She had a list of missing information that might help them unravel the mystery of the Hungarian philanthropist. Peter Novak’s father, Count Ferenczi-Novak, was said to have been obsessively fearful for his child’s safety. Fielding had told Janson that the count had made enemies who, he was convinced, would seek to revenge themselves against his scion. Is that what had finally happened, half a century later? The Cambridge don’s words had the keenness of a blade: The old nobleman may have been paranoid, but as the old saw has it, even paranoids have enemies. She wanted to retrace the count’s movements back in those fateful years when the Hungarian government underwent such bloody tumult. Were there visa records that might indicate private trips that Novak’s father had made, with or without his son? But the most important information they could get would be genealogical: Peter Novak was said to be concerned with protecting the surviving members of his family—a typical sentiment among those who had seen such destruction in their tenderest years. Yet who were these relations—were there surviving cousins with whom he might have kept in touch? The family history of Count Ferenczi-Novak might be mired in obscurity, but it would repose somewhere in the vastness of Hungary’s National Archives. If they had the names of these unknown relatives and could locate them, they might get an answer to the most vexing question of all: was the real Peter Novak alive or dead?

Janson dropped her off in front of the National Archives building; he had some dealings of his own to conduct. Years in the field had given him an instinct for where to find the black-market vendors of false identity papers and other instruments that could come in handy. He might or might not get lucky, he told her, but decided he might as well give it a try.

Now Jessica Kincaid, dressed simply in jeans and a forest green polo shirt, found herself inside an entrance hall, scanning a chart of the Archives’ holdings that hung beside a vast and intimidating list of sections.

Archives of the Hungarian Chancellery (1414–1848) I. “B.”

Records of Government Organs between 1867 and 1945 II. “L.”

Government Organs of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919) II. “M.”

Records of the Hungarian Working People’s Party (MDP) and the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) VII. “N.”

Archivum Regnicolaris (1222–1988) I. “O.”

Judicial Archives (13th century–1869) I. “P.” Archives of Families, Corporations and Institutions (1527–20th century).

And the list went on.