The Maryland night was calm. The sound of the Atlantic crashing gently into the Chesapeake shore was relaxing. Beach houses sat on their lots. Some were dark; others were lit. Hardly any real sound went from any one to the other. Occasionally, the sounds of people out and celebrating were heard. In passing one of these houses, you might hear the sounds of people talking, the clink of beer bottles, and the sounds of grilling meat.
Through this idyllic scene ran a solitary man. You might have looked curiously at him as he ran: he was dressed in a simple but elegant suit. His wing tips slapped against the ground as he ran. One hand was wrapped in a silk napkin which was swiftly growing a red rose of blood. In the other, he clutched a silver – not pewter, not nickel – ice bucket.
In the house beyond him, from which he had fled, a woman in a black silk dress stood with her hands in the air as police converged on her. Inside the house itself was a grisly surprise – the still-breathing ruin of Paul Krendler. He might survive with medical attention – might – but his days at the Department of Justice were effectively over. Instead, his days would revolve around re-learning to use the toilet.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter ran down the road to where his van was parked. The van was certainly not his preferred means of transport. Still, it would do the job. He saw its bulk ahead, parked just off the road, and grinned. He had evaded capture by always having a next move ready. He had one now.
When he reached the van, he bent and took the keys smoothly from where he had secreted them under the bumper. Thankfully, the van had an automatic transmission. He slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and dropped it into drive. Fortunately, the van also had power steering. He grinned again as the dash lights came to life.
Dr. Lecter drove easily, even though his hand throbbed where he had been forced to chop off his own thumb. His thumb currently resided in the silver ice bucket lolling on the passenger seat. As the van rolled forward, he thought about his Clarice for a moment.
Not in a thousand years, she had said. He had been so disappointed. He would have much preferred her to come with him. Be with him. But her hunter's instincts were not to be so easily ignored.
As he reviewed what Clarice had done to him – over and over and over – the miles slipped away, to Dr. Lecter's destination.
The headlights splashed onto a sign for the local municipal airport. Dr. Lecter turned the van in and pulled to a stop in the parking lot. He took the ice bucket with him and felt in his pocket with his thumbless hand, wincing as the stump pressed against his thight.
The FBI files on Dr. Hannibal Lecter did not indicate that he knew how to fly a plane. This might be forgiven by the fact that he had never held a pilot's license. What he did have were a few flying lessons he had taken before his incarceration, all of which he had carefully reviewed in his memory palace countless times, a few solo trips, and a mind that could not be measured by man.
A day or so before Dr. Lecter had invited Clarice to his table, he had taken the liberty of renting a plane for a brief sojourn in the sky. It had refreshed his memory on what he needed to do to avoid crashing. Instead of returning the keys straightaway, Dr. Lecter had taken them to a hardware store and had duplicates made. He had returned to the airport, stammering and apologetic. The rental people had been most kind and saved their remarks about how he was an idiot until after he had left.
Dr. Lecter jogged up to the flight school's Piper Cub and took out his duplicate keys. He unlocked the plane and swiftly preflighted it. Once inside, he started the plane and contacted the tower. He advised them that he had just filed his flight plan, even though he had neglected this little tidbit. When they asked him for the plane's tail number, he provided them with that of one parked a few yards away.
He slid the plane down the runway and managed to get it into the air OK. The tower wished him a safe trip. Dr. Lecter thanked the tower very much and got the plane to his assigned altitude. As he pointed the plane in the direction he wanted to go, he thought about what he knew about reimplantation.
Six hours. It had only been half an hour since he fled Krendler's lake house. Two in the air. It ought to do. And he knew who he could call on.
Dr. Lecter's intelligence was not measurable by modern man, and he knew exactly what he planned to do. He had known the moment he raised the cleaver high in the air and told Clarice, "Now this is going to hurt." Once the plane was in the air and it was simple to keep it going where he wanted, he took a moment to duck back into his memory palace and review the information he needed. From a large book in a white room, Dr. Lecter took an address and phone number. He did not know the city he was going to, but a city map stored in his memory palace gave him an acceptable sense of direction.
The hum of the engine was soothing as the plane cut through the night air. Dr. Lecter turned the windshield wipers on and off. The plane was thirty years old, and virtually the same model he had learned on all those years ago.
He opened the ice bucket and took a moment to review his thumb. Its color was poor – a nasty, sickly gray – but that did not disturb him terribly. He knew that it was to be expected. The stump throbbed. Dr. Lecter took a deep breath and made it go away. The throb simply cut off, not bothering him anymore. He knew that the nerves were still blaring, and that the pain was still being transmitted. He simply refused to receive it. Instead, he thought about who he was planning on paying a visit to. It had been many years, but Dr. Lecter was confident that his contact would not turn him down or turn him in.
He had a favor to call in, after all.
According to the instruments, and to Dr. Lecter's own mental image of where he should be, he was close to his destination. The radio squawked with other planes seeking to land and just chatting with the tower. Private planes are notorious for their habit of yakking on the radio. The fellow currently speaking would simply flop back dead in his seat if the tower did not call his wife for him. He was chatting with the tower personnel about which restaurant had the best pork sandwich. Dr. Lecter pulled a face of distaste and waited politely.
He asked for and received permission to land. Very carefully, his wounded hand delicate on the controls, Dr. Lecter brought the plane down and felt the solid bump that meant he was now back on terra firma. The landing was not as smooth as he would have liked, but it had been years since his flying lessons, and all in all he was satisfied.
Dr. Lecter abandoned the plane without a second thought. He strolled over nonchalantly to the parking lot, which was not terribly different from the parking lot at the airport he had departed from, or any other one in America, for that matter. These were the municipal airports, rarely policed and mostly flown by hobbyists and students. There would be no security people here with guns and walkie-talkies to seek out a man with a wounded hand.
What there was, instead, was a hefty man busy lifting a large cooler into the back of an old but serviceable Jeep Cherokee. Dr. Lecter nodded politely at the man.
"Good morning," he said.
"Morning," the man grunted, and fished in the pocket of his flannel shirt for a cigarette and a wooden kitchen match. He scratched it into life on his thumb and lit his cigarette meditatively. "How's the flying conditions out there? Early to be in the air."
"Excellent," Dr. Lecter assured him. "I like flying in the early morning. It's quite peaceful."
"I bet," the man said. His eyes floated down to the napkin binding Dr. Lecter's hand. "What happened to your hand there?" he asked, his eyes wide.
"This," Dr. Lecter said. His good hand came out from behind his back. In it, he held the meat cleaver he had used to chop off his thumb back at Chesapeake. He knew that he would not be as strong as he normally was, and the cleaver's weight was comforting. He drove the cleaver between the man's eyes. The man dropped dead without another word, the cleaver sticking out from where it had stuck in the bone of his forehead.
Dr. Lecter reached down and worked the cleaver free. Even wounded, he was quite strong and it was a simple matter to get the man into the back of the Cherokee. He opened the cooler and put the man's head into the icy water there, where it would not get the trim bloody. No one would see the corpse stuffed down behind the door unless they actually went and looked. Then he threw himself behind the wheel and sighed.
The engine started and Dr. Lecter sought out his goal. The Interstate was not far away. Dr. Lecter took the on-ramp and headed towards the city.