The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,181

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 Bekesi 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 itself 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 snakeskin-like 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 Molnar, his place of birth. The population of Molnar 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 Bekesi 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 Bekesi says nothing. No, I tell you one thing: there was no Kis family in Molnar."

"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.

Bekesi 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."

Bekesi 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