فصل 75

Chapter 75

KRENDLER WAS dressed for jogging in the cold and had to unzip his running suit to keep from overheating when Eric Pickford called him at his Georgetown home.

“Eric, go to the cafeteria and call me on a pay phone.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Krendler?”

“Just do what I tell you.”

Krendler pulled off his headband and gloves and dropped them on the piano in his living room. With one finger he pecked out the theme from Dragnet until the conversation resumed: “Starling was a techie, Eric. We don’t know how she might have rigged her phones. We’ll keep the government’s business secure.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Starling called me, Mr. Krendler. She wanted her plant and stuff - that stupid weather bird that drinks out of the glass. But she told me something that worked.

She said to discount the last digit on the zip codes for the suspect magazine subscriptions if the difference is three or less. She said Dr Lecter might use 435 several mail drops that were conveniently close to each other.”

“And?”

“I got a hit that way. The journal of Neurophysiology’s going to one zip code and Physica Scripta and ICARUS are going to another. They’re about ten miles apart. The subscriptions are in different names, paid with money orders.”

“What’s ICARUS?”

“It’s the international journal of solar system studies. He was a charter subscriber twenty years ago. The mail drops are in Baltimore. They usually deliver the journals about the tenth of the month. Got one more thing, a minute ago, a sale on a bottle of Chateau, what is it, Yuckum?”

“Yeah, it’s pronounced like EEE-Kim. What about it?”

“High-end wine store in Annapolis. I entered the purchase and it hit on the sensitive dates list Starling put in. The program hit on Starling’s birth year. That’s the year they made this wine, her birth year. Subject paid three hundred twenty-five dollars cash for it and-“

“This was before or after you talked with Starling?”

“Just after, just a minute ago-“

“So she doesn’t know it.”

“No. I should call-“

“Are you saying the merchant called you on a single-bottle purchase?”

“Yes, sir. She’s got notes here, there are only three bottles like that on the East Coast. She’d notified all three. You’ve got to admire it.”

“Who bought it - what did he look like?”

“White male, medium height with a beard. He was bundled up.”

“Has the wine store got a security camera?”

“Yes, sir, that’s the first thing I asked. I said we’d send somebody for the tape. I haven’t done it yet. The wine store clerk hadn’t read the bulletin, but he told the owner because it was such an unusual purchase. Owner ran outside in time to see the subject - he thinks it was the subject - driving away in an old pickup truck. Gray with a vise on the back. If it’s Lecter, you think he’ll try to deliver it to Starling? We better alert her.”

“No,” Krendler said. “Don’t tell her.”

“Can I post the VICAP bulletin board and the Lecter file?”

“No,” Krendler said, thinking fast. “Have you got a reply from the Questura about Lecter’s computer?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you can’t post VICAP until we can be sure Lecter’s not reading it himself. He could have Pazzi’s access code. Or Starling could be reading it and tipping him some way like she did in Florence.”

“Oh, right, I see. Annapolis FO can get the tape.”

“Leave it all strictly to me.”

Pickford dictated the address of the wine store.

“Keep going on the subscriptions,” Krendler instructed. “You can tell Crawford about the subscriptions when he comes back to work. He’ll organize coverage on the mail drops after the tenth.”

Krendler called Mason’s number, and started out running from his Georgetown town house, trotting easily toward Rock Creek Park.

In the gathering gloom only his white Nike headband and his white Nike shoes, and the white stripe down the side of his dark Nike running suit were visible, as though there were no man at all among the trademarks.

It was a brisk half-hour run. He heard the blat of helicopter blades just as he came in sight of the landing pad near the zoo. He was able to duck under the turning propeller blades and reach the step without ever breaking stride. The lift of the jet helicopter thrilled him, the city, the lighted monuments falling away as the aircraft took him to the heights he deserved, to Annapolis for the tape and to Mason.