Molnár. Where it all began.
It now looked like their last hope of finding any link to Peter Novak’s origins. The last hope of unraveling the web of deceit that ensnared them.
Yet what, if anything, remained of it?
The route they took the next morning skirted the major cities and highways, and the Lancia groaned and bounced as they drove through the Bükk Hills in northeast Hungary. Jessie seemed preoccupied for much of the time.
“There’s something about those men yesterday,” she finally said. “Something about the way they set it up.”
“The triangle config?” Janson said. “Pretty standard, actually. It’s what you do when you’ve got just three men on hand. Surveillance and blocking. Straight out of the manual.”
“That’s what’s bothering me,” she said. “It’s straight out of our manual.”
Janson did not speak for a few moments. “They had Cons Op training,” he said.
“Felt that way,” Jessie said. “Sure felt that way. And seeing that blond guy blasting away …”
“Like he’d anticipated the possibility of your maneuver and was resorting to the countermeasure.”
“Felt like it, yeah.”
“Very sound, from a tactical point of view. Whatever his reasons, he had to eliminate you or the hostage. Nearly did both. Shooting a colleague like that meant that a hostage—and therefore the possibility of a security breach—was the one thing he couldn’t risk.”
“I gotta tell you, it’s freaking me out,” Jessie said. “The whole Cons Op angle. It’s like everything’s lined up against us. Or maybe it’s more complicated than that. Maybe it’s like what that creep at the Archives was saying about how records get destroyed. Something about how fire and water are opposites, but they’re both enemies.”
The terrain grew increasingly hilly; when even the Soviet-era tower blocks had vanished from the horizon, they knew they were approaching their destination. The village of Molnár was near the Tisza River, between Miskolc and Nyíregyháza. Sixty miles to the north was the Slovak Republic; sixty miles to the east was Ukraine and, just beneath it, Romania. At different points in history, all represented expansionist powers—geopolitical predators. The mountains funneled the river; they also funneled whatever armies wished to proceed from the eastern front to the Magyar heartland. The countryside was deceptively beautiful, filled with emerald-like knolls, foothills ramping toward the low, bluish mountains farther away. Here and there, one of the hills swelled to a lofty peak, lower elevations terraced with vineyards, ceding the higher altitudes to the camouflage drab of forests. Yet the landscape was also scarred, in ways that were visible and in ways that were not.
Now they rolled over a small bridge across the Tisza, a bridge that had once connected two halves of the village of Molnár.
“It’s unbelievable,” Jessie said. “It’s gone. Like somebody waved a magic wand.”
“That would have been a lot kinder than what happened,” Janson said. One winter day in 1945, he had read, the Red Army swept down these mountains and one of Hitler’s divisions attempted an ambush. The artillery units had been passing through the road along the Tizsa River when the German and Arrow Cross soldiers sought to head them off, failing, but taking many lives in the attempt. The Red Army believed that the villagers of Molnár had known all along of the ambush. A lesson had to be taught to the rural Hungarians in the area, a penalty paid in blood. The village was torched, its inhabitants slaughtered.
When Jessie had scrutinized maps of the region, she found that on the same spot where the prewar maps showed the small village, the contemporary atlases showed nothing at all. Jessie had pored over the densely printed maps with a jeweler’s loupe and a draftsman’s ruler; there could be no mistake about it. It was an absence that spoke louder than any presence could.
They pulled into a roadside tavern. Inside, two men sat at a long, copper bar, peering into their Dreher pilsners. Their garb was rustic: tattered, muddy-hued cotton shirts and blue dickeys, or some old Soviet version thereof. Neither man looked up as the Americans arrived. The barkeep followed them with his eyes wordlessly. He wore a white apron and busied himself drying beer steins with a gray-looking towel. His receding hairline and the dark indentations beneath his eyes contributed to an impression of age.
Janson smiled. “Speak English?” he called to the man.
The man nodded.
“See, my wife and I, we’ve been sight-seeing hereabouts. But it’s also kind of an explore-your-roots thing. You follow?”
“Your family is Hungarian?” The barkeep’s English was accented but unhalting.
“My wife’s,” Janson said.
Jessie smiled and nodded. “Straight up,” she added.
“Is that so?”
“According to family lore, her grandparents were born in a village called Molnár.”
“It no longer exists,” the barkeep said. He was, Janson saw now, younger than he had first seemed. “And the family’s name?”
“Family name was Kis,” Janson said.
“Kis is like Jones in Hungary. I’m afraid that does not narrow your search very much.” His voice was cool, formal, reserved. Not a typical rural tavernkeeper, Janson decided. As he took a step back from the bar, a blackish horizontal stripe was visible on his apron where his big belly rubbed against the ledge of the bar.
“I wonder whether anybody else might have any memories of the old days,” Jessie said.
“Who else is here?” The question was a polite challenge.
“Maybe … one of these gentlemen?”
The barkeep gestured toward one with his chin. “He’s not even Magyar, really, he’s Palóc,” he said. “A very old dialect. I can hardly understand him. He understands our word for money, and I understand his for beer. So we get along. Beyond that, I would not press.” He shot a glance toward the other man. “And he’s a Ruthenian.” He shrugged. “I say no more. His forints are as good as any other’s.” It was a statement of democratic sentiment that conveyed the opposite.
“I see,” Janson said, wondering whether he was being let in on things by being told of the local tensions, or deliberately frozen out. “And there wouldn’t be anybody who lives around here and might remember the old days?”
The man behind the bar ran his gray cloth along the inside of another stein, leaving behind a faint beard of lint. “The old days? Before 1988? Before 1956? Before 1944? Before 1920? I think these are the old days. They speak of a new era, but I think it is not so new.”
“I hear you,” Janson said folksily.
“You are visiting from America? Many fine museums in Budapest. And farther west, there are show villages. Very picturesque. Made just for people like you, American tourists. I think this is not such a nice place to visit. I have no postcards for you. Americans, I think, do not like places that do not have postcards.”
“Not all Americans,” Janson said.
“All Americans like to think they are different,” the man said sourly. “One of the many, many ways in which they are all the same.”
“That’s a very Hungarian observation,” Janson said.
The man gave a half smile and nodded. “Touché. But the people around here have suffered too much to be good company. That is the truth. We are not even good company to ourselves. Once upon a time, people would spend the winters staring into their fireplaces. Now we have television sets, and stare into those.”
“The electronic hearth.”
“Exactly. We can even get CNN and MTV. You Americans complain about drug traffickers in Asia, and meanwhile you flood the world with the electronic equivalent. Our children know the names of your rappers and movie stars, and nothing about the heroes of their own people. Maybe they know who Stephen King is, but they don’t know who our King Stephen was—the founder of our nation!” A petulant head shake: “It’s an invisible conquest, with satellites and broadcast transmitters instead of artillery. And now you come here because—because why? Becau
se you are bored with the sameness of your lives. You come in search of your roots, because you want to be exotic. But everywhere you go, you find your own spoor. The slime of the serpent is over all.”
“Mister,” Jessie said. “Are you drunk?”
“I have a graduate degree in English from Debrecen University,” he said. “Perhaps it comes to the same.” He smiled bitterly. “You are surprised? Tavernkeeper’s son can go to university: the glories of communism. University-educated son cannot find job: glories of capitalism. Son works for father: glories of Magyar family.”
Jessie turned to Janson and whispered, “Where I come from, people say that if you don’t know who the mark is at the table after ten minutes, it’s you.”
Janson’s expression did not change. “This was your dad’s place?” he asked the big-bellied man.
“Still is,” the man said warily.
“I wonder if he’d have any recollections … .”
“Ah, the wizened old Magyar, swilling brandy and spinning sepia pictures like an old nickelodeon? My father is not a local tourist attraction, to be wheeled out for your entertainment.”
“You know something?” Jessie said, interrupting. “I was once a barkeep. In my country, it’s considered you’re in the hospitality business.” A trace of heat crept into her voice as she spoke. “Now I’m sorry your fancy degree didn’t get you a fancy job, and it just tears me up that your kids prefer MTV to whatever Magyar hootenannies you got for them, but—”
“Honey,” Janson interjected, with a warning tone. “We’d better hit the road now. It’s getting late.” With a firm hand on her elbow, he escorted her out the door. As they stepped into the sun, they saw an old man seated on a canvas folding chair on the porch, a look of amusement in his eyes. Had he been there when they arrived? Perhaps so; something about the old man blended into the scenery, as if he were a piece of nondescript furniture.
Now the old man tapped the side of his head, the sign for “loco.” His eyes were smiling. “My son is a frustrated man,” he said equably. “He wants to ruin me. You see the customers? A Ruthenian. A Palóc. They don’t have to listen to him talk. No Magyar would come anymore. Why pay to listen to his sourness?” He had the uncreased, porcelain complexion of certain elderly people, whose skin, thinned but not coarsened by age, acquires an oddly delicate appearance. His large head was fringed with white hair, scarcely more than wisps, and his eyes were a cloudy blue. He rocked back and forth gently in his chair, his smile unwavering. “But Gyorgy is right about one thing. The people around here have suffered too much to be civil.”
“Except you,” Jessie said.
“I like Americans,” the old man said.
“Aren’t you the sweetest,” Jessie returned.
“It’s the Slovaks and the Romanians who can go hang themselves. Also the Germans and the Russians.”
“I guess you’ve seen some hard times,” Jessie said.
“I never had Ruthenians in the bar when I was running things.” He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t like those people,” he added, softly. “They’re lazy and insolent and do nothing but complain, all day long.”
“You should hear what they say about you,” she said, leaning in toward him.
“Em?”
“I bet the bar was packed when you were running things. I bet there were lots of ladies flocking there especially.”
“Now why would you think that?”
“A good-looking guy like you? I got to spell it out? Bet you still get yourself in a heap of trouble with the ladies.” Jessie knelt down beside the old man. His smile grew wider; such proximity to a beautiful woman was to be savored.
“I do like Americans,” the old man said. “More and more.”
“And Americans like you,” Jessie said, taking his forearm and squeezing it gently. “At least this one does.”
He drew in a deep breath, inhaling her perfume. “My dear, you smell like the Tokaj of the emperors.”
“I’m sure you say that to all the girls,” she said, pouting.
He looked severe for a moment. “Certainly not,” he said. Then he smiled again. “Only the pretty ones.”
“I bet you knew some pretty girls from Molnár once upon a time,” she said.
He shook his head. “I grew up farther up the Tisza. Nearer Sárospatak. I moved here only in the fifties. Already, no more Molnár. Just rocks and stones and trees. My son, you see, belongs to the generation of the disappointed. A csalódottak. People like me, who survived Béla Kun and Miklós Horthy and Ferenc Szálasi and Mátyás Rákosi—we know when to be grateful. We never had great expectations. So we cannot be greatly disappointed. I have a son who pours beer for Ruthenians all day, but do you see me complaining?”
“We really should be getting along now,” Janson put in.
Jessie’s eyes did not leave the old man’s. “Well, things used to be a whole lot different, I know that. Didn’t there used to be some baron from these parts, some old Magyar nobleman?”
“Count Ferenczi-Novak’s lands used to stretch up that mountainside.” He gestured vaguely.
“Now that must have been a sight. A castle and everything?”
“Once,” he said, distractedly. He was not eager for her to leave. “A castle and everything.”
“Gosh, I wonder if there’d be anybody alive who might have known that count guy. Ferenczi-Novak, was it?”
The old man was silent a moment, his features looking nearly Asiatic in repose. “Well,” he said. “There’s the old woman, Grandma Gitta. Gitta Békesi. Can speak English, too. They say she learned as a girl when she worked in the castle. You know how it is—the Russian noblewomen always insisted on speaking French, the Hungarian noblewomen always insisted on speaking English. Everybody always wants to sound like what they aren’t … .”
“Békesi, you said?” Jessie prompted gently.
“Maybe not such a good idea. Most people say she lives in the past. I can’t promise she’s all there. But she’s all Magyar. Which is more than you can say for some.” He laughed, a phlegm-rattling laugh. “Lives in an old farmhouse, the second left, and then another left, up around the bend.”
“Can we tell her you sent us?”
“Better not,” he said. “I don’t want her cross at me. She doesn’t like strangers much.” He laughed again. “And that’s an understatement!”
“Well, you know what we say in America,” Jessie said, giving him a soulful look. “There are no strangers here, only friends we haven’t met.”
The son, his white apron still stretched around his round belly, stepped onto the porch with a look of smoldering resentment. “That’s another thing about you Americans,” he sneered. “You have an infinite capacity for self-delusion.”
Situated halfway up a gently sloping hill, the old twostory brick farmhouse looked like thousands of others that dotted the countryside. It could have been a century old, or two, or three. Once, it might have housed a prosperous peasant and his family. But, as a closer approach made clear, the years had not been kind to it. The roof had been replaced with sheets of rusting, corrugated steel. Trees and vines grew wild around the house, blocking off many of the windows. The tiny attic windows, beneath the roof, had a cataract haze; at some point glass had been replaced with plastic, which was starting to decompose in the sun. A few fissures ran from the foundation halfway up the side of the front wall. Shutters were encrusted with peeling paint. It was hard to believe that anyone lived here. Janson recalled the old man’s amused look, the laughter in his eyes, and wondered whether he had played some Magyar prank on them.
“I think that’s what you call a fixer-upper,” Jessie said.
They pulled the Lancia off to the side of the road—a road that was hardly deserving of the name, for its pavement was crumbled and pitted by neglect. Proceeding on foot, they made their way down what had once been a cow path, now almost impassable with overgrown brambles. The house was nearly a mile down the slope, the very picture of neglect.
/> As they approached the entrance, though, Janson heard a noise. An eerie, low rumble. After a moment, he recognized it as the growl of a dog. And then they heard a throaty bark.
Through narrow slot glass set into the door, he saw the white figure springing impatiently. It was a Kuvasz, an ancient Hungarian breed, used as a guard dog for more than a millennium. The breed was little known in the West, but it was all too well known to Janson, who years ago had had an encounter with one. Like other canines bred to be guard dogs—mastiffs, pit bulls, Alsatians, Dobermans—they were fiercely protective of their masters and aggressive toward strangers. A fifteenth-century Magyar king was said to trust only his Kuvasz dogs, not people. The breed had a noble build, with its protruding forechest, powerful musculature, long muzzle, and thick white coat. But Janson had seen such white fur stained with human blood. He knew what a slathering Kuvasz was capable of when roused to action. The incisors were sharp, the jaws powerful, and its light-footed stance could instantly become a pounce that seemed to turn the animal into nothing but muscle and teeth.
Gitta Békesi’s animal was not the giant creature spoken of in ancient times; it was three feet tall and 120 pounds, Janson estimated. At the moment, it seemed to be pure hostile energy. Few creatures were as deadly as an enraged Kuvasz.
“Mrs. Békesi?” Janson called out.
“Go away!” a quavering voice replied.
“That’s a Kuvasz, isn’t it?” Janson said. “What a handsome animal! There’s nothing like them, is there?”
“That handsome animal would like nothing so much as to clamp its jaws around your throat,” the old woman said, her voice gaining resolve. It floated through the open window; she herself remained in the shadows.
“It’s just that we’ve traveled a long, long way,” Jessie said. “From America? You see, my grandfather, he came from this village called Molnár. People say you’re the one person who might be able to tell us something about the place.”
There was a long pause, silent save for the rasping growl of the enraged guard dog.