Hannibal Rising Page 0,64

is private."

Hannibal turned and spoke English. "Well, where is it then? The door says privy, doesn't it? I come down here and there's only the basement. The loo, man, the pissoir, the toilet, where is it? Speak English. Do you understand loo? Tell me quickly, I'm caught rather short."

"Prive, prive!" Hercule gestured up the stairs. "Toilette!" and at the top waved Hannibal in the right direction.

He arrived back at the table as the sundaes arrived. "Kolnas is using the name 'Kleber.' It's on the license. Monsieur Kleber residing on the Rue Juliana. Ahhh, regard."

PetrasKolnas came onto the terrace with his family, dressed for church.

The conversations around Hannibal took on a swoony sound as he looked at Kolnas, and dark motes swarmed in his vision.

Kolnas' suit was of inky new broadcloth, a Rotary pin in the lapel. His wife and two children were handsome, Germanic-looking. In the sun, the short red hairs and whiskers on Kolnas' face gleamed like hog bristles.

Kolnas went to the cash register. He lifted his son onto a barstool.

"Kolnas the Prosperous," Hannibal said. "The Restaurateur. The Gourmand.

He's come by to check the till on his way to church. How neat he is."

The headwaiter took the reservation book from beside the telephone and opened it for Kolnas' inspection.

"Remember us in your prayers, Monsieur," the headwaiter said.

Kolnas nodded. Shielding his movement from the diners with his thick body, he took a Webley. 455 revolver from his waistband, put it on a curtained shelf beneath the cash register and smoothed down his waistcoat. He selected some shiny coins from the till and wiped them with his handkerchief. He gave one to the boy on the barstool. "This is your offering for church, put it in your pocket."

He bent and gave the other to his little daughter. "Here is your offering, liebchen. Don't put it in your mouth. Put it safe in the pocket!"

Some drinkers at the bar engaged Kolnas and there were customers to greet. He showed his son how to give a firm handshake. His daughter let go of his pants leg and toddled between the tables, adorable in ruffles and a lacy bonnet and baby jewelry, customers smiling at her.

Hannibal took the cherry from the top of his sundae and held it at the edge of the table. The child came to get it, her hand extended, her thumb and forefinger ready to pluck. Hannibal 's eyes were bright. His tongue appeared briefly, and then he sang to the child.

"EinMannleinstehtimWaldeganz still undstumm -do you know that song?"

While she ate the cherry, Hannibal slipped something into her pocket.

"Es hat vonlauter Purpurein Mantlein um."

Suddenly Kolnas was beside the table. He picked his daughter up. "She doesn't know that song."

"You must know it, you don't sound French to me."

"Neither do you, Monsieur," Kolnas said. "I would not guess that you and your wife are French. We're all French now."

Hannibal and Lady Murasaki watched Kolnas bundle his family into a Traction Avant.

"Lovely children," she said. "A beautiful little girl."

"Yes," Hannibal said. "She's wearing Mischa's bracelet."

High above the altar at the Church of the Redeemer is a particularly bloody representation of Christ on the cross, a seventeenth-century spoil from Sicily. Beneath the hanging Christ, the priest raised the communion cup.

"Drink," he said. "This is my blood, shed for the remission of your sins." He held up the wafer. "This is my body, broken for you, sacrificed that you might not perish, but have everlasting life. Take, eat, and as oft as ye do this, do it in remembrance of me."

Kolnas, carrying his children in his arms, took the wafer in his mouth, and returned to the pew beside his wife. The line shuffled around and then the collection plate was passed. Kolnas whispered to his son. The child took a coin from his pocket and put it in the plate. Kolnas whispered to his daughter, who sometimes was reluctant to give up her offering.

"Katerina..."

The little girl felt in her pocket and put into the plate a scorched dog tag with the name Petras Kolnas. Kolnas did not see it until the steward took the dog tag from the plate and returned it, waiting with a patient smile for Kolnas to replace the dog tag with a coin.

Chapter 49-50

49

ON LADY MURASAKI'S terrace a weeping cherry in a planter overhung the table, its lowest tendrils brushing Hannibal 's hair as he sat across from her. Above her shoulder floodlit Sacre Coeur hung in the night sky like a drop of the moon.

She was playing