Hannibal - Thomas Harris [136]
Carlo crossed himself as he mentioned the dead man's name.
“I understand your feelings completely, Carlo. You have my deepest sympathy. Carlo, I want Dr Lecter consumed in two sittings. The first evening, I want the pigs to gnaw off his feet, with him watching through the bars. I want him in good shape for that. You bring him to me in good shape. No blows to the head, no broken bones, no eye damage. Then he can wait overnight without his feet, for the pigs to finish him the next day. I'll talk to him for a while, and then you can have him for an hour before the final sitting. I'll ask you to leave him an eye and leave him conscious so he can see them coming. I want him to see their faces when they eat his face. If you, say, should decide to unman him, it's entirely up to you, but I want Cordell there to manage the bleeding. I want film.”
“What if he bleeds to death the first time in the pen?”
“He won't. Nor will he die overnight. What he'll do overnight is wait with his feet eaten off. Cordell will see to that and replace his body fluids, I expect he'll be on an IV drip all night, maybe two drips.”
“Or four drips if we have to,” said Cordell's disembodied voice on the speakers. “I can do cutdowns on his legs.”
“You can spit and piss in his IV at the last, before you roll him into the pen,” Mason told Carlo in his most sympathetic voice. “Or you can come in it if you like.”
Carlo's face brightened at the thought, then he remembered the muscular signorina with a guilty sideways glance. “Grazie mille, Padrone. Can you come to see him die?”
“I don't know, Carlo. The dust in the barn disturbs me. I may watch on video. Can you bring a pig to me? I want to put my hand on one.”
“To this room, Padrone?”
“No, they can bring me downstairs briefly, on the power pack.”
“I would have to put one to sleep, Padrone,” Carlo said doubtfully.
“Do one of the sows. Bring her on the lawn outside the elevator. You can run.the forklift over the grass.”
“You figure on doing this with one van, or a van and a crash car?” Krendler asked.
“Carlo?”
“The van is plenty. Give me a deputy to drive.”
“I've got something else for you,” Krendler said. “Can we have some light?”
Margot moved the rheostat and Krendler put his backpack on the table beside the bowl of fruit. He put on cotton gloves and took out what appeared to be a small monitor with an antenna and a mounting bracket, along with an external hard drive and a rechargeable battery pack.
“It's awkward covering Starling because she lives in a culdesac with no place to lurk. But she has to come out - Starling's an exercise freak,” Krendler said. “She's had to join a private gym since she can't use the FBI stuff anymore. We caught her parked at the gym Thursday and put a beacon under her car. It's NiCad and recharges when the motor's running so she won't find it from a battery drain. The software covers these five contiguous states. Who's going to work this thing?”
“Cordell, come in here,” Mason said.
Cordell and Margot knelt beside Krendler and Carlo stood over them, his hat held at the height of their nostrils.
“Look here.”
Krendler switched his monitor on. “It's like a car navigation system except it shows where Starling's car is.”
An overview of metropolitan Washington appeared on the screen: “Zoom here, move the area with the arrows, got it? Okay, it's not showing any acquisition. A signal from Starling's beacon will light this, and you'll hear a beep. Then you can pick up the source on overview and zoom in. The beep gets faster as you get closer. Here's Starling's neighborhood is in streetmap scale. You're not getting any blip from her car because we're out of range. Anywhere in metro Washington or Arlington you would. I picked it up from the helicopter coming out. Here's the converter for AC plug in your van. One thing. You have to guarantee me this thing never gets in the wrong hands. I could get heat from this, it's not in the spy shops yet. Either its back in my hands or it's in the bottom