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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "I thought so. No difficulty then. He has been on my payroll for years. It's just a shakedown. What did Leet tell him?" "Nothing yet, but Leet sounds nervous. For now he'll lay it on Kopnik, his dead colleague," Trebelaux said. "Leet knows nothing, not an inkling of where you got the picture?" "Leet thinks I got it in Lausanne, as we agreed. He's squealing for his money back. I said I would check with my client." "I own Popil, I'll take care of it, forget the whole thing. I have something much more important to talk with you about. Could you possibly travel to America?" "I don't take things through customs." "Customs is not your problem, only the negotiations while you're there. You have to see the stuff before it goes, then you see it again over there, across a table in a bank meeting room. You could go by air, take a week." "What sort of stuff?" "Small antiquities. Some icons, a salt cellar. We'll take a look, you tell me what you think." "About the other?" |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "You are safe as houses," Kleber said. Kleber was his name only in France. His birth name was Petras Kolnas and he knew Inspector Popil's name, but not from his payroll. THE CANAL BOAT Christabel was tied up with only a spring line at a quay on the Marne River east of Paris, and after Trebelaux came aboard the boat was under way at once. It was a black Dutch-built double-ender with low deckhouses to pass under the bridges and a container garden on deck with flowering bushes. The boat's owner, a slight man with pale blue eyes and a pleasant expression, was at the gangway to welcome Trebelaux and invite him below. "I'm glad to meet you," the man said and extended his hand. The hair on the owner's hand grew backward, toward the wrist, making his hand feel creepy to the Swiss. "Follow Monsieur Milko. I have the things laid out below." |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 The owner lingered on deck with Kolnas. They strolled for a moment among the terracotta planters, and stopped beside the single ugly object in the neat garden, a fifty-gallon oil drum with holes cut in it big enough to admit a fish, the top cut out with a torch and tied back on loosely with wire. A tarp was spread on the deck under it. The owner of the boat patted the steel drum hard enough to make it ring. "Come," he said. On the lower deck he opened a tall cabinet. It contained a variety of arms: a Dragunov sniper rifle, an American Thompson submachine gun, a couple of German Schmeissers, five Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons for use against other boats, a variety of handguns. The owner selected a trident fish spear with the barbs filed off the tines. He handed it to Kolnas. "I'm not going to cut him a lot," the owner said in pleasant tones. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "Eva's not here to clean it up. You do it on deck after we find out what he's told. Puncture him good so he won't float the barrel." "Milko can-" Kolnas began. "He was your idea, it's your ass, you do it. Don't you cut meat every day? Milko will bring him up dead and help you load him in the barrel when you've stuck him enough. Keep his keys and go through his room. We'll do the dealer Leet if we have to. No loose ends. No more art for a while," said the boat owner, whose name in France was Victor Gustavson. Victor Gustavson is a very successful business-man, dealing in ex-SS morphine and new prostitutes, mostly women. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 The name is an alias for Vladis Grutas. Leet remained alive, but without any of the paintings. They were held in a government vault for years while the court was stalemated on whether the Croatian agreement on reparations could be applied to Lithuania, and Trebelaux stared sightless from his barrel on the bottom of the Marne, no longer bald, hirsute now with green hair algae and eelgrass that wave in the current like the locks of his youth. No other painting from Lecter Castle would surface for years. Through Inspector Popil's good offices, Hannibal Lecter was allowed to visit the paintings in custody from time to time over the following years. Maddening to sit in the dumb silence of the vault under the eye of a guard, in earshot of the man's adenoidal breathing. Hannibal looks at the painting he took from his mother's hands and knows the past was not the past at all; the beast that panted its hot stench on his and Mischa's skins continues to breathe, is breathing now. He turns the "Bridge of Sighs" to the wall and stares at the back of the painting for minutes at a time Mischa's hand erased, it is only a blank square now where he projects his seething dreams. He is growing and changing, or perhaps emerging as what he has ever been. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 II ON CENTER STAGE in the Paris Opera, Dr. Faust's time was running out in his deal with the Devil. Hannibal Lecter and Lady Murasaki watched from an intimate box at stage left as Faust's pleas to avoid the flames soared to the fireproof ceiling of Garnier's great theater. Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephi-stopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki, in full fig for the opera. Winks of light came from the opposite boxes as gentlemen turned their opera glasses away from the stage to look at her as well. Against the stage lights she was in silhouette, just as Hannibal first saw her at the chateau when he was a boy. The images came to him in order: gloss of a handsome crow drinking from the rainspout, gloss of Lady Murasaki's hair First her silhouette, then she opened a casement and the light touched her face. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 Hannibal had come a long way on the bridge of dreams. He had grown to fill the late count's evening clothes, while in appearance Lady Murasaki remained exactly the same. Her hand closed on the material of her skirt and he heard the rustle of the cloth above the music. Knowing she could feel his gaze, he looked away from her, looked around the box. The box had character. Behind the seats, screened from the opposing boxes, was a wicked little goat-footed chaise where lovers might retire while the orchestra provided cadence from down below in the previous season, an older gentleman had succumbed to heart failure on the chaise during the final measures of "Flight of the Bumblebee," as Hannibal had occasion to know from ambulance service. Hannibal and Lady Murasaki were not alone in the box. In the front pair of seats sat the Commissioner of Police for the Prefecture of Paris and his wife, leaving little doubt as to where Lady Murasaki got the tickets. From Inspector Popil, of course. |
著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。
JASRAC許諾番号：9008249113Y38200
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(2271)
How pleasant that Popil himself could not attend probably detained by a murder investigation, hopefully a time-consuming and dangerous one, out-of-doors in bad weather perhaps, with the threat of fatal lightning.
ただ、ポピール自身が今夜出席出来なかったのは、なんと愉快なことか。 おそらく、とハンニバルは思っていた。 殺人事件の捜査か何かで拘束されているのだろう。 願わくはそれが危険な難事件で、悪天候の下、野外を動き廻ることを余儀なくされ、致命的な落雷か何かに曝されたりすると良いのだがと思っていた。
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(2272)
The lights came up and tenor Beniamino Gigli got the standing ovation he deserved, and from a tough house.
場内の明かりが灯いて、テノールのべニャミーノ・ジリが、受けて当然のスタンディング・オベーションを、それも厳しい批評眼で知られる観客たちから受けていた。
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(2273)
The police commissioner and his wife turned in the box and shook hands all around, everyone's palms still numb from applauding.
警視総監夫妻は背後を振り向いて、周囲のすべての人間と握手を交わした。 拍手を終えたばかりの彼らの掌は、まだ感覚が麻痺していた。
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(2274)
The commissioner's wife had a bright and curious eye.
警視総監の妻の目はキラキラと輝いて、好奇心を漲らせていた。
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(2275)
She took in Hannibal, fitted to perfection in the count's dinner clothes, and she could not resist a question.
彼女は、ハンニバルを値踏みするように見た。 亡き伯爵の夜会服を一部の隙もなく着こなしている青年を見ると、彼女は聞かずにいられなかった。
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(2276)
"Young man, my husband tells me you were the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France."
「主人から聞いたんですけど、あなたはフランス史上最年少で医学校に入学できたんですってね」
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(2277)
"The records are not complete, Madame. Probably there were surgeon's apprentices . . ."
「いえ、その記録には不備があるんです、マダム。 たぶん、外科医の実習生の人たちが居たでしょうから －－－－」
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(2278)
"Is it true that you read through your textbooks once and then return them to the bookstore within the week to get all your money back?"
「あなたは教科書をさっと読み通してしまうと、その週のうちに本屋さんに返却して、購入代金を返して貰うんですって？」
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(2279)
Hannibal smiled.
ハンニバルは微笑した。
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(2280)
"Oh no, Madame. That is not entirely accurate," he said.
「とんでもない、マダム。 いくらぼくだって、そんな」
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "I'm surprised you told Inspector Popil about my books," he said inside the car. "He found it out himself," Lady Murasaki said. "He told the commissioner, the commissioner told his wife. She needs to flirt. You are not naturally ob-tuse, Hannibal." She is uneasy in closed places with me now; she expresses it as irritation. "Sorry." She looked at him quickly as the taxi passed a streetlight. "Your animosity clouds your judgment. Inspector Popil keeps up with you because you in-trigue him." "No, my lady, you intrigue him. I expect he pesters you with his verse …" Lady Murasaki did not satisfy Hannibal's curiosity. "He knows you are first in the class," she said. |