The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,176

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 Molnar was near the Tisza River, between Miskolc and Nyiregyhaza. 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 Molnar.

"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 Molnar 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 Molnar."

"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 Paloc," 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