ROUND-TRIP to Geneva in a day, to see the money.
The commuter plane to Milan, a whistling Aerospatiale prop jet, climbed out of
Florence in the early morning, swinging over the vineyards with their rows
wide apart like a developer's coarse model of Tuscany. Something was wrong in
the colors of the landscape the new swimming pools beside the villas of the
wealthy foreigners were the wrong blue. To Pazzi, looking out the window of
the airplane, the pools were the milky blue of an aged English eye, a blue out
of place among the dark cypresses and the silver olive trees.
Rinaldo Pazzi's spirits climbed with the airplane, knowing in his heart that
he would not grow old here, dependent on the whim of his police superiors,
trying to last in order to get his pension.
He had been terribly afraid that Dr Lecter would disappear after killing
Gnocco. When Pazzi spotted Lecter's work lamp again in Santa Croce, he felt
something like salvation; the doctor believed that he was safe.
The death of the Gypsy caused no ripple at all in the calm of the Questura and
was believed drug-related fortunately there were discarded syringes on the
ground around him, a common sight in Florence, where syringes were available
for free.
Going to see the money. Pazzi had insisted on it.
The visual Rinaldo Pazzi remembered sights completely: the first time he ever
saw his penis erect, the first time he saw his own blood, the first woman he
ever saw naked, the blur of the first fist coming to strike him. I remembered
wandering casually into a side chapel of a Sienese church and looking into the
face of St Catherine of Siena unexpectedly, her mummified head in its
immaculate white wimple resting in a reliquary shaped like a church.
Seeing three million U.S. dollars had the same impact on him.
Three hundred banded blocks of hundred-dollar bills in nonessential serial
numbers.
In a severe little room, like a chapel, in the Geneva Credit Suisse, Mason
Verger's lawyer showed Rinaldo Pazzi the money. It was wheeled in from the
vault in four deep lock boxes with brass number plates. The Credit Suisse also
provided a counting machine, a scale and a clerk to operate them. Pazzi
dismissed the clerk. He put his hands on top of the money once.
Rinaldo Pazzi was a very competent investigator. He had spotted and arrested
scam artists for twenty years. Standing in the presence of this money,
listening to the arrangements, he detected no false note; if he gave them
Hannibal Lecter, Mason would give him the money.
In a hot sweet rush Pazzi realized that these people were not fooling aroundMason Verger would actually pay him. And he had no illusions about Lecter's
fate. He was selling the man into torture and death. To Pazzi's credit, he
acknowledged to himself what he was doing.
Our freedom is worth more than the monster's life. Our happiness is more
important than his suffering, he thought with the cold egoism of the damned.
Whether the "our" was magisterial or stood for Rinaldo and his wife is a
difficult question, and there may not be a single answer.
In this room, scrubbed and Swiss, neat as a wimple, Pazzi took the final vow.
He turned from the money and nodded to the lawyer, Mr. Konie. From the first
box, the lawyer counted out one hundred thousand dollars and handed it to
Pazzi.
Mr. Konie spoke briefly into a telephone and handed the receiver to Pazzi.
"This is a land line, encrypted," he said.
The American voice Pazzi heard had a peculiar rhythm, words rushed into a
single breath with a pause between, and the plosives were lost. The sound of
it made Pazzi slightly dizzy, as though he were straining for breath along
with the speaker.
Without preamble, the question: "Where is Dr Lecter?"
Pazzi, the money in one hand and the phone in the other, did not hesitate.
"He is the one who studies the Palazzo Capponi in Florence. He is the . . .
curator."
"Would you please show your identification to Mr. Konie and hand him the
telephone. He won't say your name into the telephone."
Mr. Konie consulted a list from his pocket and said some prearranged code
words to Mason, then he handed the phone back to Pazzi.
"You get the rest of the money when he is alive in our hands," Mason said.
"You don't have to seize the doctor yourself, but you've got to identify him
to us and put him in our hands. I want your documentation as well, everything
you've got on him. You'll be back in Florence tonight? You'll get instructions
tonight for a meeting near Florence. The meeting will be no later than
tomorrow night. There you'll get instructions from the man who will take Dr
Lecter. He'll ask you if you know a florist. Tell him all florists are
thieves. Do you understand me? I want you to cooperate with him."
"I don't want Dr Lecter in my . . . I don't want him near Florence when . . ."
"I understand your concern. Don't worry, he won't be."
The line went dead.
In a few minutes paperwork, two million dollars was placed in escrow. Mason
Verger could not get it back, but he could release it for Pazzi to claim. A
Credit Suisse official summoned to the meeting room informed Pazzi the bank
would charge him a negative interest to facilitate a deposit there if he
converted to Swiss francs, and pay three percent compound interest only on the
first hundred thousand francs. The official presented Pazzi with a copy of
Article 47 of the Bundesgesetz fiber Banken and Sparkassen governing bank
secrecy and agreed to perform a wire transfer to the Royal Bank of Nova Scotia
or to the Cayman Islands immediately after the release of the funds, if that
was Pazzi's wish.
With a notary present, Pazzi granted alternate signature power over the
account to his wife in the event of his death. The business concluded, only
the Swiss bank official offered to shake hands. Pazzi and Mr. Konie did not
look at each other directly, though Mr. Konie offered a good-bye from the
door.
The last leg home, the commuter plane from Milan dodging through a
thunderstorm, the propeller on Pazzi's side of the aircraft a dark circle
against the dark gray sky. Lightning and thunder as they swung over the old
city, the campanile and dome of the cathedral beneath them now, lights coming
on in the early dusk, a flash and boom like the ones Pazzi remembered from his
childhood when the Germans blew up the bridges over the Arno, sparing only the
Ponte Vecchio. And for a flash as short as lightning he remembered seeing as a
little boy a captured sniper chained to the Madonna of Chains to pray before
he was shot.
Descending through the ozone smell of lightning, feeling the booms of thunder
in the fabric of the plane, Pazzi of the ancient Pazzi returned to his ancient
city with his aims as old as time.