The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,157

of course, was impossible to say. Yet what choice was there? Whatever the risks, it was the only way they could ever penetrate the mystery that was Peter Novak.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
He was baiting a trap.

The thought did little to calm Janson's nerves, for he knew how often traps caught those who set them. In this phase, his principal weapon would be his own composure. He thus had to steer clear of the pitfalls of anxiety and overconfidence. One could lead to paralysis, the other to stupidity.

Still, if a trap had to be set, he could think of no setting more appropriate. Thirty-five seventeen Miskolc-Lillafiired, Erzsebet setany 1, was a couple of miles west of Miskolc proper, and the only notable building in the resort area of Lillaf眉red. The Palace Hotel, as it was now called, stood near the wooded banks of Lake Hamori, surrounded by a sylvan glade that suggested a long-past feudal Europe of parks and palaces. If the place evoked nostalgia, it was in fact a tribute to it. The completion of the faux hunting castle, in the 1920s, was an imperial project of Admiral Horthy's regime, designed as a monument to the nation's historical glories. The restaurant, fittingly, was named for King Matthias, the fifteenth-century Hungarian warrior-sovereign who led his people to greatness, a greatness that gleamed with the blood of their enemies. In the post-Communist era, the place was swiftly restored to its former opulence. Now it drew vacationers and businessmen from all over the country. A project borne of imperial vainglory had been co-opted by a still more powerful dominion, that of commerce itself.

Paul Janson strode through the lavishly appointed lobby and down to the cellar-style restaurant on the level below. His stomach was tight with tension; food was the last thing on his mind. And yet any sign that he was on edge would only betray him.

"I'm Adam Kurzweil," Janson told the maitre d'hotel, in a well-modulated transatlantic accent. It was the sort of language-school English that was common both to educated citizens of the British Commonwealth - Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa, India - and to affluent Europeans who had received early instruction in the tongue. "Kurzweil" wore a chalk-striped suit and a scarlet tie, and bore himself with the erect hauteur of a businessman used to being deferred to.

The maitre d', dressed in a swallowtail dinner jacket, his black hair oiled and combed into obsidian waves, gave Janson a sharp, appraising look before his face creased into a professional smile. "Your guest is already here," he said. He turned to a younger woman beside him. "She will show you to your table."

Janson nodded blandly. "Thank you," he said.

The table was, as his guest had obviously requested, a discreet corner banquette. The man he was meeting was a resourceful and careful man, or he would not have survived in his particular line of business for as long as he had.

As Janson walked toward the banquette, he concentrated on entering into a character he would have to make wholly his own. First impressions did indeed matter. The man he was meeting, Sandor Lakatos, would be suspicious. As Kurzweil, therefore, he would be more so. It was, he knew, the most effective countermeasure.

Lakatos turned out to be a small, hunched man; the curvature of his upper spine set his head oddly forward on his neck, as if he were tucking in his chin. His cheeks were round, his nose bulbous, and his wattled neck was continuous with his jawline, giving his head a pearlike shape. He was a study in dissipation.

He was also among the biggest arms dealers in Central Europe. His fortunes had risen markedly during the arms embargo of Serbia, when that republic had to seek irregular sources for what was no longer available to it legally. Lakatos had begun his career in long-haul trucking, specializing in produce and then dry goods; his business model, and his infrastructure, required little modification to expand into the armaments trade. That he had agreed to meet with Adam Kurzweil at all was a testament to another factor behind his success: his sheer, unappeasable greed.

Employing a long-disused legend, that of a Canadian principal in a security-services - that is, private militia - company, Janson left calls with a number of businessmen long since retired from the trade. In each instance, the message was the same. A certain Adam Kurzweil, representing a client who could not be named, sought a supplier for an extremely large and lucrative transaction. The Canadian