time? I’ll pay for the call.”

  “Fuck you. Call who you please. You can call them, I’m serious. Or I’ll do it. I have papers, I have friends.”

  “I have children. Yours.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I have both of them. I went to your home on the Rue Juliana. I went into the room with the big stuffed elephant and I took them.”

  “You are lying.”

  “‘Take her, she’s going to die anyway’ that’s what you said. Remember? Tagging along behind Grutas with your bowl.

  “I brought something for your oven.” Hannibal reached behind him and threw onto the table his bloody bag. “We can cook together, like old times.” He dropped Mischa’s bracelet onto the kitchen table. It rolled around and around before it settled to a stop.

  Kolnas made a gagging sound. For a moment he could not touch the bag with his trembling hands and then he tore at it, tore at the bloody butcher paper inside, tore down to meat and bones.

  “It’s a beef roast, Herr Kolnas, and a melon. I got them at Les Halles. But do you see how it feels?”

  Kolnas lunged across the table, bloody hands finding Hannibal’s face, but he was off his feet stretched over the table and Hannibal pulled him down, and he brought the pistol down on the base of Kolnas’ skull, not too hard, and Kolnas’ lights went out.

  Hannibal’s face, smeared with blood, looked like the demonic faces in his own dreams. He poured water in Kolnas’ face until his eyes opened.

  “Where is Katerina, what have you done with her?” Kolnas said.

  “She is safe, Herr Kolnas. She is pink and perfect. You can see the pulse in her temple. I will give her back to you when you give me Lady Murasaki.”

  “If I do that I am a dead man.”

  “No. Grutas will be arrested and I will not remember your face. You get a pass for the sake of your children.”

  “How do I know they are alive?”

  “I swear on my sister’s soul you will hear their voices. Safe. Help me or I will kill you and leave the child to starve. Where is Grutas? Where is Lady Murasaki?”

  Kolnas swallowed, choked on some blood in his mouth. “Grutas has a houseboat, a canal boat, he moves around. He’s in the Canal de Loing south of Nemours.”

  “The name of the boat?”

  “Christabel. You gave your word, where are my children?”

  Hannibal let Kolnas up. He picked up the telephone beside the cash register, dialed a number and handed Kolnas the receiver.

  For a moment Kolnas could not recognize his wife’s voice, and then “Hello! Hello! Astrid?? Check on the children, let me speak to Katerina! Just do it!”

  As Kolnas listened to the puzzled sleepy voice of the awakened child, his face changed. First relief and then curious blankness as his hand crept toward the gun on the shelf beneath the cash register. His shoulders slumped. “You tricked me, Herr Lecter.”

  “I kept my word. I will spare your life for the sake of your—”

  Kolnas spun with the big Webley in his fist, Hannibal’s hand slashing toward it, the gun going off beside them, and Hannibal drove the tanto dagger underneath Kolnas’ chin and the point came out the top of his head.

  The telephone receiver swung from its wire. Kolnas fell forward on his face. Hannibal rolled him over and sat for a moment in a kitchen chair looking at him. Kolnas’ eyes were open, already glazing. Hannibal put a bowl over his face.

  He carried the cage of ortolans outside and opened it. He had to grab the last one and toss it into the moonbright sky. He opened the outdoor aviary and shooed the birds out. They formed up in a flock and circled once, tiny shadows flicking across the patio, climbing to test the wind and pick up the polestar. “Go,” Hannibal said. “The Baltic is that way. Stay all season.”

  56

  THROUGH THE VAST NIGHT a single point of light shot across the dark fields of Ile de France, the motorcycle flat out, Hannibal down on the gas tank. Off the concrete south of Nemours and following an old towpath along the Canal de Loing, asphalt and gravel, now a single lane of asphalt overgrown on both sides, Hannibal once zigging at speed through cows on the road and feeling a tail-brush sting him as he passed, swerving off the pavement, gravel rattling under the fenders, and back on again, the motorcycle shaking its head and catching itself, settling into speed again.

  The lights of Nemours dimming behind him, flat country now, and only the darkness ahead, the details of the gravel and the weeds absurdly sharp, insistent in his headlight, and the dark ahead swallowed up the yellow beam. He wondered if he joined the canal too far south—was the boat behind him?

  He stopped and turned off his lights, to sit in darkness and decide, the motorcycle shivering under him.

  Far ahead, far into the dark, it appeared that two little houses moved in tandem across the meadow, deckhouses just visible above the banks of the Canal de Loing.

  Vladis Grutas’ houseboat was wonderfully quiet as it motored southward sending a soft ripple against the sides of the canal, cows asleep in the fields on both sides. Mueller, nursing stitches in his thigh, sat in a canvas chair on the foredeck, a shotgun propped against the railing of the companionway beside him. At the stern, Gassmann opened a locker and took out some canvas fenders.

  Three hundred meters back, Hannibal slowed, the BMW burbling along, weeds brushing his shins. He stopped and took his father’s field glasses from the saddlebag. He could not read the name of the boat in the darkness.

  Only the boat’s running lights showed and the glow from behind the window curtains. Here the canal was too wide to be sure of making a jump onto the deck.

  From the bank he might be able to hit the captain in the wheelhouse with the pistol—he could surely drive him from the helm—but then the boat would be alerted, he would have to face them all at once as he came aboard. They could be coming from both ends at once. He could see a covered companionway at the stern and a dark lump near the bow that was probably another entrance to the lower deck.

  The binnacle light glowed in the wheelhouse windows near the stern, but he could not make out anyone inside. He needed to get ahead of them. The towpath was close beside the water and the fields too rough for a detour.

  Hannibal rode past the canal boat on the towpath, feeling his side toward the boat tingling. A glance at the boat. Gassmann on the stern was pulling canvas fenders out of a locker. He looked up as the motorcycle passed. Moths fluttered above a cabin skylight.

  Hannibal held himself to a moderate pace. A kilometer ahead he saw the lights of a car crossing the canal.

  The Loing narrowed to a lock not more than twice the beam of a canal boat. The lock was integral with a stone bridge, its upstream doors set into the stone arch, the lock’s enclosure like a box beyond the bridge, not much longer than the Christabel.

  Hannibal turned left along the bridge road in case the boat captain was watching him and drove a hundred yards. He turned off his lights, turned around and returned near the bridge, putting the motorcycle in brush beside the road. He walked forward in the dark.

  A few rowboats were upside down on the canal bank. Hannibal sat on the ground among them and peered over the hulls at the boat coming on, still a half-kilometer away. It was very dark. He could hear a radio in a small house at the far end of the bridge, probably the house of the lockkeeper. He buttoned the pistol into the pocket of his jacket.

  The tiny running lights of the canal boat came very slowly the red portside light toward him and behind it the high white light on a folding mast above the cabin. The boat would have to stop and lower itself a meter in the lock. He lay beside the canal, weeds all around him. It was too early in the year for the crickets to sing.

  Waiting as the canal boat came, slowly slowly. Time to think. Part of what he did at Kolnas’ café was unpleasant to remember: It was difficult to spare Kolnas’ life even for that short time, and distasteful to allow him to speak. Good, the crunch he felt in his hand when the tanto blade broke out the top of Kolnas’ skull like a little horn. More satisfying than Milko. Good things to enjoy: the Pythagorean proof with tiles, tearing off Dortlich’s head. Much to look forward to: He would invite Lady Murasaki for the jugged hare at Restaurant Champs de Mars. Hannibal was calm. His pulse was 72.

  Dark beside the lock, and the sky clear and frosted with stars. The mast light of the canal boat should just be among the low stars when the boat reached the lock.

  It had not quite reached the low stars when the mast folded back, the light like a falling star descending in an arc. Hannibal saw the filament glow in the boat’s big searchlight and flung himself down as the light gathered its beam and swept over him to the gates of the lock and the horn of the canal boat sounded. A light came on in the lockkeeper’s cabin and in less than a minute the man was outside pulling on his galluses. Hannibal screwed the silencer onto Milko’s gun.

  Vladis Grutas came up the front companionway and stood on the deck. He stretched and threw a cigarette into the water. He said something to Mueller and put the shotgun on the deck among the planters, out of sight of the lockkeeper, and went below again.

  Gassmann at the stern put out fenders and readied his line. The upstream lock doors stood open. The lockkeeper went into his booth beside the canal and turned on bollard lights at each end of the lock. The canal boat slid under the bridge into the lock, the captain reversing his engine to stop. At the sound of the motor, Hannibal sprinted onto the bridge in a low crouch, keeping below the stone railing.

  He looked down into the boat as it slid beneath him, down on the deck and through the skylights. Skylight sliding under, a glimpse of Lady Murasaki bound to a chair, visible only for an instant from directly above.

  It took about ten minutes to equalize the level of the water with the downstream side, the heavy doors rumbling open, Gassmann and Mueller gathering in the lines. The lockkeeper turned back toward his house. The captain advanced the throttle and the water boiled behind the canal boat.

  Hannibal leaned over the railing. At a range of two feet he shot Gassmann in the top of the head, up on the railing now and jumping, landing on Gassmann and rolling to the deck. The captain felt the thud of Gassmann falling, and looked first to the stern lines, saw they were clear.

  Hannibal tried the stern companionway door. Locked.

  The captain leaned out of the wheelhouse. “Gassmann?”

  Hannibal crouched beside the body on the stern, patted the waist. Gassmann was not armed. Hannibal would have to pass the wheelhouse to go forward, and Mueller was on the bow. He went forward on the right side. The captain came out of the wheelhouse on the left and saw Gassmann sprawled there, his head leaking into the scuppers.

  Hannibal scuttling forward fast, bent over beside the low deck cabins.

  He felt the boat go into neutral, and running now he heard a gun go off behind him, the bullet screaming off a stanchion and fragments stinging his shoulder. He turned and saw the captain duck behind the aft cabin. Near the forward companionway a tattooed hand and arm were visible for a second, grabbing the shotgun from beneath the bushes. Hannibal fired to no effect. His upper arm felt hot and wet. He ducked between the two deck cabins and out onto the portside deck, running forward low, up beside the forward cabin to the foredeck, Mueller crouched on the foredeck, standing when he heard Hannibal, swinging the shotgun, the muzzle hitting the corner of the companionway for a half-instant, swinging again, and Hannibal shot him four times in the chest as fast as he could pull the trigger, the shotgun going off blowing a ragged hole in the woodwork beside the companionway door. Mueller staggered and looked at his chest, collapsed backward and sat dead against the railing. The companionway door was unlocked. Hannibal went down the stairs and locked the door behind him.

  At the stern, the captain, crouched on the after-deck beside Gassmann’s body, fumbled in his pocket for the keys.

  Fast down the stairs and along the narrow passage of the lower deck. He looked into the first cabin, empty, nothing but cots and chains. He slammed open the second door, saw Lady Murasaki tied to the chair and rushed to her. Grutas shot Hannibal in the back from behind the door, the bullet striking between his shoulder blades and he went down on his back, blood spreading from under him.

  Grutas smiled and came to him. He put his pistol under Hannibal’s chin and patted him down. He kicked Hannibal’s gun away. Grutas took a stiletto from his belt and poked the tip into Hannibal’s legs. They did not move.

  “Shot in the spine, my little Mannlein,” Grutas said. “Can’t feel your legs? Too bad. You won’t feel it when I cut off your balls.” Grutas smiled at Lady Murasaki. “I’ll make you a coin purse to keep your tips.”

  Hannibal’s eyes opened.

  “You can see?” Grutas wagged the long blade before Hannibal’s face. “Excellent! Look at this.” Grutas stood before Lady Murasaki and trailed the point lightly down her cheek, barely dimpling the skin. “I can put some color in her cheeks.” He drove the stiletto into the back of the chair beside her head. “I can make some new places for sex.”

  Lady Murasaki said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on Hannibal. His fingers twitched, his hand moved slightly toward his head. His eyes moved from Lady Murasaki to Grutas and back again. Lady Murasaki looked up at Grutas, excitement in her face along with anguish. She could be as beautiful as she chose to be. Grutas bent and kissed her hard, cutting her lips against her teeth, his face crushed over hers, his hard empty face paling, his pale eyes unblinking as he groped inside her blouse.

  Hannibal got his hand behind his head, pulled from behind his collar the tanto knife, bloody, bent and dimpled by Grutas’ bullet.

  Grutas blinked, his face convulsed in agony, his ankles buckled and he fell hamstrung, Hannibal twisting from under him. Lady Murasaki, her ankles bound together, kicked Grutas in the head. He tried to raise his gun, but Hannibal seized the barrel, twisting up, the gun went off and Hannibal slashed Grutas’ wrist, the gun falling away and sliding on the floor. Grutas crawled toward the gun, pulling himself on his elbows, then up on his knees, knee-walking, and falling again, pulling himself on his elbows like a broken-backed animal in the road. Hannibal cut Lady Murasaki’s arms free and she jerked the stiletto out of the back of the chair to cut free her ankles and moved into the corner beside the door. Hannibal, his back bloody, cut Grutas off from the gun.

  Grutas stopped and on his knees he faced Hannibal. An eerie calm came over him. He looked up at Hannibal with his pale Arctic eyes.

  “Together we sail deathward,” Grutas said. “Me, you, the stepmother that you fuck, the men you have killed.”

  “They were not men.”