took on somebody else’s identity. A dead kid, a wiped-out village—and, for
somebody, an opportunity.”
“Identity theft,” said Janson. “Beautifully executed.”
“It’s genius, when you think about it. You choose a village that was totally
liquidated in the war—so there’s practically nobody around who’d remember a
thing about his childhood. All the records, certificates of birth and death,
destroyed after the place was torched.”
“Making himself an aristocrat’s son was a good move,” Janson said. “It helps
deal with a lot of questions that might have arisen about his origins. Nobody
has to wonder how he could be so well educated and worldly without an
institutional record of his schooling.”
“Exactly. Where’d he go to school? Hey, he was privately tutored—a count’s kid,
right? Why was he off the radar? Because this aristocrat, this Janos
Ferenczi-Novak, had tons of enemies and good reason to be paranoid. Everything
fits, real tight.”
“Like dovetailed planks. Too tightly. The next thing you know, he’s a big-time
currency trader.”
“A man with no past.”
“Oh, he’s got a past, all right. It’s just a past that nobody knows.”
He flashed on the philanthropist’s Gulfstream V, and the white cursive letters
on its indigo enamel: Sok kicsi sokra megy. The same Hungarian proverb Novak had
repeated on the news segment. Many small things can add up to a big one. It was
a proposition that held for benefaction—and for deception. Marta Lang’s words,
in that jet, returned to him with a chilling resonance: Novak’s proved who he
really is, again and again. A man for all seasons, and a man for all peoples.
Yet who was he really?
Jessie stepped easily over an immense bough that lay in their path. “Thing I
keep going back to is why? Why the trickery? Everybody loves him. He’s a goddamn
hero of the age.”
“Even saints can have something to hide,” Janson parried, choosing his path more
carefully “What if the man came from a family that had been involved with Arrow
Cross atrocities? Again, you’ve got to imagine a country where people have long
memories, where reprisal is a byword, where whole families, including children
and grandchildren, were killed or deported because they were on the wrong side.
These cycles of revenge were a motive force of twentieth-century Hungarian
history. If there was evil like this in your past, you might very well want to
escape it, leave it behind you, by whatever means necessary. Grandma Gitta isn’t
the only person who lives in the past around here. Think about it. Say that this
man came from an Arrow Cross family. No matter what he did, it would come up
again and again—in every interview, every conversation, every discussion.”
Jessie nodded. ” ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth
are set at edge,’ ” she said. “Like it says in the Book of Jeremiah.”
“The motivation could be as simple as that,” said Janson. Still, he suspected
that nothing about it was truly simple. Something—not an idea, but an inkling of
one—hovered indistinctly in his mind, just out of reach, but dartingly present,
like a tiny insect. Faint, nearly imperceptible, and yet there.
If only he could focus, shut everything else out and focus.
A few moments elapsed before he recognized the sound that drifted up the hill.
It, too, was faint and nearly imperceptible, and yet as his senses tuned to the
auditory stimulus, he recognized the source, and his heart began to thud.
It was a woman screaming.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Oh Christ, no!
The thorny privet and overgrown vines whipped and scratched at Janson as he
raced down the winding hillside path. He was mindful only of his footfalls as he
vaulted over boulders and burst through bushes; a misplaced step in the
treacherous terrain could result in a sprain or worse. He had ordered Jessie to
return to the Lancia posthaste: it would be a disaster if their enemies reached
it first. Her trek was uphill, but she ran like a gazelle and would get there
soon.
A few minutes later, only slightly winded, Janson arrived at the old woman’s
dilapidated farmhouse. The screams had ceased, replaced by something even more
ominous: utter silence.
The door was ajar, and inside was a spectacle that Janson knew would be forever
etched on his mind. The noble Kuvasz lay on its side; it had been disemboweled,
and its viscera spilled from its belly onto the flatweave rug, in a glistening,
red mound, steaming faintly in the chilly air. Splayed in the nearby rocking
chair was Gitta Bekesi, a woman who had survived Red Terrors and White, the
annihilating clashes of two world wars, the tanks of 1956, outbreaks and plagues
of man and nature both. Her face was hidden by her coarse muslin frock, which
had been yanked up and over her head, exposing her flaccid torso—and the
unspeakable horrors that had been visited upon it. Small, red-rimmed wounds—each
corresponding to the plunge of a bayonet, Janson knew—crisscrossed her silvery
flesh in a grotesque arrangement. The blades of her assailants had plunged into
her dozens of times. On her exposed arms and legs he could see a cluster of red
weals caused by the pressure of gripping fingers. The woman had been held down,
and tortured with a plunging blade. Were they seeking information from her? Or
merely punishing her, sadistically, for the information she had already divulged
to him?
What kind of monsters would do such a thing?
Janson’s face felt frozen, numb. He looked around, saw spatters of the dead
woman’s blood on the floor and on the walls. The atrocity had occurred just
minutes before. Her visitors had been as swift as they were savage.
And where were they now? They could not be far. Was he meant to be their next
victim?
Janson’s heart beat in a powerful, slow rhythm. The prospect of confrontation
did not fill him with anxiety, but with a strange sense of transport. The old
woman might have been easy prey; whoever had done this to her would find that he
was not. A convulsing feeling of rage ran through him, familiar and oddly
comforting in its familiarity. It would find release.
The half-taunting words of Derek Collins returned to him: Violence is something
you’re very, very, very good at, Janson … You tell me you’re sickened by the
killing. I’m going to tell you what you’ll discover one day for yourself: that’s
the only way you’ll ever feel alive.
It felt true now. For years, he had run from his nature. He would not run from
it today. As he surveyed the carnage, one thought ran through his mind like a
saber. Those who had inflicted such suffering would themselves know suffering.
Where were they?
Close, very close. Because they were looking for him. They would be up the hill.
Would Jessie make it to the Lancia in time?
Janson needed elevation if he was to get a proper view of the field of
operation. The farmhouse, he saw, was built around a courtyard in the
traditional L, with living and working areas under one roof. At right angles to
the house was a big portico with a hayloft above and, adjoining it, horse
stables. Now he ran into the courtyard and climbed a ladder to the tall hayloft
opposite. A hinged door in the rough-planked roof allowed him to clamber to its
highest point.
A quarter mile up the hill, he could see, a small party of armed men were making
their way toward Jessie Kincaid. Their figures were difficult to make out in the
dim light, but broken tree limbs and trampled grass showed their progress. Then
Janson saw and heard the flutter of black birds, swooping from the nearby
underbrush into the sky, with strident caws; something had disturbed them. A
moment later he saw movement in the overgrown trees and bushes surrounding the
old farmhouse, and he realized what it meant.
He had fallen into a trap!
The men had been counting on his overhearing the old woman’s screams. They had
sought to lure him back to the old farmhouse.
They had him exactly where they wanted him—would do to him exactly what they
wanted to! Adrenaline filled his veins, brought a terrible icy focus to his
perception.
The farmhouse was itself a gated enclosure, but the armed men had it surrounded
on all four sides, and now they showed themselves, edging out of the underbrush
and into the yard. They must have seen him enter, had probably been waiting for
him to dash out. For there was no way Janson could escape undetected. Kincaid
would be intercepted on her way to the Lancia; he would be destroyed or captured
in a gated compound that was now his prison.
The spill of their flashlights illuminated each side of the old woman’s home; in
the light, he could also see their carbines. They would fire at their quarry at
the first opportunity. Janson was, at the moment, an easy target indeed—and it