Jessie looked at Janson and whispered. “That dog’s really got you spooked, hasn’t it?”
“Ask me sometime about Ankara, 1978,” Janson replied quietly.
“I know about Ankara.”
“Trust me,” Janson said. “You don’t.”
Finally, the woman broke her silence. “Your grandfather,” she said. “What was his name?”
“Kis is what the family was called,” she said, repeating the deliberately generic name. “But I’m more interested in getting a feel for the place, the world he grew up in. Not necessarily him in particular. Really, I just want something to remember … .”
“You lie,” she said. “You lie!” Her voice was a wail. “Strangers come with lies. You should be ashamed of yourself. Now go! Go, or I will give you something to remember.” They heard the distinctive sound of a shotgun cartridge being chambered.
“Oh shit,” Jessie whispered. “What now?”
Janson shrugged. “When all else fails? The truth.”
“Hey, lady,” Jessie said. “You ever hear of a Count Janós Ferenczi-Novak?”
A long silence ensued. In a voice like sandpaper, the woman demanded, “Who are you?”
Ahmad Tabari was impressed by the rapidity with which the intelligence chief worked. It was now their third meeting, and already Al-Mustashar had started to work his magic.
“We work in phases,” the Libyan told him, his eyes bright. “A shipment of small arms is even now on its way toward your men at Nepura.” He referred to the port in the northwesternmost point of Kenna. “These arrangements were not easy to broker. I assume that there will be no difficulties with interception. The Anuran gunboats have created some difficulty for your people, have they not?”
The Kagama warrior was cautious in his reply. “One steps back to step forward. Even the Prophet’s struggles did not always go smoothly. Otherwise, they would not have been struggles. Remember the Truce of Hudaybiyah.” He referred to the compact that Muhammad had made with the denizens of Khaybar, not far from Medina.
Ibrahim Maghur nodded. “Only when the Prophet’s troops were strong enough did he break the pact, overrun the Khaybar rulers, and expel the infidels from Arabia.” His eyes flashed. “Are your troops strong enough?”
“With your help, and Allah’s, they will be.”
“You are a Caliph indeed,” said Colonel Maghur.
“When first we met, you told me that history was made by great men,” the Kagama said after a while.
“This is what I believe.”
“It would follow that history can also be unmade by great men. Men of power and prominence whose imperial ambitions masquerade as humanitarian compassion. Men who seek to outmaneuver righteous resistance through preachments of peace—who will do whatever they can to suppress the violence that ultimate justice requires.”
Maghur nodded slowly. “Your discernment as well as your tactical genius will guarantee your place in the history books, and the ultimate triumph of your struggles on behalf of ummah. I understand whom you speak of. He is indeed a true enemy of revolution. Alas, our attempts to strike at him have so far been futile.”
“I cannot forget that he was once my prisoner.”
“And yet he slipped from your clutches. He is as slippery as the serpent in the garden.”
Ahmad Tabari’s face tightened at the memory. All his reverses could be traced back to that humiliating blow. The jewel in his crown had been stolen by a thief in the night. Until then, nothing had marred Tabari’s aura of inexorable triumph and serene confidence: his followers believed that Allah had himself blessed the Caliph’s every move. Yet just a day shy of Id ul-Kebir came the shocking invasion of the Caliph’s newly claimed stronghold—and the seizure of his legendary captive. Nothing had gone smoothly since.
“The serpent must be hunted and killed before progress can resume,” Maghur said.
Tabari’s gaze was distant, but his mind was furiously engaged. A movement like his depended upon the sense that ultimate success was inevitable: the event had shaken that air of inevitability. The diminishment of morale was subsequently exploited by the incursions of the Republic of Anura’s troops—and every successful raid of theirs compounded the loss of confidence among the Caliph’s followers. It was a vicious circle. A bold act was essential to break out of it. The Libyan understood that. Now Tabari looked at him closely. “And you will provide support?”
“My position in my government is such that I must operate through many veils. Tripoli cannot be connected to your activities. There are others, however, whose hospitality can be turned to your advantage.”
“You refer, again, to the Islamic Republic of Mansur,” the gimlet-eyed guerrilla said. Mansur had originated as a secessionist movement within Yemen, spearheaded by a charismatic mullah: if the breakaway was not fiercely contested by the Yemeni forces, it was because nothing of value was being lost. Confined largely to the shifting sands of the Rub’ al-Khali desert, Mansur was a desperately poor country, with few exports other than khat and some paltry handicrafts. The government itself had little to offer to its citizens save a Shiite version of Sharia: piety in medieval garb. Yet if its material exports were scant, it had begun to make a name for itself as an exporter of radical Islam, and the revolutionary fervor it entrained.
Ibrahim Maghur smiled. “On certain occasions, the holy men of Mansur have spoken to me of their security concerns. I have taken the liberty of telling them that I have identified somebody who is both devoted to Allah and truly expert in such matters. You will accompany me to Khartoum, where I have arranged special air transport for you. You will be received in the desert town they call the capital and will, I believe, find them a welcoming people indeed. At that point, you can write your own ticket.”
“And they will help me find the serpent?”
Maghur shook his head. “I will help you find the serpent. We will remain in close contact, you and I. Your Mansur hosts will merely provide you with the official identity and mobility you will need. In short, Mansur will be the stalking horse upon which you will ride.”
A gust of desert air whipped at their loose-fitting garments.
“They say if you strike at a king, you must kill him,” the Caliph mused.
“Your enemies will soon learn the truth of that,” the Libyan said. “Through his hirelings, Peter Novak struck at you—but failed to kill you. Now you will strike at him … .”
“And kill him.” The words were spoken as simple fact.
“Indeed,” Maghur said. “Allah’s own justice demands it. Yet time grows short, for the thirsts of your revolutionary followers are great.”
“And what will slake that thirst?”
“The blood of the infidel,” Maghur said. “It will flow like juice from the sweetest pomegranate, and with it your cause will regain its life-spirit.”
“The blood of the infidel,” the Caliph repeated.
“The only question is whom you can trust to … extract it.”
“Trust?” The Caliph blinked slowly.
“What surrogate will you dispatch?”
“Surrogate?” The Kagama warrior appeared faintly affronted. “This is not a task to be delegated. Recall, it was the Prophet himself who led the onslaught against Khaybar.”
The Libyan’s eyes widened with what seemed to be even greater respect for the rebel leader.
“The blood of the infidel will indeed flow,” the Caliph said, and he held out his hands. “These palms will brim with Peter Novak’s blood.”
“And it will bear the blessings of Allah.” The Libyan bowed. “Come with me now. The stalking horse must be saddled. Mansur awaits you, el Caliph.”
Chapter Twenty-six
With supreme reluctance, Gitta Békesi finally agreed to let them enter the decaying farmhouse where she now lived alone with her savage dog. The dog’s reluctance seemed greater still: though it obediently stood back, one could tell from its rigid posture that, at the slightest signal from its mistress, it would throw itse
lf at the visitors in a frenzy of bristling fur and snapping teeth.
The old crone shared the decrepitude of her lodgings. The skin hung loosely from her skull; pale, dry scalp showed through her thinning hair; her eyes were sunken, hard and glittering behind loose snakeskinlike folds. If age had softened what had been hard, it had hardened what had been soft, turning her high cheeks gaunt and hollow, her mouth into a cruel slash.
It was the face of a survivor.
From the many articles Janson had digested, he knew that Peter Novak was eight years old in 1945, when clashing forces commanded by Hitler and Stalin essentially liquidated the farming village of Molnár, his place of birth. The population of Molnár had always been small enough—under a thousand, in the early forties. Nearly all perished. Even aside from her age, could someone have experienced such a cataclysmic event and not still bear the impress of the trauma?
In the large sitting room, a fire burned slowly in the fireplace. On the wooden mantel above it, a sepia photograph in a tarnished silver frame showed a beautiful young woman. Gitta Békesi as she once was: a robust peasant girl, exuding rude health, and something else, too—a sly sensuality. It gazed upon them, cruelly mocking the ravages of age.
Jessie walked over to it. “What a beauty you were,” she said simply.
“Beauty can be a curse,” the old woman said. “Fortunately, it is always a fleeting one.” She made a clicking noise with her tongue and the dog came over and sat at her side. She reached down and rubbed its flanks with her clawlike hands.
“I understand that you once worked for the count,” Janson said. “Count Ferenczi-Novak.”
“I do not speak of these things,” she said curtly. She sat in a caned rocking chair, the webbing of the seat half torn. Behind her, resting against the wall like a walking stick, was her old shotgun. “I live alone and ask nothing more than that I be left alone. I tell you that you are wasting your time. So. I have let you in. Now you can say that you have sat with the old woman and asked her your questions. Now you can tell everyone concerned that Gitta Békesi says nothing. No, I tell you one thing: there was no Kis family in Molnár.”
“Wait a minute—‘everyone concerned’? Who’s concerned?”
“Not me,” she said, and staring straight ahead, she fell silent.
“Are those chestnuts?” Jessie asked, looking at a bowl on a small table by the woman’s chair.
Békesi nodded.
“Could I have one? I feel so rude asking, but I know you just roasted those, ’cause this whole place of yours smells like it, and it’s just making my mouth water.”
Békesi glanced at the bowl and nodded. “They’re still hot,” she said approvingly.
“Makes me think of my grandma somehow—we’d come to her house and she’d roast us some chestnuts … .” She beamed at the memory. “And it made every day seem like Christmas.” Jessie peeled a chestnut and ate it greedily. “This is perfect. Just a perfect chestnut. This alone was worth the five-hour drive.”
The old woman nodded, her manner noticeably less aloof. “They get too dry when you over-roast them.”
“And too hard when you don’t roast them long enough,” Jessie put in. “But you got it down to a science.”
A small, contented smile settled on the old woman’s face.
“Do all your visitors beg you for ’em?” Jessie asked.
“I get no visitors.”
“None at all? Can’t hardly believe that.”
“Very few. Very, very few.”
Jessie nodded. “And how do you handle the nosy ones?”
“Some years ago, a young journalist from England came here,” the old woman said, looking off. “So many questions he had. He was writing something about Hungary during the war and after.”
“Is that right?” Janson asked, his eyes intent. “I’d love to read what he wrote.”
The crone snorted. “He never wrote anything. Just a couple of days after his visit, he was killed in an accident in Budapest. The accident rates are terrible there, everyone says so.”
The temperature seemed to drop in the room as she spoke.
“But I always wondered,” the old woman said.
“He ask about this count, too?” Jessie prompted.
“Have another chestnut,” the old woman said.
“Could I really? You don’t mind?”
The old woman nodded, pleased. After a while she said, “He was our count. You could not live in Molnár and not know the count. The land you worked was his land, or once had been. One of the very old families—he traced his ancestry back to one of the seven tribes that formed the Hungarian nation in the year 1000. His ancestral estate was here, even though he spent a great deal of time in the capital.” She lifted her small dark eyes toward the ceiling. “They say I am an old woman who lives in the past. Perhaps it is so. Such a troubled land we lived in. Ferenczi-Novak understood that better than most.”
“Did he, now?” Jessie said.
She regarded her quietly for a moment. “Perhaps you will join me in a small glass of pálinka.”
“I’m fine, ma’am.”
Gitta Békesi stared ahead stonily and said nothing, evidently offended.
Jessie looked at Janson and then back at the old woman. “Well, if you’re having some.”
The old woman slowly rose and walked unsteadily to the glass-front sideboard. There, she lifted an enormous jug filled with a colorless liquid, and poured a small quantity into two shot glasses.
Jessie took one. The old woman settled back into her chair and watched as Jessie had a sip.
Explosively, she sprayed the liquid out. It was as involuntary as a sneeze. “Jeez, I’m sorry!” she got out in a strangled voice.
The old woman smiled mischievously.
Jessie was still struggling for breath. “What the …” Jessie gasped, her eyes watering.
“Around here, we make it ourselves,” the woman said. “A hundred and ninety proof. A bit stiff for you?”
“Little bit,” Jessie said hoarsely.
The old woman swallowed the rest of the brandy, and looked more relaxed than she had been. “It all goes back to the Treaty of Trianon, in 1920, and the lost territories. We had to give up almost three-quarters of our land to the Romanians and the Yugoslavs. Can you imagine what that felt like?”
“Like an amputation,” Janson offered.
“That’s it—there was a ghostly sense that a part of you was there and yet not there. Nem, nem soha! It was the national motto, and it means ‘No, no never.’ It is the answer to the question ‘Can it remain like this?’ Every stationmaster would inscribe the catechism in flowers in his garden. Justice for Hungary! But nobody in the world took it seriously, this thirst for the lost territories. Nobody but Hitler. Such madness—like riding a tiger. In Budapest, the government makes friends with this man. Soon they are in the belly of the beast. It was a mistake for which this country would suffer so terribly. But nobody suffered more than we did.”
“And were you around when …”
“All the houses were set on fire. The people who lived here—whose ancestors had worked here as long as anyone could remember—rousted from their beds, their fields, the breakfast tables. Rounded up and forced at gunpoint to walk along the iced-over waters of the Tisza until the ice broke and they fell in. Whole families, walking hand in hand—then, a minute later, drowning, freezing, in the icy waters. They say you could hear the ice cracking all the way up the vineyards. I was in the castle at the time, and it was being shelled. I thought the walls would collapse in on us. Much of it was destroyed. But in the cellars, we were safe. A day later, the army had moved on, and I wandered back to the village of my birth, the only home I had ever known, and—nothing.”
Her voice faded to an inexorable whisper. “Nothing but pillage and destruction. Charred ruins, black embers. The occasional farmhouse on the mountain had escaped destruction. But the village of Molnár, which had survived the Romanian pillage, the Tartars and th
e Turks, was no more. No more. And in the river, so many bodies were floating, like an ice floe. And among them, naked, bloated, bluish, were the bodies of my very own parents.” She raised a hand to her forehead. “When you see what human beings can do to each other, it makes you … ashamed to be alive.”
The two Americans were silent for a moment.
“How did you find yourself in the castle?” Janson asked after a while.
The old woman smiled, remembering. “Janós Ferenczi-Novak—a wonderful man, and so was his Illana. To serve them was a privilege, I never forgot that. You see, my parents and my grandparents and my great-grandparents worked the land. They were peasants, but over time, the nobleman deeded them small parcels of land. They grew potatoes, and grapes, and berries of all sorts. They had hopes for me, I think. I was a pretty little girl. It’s true. They thought if I worked as a servant at the castle, I would learn a thing or two. Perhaps the count would take me with him to Budapest, where I might meet a special man. My mother nurtured these sorts of dreams. She knew one of the women who helped run Ferenczi-Novak’s household, and had her meet her little girl. And one thing led to another, and I met the great man himself, Count Ferenczi-Novak, and his beautiful blue-eyed wife, Illana. The count was spending more and more time in Budapest, in the circles of the government of the Regent Horthy. He was close to Miklós Kállay, who would become prime minister. I think he was some sort of high minister in Kállay’s government. The count was an educated man. The government needed such men as he, and he had a strong sense of public service. But even then, he would spend several weeks at a time in his country estates, in Molnár. A tiny village. A tavern owner. The grocer, a Jew from Hódmezövásárhely. But mostly farmers and woodcutters. Humble folk, eking out a living along the Tisza River. Then came the day my mother took me to the castle on the hill—the castle we had somehow imagined, growing up, to be part of the mountain itself.”
“It must be hard to remember something that happened so long ago,” Jessie ventured.
The old woman shook her head. “Yesterday is sunk into the mists of the past. What happened six decades ago, I can see as if it is happening now. The long, long path, past his stables. The stone gateposts with their worn carvings. And then, inside—the curving staircase, the worn steps. It took my breath away. Drunken guests, people said, would slip on those worn steps. Later, when I joined the household staff, I would overhear Countess Illana talking about such things—she was so funny, and so dismissive about it all. She never liked the staghorns mounted on the walls—did any castle not have them? she protested. The paintings, Teniers, Teniers the Younger. ‘Like every castle in Central Europe,’ I once heard the countess say to someone. The furniture, ‘Very late Franz Josef,’ she would say. And how dark it was in the main hall. You didn’t want to put a hole through the frescoes, you see, to put in electric lighting. So everything glowed with candlelight. In that hall, I remember, there was a grand piano, of rosewood. With the most delicate lace cloth on top, and a silver candelabra that had to be carefully polished every Saturday. And outside it was as beautiful. I was dizzy with excitement the first time I walked through the English-style garden in the back. There were overgrown catalpa trees, with their misshapen limbs, littering pods everywhere, and pollarded acacias and walnut trees. The countess was very proud of her jardin anglais. She taught us to call everything by its proper name. In English, yes, English. Another member of her household drilled me in this language. Illana enjoyed addressing people in English, as if she were living in a British country house, and so we learned.” She looked oddly serene. “That English garden. The smell of freshly mown grass, the fragrance of roses, and hay—it was like Paradise to me. I know people say I live in the past, but it was a past worth living in.”