Hannibal Rising Page 0,78

now, and only the darkness ahead, the details of the gravel and the weeds absurdly sharp, insistent in his headlight, and the dark ahead swallowed up the yellow beam. He wondered if he joined the canal too far south-was the boat behind him?

He stopped and turned off his lights, to sit in darkness and decide, the motorcycle shivering under him.

Far ahead, far into the dark, it appeared that two little houses moved in tandem across the meadow, deckhouses just visible above the banks of the Canal de Loing.

Vladis Grutas' houseboat was wonderfully quiet as it motored southward sending a soft ripple against the sides of the canal, cows asleep in the fields on both sides. Mueller, nursing stitches in his thigh, sat in a canvas chair on the fore-deck, a shotgun propped against the railing of the companionway beside him. At the stern, Gassmann opened a locker and took out some canvas fenders.

Three hundred meters back, Hannibal slowed, the BMW burbling along, weeds brushing his shins. He stopped and took his father's field glasses from the saddlebag. He could not read the name of the boat in the darkness.

Only the boat's running lights showed and the glow from behind the window curtains. Here the canal was too wide to be sure of making a jump onto the deck.

From the bank he might be able to hit the captain in the wheelhouse with the pistol-he could surely drive him from the helm-but then the boat would be alerted, he would have to face them all at once as he came aboard. They could be coming from both ends at once. He could see a covered companionway at the stern and a dark lump near the bow that was probably another entrance to the lower deck.

The binnacle light glowed in the wheelhouse windows near the stern, but he could not make out anyone inside. He needed to get ahead of them. The towpath was close beside the water and the fields too rough for a detour.

Hannibal rode past the canal boat on the towpath, feeling his side toward the boat tingling. A glance at the boat. Gassmann on the stern was pulling canvas fenders out of a locker. He looked up as the motorcycle passed. Moths fluttered above a cabin skylight.

Hannibal held himself to a moderate pace. A kilometer ahead he saw the lights of a car crossing the canal.

The Loing narrowed to a lock not more than twice the beam of a canal boat. The lock was integral with a stone bridge, its upstream doors set into the stone arch, the lock's enclosure like a box beyond the bridge, not much longer than the Christabel.

Hannibal turned left along the bridge road in case the boat captain was watching him and drove a hundred yards. He turned off his lights, turned around and returned near the bridge, putting the motorcycle in brush beside the road. He walked forward in the dark.

A few rowboats were upside down on the canal bank. Hannibal sat on the ground among them and peered over the hulls at the boat coming on, still a half-kilometer away. It was very dark. He could hear a radio in a small house at the far end of the bridge, probably the house of the lockkeeper. He buttoned the pistol into the pocket of his jacket.

The tiny running lights of the canal boat came very slowly, the red portside light toward him and behind it the high white light on a folding mast above the cabin. The boat would have to stop and lower itself a meter in the lock. He lay beside the canal, weeds all around him. It was too early in the year for the crickets to sing.

Waiting as the canal boat came, slowly slowly. Time to think. Part of what he did at Kolnas' cafe was unpleasant to remember: It was difficult to spare Kolnas' life even for that short time, and distasteful to allow him to speak. Good, the crunch he felt in his hand when the tanto blade broke out the top of Kolnas' skull like a little horn. More satisfying than Milko. Good things to enjoy: the Pythagorean proof with tiles, tearing off Dortlich's head. Much to look forward to: He would invite Lady Murasaki for the jugged hare at Restaurant Champs de Mars. Hannibal was calm. His pulse was 72.

Dark beside the lock, and the sky clear and frosted with stars. The mast light of the canal boat should just be among the