Hannibal Page 0,12
the screen, the ban;y writing absurdly large in magnification.
Dear Clarice, Mason read, I have followed with enthusiasm the course of your disgrace and public shaming.
... The very rhythm of the voice excited in him old thoughts that spun him, spun his bed, spun his room, tore the scabs off his unspeakable dreams, raced his heart ahead of his breath. The machine sensed his excitement and filled his lungs ever faster.
He read it all, at his painful rate, reading over the moving machine, like reading on horseback.
Mason could not close his eye, but when he had finished reading, his mind went away from behind his eye for a while to think. The breathing machine slowed down. Then he puffed on his pipe.
"Yes, sir."
"Punch up Congressman Vellmore. Bring me the headphone. Turn off the speakerphone.
"Clarice Starling," he said to himself with the next breath the machine permitted him. The name has no plosive sounds and he managed it very well. None of the sounds was lost. While he waited for the telephone, he dozed a moment, the shadow of the eel crawling over his sheet and his face and his coiled hair.
Part I Washington D.C. Chapter 7
BUZZARD'S POINT, the FBI's field office for Washington and the District of Columbia, is named for a gathering of vultures at a Civil War hospital on the site.
The gathering today is of middle-management officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI to discuss Clarice Starling's fate.
Starling stood alone on the thick carpet of her boss's office. She could hear her pulse thump beneath the bandage around her head. Over her pulse she hear the voices of the men, muffled by the frosted-glass door of an adjoining conference room.
The great seal of the FBI with its motto, "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity," is rendered handsomely in gold leaf on the glass. The voices behind the seal rose and fell with some passion; Starling could hear her name when no other word was clear.
The office has a fine view across the yacht basin to Fort McNair, where the.accused Lincoln assassination conspirators were hanged.
Starling flashed on photos she had seen of Mary Surratt, walking past her own casket and mounting the gallows at Fort McNair, standing hooded on the trap, her skirts tied around her legs to prevent immodesty as she dropped through to the loud crunch and the dark.
Next door, Starling heard the chairs scrape back as the men got to their feet. They were filing into this office now. Some of the faces she recognized. Jesus, there was Noonan, the A/DIC over the whole investigation division.
And there was her nemesis, Paul Krendler from justice, with his long neck and his round ears set high on his head like the ears of a hyena. Krendler was a climber, the gray eminence at the shoulder of the Inspector General. Since she caught the serial killer Buffalo Bill ahead of him in a celebrated case seven years ago, he had dripped poison into her personnel file at every opportunity, and whispered close to the ears of the Career Board.
None of these men had ever been on the line with her, served a warrant with her, been shot at with her or combed the glass splinters out of their hair with her.
The men did not look at her until they all looked at once, the way a sidling pack turns its attention suddenly on the cripple in the herd.
"Have a chair, Agent Starling."
Her boss, Special Agent Clint Pearsall, rubbed his thick wrist as though his watch hurt him.
Without meeting her eyes, he gestured toward an armchair facing the windows. The chair in an interrogation is not the place of honor.
The seven men remained standing, their silhouettes black against the bright windows. Starling could not see their faces now, but below the glare, she could see their legs and feet. Five were wearing the thick-soled tasseled loafers favored by country slicksters who have made it to Washington. A pair of Thom McAn wing tips with Corfam soles and some Florsheim wing tips rounded out the seven. A smell in the air of shoe polish, warmed by hot feet.
"In case you don't know everybody, Agent Starling,, this is Assistant Director Noonan, I'm sure you know who he is; this is John Eldredge from DEA, Bob Sneed, BATF, Benny Holcomb is assistant to the mayor and Larkin Wainwright is an examiner from; our Office of Professional Responsibility," Pearsall said. "Paul Krendler - you know Paul -