Hannibal

Approaching the barn, Starling leaves her car and thinks about how she will be able to rescue Lecter before taking him into custody. She hears the recorded screams that Carlo plays to the pigs; she sees the “dark shapes” rushing through the forest (489). She sees Carlo placing the bound Lecter on a forklift, preparing to offer him to the waiting pigs. Mason waits in a nearby van, watching and listening with glee. Cordell is with him, offering medical advice and tending to Mason. Just as Lecter is about to be fed to the pigs, Starling jumps out and demands that they stop. She brandishes Brigham's gun. As Cordell leaps behind the wheel of his van and drives away with Mason, Starling engages in a gun fight. She shoots Mogli, handcuffs Carlo and Piero together, and then begins to untie Lecter. He warns her that Tommaso is above her with a tranquilizer rifle. She realizes too late; Tommaso shoots her, and she falls unconscious. Lecter frees himself. The pigs burst into the pen and attack Carlo and Piero. Lecter picks up Starling. Tommaso fires another dart, hitting her shin. Lecter carries Starling past the pigs. They smell no fear on him and do not try to attack him. Lecter carries Starling to her parked car and drives away.

Mason is “whining and crying” as Cordell returns him to his bed (497). Margot returns to the barn to see whether anyone remains alive. She finds Tommaso and realizes that he is “the only one left alive who had ever seen her at the barn, not counting Cordell” (498). She agrees to pay Tommaso the full fee in exchange for his silence. She takes the cattle prod and a farrier's hammer from the barn. Before Tommaso leaves the property, he tries to explain to Margot how the pigs did not attack Lecter. He believes that the pigs “worship him” (500), and he will tell the story in this way for many years. Inside the mansion, Margot kills Cordell with the hammer and then speaks to her brother. He wants to “start over” (502), but Margot wants what she is owed. She uses the cattle prod to harvest her brother's sperm, just as Lecter told her. Then, she takes the eel from the tank and rams it down her brother's throat. Leaving traces of Lecter's scalp and hair behind, she returns to Judy.

Starling recuperates in an unfamiliar room. Lecter is watching her. He has carefully tended to her medical needs and ensured that the tranquilizer dart is not fatal. At Muskrat Farm, the authorities accept Margot's version of events. The pigs have carried away many of the “depleted remains” (510), complicating the investigation.

Starling wakes in the “fresh-smelling semidark” (512). She drinks herbal tea and slips in and out of sleep. Lecter checks her pupils and ensures that she is comfortable. Over the coming days, they talk often. He provides her with a selection of clothes and her guns. With Starling's help, Lecter removes the tracking device from her car, for which she blames Krendler. When Lecter tells her that Mason Verger is dead, she asks him to play the harpsichord for her.

Krendler feels “reasonably safe” from repercussions (516). Margot gives a recently received telephone message to the police, in which Lecter gloats about Mason's “extremely painful and prolonged” death (517). Starling's presence at the scene of the crime is “a considerable embarrassment” to the FBI (518). She is declared missing. Crawford remains in the hospital, and Ardelia's attempts to locate Starling are ignored.

Starling loses her sense of time. She talks often and at length with Lecter. He tells her about his childhood and Mischa. On one occasion, he takes her into a room where her father's bones are laid out on the bed. Their conversations—conducted “under the influence of a major hypnotic drug and deep hypnosis” (524)—allow her to come to terms with the unresolved emotions regarding her father's death. Uncovering her longstanding loathing for Paul Krendler as an “icon of failure and frustration” (529), Lecter realizes that Starling has begun to push back against authority figures.

Ardelia visits Barney. She asks him whether he knows “anything about Clarice Starling” (531). Barney insists that he does not. After she leaves, he becomes increasingly paranoid about who might visit him next. Margot visits him five days after the incident at Muskrat Farm. Fearing that she might kill him for what he knows, he shows her his most valuable possession: Lecter's famous mask. The mask still contains traces of DNA, which he collects and gives to Margot. She can use this to ensure that he does not talk. Margot gives him enough money “to see every Vermeer in the world” (538). Margot announces that she intends to visit Franklin and that she has paid to recover his cat. Barney bids her farewell.

Lecter prepares a dinner for himself and Starling. He provides her with an “exquisite” outfit (539). After an in-depth conversation, they sit down to eat. Lecter reveals that “Krendler is joining [them] for the first course” (545). He reveals the captured, drugged Krendler dressed in “a very nice funeral tuxedo” (546). Lecter reveals that Margot invited Krendler to a meeting, something she had arranged with Lecter to allow Lecter to kidnap him as a way to return his favor. Lecter asks Krendler to say grace. Krendler obeys but cannot keep himself from insulting Starling. She ruminates on his mistreatment of her over many years. Lecter reveals that he has already surgically removed the top of Krendler's skull to reveal the “pinky-gray dome” inside (549). He slices away parts of Krendler's brain and then cooks them. Krendler announces that the cooking brain “smells great” (550). Starling and Lecter eat and talk while Krendler sings nonsensically to himself. Starling asks for a “second helping” (551). Then, Lecter kills Krendler with a crossbow. They continue their meal and their conversation. Eventually, their conversation turns romantic.

Three years later, Barney is undertaking his trip to see every Vermeer. He visits Buenos Aires with a woman he has recently met. They visit the opera, and, in the audience, Barney spots Starling and Lecter. He immediately departs for Rio, leaving the local Vermeer as “the only one Barney never saw” (559). Lecter and Starling live as a couple in a well-appointed house in Buenos Aires. She “avidly welcomes and encourages” their deep psychological explorations of her mind (561). She is building her own memory palace, filling it with memories such as those of the now-deceased Jack Crawford and her father. She has contacted Ardelia, assuring her friend that she is fine and that Ardelia should not search for her.