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came back into the office without Noonan and closed the door. "Assistant Director Noonan has gone back to his office..."Gentlemen, I'm going to call a halt to this meeting, and I'll get back to you individually by telephone," Pearsall said.

Krendler's head came up. He was suddenly alert the scent of politics.

"We've got to decide some things," Sneed began.

"No, we don't."

"But-"

"Bob, believe me, we don't have to decide anything, I'll get back to you. And, Bob?"

"Yeah?"

Pearsall grabbed the wire behind Sneed's tie and pulled down hard, popping buttons off Sneed's shirt and snatching tape loose from his skin. "You come to me with a wire again and I'll put my foot in your ass."

None of them looked at Starling as they left, except Krendler.

Moving toward the door, sliding his feet so he would not have to look where he was going, he used the extreme articulation of his long neck to turn his face to her, as a hyena would shuffle at the fringe of a herd, peering in at a candidate. Mixed hungers crossed his face; it was Krendler's nature to both appreciate Starling's leg and look for the hamstring.

Part I Washington D.C. Chapter 8

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE is the FBI section that deals with serial murder. Down in its basement offices, the air is cool and still. Decorators with their color wheels have tried in recent years to brighten the subterranean space. The result is no more successful than funeral home cosmetics.

The section chief's office remains in the original brown and tan with the checked cafe curtains on its high windows. There, surrounded by his hellish files Jack Crawford sat writing at his desk.

A knock, and Crawford looked up to a sight that pleased him - Clarice Starling stood in his doorway. Crawford smiled and rose from his chair. He and Starling often talked while standing; it was one of the tacit formalities they had come to impose on their relationship. They did not need to shake hands.

"I heard you came to the hospital," Starling said' "Sorry I missed you."

"I was just glad they let you go so fast," he said. "Tell me about your ear, is it okay?"

"It's fine if you like cauliflower. They tell me it'll go down, most of it."

Her ear was covered by her hair. She did not offer to show him.

A little silence.

"They had me taking the fall for the raid, Mr. Crawford. For Evelda Drumgo's death, all of it. They were like hyenas and then suddenly it stopped and they slunk away. Something drove them off."

"Maybe you have an angel, Starling."."Maybe I do. What did it cost you, Mr. Crawford?"

Crawford shook his head. "Close the door, please, Starling." Crawford found a wadded Kleenex in his pocket and polished his spectacles. "I would have done it if I could. I didn't have the juice by myself. If Senator Martin was still in office, you'd have had some cover... They wasted John Brigham on that raid just threw him away. It would have been a shame if they wasted you like they wasted John. It felt like I was stacking you and John across a jeep."

Crawford's cheeks colored and she remembered his face in the sharp wind above John Brigham's grave. Crawford had never talked to her about his war.

"You did something, Mr. Crawford."

He nodded. "I did something. I don't know how glad you'll be. It's a job."

A job. Job was a good word in their private lexicon. It meant a specific and immediate task and it cleared the air. They never spoke if they could help it about the troubled central bureaucracy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crawford and Starling were like medical missionaries, with little patience for theology, each concentrating hard on the one baby before them, knowing and not saying that God wouldn't do a goddamned thing to help. That for fifty thousand Ibo infant lives, He would not bother to send rain.

"Indirectly, Starling, your benefactor is your recent correspondent."

"Dr Lecter." She had long noted Crawford's distaste for the spoken name.

"Yes, the very same. For all this time he'd eluded us - he was away clean - and he writes you a letter. Why?"

It had been seven years since Dr Hannibal Lecter, known murderer of ten, escaped from custody in Memphis, taking five more lives in the process.

It was as though Lecter had dropped off the earth. The case remained open at the FBI and would remain open forever, or until he was caught. The same was