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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 He carried good binoculars in a bag clutched fiercely against his chest. They shook him, asking questions in Russian, Polish, and makeshift Lithuanian, until they realized he could not speak at all. The soldiers shamed each other into not taking the field glasses from the boy. They gave him half an apple and let him ride behind the turret in the warm breath of the radiators until they reached a village. A SOVIET MOTORIZED unit with a tank destroyer and heavy rocket launcher had sheltered at the abandoned Lecter Castle overnight. They were moving before dawn, leaving melted places in the snow of the courtyard with dark oil stains in them. One light truck remained at the castle entrance, the motor idling. Grutas and his four surviving companions, in their medical uniforms, watched from the woods. It had been four years since Grutas shot the cook in the castle courtyard, fourteen hours since the looters fled the burning hunting lodge, leaving their dead behind them. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 Bombs thudded far away and on the horizon anti-aircraft tracers arched into the sky. The last soldier backed out the door, paying out fuse from a reel. "Hell," Milko said. "It's about to rain rocks big as boxcars." "We're going in there anyway," Grutas said. The soldier unreeled fuse to the bottom of the steps, cut it and squatted at the end. "The dump's been looted anyway," Grentz said. "C'est foutu." "Tu debandes ?" Dortlich said. "Va to faire enculer,, " Grentz said. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 They had picked up the French when the Totenkopfs refitted near Marseilles, and liked to insult each other with it in the tight moments before action. The curses reminded them of pleasant times in France. The Soviet trooper on the steps split the fuse ten centimeters from the end and stuck a match head in the split. "What color's the fuse?" Milko said. Grutas had the field glasses. "Dark, I can't tell." From the woods, they could see the flare of a second match on his face as the trooper lit the fuse. "Is it orange or is it green?" Milko said. "Does it have stripes on it?" Grutas did not answer. |
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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 soldier walked to the truck, taking his time, laughing as his companions on the truck yelled at him to hurry, the fuse sparking behind him on the snow. Milko was counting under his breath. As soon as the vehicle was out of sight, Grutas and Milko ran for the fuse. The fire in the fuse crossing the threshold now as they reached it. They could not make out the stripes until they were close. Burros at twominutesameter twominutesameter twominute-sameter. Grutas slashed it in two with his spring knife. Milko muttered "fuck the farm" and charged up the steps and into the castle, following the fuse, looking, looking, for other fuses, other charges. He crossed the great hall toward the tower, following the fuse and saw what he was looking for, the fuse spliced onto a big loop of detonating cord. He came back into the great hall and called out, "It's got a ring main cord. That's the only fuse. You got it." |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 Breeching charges were packed around the base of the tower to destroy it, coordinated by the single loop of detonating cord. The Soviet troops had not bothered to close the front door, and their fire still burned on the hearth in the great hall. Graffiti scarred the bare walls and the floor near the fire was littered with droppings and bumwad from their final act in the relative warmth of the castle. Milko, Grentz and Kolnas searched the upper floors. Grutas motioned for Dortlich to follow him and descended the stairs to the dungeon. The grate across the wine room door hung open, the lock broken. Grutas and Dortlich shared one flashlight between them. The yellow beam gleamed off glass shards. The wine room was littered with empty bottles of fine vintages, the necks knocked off by hasty drinkers. The tasting table, knocked over by contesting looters, lay against the back wall. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "Balls," Dortlich said. "Not a swig left." "Help me," Grutas said. Together they pulled the table away from the wall, crunching glass underfoot. They found the decanting candle behind the table and lit it. "Now, pull on the chandelier," Grutas told the taller Dortlich. "Just give it a tug, straight down." The wine rack swung away from the back wall. Dortlich reached for his pistol when it moved. Grutas went into the chamber behind the wine room. Dortlich followed him. "God in Heaven!" Dortlich said. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "Get the truck," Grutas said. Lithuania, 1946 HANNIBAL LECTER, thirteen, stood alone on the rubble beneath the moat's embankment at the former Lecter Castle and threw crusts of bread onto the black water. The kitchen garden, its bounding hedges overgrown, was now the People's Orphanage Cooperative Kitchen Garden, featuring mostly turnips. The moat and its surface were important to him. The moat was constant; on its black surface reflected clouds swept past the crenellated towers of Lecter Castle just as they always had. Over his orphanage uniform Hannibal now wore the penalty shirt with the painted words NO GAMES. The soccer game was interrupted when the draft horse Cesar and his Russian driver crossed the field with a load of firewood on the wagon. Forbidden to play in the orphans' soccer game on the field outside the walls, he did not feel deprived. Cesar was glad to see Hannibal when he could visit the stable, but he did not care for turnips. |
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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 watched the swans coming across the moat, a pair of black swans that survived the war. Two cygnets accompanied them, still fluffy, one riding on his mother's back, one swimming behind. Three older boys on the embankment above parted a hedge to watch Hannibal and the swans. The male swan climbed out onto the bank to challenge Hannibal. A blond boy named Fedor whispered to the others. "Watch that black bastard flap the dummy he'll knock shit out of him like he did you when you tried to get the eggs. We'll see if the dummy can cry." Hannibal raised his willow branches and the swan went back into the water. Disappointed, Fedor took a slingshot of red inner-tube rubber out of his shirt and reached into his pocket for a stone. The stone hit the mud at the edge of the moat, spattering Hannibal's legs with mud. Hannibal looked up at Fedor expressionless and shook his head. |
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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 next stone Fedor shot splashed into the water beside the swimming cygnet, Hannibal raising his branches now, hissing, shooing the swans out of range. A bell sounded from the castle. Fedor and his followers turned, laughing from their fun, and Hannibal stepped out of the hedge swinging a yard of weeds with a big dirt ball on the roots. The dirt ball caught Fedor hard in the face and Hannibal, a head shorter, charged and shoved him down the steep embankment to the water, scrambling after the stunned boy and had him in the black water, holding him under, driving the slingshot handle again and again into the back of his neck, Hannibal's face curiously blank, only his eyes alive, the edges of his vision red. Hannibal heaved to turn Fedor over to get to his face. Fedor's companions scrambled down, did not want to fight in the water, yelling to a monitor for help. First Monitor Petrov led the others cursing down the bank, spoiled his shiny boots and got mud on his flailing truncheon. Evening in the great hall of Lecter Castle, stripped now of its finery and dominated by a big portrait of Joseph Stalin. A hundred boys in uniform, having finished their supper, stood in place at plank tables singing ""The Internationale."" Headmaster, slightly drunk, directed the singing with his fork. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 First Monitor Petrov, newly appointed, and Second Monitor in jodhpurs and boots walked among the tables to be sure everyone was singing. Hannibal was not singing. The side of his face was blue and one of his eyes was half-closed. At another table Fedor watched, a bandage on his neck and scrapes on his face. One of his fingers was splinted. The monitors stopped before Hannibal. Hannibal palmed a fork. "Too good to sing with us, Little Master?" First Monitor Petrov said over the singing. "You're not Little Master here anymore, you're just another orphan, and by God you'll sing!" |