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Margot drove into the double side doors, where Starling had entered the barn. Squeals and grunts and tossing bristled backs. Margot drove forward honking and drove the pigs back enough to see there were three human remains, none recognizable anymore.

They drove into the tack room and closed the doors behind them.

Margot considered that Tommaso was the only one left alive who had ever seen her at the barn, not counting Cordell.

This may have occurred to Tommaso too. He stood a cautious distance from her, his dark intelligent eyes on her face. There were tears on his cheeks.

Think, Margot. You don’t want any shit from the Sards. They know on their end that you handle the money. They’ll dime you out in a second.

Tommaso’s eyes followed her hand as it went into her pocket.

The cell phone. She punched up Sardinia, the Steuben banker at home at two-thirty in the morning. She spoke to him briefly and passed the telephone to Tommaso. He nodded, replied, nodded again and gave her back the phone. The money was his. He scrambled to the loft and got his satchel, along with Dr. Lecter’s overcoat and hat. While he was getting his things, Margot picked up the cattle prod, tested the current and slid it up her sleeve. She took the farrier’s hammer too.

CHAPTER

88

TOMMASO, DRIVING Cordell’s car, dropped Margot off at the house. He would leave the Honda in long-term parking at Dulles International Airport. Margot promised him she would bury what was left of Piero and Carlo as well as she could.

There was something he felt he should say to her and he gathered himself and got his English together. “Signorina, the pigs, you must know, the pigs help the Dottore. They stand back from him, circle him. They kill my brother, kill Carlo, but they stand back from Dr. Lecter. I think they worship him.” Tommaso crossed himself. “You should not chase him anymore.”

And throughout his long life in Sardinia, Tommaso would tell it that way. By the time Tommaso was in his sixties, he was saying that Dr. Lecter, carrying the woman, had left the barn borne on a drift of pigs.

After the car was gone down the fire road, Margot stood for minutes looking up at Mason’s lighted windows. She saw the shadow of Cordell moving on the walls as he fussed around Mason, replacing the monitors on her brother’s breath and pulse.

She slipped the handle of the farrier’s hammer down the back of her pants and settled the tail of her jacket over the head.

Cordell was coming out of Mason’s room with some pillows when Margot got off the elevator.

“Cordell, fix him a martini.”

“I don’t know—”

“I know. Fix him a martini.”

Cordell put the pillows on the love seat and knelt in front of the bar refrigerator.

“Is there any juice in there?” said Margot, coming close behind him. She swung the farrier’s hammer hard against the base of his skull and heard a popping sound. His head smashed into the refrigerator, rebounded, and he fell over backward off his haunches looking at the ceiling with his eyes open, one pupil dilating, the other not. She turned his head sideways against the floor and came down with the hammer, depressing his temple an inch, and thick blood came out his ears.

She did not feel anything.

Mason heard the door of his room open and he rolled his goggled eye. He had been asleep for a few moments, the lights soft. The eel was also asleep beneath its rock.

Margot’s great frame filled the doorway. She closed the door behind her.

“Hi, Mason.”

“What happened down there? What took you so fucking long?”

“They’re all dead down there, Mason.” Margot came to his bedside and unclipped the telephone line from Mason’s phone and dropped it on the floor.

“Piero and Carlo and Johnny Mogli are all dead. Dr. Lecter got away and he carried the Starling woman with him.”

Froth appeared between Mason’s teeth as he cursed.

“I sent Tommaso home with his money.”

“You what???? You fucking idiot bitch, now listen, we’re going to clean this up and start over. We’ve got the weekend. We don’t have to worry about what Starling saw. If Lecter’s got her, she’s good as dead.”