Vive la France!"

Hannibal watched as patriotic fervor swelled the artery in the traitorFerrat's forehead and caused the jugular and carotid to stand out in his neck-an eminentlyinjectable head.

"Yes, vive la France!" Hannibal said, redoubling his efforts:

"Our letter should emphasize that, though they call him Vichy, he was actually a hero of the Resistance, then?"

"Certainly."

"He saved downed airmen, I would imagine?"

"On a number of occasions."

"Performed the customary acts of sabotage?"

"Often, and without regard for his own safety."

"Tried to protect the Jews?"

Quarter-second hitch. "Heedless of risk to himself."

"Was tortured perhaps, he suffered broken fingers for the sake of France?"

"He could still use them to salute proudly when Le Grand Charles returned,"Ferrat said.

Hannibal finished scribbling. "I've just listed the highlights here, do you think you could show it to him?"

Ferrat looked over the sheet of notebook paper, touching each point with his forefinger, nodding, murmuring to himself. "You might put in a few testimonials from his friends in the Resistance, I could supply those. A moment please."Ferrat turned his back to Hannibal and leaned close to his clothing. He turned back with a decision.

"My client's response is: Merde. Tell the young fucker I'll see the dope and rub it on my gums first before I sign. Pardon, but that is verbatim literatim."Ferrat became confidential, leaning close to the bars. "Others on the tier told him he could get enough laudanum-enough laudanum to be indifferent to the knife. 'To dream and not to scream' is how I'd couch it in a courtroom setting. The St. Pierre medical school is giving laudanum in exchange for… permission. Do you give laudanum?"

"I will be back to see you, with an answer for him."

"I wouldn't wait too long,"Ferrat said. " St. Pierre will be coming round." He raised his voice and gripped the neck of his combination underwear as he might clutch his waistcoat during an oration. "I'm empowered to negotiate on his behalf with St. Pierre as well." Close to the bars and quiet now: "Three days and poor Ferrat will be dead, and I'll be in mourning and out a client. You are a medical person. Do you think it's going to hurt? Hurt Monsieur Ferrat when they…"

"Absolutely not. The uncomfortable part is now. Beforehand. As for the thing itself, no. Not even for an instant." Hannibal had started away, when Ferrat called to him and he went back to the bars.

"The students wouldn't laugh at him, at his parts."

"Certainly not. A subject is always draped, except for the exact field of study."

"Even if he were… somewhat unique?"

"In what way?"

"Even if he had, well, infantile parts?"

"A common circumstance, and never, ever, an occasion for humor,"

Hannibal said. There's a candidate for the anatomy museum, where donors are not credited.

The pounding of the executioner's mallet registered as a twitch in the corner of Louis Ferrat's eye as he sat on his bunk, his hand on the sleeve of his companion, the clothes. Hannibal saw him imagining the assembly in his mind, the uprights lifted into place, the blade with its edge protected by a slit piece of garden hose, beneath it the receptacle.

With a start, seeing it in his mind, Hannibal realized what the receptacle was. It was a baby's bathtub. Like a falling blade Hannibal 's mind cut off the thought and, in the silence after, Louis' anguish was as familiar to him as the veins in the man's face, as the arteries in his own.

"I'll get him the laudanum," Hannibal said. Failing laudanum, he could buy a ball of opium in a doorway.

"Give me the consent form. Collect it when you bring the dope."

Hannibal looked at Louis Ferrat, reading his face as intently as he had studied his neck, smelling the fear on him, and said, "Louis, something for your client to consider. All the wars, all the suffering and pain that happened in the centuries before his birth, before his life, how much did all that bother him?"

"Not at all."

"Then why should anything after his life bother him? It is untroubled sleep. The difference is he will not wake to this."

37

THE ORIGINAL WOOD BLOCK engravings for Vesalius' great atlas of anatomy, De Fabrica, were destroyed in Munich in World War II. For Dr. Dumas the engravings were holy relics and in his grief and anger he became inspired to compile a new atlas of anatomy. It would be the best to date in the line of atlases that succeeded Vesalius' in the four hundred years since De Fabrica.

Dumas found that drawings were superior to photography in illustrating the anatomy, and essential in elucidating cloudy X-rays. Dr. Dumas was a superior anatomist, but he was not an artist. To his great good fortune, he saw Hannibal Lecter's schoolboy drawing of a frog, followed his progress and secured for him a medical scholarship.

Early evening in the laboratory. During the day, Professor Dumas had dissected the inner ear in his daily lecture, and left it to Hannibal, who now drew the cochlear bones on chalkboard at 5x enlargement.

The night bell rang. Hannibal was expecting a delivery from the Fresnes firing squad. He collected a gurney and pushed it down the long corridor to the night entrance. One wheel of the gurney clicked on the stone floor and he made a mental note to fix it.

Standing beside the body was Inspector Popil. Two ambulance attendants transferred the limp and leaking burden from their litter to the gurney and drove away.

Lady Murasaki had once remarked, to Hannibal 's annoyance, that Popil looked like the handsome actor LouisJourdan.

"Good evening, Inspector."

"I'll have a word with you," Inspector Popil said, looking nothing whatever like Louis Jourdan.

"Do you mind if I work while we talk?"

"No."

"Come, then." Hannibal rolled the gurney down the corridor, clicking louder now. A wheel bearing probably.

Popil held open the swinging doors of the laboratory.

As Hannibal had expected, the massive chest wounds occasioned by theFresnes rifles had drained the body very well. It was ready for the cadaver tank. That procedure could have waited, but Hannibal was curious to see if Popil in the cadaver tank room might look even less like Louis Jourdan, and if the surroundings might affect his peachy complexion.

It was a raw concrete space adjacent to the laboratory, reached through double doors with rubber seals. A round tank of formalin twelve feet in diameter was set into the floor and covered with a zinc lid. The lid had a series of doors in it on piano hinges. In one corner of the room an incinerator burned the waste of the day, an assortment of ears on this occasion.

A chain hoist stood above the tank. The cadavers, tagged and numbered, each in a chain harness, were tethered to a bar around the circumference of the tank. A large fan with dusty blades was set into the wall.

Hannibal started the fan and opened the heavy metal doors of the tank.

He tagged the body and put it into a harness and with the hoist swung the body over the tank and lowered it into the formalin.

"Did you come from Fresnes with him?" Hannibal said as the bubbles came up.

"Yes."

"You attended the execution?"

"Yes."

"Why, Inspector?"

"I arrested him. If I brought him to that place, I attend."

"A matter of conscience, Inspector?"

"The death is a consequence of what I do. I believe in consequences. Did you promise Louis Ferrat laudanum?"

"Laudanum legally obtained."

"But not legally prescribed."

"It's a common practice with the condemned, in exchange for permission, I'm sure you know that."

"Yes. Don't give it to him."

"Ferrat is one of yours? You prefer him sober?"