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 twostory 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 sun. A few fissures ran from the foundation halfway up the side of the front wall. Shutters were encrusted with peeling paint. It was hard to believe that anyone lived here. Janson recalled the old man’s amused look, the laughter in his eyes, and wondered whether he had played some Magyar prank on them.

“I think that’s what you call a fixer-upper,” Jessie said.

They pulled the Lancia off to the side of the road—a road that was hardly deserving of the name, for its pavement was crumbled and pitted by neglect. Proceeding on foot, they made their way down what had once been a cow path, now almost impassable with overgrown brambles. The house was nearly a mile down the slope, the very picture of neglect.

As they approached the entrance, though, Janson heard a noise. An eerie, low rumble. After a moment, he recognized it as the growl of a dog. And then they heard a throaty bark.

Through narrow slot glass set into the door, he saw the white figure springing impatiently. It was a Kuvasz, an ancient Hungarian breed, used as a guard dog for more than a millennium. The breed was little known in the West, but it was all too well known to Janson, who years ago had had an encounter with one. Like other canines bred to be guard dogs—mastiffs, pit bulls, Alsatians, Dobermans—they were fiercely protective of their masters and aggressive toward strangers. A fifteenth-century Magyar king was said to trust only his Kuvasz dogs, not people. The breed had a noble build, with its protruding forechest, powerful musculature, long muzzle, and thick white coat. But Janson had seen such white fur stained with human blood. He knew what a slathering Kuvasz was capable of when roused to action. The incisors were sharp, the jaws powerful, and its light-footed stance could instantly become a pounce that seemed to turn the animal into nothing but muscle and teeth.