The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,182

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 overroast 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 Molnar 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 palinka."

"I'm fine, ma'am."

Gitta Bekesi 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,