Hannibal - Thomas Harris [93]
Since this partial answer to his prayer, Hannibal Lecter had not been bothered by any considerations of deity, other than to recognize how his own modest predations paled beside those of God, who is in irony matchless, and in Wanton malice beyond measure.
In this hurtling aircraft, his head bouncing gently against the headrest, Dr Lecter is suspended between his last view of Mischa crossing the bloody snow and the sound of the axe. He is held there and he cannot stand it. In the world of the airplane comes a short scream from his sweating face, thin and high, piercing.
Passengers ahead of him turn, some wake from sleep. Some in the row ahead of him are snarling. “Kid, Jesus Christ, what is the matter with you? My God!”
Dr Lecter's eyes open, they look straight ahead, a Hand is on him. It is the small boy's hand.
“You had a bad dream, huh?”
The child is not frightened, nor does he care about the complaints from the forward rows.
“Yes.”
“I have bad dreams a lots of times too. I'm not laughing at you.”
Dr Lecter took several breaths, his head pressed back against the seat. Then his composure returned as though calm rolled down from his hairline to cover his face. He bent his head to the child and said in a confidential tone, “You're right not to eat this swill, you know. Don't ever eat it.”
Airlines no longer provide stationery. Dr Lecter, in perfect command of himself, took some hotel stationery from his breast pocket and began a letter to Clarice Starling. First, he sketched her face. The sketch is now in a private holding at the University of Chicago and available to scholars. In it Starling looks like a child and her hair, like Mischa's, is stuck to her cheek with tears. .
We can see the airplane through the vapor of our breath, a brilliant point of light in the clear night sky. See it cross the Pole star, well past the point of no return, committed now to a great arc down to tomorrow in the New World.
Hannibal
Chapter 49
THE STACKS of paper and files and diskettes in Starling's cubicle reached critical mass. Her request for more space went unanswered. Enough. With the.recklessness of the damned she commandeered a spacious room in the basement at Quantico. The room was supposed to become Behavioral Science's private darkroom as soon as Congress appropriated some money. It had no windows, but plenty of shelves and, being built for a darkroom, it had double blackout curtains instead of a door.
Some anonymous office neighbor printed a sign in Gothic letters that read HANNIBAL'S HOUSE and pinned it on her curtained entrance. Fearful of losing the room, Starling moved the sign inside.
Almost at once she found a trove of useful personal material at the Columbia College of Criminal Justice Library, where they maintained a Hannibal Lecter Room. The college had original papers from his medical and psychiatric practices and transcripts of his trial and the civil actions against him. On her first visit to the library Starling waited fortyfive minutes while custodians hunted for the keys to the Lecter room without success. On the second occasion, she found an indifferent graduate student in charge, and the material uncatalogued.
Starling's patience was not improving in her fourth decade. With Section Chief Jack Crawford backing her at the U.S. Attorney's office, she got a court order to move the entire college collection to her basement room at Quantico. Federal marshals accomplished the move in a single van.
The court order created waves, as she feared it would. Eventually, the waves brought Krendler . . .
At the end of along two weeks, Starling had most of the library material organized in her makeshift