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Chapters (54)
  1. Title Page
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Prologue
  4. PART ONE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. PART TWO
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. PART THREE
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. PART FOUR
  39. Chapter Thirty-two
  40. Chapter Thirty-three
  41. Chapter Thirty-four
  42. Chapter Thirty-five
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Epilogue
  52. ALSO BY ROBERT LUDLUM
  53. Critical Praise for Robert Ludlum
  54. Copyright Page

A few moments elapsed before he recognized the sound that drifted up the hill. It, too, was faint and nearly imperceptible, and yet as his senses tuned to the auditory stimulus, he recognized the source, and his heart began to thud.

It was a woman screaming.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-seven

Oh Christ, no!

The thorny privet and overgrown vines whipped and scratched at Janson as he raced down the winding hillside path. He was mindful only of his footfalls as he vaulted over boulders and burst through bushes; a misplaced step in the treacherous terrain could result in a sprain or worse. He had ordered Jessie to return to the Lancia posthaste: it would be a disaster if their enemies reached it first. Her trek was uphill, but she ran like a gazelle and would get there soon.

A few minutes later, only slightly winded, Janson arrived at the old woman’s dilapidated farmhouse. The screams had ceased, replaced by something even more ominous: utter silence.

The door was ajar, and inside was a spectacle that Janson knew would be forever etched on his mind. The noble Kuvasz lay on its side; it had been disemboweled, and its viscera spilled from its belly onto the flatweave rug, in a glistening, red mound, steaming faintly in the chilly air. Splayed in the nearby rocking chair was Gitta Békesi, a woman who had survived Red Terrors and White, the annihilating clashes of two world wars, the tanks of 1956, outbreaks and plagues of man and nature both. Her face was hidden by her coarse muslin frock, which had been yanked up and over her head, exposing her flaccid torso—and the unspeakable horrors that had been visited upon it. Small, red-rimmed wounds—each corresponding to the plunge of a bayonet, Janson knew—crisscrossed her silvery flesh in a grotesque arrangement. The blades of her assailants had plunged into her dozens of times. On her exposed arms and legs he could see a cluster of red weals caused by the pressure of gripping fingers. The woman had been held down, and tortured with a plunging blade. Were they seeking information from her? Or merely punishing her, sadistically, for the information she had already divulged to him?

What kind of monsters would do such a thing?

Janson’s face felt frozen, numb. He looked around, saw spatters of the dead woman’s blood on the floor and on the walls. The atrocity had occurred just minutes before. Her visitors had been as swift as they were savage.

And where were they now? They could not be far. Was he meant to be their next victim?