The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,178

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 Molnar once upon a time," she said.

He shook his head. "I grew up farther up the Tisza. Nearer Sarospatak. I moved here only in the fifties. Already, no more Molnar. Just rocks and stones and trees. My son, you see, belongs to the generation of the disappointed. A csalodottak. People like me, who survived B锚la Kun and Miklos Horthy and Perene Szalasi and Matyas Rakosi - 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 Bekesi. 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... "

"Bekesi, 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 two-story 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