Author's note: the Spanish that the guard speaks to Lisa isn't 'wrong', it's Argentine Spanish (which uses the 'vos' form.) No gore in this chapter (sorry, Saavik), but here we go.
After the showdown at the Lecter mansion, Lisa Starling was taken to the women's prison at Ezeiza. She was incarcerated there pending her trial on murder charges. A bail hearing was held and bail was denied, just as had happened to her cousin several months earlier and thousands of miles northward.
There, just as Susana had done, she did the only thing she could do: flopped back on her bunk and waited for her trial.
Susana Alvarez Lecter also fled her Buenos Aires mansion. Her accommodations were far more comfortable than her cousin's. Many years ago, Dr. Hannibal Lecter had bought another mansion on the beach in Mar del Plata, where the wealthy had built wonderful baroque mansions a century before. There, the Alvarez family had spent their summers. She brought along with her those things from the Buenos Aires house that she wanted, and the household servants moved with her. The beach house was titled to one of Susana's alternate identities and was quite safe from the authorities. She had no fear of capture here. The local police were as amenable to quiet financial support as the Buenos Aires police had been. And she had it -- money had never been a concern of Susana Alvarez Lecter. Between the sources she had in Buenos Aires and here, she would know of any American attempt to track her here long before the first FBI agent set foot on Argentine soil.
It had been roughly a week since Lisa's disastrous raid. Lisa Starling sweltered in her tiny cell in Ezeiza. Susana Alvarez sat out on the deck of the beach house, a glass of wine set before her on the table. She wore a bikini, an ankle-length sarong, a wide-brimmed hat, and sunglasses. The deck extended out to a dock on one side. On the other was a strip of beach that ran for a few hundred yards to where the waves of the Atlantic lapped. Swimming in the ocean was something she enjoyed doing, just as her father had after the enforced deprivation of his incarceration. She was much more appreciative of it now – the smell of the salt air, the sounds of the seagulls and the waves, the freedom to go in the water or not as she wished. All of it meant more now that she had been forced to do without it.
She had won, once again. Luke had been lost to her, but she could deal with that. She hadn't known what she was going to do with him anyway. The FBI was no more of a threat to her than the five-year-old next door: they were too busy rebuilding their shattered Behavioral Sciences Unit, and their best source of information on her was currently stashed away in a cell in the women's prison at Ezeiza. She could leave Argentina now and disappear completely. By the time the FBI was even able to track her again, she could be anywhere in the world she wanted, hidden away with a new face, a new identity, a new life. Or she could stay here, where her wealth could guarantee her freedom. Lisa might not want to see her now, but she would come around eventually. She had everything she could want – freedom, wealth, the lifestyle that she had always wanted.
So why then was she not happy? Here she was, free, rich, and safe. A month ago she had been incarcerated in a tiny cell, waiting to be frogmarched to her execution. Now she was enjoying the wine cellar her father had set up in this house many years ago, being catered to by her servants, her own private strip of sea and sand, and the culture and couture of Buenos Aires were not terribly far away, if she should need them. But she wasn't happy.
Susana wasn't a psychiatrist, and did not know the human mind as well as her father had. But she knew what wasn't the cause of her malaise. It wasn't Luke. She had liked Luke, and he had been very useful. She had been frankly stunned that Lisa Starling had the guts to kill him. Given her choice she would have preferred him alive, but she wasn't going to play weeping widow over him.
No, Susana thought, the sources of her malaise were twofold, and both of them Starlings. When Lisa had brought her the news of her mother's death in prison, it had not quite struck home to her. At the time, she had other things that had commanded her attention: finishing her handcuff key and wondering if she would die of appendicitis herself. When she had made it down here the first time, she had still been distracted from it: she had been planning the strike against Behavioral Sciences and hoping that Luke was going to fulfill his duty. But now, all that had been taken care of. It bothered Susana that her mother had died while she was a prisoner. One more day, and Clarice would have known her daughter was free. One more month, and she would have known that her daughter's dirty little war against Behavioral Sciences had successfully crippled them. But fate had been cruel. Clarice had died thinking her daughter a doomed prisoner.
Next to the glass of wine lay two envelopes. Both bore her name written across them in her mother's hand. These were the only contents of the safe in her mother's office in Buenos Aires. She had already torn open the first, and been as surprised as her cousin had been to discover that she had, indeed, possessed American citizenship since she had been a toddler. It seemed somehow very like her mother to have done that. Her papa would have deemed it too risky.
The second was much more recent. She had opened it and noticed the date: two days before she had escaped from Alexandria. She had not yet read the letter itself until now. A sip of wine served to fortify her and she glanced around to make sure that none of the servants were around. The fine vellum sheets in the envelope slid out easily, and Susana began to read her mother's last message to her.
Dear Susana,
I hope and pray that you're reading this in my office, free and clear. If you are, I'll be happier than words can say. I told you to come home – in fact, I begged you. But you were convinced of your ability to evade the police. I won't go on about that, though, as I'm not sure how much longer I have, and I don't want that to be the last contact we ever have.
If you are free, I won't bother to ask you how that happened. Somehow, I can tell: if you are, you're free by your own hand and I'd imagine that the cost of your freedom was paid by someone else, in blood. You are just like your father in that respect: you found a weakness of the system and walked through it to freedom.
Susana, it kills me to know that my only daughter is in prison. I saw on the news that they plan to try and execute you. I can't tell you how horrible that is to me. I know that you won' beg for mercy – you are too proud. But I would, if it would make a bit of difference. But I fear that it will not – the FBI can be very vengeful indeed, and they will stop at nothing to see you pay.
From the day you were born, you were always your father's daughter. He was always the one you preferred; he was always the one you idolized. Until you and I were both older, it never struck me as odd – after all, that is how I felt about my father. But it was always him you wanted to put you to bed, always him you wanted to emulate. Then you went to the US and got hurt and arrested, and I went to go get you out of there. And then you went back for medical school, and I was terrified, but things were calm. You had that little jag between your first and second years of medical school, and that was where we found out Uncle David had a daughter who went into the FBI. But then you settled in, and things seemed to be all right. You did your residency in Boston and then moved to Virginia, which scared the hell out of me. And I hoped and prayed that you might come home where I could protect you, but you were happy and you were peaceful, and so I was all right with you being there. And then, apocalypse. They tracked you down and caught you.
Susana, I don't know if I'll ever see you again, I don't know how much longer I have. But if this is the last contact we ever have, please, I beg you. Enough is enough. Please, no more. If you're free, take that as a second chance, and use it.
You should also know that your father forswore killing when you were born. It was not because he had turned over a new moral leaf – until the day he died, he continued to maintain that he could improve the quality of both the medical school staff and student body in a day or so with a Harpy, a Dremel tool, and an electric drill. And he meant it, too. It was not that he had decided killing was immoral – it was that he loved you more, and did not want to risk losing you.
So please, Susana, for once in your life listen to me. If you're free, you have a second chance. Go from here if you need to, build a life, have a family. Once I'm gone, you'll be alone. Well, except for Lisa Starling, and she won't have anything to do with you. I can't help you there – I knew Uncle David only very sketchily, and by the time Lisa was born we were already down here. But please, Susana, quit taking such risks – the thought of you in that prison cell, with no one on earth caring what happens to you, terrifies me.
What drove me was trying to save the lambs. What drives you, Susana, is rage. But what is it you rage for? Your father is gone, Susana. No matter how many you kill you cannot bring him back. Or was it that serial killer? Surely I can only begin to imagine the terror that put you through – but the Skinner is dead. He can't hurt you anymore.
You have always sought to emulate your father. Emulate him in this. You have a vast fortune, an excellent education, and the capability to live where you will. Please, Susana. You have a second chance. Take it.
With love,
Your mother
Maria (Clarice)
Susana Alvarez sat in her deck chair and watched the waves of the South Atlantic batter the beach and considered her mother's final request. There was the one Starling. Running and hiding galled Susana, but her mother was correct – living under the noses of her enemies had landed her in a prison cell and almost gotten her killed. Better to live safely than live in prison. Next time there would be no Luke.
The other Starling, of course, was Lisa. Poor Lisa, jailed in Ezeiza. Susana had never been jailed in Argentina herself, but she had heard that conditions in Ezeiza were barbaric. Amnesty International came down and whined about it in the press. Insufficient light, insufficient food, insufficient ventilation. Alexandria Detention Center had been hard time, but Lisa had it far worse. Of course, Lisa had been foolish to the extreme to come down here after her herself.
Susana pondered for a moment and called for her maid Juanita. The young woman came out on the deck, offered her mistress a tentative smile, and asked what she wanted.
"Please get my attorney on the line," Susana said.
Juanita nodded. "Señor Nitti?"
"No," Susana said. "Pinzetti. The one for dirty business."
The maid did as she was told and brought the cordless phone out to Susana, along with a refill on her wine. Susana accepted it with a nod of thanks and lifted the phone to her ear.
"Señor Pinzetti," she said calmly. "This is Susana Alvarez. I have some business I'd like to discuss with you."
…
The Ezeiza Penitentiary Complex was a vast warehouse of misery. It was arranged in a triangle. One long building made up one edge of the triangle. The remaining two sides were made up of six identical dormitories, three per side. The prison had been rebuilt shortly before the turn of the century, around the same time as the Alexandria Detention Center had been built in Alexandria, Virginia. Just as the Alexandria jail had held Susana Alvarez Lecter, the Ezeiza Penitentiary Complex held Lisa Starling.
Lisa Starling was held in protective custody in the women's prison occupying the complex. The Argentine authorities did not see fit to grant her bail, but as an American and a law enforcement officer, they did deem it appropriate to keep her segregated from other inmates for her own protection. Her stomach wound had been stitched up at a Buenos Aires hospital before she had been brought here. The cell she occupied was more or less the same size as the one Susana Alvarez Lecter had been obliged to occupy. She had a small barred window, a dirty mattress, and a toilet in her cell. That, she learned swiftly, was about as good as it got.
The prison did not offer amenities such as a library to its inmates, and recreation was for an hour a day in which Lisa was allowed to walk up and down a fenced-in dog run outside. Time itself was oppressive, a very curse to Lisa Starling. Once a week or so, she was taken down to the end of the cellblock and allowed to shower. Her attorneys dropped in occasionally, and sometimes the American consulate sent someone over to 'monitor her condition'. Lisa had hoped that they might be able to help her somehow. Instead, they were simply able to point out that she was losing weight and hadn't been fed enough. Lisa didn't need a consular officer to point that out to her.
After two months in prison, Lisa found herself feeling empty. Nothing seemed to faze her. At first, she had been enraged, demanding an attorney, the American consulate, the FBI. Now…she just felt nothing. She couldn't muster up anger at her cousin anymore, even for sticking her here. She would think about her life in America and it seemed so long ago. Her world had shrunk to this damn little cell, the here and the now.
She stood on her mattress, staring out her tiny barred window, hoping to see something, anything, to break the drudgery. Fifteen minutes before, word had come down the run that a limousine had pulled into the front gates. At least that was what she thought it meant. But now, there was nothing. Just the same old, same old. Boring. Tedious.
She heard the guards coming down the run and automatically ignored them. It was funny, she thought in a vague and distant way. All of her adult life spent enforcing the law, and now, in prison, she hated the guards as passionately as any other prisoner. Damn screws.
Lisa ignored the guards just as Susana had ignored hers, until she realized they were standing in front of her cell. She simply eyed them with no friendliness or openness.
"Starleeng!" one of them barked. "Vamonos. Tenès visitadora."
"Quìen es?" asked Lisa slowly. Her cell door rumbled open.
"Ya veràs," the screw answered. "Està esperandovos."
Lisa let them put the cuffs on her and take her down the run. Who was it? Her attorneys? Didn't make sense. Justice moved slowly in Argentina, just like anywhere else. Last time she'd talked to them they'd said she would probably spend a year in the can before her trial started. The useless consular people came once a month. Lisa, you're looking haggard. Are they treating you well? Why no, Miss Consular Officer, they don't feed me enough and keep me locked up most of the day. Oh my, we'll register a complaint for you. Helpful. So glad to know that's where her tax money had gone all these years.
Visitation was normally in a room with a partition, but the guards brought her past that to a small room with a battered table and two chairs. The table was pocked with cigarette burns. The chairs were simple, wooden chairs with no concession to comfort at all. One was empty. The other was occupied by Susana Alvarez Lecter.
"Aquì està ella, Dr. Alvardo," the guard said, sounding almost respectful. Lisa had to gag. What sort of topsy-turvy world was this? She was locked up and Susana was respected?
The guard told her to sit and then removed her handcuffs. Lisa eyed her cousin slowly. These past two months had apparently been easy for Susana, a lot easier than Lisa's time had gone. Of course she hadn't been in prison. Susana looked slightly tanner and was smartly dressed in a tailored Chanel suit. She looked the perfect young professional. Lisa put her elbows on the table and wondered what to say.
"Hello, Lisa," Susana Alvarez said in English. "How are you?"
Lisa smiled tightly. "All right, I guess," she said. "Look at me."
"You've dropped some weight," Susana observed. "That's to be expected. They don't feed you enough in prison. They didn't at ADC, either."
"Like you care?" Lisa said sarcastically. "What are you here for anyway? Gloating?"
"Not at all, Lisa," Susana said. "You are my cousin, after all, and you visited me when I was the one in jail. I'm here to return the favor." She reached down for something and then placed a white paper bag on the table. The bag grabbed Lisa Starling's attention almost immediately. A mouthwatering aroma of chicken arose from the bag, grilled chicken and spices.
"Go ahead, Lisa," Susana said delicately. "It's for you. I ate beforehand."
"Thank you," Lisa said, remembering her manners before taking the bag. It contained a sandwich, thick bread and a thick piece of grilled chicken slathered with sauce. God, it was good: smelled good, looked good, and she knew it would taste good. The urge to simply devour it like an animal was quite strong, but something held Lisa back. Even as her mouth filled with anticipatory saliva, she held back.
"Are you sure you don't want any?" Lisa asked, her eyes narrowing just a bit.
Susana waved. "Go right ahead," she invited. "All yours."
Lisa began to eat it, but slowly, enjoying the taste of the rich sauce. Susana watched her, seemingly amused.
"So what brings you here?" Lisa asked again. "Planning to gloat? Lecture me about how I shouldn't have come here?"
Susana smiled calmly and shook her head. "What good would that do? The point is, Lisa, you are here. If you haven't learned the error of your ways…well, then, nothing I could say would change that. And I simply want to ask a few questions of you, that's all. Perhaps we could…help each other."
As Lisa ate, she felt her strength surge anew, and with it came all the anger and resentment. Susana Alvarez Lecter, a cold-blooded killer, was free. She, Lisa Starling, an officer of the law, was not. What game was Susana playing now? Was this her final victory, leaving Lisa in an Argentine prison while she left? Her eyes narrowed.
"I guess I don't see how you could help me…," Lisa said, finishing off the last remaining bites of the sandwich and having to consciously fight the urge to lick the remaining sauce off her fingers, "or for that matter, how I could help you. Or why I would want to help you. You put me here."
Susana smiled tactfully, gracious hostess faced with a slightly rude guest. "I didn't put you here, Lisa," she said. "You were the one who came down here after me, and then gunned down a wounded man."
"Oh, so that's it," Lisa said. "You're mad because I killed your boyfriend."
Susana shook her head. "Not really," she said indifferently. "You were defending yourself, after all, and I liked the guy, but I didn't want to marry him. Luke did what I wanted him to, but I'd have had to leave the country without him anyway." Noticing Lisa's look of surprise, she continued. "Oh, don't look so surprised. I am a sociopath, at least that's what it says in my file."
Lisa Starling shook her head and grinned humorlessly. "Maybe it does," she said. "But you're not a sociopath, Susana…calling you that is oversimplifying things." It felt somewhat strange to talk like a profiler again. "There isn't a word for what you are."
"Yes, there is," Susana said promptly. "Dr. Lecter."
Lisa looked mutely at her cousin, not sure how to answer that. It made her think of Will Graham, and suddenly all the pain of his death came right back to her, fresh as it was when she watched Susana kill him.
"Well, Lisa, you're in a lot of trouble," Susana continued blithely. "You'll be kept here in jail for the time being on the murder charges. You'll probably claim self-defense, but that'll be hard. Four police officers testifying against you…and the sword cane you claim Luke used to attack you? Well, that's gone." Her eyes gleamed.
"You got rid of it," Lisa said heavily.
Susana shrugged. "It disappeared," she said. "Just like the evidence my attorneys asked for, back in Virginia. Perhaps they're in the same place."
Lisa's shoulders slumped. So that was what this was about. Payback. It seemed somehow petty for Susana, but perhaps, in the end, Will Graham had been right. Prison had changed Susana.
"So that's it," Lisa said. "I go to jail for the rest of my life and you go free."
Susana Alvarez crossed her expensively stockinged legs and leaned forward.
"Go to jail? That's how it looks like right now, cousin. You could claim insanity, I suppose, but the main difference between an insane asylum and a prison here are that you'd have a definite sentence to serve in prison. Maybe after a few years they'd get big-hearted and let you serve out your sentence in an American prison rather than here. In any case, you'd no longer be an FBI agent. They'll put you on administrative leave, but once you're found guilty they'll have to fire you."
Lisa shrugged herself and let out a short chuckle.
"Well, then," she said bitterly. "I lose. You win. Congratulations."
"That is how it seems," Susana agreed. "But you know, Lisa, we're two very different people. Up there, you're an FBI agent and I'm a criminal. Down here, I'm a wealthy heiress and you're the murderer. But one big way that we're different is that you want to see me in jail."
Lisa watched her cousin carefully.
"Do this the good, right way, and you'll be giving up your life," Susana explained. "You'll serve at least twenty years in jail. Your career will be in ruins. Instead of tracking criminals at Quantico you'll be living with them. But what would you say if I told you there was another way? If I could guarantee you that one month from now, you'd be on a plane back to the United States, free and clear?"
Lisa Starling gave her cousin a streetwise look and shook her head slowly. "That you're full of it," she said. "You set this in motion. But you can't get me out of this any more than I could have gotten you out of jail on my own say-so. You can't possibly deliver on that."
"Not on my own say-so, no," Susana agreed. "But Lisa, think for a bit…in your obsession with me, you must have learned about my father."
Lisa nodded, wondering what in hell her cousin was talking about.
"You knew my father had money from his elderly clients, way back when," she said. "Fifty years ago, long before I was born. Didn't it ever occur to you and your fellow FBI agents that for a man like my father, the stock market would've been a money making machine?"
Susana smiled, her eyes misty with memory. "Papa was good at it, too. He said the market was half a question of minds: knowing when people panic and sell and when they buy like idiots. Tell me, did the FBI ever attempt to figure out how much money I have?"
Now Lisa understood. Susana meant to buy her cousin's freedom. But how? And what did she mean? Surely Susana knew what would happen if Lisa returned to the FBI. The hunt would continue. She thought for a moment.
"We tried," Lisa said thoughtfully. "Current estimates were anywhere from twenty to forty million, based on computer models."
Susana made a face and shook her head. One elegantly polished thumbnail popped up and bounced. "It's more than that," she said tactfully. "A lot more. Papa made a lot of it shortly before I was born. He got out of the dot-com boom just in time." She favored her cousin with a cold smile.
"I can get you out of here, and back to the FBI," Susana explained. "Being rich is part of it – I can pay off the right people. The other part, Lisa, is knowing where the weak points are. I don't need to worry about paying off the judge, even though that's a possibility. I just need to know what clerk will take a ten-thousand-dollar payment to give me something…say, the ballistics tests on your gun…the gun itself…the affidavits filed by the police officers who arrested you. The statement I made. Without that, there's nothing."
"Lisa, there are rules about such things here, and here they actually dismiss charges when evidence vanishes and isn't available for the defense. The charges against you would be dropped. Dropped…but not gone. They could be refiled against you…if that evidence ever came to light. But so long as you left me in peace, I'd give you the same privilege."
"Blackmail," Lisa Starling said simply.
"If you see it that way," Susana said. "The deal would simply be this: your freedom would depend on my own. You'd be free, you'd be an FBI agent, just as before. The only difference would be that if I was ever apprehended and sent back to the US, I would call an attorney. That attorney would call down here. The evidence would come to light – some safety deposit box somewhere, maybe here, maybe Uruguay, Paraguay, who knows? And the authorities here would refile the charges against you, and then you'd have a choice, I guess. You could become a fugitive, of course. But more likely, a warrant would be issued in the US for you, and you'd be taken into custody and extradited down here." She smiled coldly. "You don't face death penalty charges, so extradition would be a small thing indeed. But that's what it comes down to, Lisa, that's what I can do. We would either both be free or both be jailed. That's more than the FBI can offer you."
Lisa was silent for several moments. She was full for the first time in two months, and it had an effect on her. She was grateful for the food, yes, but this just seemed to good to be true.
"And you would do this for me?" she asked.
"Once I have some answers," Susana hedged, "perhaps." Her eyes locked on Lisa's. "The question, Cousin Lisa, is what you have to tell me about your erstwhile employer. And yourself."
Lisa didn't need to be told what Susana was talking about. "I'm in Behavioral Sciences, Susana," Lisa said carefully. "I don't work in the evidence labs. You know that. I had nothing to do with disobeying the court order. That was other people, not me."
Susana's voice was carefully neutral. "Perhaps," she said. "But Lisa, you know that the judge was planning to throw out the charges against me because the FBI refused to turn over the evidence my attorneys asked for. You, who have studied me for years, you didn't keep up on my case?"
This was crazy, Lisa thought. Here she was in jail and Susana was demanding she justify herself. But part of her still did want to explain. Wanted to make Susana understand that she had nothing to do with the FBI's malfeasance.
"I had other work to do," Lisa started. "Other killers, just like you said. I thought the legal system was just doing its job."
"Was it?" Susana asked cuttingly, her head tilted. "You know, the day the judge told the FBI to turn over the evidence or he would free me, I actually thought there might be some justice for me after all. So I went back to my cell and waited. And then, a few days later, McNeely came and told me I had to go to court." She chuckled bitterly herself, remembering. "I had no idea for what. Then in I went, and I was arraigned on charges of murdering Ardelia Mapp and attempted murder on you. And they brought me back to my cell and I laid down on my bunk and stared at the wall. " She shook her head slowly. "And all I could think was that they were going to dismiss the charges that I had done, and kill me for something I hadn't."
Susana reached down and lifted a Prada briefcase from the floor. From it, she took a manila folder and removed several papers from it. She laid them on the table so that Lisa could see them.
"Autopsy results on Ardelia Mapp. Specifically, ballistics and neutron activation tests. A .45 was found near her body. .45, she must've picked that up from my mother. One bullet fired. FBI tests on her hand proved definitively that she fired it. That bullet was found in a steel bowl, in the bedroom, where I pulled it out of your chest."
Lisa's fingers unconsciously touched the scar on her ribcage where that bullet had struck. She said nothing.
"Now, the bullet that killed Mapp…that was a different story, wasn't it? They matched it to a gun found at the scene. No prints, because I wiped your prints off the gun. But you know what they did find?" She held up another sheet of paper and read from it.
"Blood, found in the chamber and on the slide of the gun. Blood type B. Your type, not mine. Blood that fell on that gun from where she shot you…and you shot her."
Susana laid the sheet down on the table and speared her cousin with her eyes.
"I didn't kill Ardelia, Lisa. I would have if I had the opportunity. Sure. I'd have made it painful, too. I'd have made her scream and beg for death. No simple bullet." Her eyes glittered with malice remembered and imagined.
"But…I didn't. I am innocent of that crime." She took a long breath. "Innocent," she repeated. "And the FBI knew it all along and hid the proof."
"I had nothing to do with that, either," Lisa said softly. "That was the US Attorney. I was never told, and I wouldn't have testified against you."
"Really?" Susana tilted her head and gave her cousin a hard, unforgiving look. "Knowing that I would have walked if you hadn't?"
Lisa nodded.
"Knowing that you'd spend your career in purgatory for having let me walk?" Susana demanded. "The FBI would never, never have forgiven you for that."
"Yes," Lisa affirmed. "The difference between you and me, Susana, is that I can stand losing. I won't lie in order to win."
Susana eyed her for several moments without saying anything.
"I guess I have one final question, then," she said.
"Sure," Lisa said.
"Do you know where I found this?" Susana asked, her tone pleasant and vague.
Lisa shook her head.
"In your condo," Susana explained. "In your little shrine to me you have there." Her tone dropped and became more cutting and accusatory. "So I must ask, Lisa,…if you claim this complete honesty, why then were you silent when my attorneys were looking for this evidence in an attempt to save my life?"
Lisa sighed. It probably was hard for Susana to believe. But dammit, it was true. Lisa had not known of the FBI's malfeasance. She wouldn't put it past the powers that be to have hidden it from her, knowing she would not be part of it. She would have agreed that Susana deserved to be punished for what she had done. She could have even seen the death penalty as appropriate for Susana's crimes. But she would not knowingly permit them to put her there by means of lies and deceit.
She slumped over the table and sighed.
"I didn't know you needed it, Susana," Lisa sighed. "If I'd known, I would have given you whatever you were entitled to in a heartbeat. I wouldn't be part of a frame-up. That's not…not right. And I know you don't believe me, and I know you'll probably just laugh at me. But it's true. If you'd walked on the legit charges, I wouldn't have been happy about it, but I would have accepted it."
"The agency you serve tried to frame me," Susana observed pointedly. Lisa thought that was probably what had angered Susana more than anything else. Susana would have regarded being sentenced for something she had done as fair play. Being sentenced for a crime she hadn't committed would have burned Susana to no end.
"Yes, they did," Lisa said softly. "And the FBI was wrong. Is that what you want? For me to admit it? Fine, Susana, I'll admit it. What they did to you was wrong. That's not right to do to anyone."
"Not even me?"
"Not even you," Lisa affirmed.
Silence reigned in the room for several moments. Susana seemed to be weighing something in her mind.
"All right," she said finally. "I believe you." Then, her emotional needs satisfied, she squared her shoulders and continued forward, confident and cocky once more.
"Now then. I don't plan on freeing you for free, you know. You do have something I want. I never did get a chance to get my FBI file, and see how you caught me. So my question to you, Lisa Starling is this: you know that file up and down, don't you?"
Lisa sighed. She knew where this was coming. But the thought of being out…now that was nothing to sneeze at. Out. She wanted it so badly. She could understand, now, why her cousin had seen fit to kill nine people in order to stay out. She couldn't approve of it, but she could understand it. Finally, she nodded.
"My attorneys have spoken with the prison officials, and you'll be quietly released into my custody for a month or so," Susana said. "All I want out of you is the contents of that file. Do that for me, Lisa, and you'll have only one court appearance more to make, then you'll get a first-class ticket from Buenos Aires to Miami. Back to the FBI. You can do whatever you like, catch whatever criminals you like, just not me. Well, I suppose you could. But if you take away my freedom, you'd be giving up your own."
Lisa Starling sat and thought for a moment. Susana's deal was far better than what her public defenders had offered her. Most of them were of the opinion that her best bet would be to plead guilty and see if they would let her serve out her time in an American prison. Some deal.
But the price…oh, the price seemed so high. She would be dealing with the very woman who had murdered her colleagues. Equipped with Lisa's knowledge of her, Susana would be impossible to find. If the FBI ever found out, her career would be ruined. And Susana would never be apprehended again. For a woman whose sworn duty was to uphold the law, it struck her as selling her soul.
Even that had its counterpoints, a small, sly voice whispered from the back of her mind. Susana might well never be apprehended again anyway. She had learned from her prior mistakes, and she would live a low-profile life far away from the FBI, probably in some country that didn't like the U.S. very much. That would happen whether or not Lisa Starling was a special agent of the FBI or a prisoner of the Argentine government. If she stayed here much longer, her career would be just as ruined. Why throw away your life, Lisa? Give her what she wants, be free.
And somehow it seemed…fitting. The agents she had worked with had ignored their sworn duty. Instead of giving Susana what she was entitled to, they had tried to hide it and stonewall. When that had backfired, they had tried to frame her. There seemed something appropriate in their being cheated of their prey.
But the fact remained. She would be helping a murderer remain free. A murderer of her friends, her co-workers. Will Graham. Eight active-duty profilers, slain so that Susana could get away clean. Taking Susana's offer would betray them all.
For the second time, Lisa Starling thought about principles. It was all well and good to have principles when things were easy. In the clutch, though, was when principles were truly tested. When what you believed in cost you personally.
But was there a cost that was too high? Was it worth it to throw away her life rather than help her cousin? No one would care that Lisa Starling had refused her cousin's offer. She would merely be 'poor Lisa', as in "Poor Lisa Starling, she's serving a life term down in Argentina." At some point, she had to wonder, could anyone really blame her for raising her palms and crying, 'Hold, enough'?
"I'll need to think about it," Lisa stammered.
Susana nodded. "Of course. It'll take a bit of time, anyway. The plan was to get you out during dinner. I thought you might like to remain here, rather than go back to your cell. But, if you'd rather be alone to think about it, you can go back to your cell. I won't be offended. But make the choice carefully. I won't be sticking around forever, Lisa…this is a one time offer."
"Thank you," Lisa managed.
The guard was called in and Lisa was taken back to her cell. The heavy bars crashed shut behind her. Lisa Starling sat down on her mattress and curled up, her arms around her knees, staring at nothing.
In for a penny, in for a pound, she had thought the day she entered Susana's home. But now the question was much deeper. In for her life…or in for her soul.
And just how did Susana intend to get the information she sought from her? After all, Susana had shoved a red-hot coal in another woman's eye, killed three innocent girls to signal her accomplice to murder four FBI agents, killed Will Graham after carving him up as her father had, and then murdered an additional four on her own, all in this go-round alone. Torturing Lisa was well within her ability. Unpleasant images of Susana standing over her with a red-hot poker or a knife tumbled through her mind.
Then she looked around the tiny cell, and thought of a life wasted within these bars. Saw herself growing old, forgetting her native tongue. Only visits from the consular officers to look forward to. Finally being released, trying to find work in the United States, seeing what an older woman who'd spent twenty years in a foreign prison could do. She saw herself working as a motel maid, ending her life trudging sheets and towels up and down the stairs as her first cousin had begun hers.
But Susana had the capability to give her what she wanted – her old life. No one would know that she had betrayed the FBI. They would simply not be able to find Susana Alvarez. And the damnable thing was that even if she said no, Susana would still get away.
Her choice was stark. Spend the rest of her life in this cell, or help a murderer evade justice. Her life…or her soul.
Lisa Starling sat and stared and thought. No matter how much she thought about it, it did not get a shred easier. She did not go to dinner when they called the others down. She simply sat and wondered at what point her principles would cost more than she was willing to pay.
Footsteps echoed down the run and stopped in front of Lisa's cell. She looked up and saw Susana, accompanied by two of the guards. Decent ones, Lisa noted. Not that one who liked bullying the prisoners. She was surprised; she would have thought Susana would have avoided any place of confinement.
The barred door opened with a loud metal crash. Susana Alvarez Lecter and Lisa Starling looked at each other, separated by nothing but air. Dimly, Lisa remembered asking Kelly McNeely if she could see Susana's cell. What a long, strange trip it had been since then.
"Well?" Susana asked.