First class was definitely worth it, Clarice decided. A suitable reward for getting this op off the ground on such short notice. She accepted a cup of coffee in a real mug from the stewardess and sipped at it, enjoying the taste. She found herself wondering if the agents under her resented her getting a first-class seat. It hadn't been her, DeGould had done it.
Oh well. Anyone who objected could try running this task force themselves. It was exhausting.
Clarice stretched out in her seat and thought about what might happen as the plane reached its cruising altitude high over the Atlantic. She saw herself running into a cottage on the beach, at the head of the column. She wouldn't make her agents go in ahead of her; none of them knew Lecter as well as she did. She thought about those strange maroon eyes. What expressions might she see there, where the dark sucked in the sparks, when she put the cuffs on him and read him his rights?
Would he be angry? Would he ask about his wife? Would it matter to him that Clarice had done everything in her power to try and make Erin's confinement comfortable? Was there room for her in his life after she brought him back--
Don't go there, she thought, squelching off the thought. If Erin Lander wants to be a little prison wife, showing up dutifully every visiting day, she can, but I won't. My duty is to catch him, not feel sorry for him. I am an FBI agent and I will not let anything get in the way of my duty. Not in a thousand years.
She stretched out in the comfortable seat and closed her eyes. Thankfully, a moment to rest. They could make her run the task force, they could run her ragged trying to get twenty agents across the Atlantic, but one thing they could not make her do was fly a Boeing 767. She closed her eyes. The exhaustion caught up with her. She would just rest her eyes for a moment. She wanted to go back in the aisle and brief her troops. Just a moment to close her eyes, that was all she needed.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are now on our final descent into Madrid International Airport. Please return all tray tables and seat backs to their original upright position."
Clarice Starling sat up and looked around. Her seatmate, an older fellow she had not bothered to introduce herself to, grinned at her.
"You must've been tired," he quipped.
"Are we landing already?"
He nodded.
She grunted. Damn, she'd wanted to talk to her people. Oh well. She cadged another cup of coffee from the stewardess and drank it quickly. The caffeine helped her focus. She sat back and waited, breathing reprocessed air and wondering how she was going to organize her team. Should be a joint operation. The FBI and the Spanish cops. She was tired, but not too bad, nothing a few cups of coffee couldn't fix.
The plane, ox-like now that it was on the ground, lumbered along the runway, threatening any smaller vehicles in its path with its great white snout. It took far too long for the plane to taxi along to the gate and finally get ready to offload them. Fortunately, Clarice's first-class seat enabled her to get off the plane early. She stationed herself by the gate and rounded up her agents one by one as they came off the plane out into the airport.
The Spanish cops were waiting for them at the airport, and once everyone had gotten their bags, they headed downstairs to several unmarked vans. Clarice found herself thinking of Feliciana Fish Market. Was she working too fast? Could this bomb on her the way that had? No; she had to work fast. The clock was ticking. Dr. Lecter did not know that they were seeking him, but he wouldn't stay in Torremolinos long, not with his wife held captive.
Fortunately, the Spanish cops had actually been useful while the FBI was en route. At a police station in Torremolinos, they went over the plan they had made. The FBI agents would go in first to get Dr. Lecter, but he would actually be handed over to the Spaniards pending extradition. That was fine with Clarice. The house itself had only two entrances. Both had been watched since Clarice's phone call earlier that day. No one had come in or out of the house.
It all seemed to be moving so quickly, Clarice thought. Hard to believe when she got up that morning that she had no idea where Dr. Lecter was. Now here she was, in the middle of the Spanish night, preparing to get him. Before she slept tonight, Dr. Lecter would be in a cell.
So there she was, in another unmarked van, hearing the Mediterranean tide wash onto the sand as the task force made its way towards the house where Michael Hinckel had been heard earlier in the day playing piano. A wire of nerves cinched itself twice around her gut.
The house itself was not quite Lecter standards, she thought as she disgorged herself from the van and observed it. They were setting up a position down the street, behind the beach dunes where Dr. Lecter could not see. It was large, yes, but it seemed somehow cheap the way beach houses can be. She would've expected him to go for something higher-class. Of course, the man wanted to stay free, and he'd satisfied himself with a suite at the Marcus Hotel when he'd escaped the first time.
What would she say when she saw him? What would happen then? Would her knees wobble when she gazed on those fine features again?
No, no, no, she told herself. What I will say to him is this: 'You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.' That is what I have to say to him. And that's it.
She glanced over and saw Rebecca DeGould wearing a set of headphone and holding up a parabolic dish on a handle. Clarice had seen these things before; they allowed you to listen in from long distance. She watched the younger woman raise the dish and point it towards Dr. Lecter's rented home. After a few moments of searching, a look of shock came over the younger woman's face.
"What is it?" Clarice asked urgently.
Wordlessly, Rebecca pulled off the headphones with one hand and handed them to her boss. Clarice slipped them on and Rebecca re-adjusted the dish. Clarice heard nothing but the faint hissing of static for a moment, and then…
Clarice heard the rich sound of piano music. Whoever was playing was quite good, but there seemed to be a bit of stiffness in the left hand; the lower notes were occasionally off just by a fraction. She wondered who it was. Beethoven? Bach? Chopin? Something pretentious, she was sure, something by some European guy who had been dead for two hundred years.
But the music made her tremble. He was there. This was actually going to work. She would be rewarded, lauded, given more promotions. She would be the agent who brought Hannibal Lecter to justice. The protégé's promise Crawford had seen in her would be fulfilled. The poison Krendler had dripped in her file would be forgotten as he was.
So why were her knees trembling and her stomach suddenly aflutter?
Clarice pulled on her flak jacket and spoke briefly with the Spanish police commander. They were agreed. It was showtime.
Two agents jogged up to the door, dressed in civilian clothing. One held a long flower box. In the flower box was a sledgehammer. It proved not to be necessary: the salt air made it easy for the door frame to give. They disappeared inside and stopped. Waiting for her.
Clarice Starling charged across the dune, across the street, and into Dr. Lecter's house. With the ease of experience, she had her gun out, checking her corners automatically and smoothly enough to please the memory of the late John Brigham. Behind her, she could hear the thunder of agents behind her.
She ran into the dining room, her mind automatically flashing back to the blueprints the Spanish cops had provided. There was no one there, just a table, chairs, and a china cabinet. But on the other side of the room were two shuttered doors. They were closed. Music escaped through the louvers of the door, and fingers of light accompanied it, making a barred pattern on the far wall.
Clarice Starling raised her hand silently. He was still playing piano? What the hell? Maybe this was a game of sorts. Perhaps he knew he was caught, and simply trying to provide himself with something pleasant right up until he was caught. She motioned for two agents to come and grab the doors, preparing to open them. Fortunately, they weren't locked, but even had they been it wouldn't have been a big deal. Those doors wouldn't have held back a determined three-year-old.
The agents pulled the doors open with a crash. Clarice ran through into the parlor. Her gun was out in front of her, roving back and forth to make sure the room was secure. Across the room stood the piano. Clarice walked up to it quickly, gun held high. Her eyes watered as she took in the image before her.
Atop the piano sat a very nice CD player, playing the haunting piano music she had heard before. On the music stand, where the sheet music would normally go, was a fine vellum envelope. Her name was written across the envelope in a careful, almost machinelike copperplate hand. She knew whose hand it was immediately.
Clarice dropped her pistol. She heard other agents coming downstairs from where they had checked the upstairs bedrooms.
"There's no one here at all," one of them said.
Clarice lowered her pistol and let out a sigh. She turned and nodded, her lips pressing together.
"Yeah," she said acidly. "I know. Get me a bag and some evidence gloves."
Safely behind her where Clarice could not see, Rebecca DeGould indulged herself in a cold smile. Their prey had flown the coop. Things were off to a very good start. Only one or two more screwups, DeGould thought. Then you'll be off this task force and back where you belong, Starling.
…
It was a sunny afternoon in Washington. Not far to the south, Erin Lander was enjoying her new extended outside privileges. Under guard, certainly, and not permitted to go very far, but that was fine. In the city itself, a man pulled his car into a parking spot and walked swiftly to his apartment building. He winked at a few kids playing hockey in the street. This was a quiet, residential area of DC, and the only sound was occasional traffic and the excited shrieks of the children.
The man jogged up a flight of stairs and reached into his pocket for his keys. They jingled as he took them out. Whistling a merry tune, he opened his door and headed into his apartment. He dropped his briefcase on the floor and grabbed himself a can of iced tea from the fridge.
He meant to check his email, and so he headed into the living room. What he saw froze him to the spot. The can of iced tea dropped from his nerveless fingers and rolled along the floor, brown liquid gurgling onto his hardwood floor.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter lounged on the couch. His left ankle was crossed comfortably over his right knee. He smiled easily at the other man. The flight in from Paris had been quite calm and quiet, and entering the US no more difficult than buying the ticket had been.
"Hello, Gregory," he said. "It's been a while, has it not? Twenty-three years, I believe."
Gregory Lynch swallowed and stared blankly at the man before him. Yes, it had been twenty-three years, but he remembered. The events of 1979 had been forever engraved on his mind. He'd tried so hard to forget, to put it behind him. But the man on his couch brought it all back.
"Dr. Lecter," he said powerlessly.
"Indeed. How have you been, Gregory?"
Gregory began to pant. Images he had tried to bury so long ago flitted through his mind. He swallowed again and sat down hard on his recliner.
"Usually one responds with 'I'm fine, how are you, Dr. Lecter?'," Dr. Lecter interposed helpfully.
"What…why are you here?" Gregory whispered.
"Why, Gregory, really." Dr. Lecter smiled at the younger man with no sympathy. "One might think you are rude. And I presume the fact that you're still free means that you've been a good boy so far."
Gregory Lynch had spent the better part of the past twenty years trying to make the most of his life. To put 1979 behind him. He thought he had finally buried those old atrocities under a pile of years, where he could finally claim to have begun anew. The presence of Dr. Lecter told him how foolish that had been. In a heartbeat, he was no longer the successful reporter for the Washington Post anymore; instead, he was the nervous, excited,
[crazy]
sixteen-year-old in juvenile hall he had once been. With this man in the room with him.
"Gregory, I'm here because I need your help," Dr. Lecter said. "I trust you wouldn't mind helping out an old friend. After all, Gregory, you wouldn't have the life you do, if not for me."
Gregory Lynch began to tremble. Sweat ran down the back of his blue oxford shirt. "I…I was sick then," he said strengthlessly. "It wasn't my fault."
"Ah, yes," Dr. Lecter mused. "I recall, do you? What you told me in juvenile hall?" He chuckled humorlessly.
"Not your fault, Gregory? It must be true what they say: reporters are very liberal." Dr. Lecter's lips curled away from his teeth in a monstrous smile. "You raped and killed your neighbor, Gregory. You were sixteen, she was fifteen. Bashed her head in with a rock sixteen times and then raped her and left her in the brush. Angry boy, were you not?"
Gregory flinched. "Please," he said. The demons of his past, long silenced by medication and time, jumped into full roar for the first time in years.
"Not your fault," Dr. Lecter repeated. "That is what you said then, too. She was a dirty girl, you told me." His voice rose, becoming hectoring and insane, imitating the words Gregory had spoken back then, in a Maryland juvenile detention hall.
"Dirty girl, dirty girl," Dr. Lecter chanted. "I had to do it, doctor, she was a dirty girl, dirty, dirty, dirty." He chuckled again and resumed his own voice, implacably cold. "You still see dirty girls out there, don't you, Gregory? Dirty girls with their black stockings and high heels and perfume. They make you think nasty thoughts, do they not? Perhaps medication stops it, but you still think it from time to time, don't you? You want to stop them, stop the dirty thoughts, stop the dirty girls, smash them, make them bleed, make the dirty thoughts go away."
"STOP!" Gregory Lynch screamed. His eyes were blank and staring. He trembled. The pleasantly decorated apartment was miles away from his tortured mind. Instead, Dr. Lecter knew, he was back in a wealthy Baltimore suburb, in the back of a patrol car, trying to comprehend just what he had done.
Dr. Lecter smiled. "You were very fortunate, Gregory," he explained. "You know that, do you not? I testified as the expert witness in your trial, and I convinced the jury that you did not know right from wrong. But you did, didn't you? You knew it was wrong."
"I was sick," Gregory groaned. Had it been only ten minutes ago that everything was just hunky-dory in his life? "It was a disease, it was schizophrenia, you know that, you're a doctor."
"Schizophrenic? Perhaps, Gregory, perhaps. But you'd been treated for it, you were on your medication. At the trial I said you'd developed a resistance to it, that it had become ineffective." He leaned in close to the trembling man. "But you went off your medication voluntarily, didn't you? You knew what you wanted to do."
Dr. Lecter paced up and down the room, reeling off other reminders of the man's past.
"You did what I told you to do, Gregory. You were a very apt pupil. You went to the mental institution, just as I said. Your parents were able to get you transferred to a private hospital under the court's auspices. I told you you'd have to do a few years, and that you did, very quietly, behaving perfectly well. Just as I told you to do. And then a near miss, wasn't it, Gregory?"
Gregory Lynch, who knew just what a close shave he had had, sat in the recliner, trembled, and said nothing.
"You were released in 1982," Dr. Lecter said. "Of course, by then I was in custody myself, but those are the risks of the killer's trade, are they not? I told you to wait, I told you what to say and how to act. And they set you free."
"I was cured," Gregory gurgled. Tears coated his cheeks. He could hear voices in the back of his mind. Unlike Clarice Starling, however, his voices were darker and whispered horrible things to him.
"Cured? In remission, Gregory, I'll agree with that. Medication may still the beast, but it won't kill it. You were lucid. But to a large degree, you always were. Even when…," he smiled monstrously. "Rip rip, bang bang, hmmmm? You were released on June 20, 1982. I learned that through a colleague I had been corresponding with. Very lucky lad you were, Gregory. One more day and who knows what would've happened?"
"Hinckley," Gregory muttered. He was weeping openly now.
Dr. Lecter affected a look of patronizing surprise. "Very good, Gregory! I see this has occupied your mind. Yes, indeed, June 21, 1982, John Hinckley, Jr, was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Many states changed their insanity-defense laws as a result of the uproar. Didn't matter to you – or to me, for that matter. I was already at Chesapeake, and you…you were out. Free to go." He smiled again. "You think about that, too, don't you, Gregory? One more day and you'd probably still be there. Back then, they looked askance at setting murderers free." He raised a hand to his face and pantomimed shaving. "A close shave indeed, friend Gregory."
He whirled, then. It was surprising that a man of his age could whirl as quickly as he could, but Dr. Lecter could move like a man forty years younger when it suited his purposes. He clapped a hand on the weeping man's shoulder and put his face very close. He could smell Gregory's cologne: Aramis. The man had some taste.
"You've still got your inner demons, Gregory," Dr. Lecter hissed, "and they're dying for you to say yes to them."
The pitiful wretch's trembling and weeping was all the affirmance Dr. Lecter needed. How sad, in a way. He had hoped for better from this one. But alas, sometimes weak clay will not hold correctly even if the best sculptor works on it. He stood up and offered Gregory a towel from the bar taking up one side of the living room.
"Here you are, Gregory," Dr. Lecter pronounced. "I have something I want you to do for me. Do this, and I'll leave you in peace. The FBI recently tracked me to Germany, and they caught my wife. It was in the Tattler."
"I don't read that crap," Gregory mumbled, wiping his face with his bar towel.
"Pity. Sometimes there are things of use in there, you know. At any rate, Gregory, my wife is being held at Quantico, at the FBI facility there." He spun and speared Gregory Lynch with his eyes.
"You're a reporter, Gregory," Dr. Lecter said. "Good at weaseling out stories and developing sources. I want you to do that for me, on this. There's a task force assembled to capture me. I want you to weasel your way in there, find a source, and find out what the task force is up to. You may publish it, provided you wait a bit and I hear about it first. After all, the American people do have the right to know." He pursed his lips and smiled at this witticism.
"I want my wife back, Gregory, and I want to know what their plans are. Find that out for me, and I'll leave you in peace. Betray me or fail me, and you'll end up in a padded cell." Dr. Lecter eyed the man before him with an inhuman calmness. Many might have felt some sympathy for Gregory Lynch as he wept in his chair, his carefully constructed upper-middle-class life in ruins around his feet and something much uglier exposed. Dr. Lecter did not. Dr. Lecter had torn this from him as easily as a man might rip up a piece of papier-mache. Gregory might weep a bit, but so long as he did his job, Dr. Lecter would be satisfied.
He clapped the smaller man on his back heartily. "Chin up," Dr. Lecter said jauntily. "I can hold your inner demons at bay, you know. Perform for me, and I shall. I'll visit you again in a few days, and hopefully you'll have something for me."
The door closed behind him, and he vanished. Gregory Lynch sat there for a long time. Horrible images flitted through his mind, things he had tried to bury, desires he had tried to bury. Then he rose, walked over to his PC and sat down. A few minutes' work on the Web told him what the public was allowed to know about the Lecter task force. It was indeed constituted, it was being run out of Quantico. Clicking a link informed him that it was led by Special Agent Clarice Starling, who had been unflatteringly nicknamed 'The FBI's Killing Machine'. He stared at her picture on the website. Pleasing smooth features, intelligent blue eyes. Sweat beads itched on his lower lip. He was still trembling.
"Dirty girl," he muttered.
