The Cathar Secret: A Lang Reilly Thriller (45 page)

     Gurt, most of her face hidden by oversized sunglasses, sipped from a frosty glass of beer. In a chair next to her, Paige Charles watched Wynn-Three and Manfred straddling a pink plastic float, paddling furiously from one end of the pool to another.

     "Where is Wynton?" Gurt asked.

     Paige shrugged. "Where else but at his office? Ever since he started his own practice, he's put in even longer hours than before. He says it's different when you're working for your own clients. I say you're just as gone either way. He plans to be here before dinner."

     Gurt nodded, wondering why anyone would choose an office to outside on a summer day like this, no matter what the pay.

     "I still cannot thank you enough," Paige said.

     Gurt shrugged. "It does me glad we were able to help. You would have done for us the same thing."

     Paige smiled, considering the improbability of her and Wynton tracking across foreign countries to rescue a kidnapped child and defeat criminals. At least, she thought that was what Gurt and Lang had done. Neither had been overly talkative on the subject. All Paige knew for certain was that Gurt had entrusted Manfred to her care and left the city, presumably to join Lang in whatever effort he was making to find Wynn-Three. Two days later, the phone had rung and Gurt had announced that Wynn-Three would be arriving with her and Lang on a private flight from Frankfurt, no explanation offered.

     Paige had wept when she saw her son emerge from the Gulfstream. The child had lost at least ten pounds and had that faraway, empty stare that she associated with veterans suffering what used to be known as combat fatigue. It had been almost a week before the little boy had spoken more than single words.

     "He is all right now, your Wynn-Three?"

     Gurt's question snapped Paige back to the present. "Yes, almost totally. Dr. Weiner, his child psychologist, says he will be fine. In fact, he seems to have forgotten whatever happened to him while he was gone, some sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome, she says. He wakes up occasionally at night screaming, but those incidents are getting further and further apart. Dr. Weiner says they will eventually disappear."

     Gurt nodded as though digesting this information. "And the prior life he remembered?"

     "Gone completely along with all the phobias it brought with it."

     Between the pool and the barbeque pit, Lang had set up a bar under a huge beach umbrella: Cokes, lemonade, and iced tea on one end, adult beverages on the other, including a keg of draft beer. Francis, clad in an incongruous combination of Madras Bermuda shorts and black clerical shirt, stood beside Lang, sipping from sweating beer glasses as they surveyed the happy chaos.

     "
Rudis indigestaque moles
, great party," Francis observed.

     "The best kind of party, a rude and undigested mass," Lang agreed.

     "I just wonder what possessed you to invite the whole neighborhood."

     Lang shrugged as he lifted the glass to his lips. "Easy. Most people have plans for the Fourth, plans to go out of town, are already on summer vacation, or attend one of the functions the private clubs sponsor. I can invite everyone without worrying about an overpowering response."

     "And you get credit for the invitation."

     "Your perspicacity never ceases to amaze me. And I repay a year's worth of social obligations." Lang bent over the keg to check the pressure. "Have you heard from Rome?"

     The smile vanished from Francis's face. "As a matter of fact, I have."

     "And?"

     "Father Steinmann is gone, joined a monastery somewhere in Tuscany. 'Health reasons' was the explanation."

     "Steinmann was only the foot soldier," Lang said bitterly. "I doubt a mere Jesuit priest has the authority to order the surveillance teams or hit squads."

     Francis was staring into his glass. "Someone agrees with you, someone high up in the Vatican pecking order. Even though Steinmann claimed the sole responsibility for trying to suppress knowledge of those Tibetan scrolls and silencing Wynn-Three in the process, his boss, Cardinal diLucci, has also joined a monastery, the only member of the College of Cardinals to ever do so as far as I know. I doubt it was his idea."

     Beer forgotten for the moment, Lang stared at his friend. "But, how . . . who squealed? I mean, I doubt the cardinal went out of his way to admit his complicity. Men that powerful rarely admit mistakes."

     "The Holy Father didn't get to the pope's throne by being naive. When the old priest you frightened so badly in the Secret Archives told his story and Steinmann made what could well have been a deathbed confession, I'd guess His Holiness connected the dots. They made a picture of the cardinal."

     Lang took a long, pensive drink. "I guess that does it: the people who wanted Wynn-Three for what he might lead them to are gone, and those who wanted him because of a possible reincarnation are too busy chanting, praying, and meditating to do him harm."

     "You left out the horrible hours, the hard beds, and the poor food."

     Lang grinned. "Speaking of food, that pig has about three and a half hours to go. I expect everybody will be happy to see it done."

     Francis drained his glass before stepping over to hold it under the keg's tap. "With the possible exception of the pig."

     Then he grew serious. "That leaves only one question unanswered."

     "And that would be . . . ?"

     "The translation of those scrolls. I can't see any good it can do, and a great deal of harm could come from it were it in the wrong hands."

     Lang grinned, "For once, we agree. After thinking about it for months, I decided on the best use for those pages."

     "Which is?"

     Lang pointed to the aromatic smoke rising from the barbecue pit. "It worked even better than newspaper as a fire starter."

     Francis smiled. "That's one pig I intend to enjoy."

D
ON'T LOOK FOR OBERKOENIGSBURG ON ANY
map: I made it up by combining Germany's Zugspitze, Austria's Kitzbühel, and a couple of other slopes and resorts where I spent about as much time on crutches as on skis.

     Dr. Aribert Heim, on the other hand, is quite real as is the brief biography given. He really did practice his nefarious "experiments" at Mauthausen concentration camp. In 2009, the Baden-Württemberg state police unit that investigates Nazi-era crimes found evidence he had died under an assumed name in Egypt in 1992. He was conveniently buried in a paupers' cemetery in Cairo, where the graves are reused every few years. There's no body, no DNA to test as was done in the case of the Angel of Death of Auschwitz, Josef Mengele, whose remains were found in Brazil and were the first to be identified by DNA testing. Heim would be about 93 by now. The Simon Wiesenthal Center suspects the reports of Heim's death might be, in Mark Twain's words, greatly exaggerated. I thought his life and questionable death made it worthwhile to use him in this story. The Center still offers a $450,000 reward for finding an alive Dr. Heim.

     Nicolas Notovitch is, or was, real, too. He supposedly translated the scrolls while recuperating from a broken leg in a monastery of Tibetan Buddhist monks located just across the border in India. In 1894, he published a book,
The Unknown Life of Jesus.
Other than a few excerpts, I have had little luck in running down a copy if indeed it was published
in English. Even in part, it is clear from parts of
Unknown Life
that Issa studied both Hinduism and Buddhism and seemed to make no distinction between the two.

     Other "authorities" have claimed to have seen the scrolls, but my research failed to find anything other than what any lawyer would call hearsay evidence.

     There is supposedly also evidence that, surviving the crucifixion, Christ fled the Roman Empire and returned to India. Because this theory had nothing to do with the tale I was telling, I made no reference to it.

     Although Rothenburg sounds like another creation of the author, it really exists and is a delight for medievalists. Be prepared to travel light, though. Vehicular traffic is largely
Verboten.

     
The Search for Bridey Murphy
is a real book that, half a century ago, stirred up a firestorm of controversy on the question of reincarnation, a subject I have tried to treat evenhandedly and on which my opinion is my own. If you're interested, you might want to look at the following list of books.

     There is no directory of prisoners at Auschwitz, either by name or number. Nor did a Google search find one at the several Holocaust museums both here and abroad. In view of the efficiency for which the Germans are famous and the fact that each prisoner was logged in and given a number, I find it difficult to accept that such a list or lists do not exist somewhere.

     Special thanks to Leonard Buccellato, PhD, child psychologist, for leading me by the hand through the probable diagnosis one of his peers might have made of Wynn-Three as well as what can and cannot be done with hypnosis. (Sorry, Len. I may have stretched it a bit). Also to Karen Branch of New Attitudes Hypnosis who was kind enough to let me sit in on one of her sessions. Besides explaining how hypnosis works, she tells me that memories from other lives are not uncommon among her patients. Her neat home office bears no resemblance to the rather shabby office of the hypnotist in this book. Reincarnation or the nonreasoning subconscious adopting something from TV or the movies? I had a lot of help from Michelle McDonald, too, who is very patient with a cyber-illiterate like me. As always, I owe a great deal of the plot of this yarn to my wife, Suzanne, my muse, biggest booster, and harshest critic, who turns over history's rocks to see what might be under there. Thank you, too, Chris
Fortunato, my agent who found this tale a home. Sometimes we just get lucky. That was the case when I decided to sign on with Chris because he shared a name with my favorite restaurant in Rome. Had I done hours of research, I could not be happier with his representation.

     When I finished this book in 2009, my then-agent had retired and my then-publisher had stopped paying its writers. Along came Chris and found Turner Publishing. I'm hoping Lang Reilly has found a permanent home here.

     There's also to the painstaking and patient editing by Christina Roth and Beau Wilson. They are as quick to catch a cumbersome phrase as the misspelling of a historical name. Their efforts will, unfortunately, go unnoticed by the reader. But then, that's part of their job. A big "thank you," Christina and Beau, for a job beautifully done.

     A very special thanks to you, the reader. Without you and your patronage, e-mails, and comments on various sites, the Lang Reilly yarns would not exist.

     Though I took nothing intact from Tom Shroder's
Old Souls
, a recounting of Dr. Ian Stevenson's journeys and research into reincarnation, I did use a number of ideas inspired by the book, as well as Elizabeth Clare Prophet's
Reincarnation: The Missing Link in Christianity
and
Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
, by Bryan L. Weiss, MD.

September 2013
G.L.                 

A Lang Reilly Thriller

COMING SOON

L
ANG HAD KEPT THE MONDEO FLOOR-BOARDED
despite virtually driving blind in the fog. He screeched to a stop in front of the hotel, sprung from the car, and dashed through the door, throwing it open so violently he nearly hit an elderly couple about to exit the lobby. Both astonished and angered at his apparent indifference to what could have been a nasty accident, they watched him slam a palm against the elevator button, mutter curses, and sprint for the stairwell.

     He climbed four flights of stairs in what, had he thought about it, might have been world-record time. Forcing himself to slow down for the sake of stealth, he slid along, back pressed to the corridor's wall, until he reached 410, his room.

     For an instant he was depleted by his four-story sprint. Then he leaned around the doorframe, placing his ear as close as possible to the door.

     Nothing.

     He reached out and touched the wood.

     The door swung open, unlocked.

     Lang flung himself inside, squatting to make as small a target as possible.

     He need not have bothered. He was the only living creature in the room. Still, he called Gurt's name only to be answered by silence, a terrifying sound.

     He stood.

     The bed was rumpled as though she had made good on her threat to take a nap. He took a step and something crunched underfoot. Kneeling, he saw shards of glass. A quick glance found a water pitcher and two unbroken glasses on the floor. Where . . . ? Oh yeah, a pitcher and two glasses had been on the dresser. But these shards of glass didn't match. They had come from a small cylindrical object with what appeared to be calibrations on it.

     The realization of what he was looking at made his stomach churn.

     Beside the dresser a small, ugly, fabric-covered chair lay on its side.

     Now that he knew what he was looking for, small signs of a struggle were everywhere: a lone woman's sandal just this side of the threshold to the bathroom; clothes, perhaps spread out on the bed, now dumped in piles on the floor; a handbag vomiting its contents.

     Most telling: a quarter-sized drop of reddish brown on the tiles of the bath, now going tacky. Someone had shed blood.

is an American author of thrillers, including the popular Lang Reilly series. He has also written several short stories and was a nominee for Writer of the Year - Fiction by the Georgia Writers Association. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, where he still resides, Loomis is a former racecar driver and is licensed as a commercial pilot. He currently works as a lawyer specializing in commercial litigation. Over half a million copies of his books are in print, and several have been translated into multiple foreign languages.