The Cathar Secret: A Lang Reilly Thriller (28 page)

     Downstairs, Gurt was absorbed in her book club's current selection.

     "What is it this month?" he asked as he took an envelope from the drawer of a book-filled Georgian breakfront.

     "It is the story of a young man, an artist, who falls in love with a beautiful older woman."

     Just the sort of thing to stoke the fantasies of Ansley Park matrons. "And?"

     "She will not leave her husband, so he kills himself."

     "You've already read the ending?"

     "Of course. I do not wish to become attached to a character who dies in the end."

     Lang thought about that for a moment, deciding Dr. Seuss was probably better reading. "You remember where we put the tape recorder?"

     Gurt didn't look up. "
We
put it nowhere.
You
said you were placing it where it would not become lost."

     Lang refrained from commenting on Gurt's Teutonic literalism and opened another drawer. "Eureka!"

     No response from Gurt.

     Lang went into the kitchen, filled a glass with ice, and poured himself a liberal shot of scotch. Setting the glass on the table, he opened the envelope and withdrew a small cassette, which he loaded into the recorder. He touched the play button and listened for the next fifteen minutes, his drink untouched. He then hit rewind and listened again before walking toward the back of the house. When the home had been remodeled, a former cleaning closet under the back stairs had been enlarged enough to hold a chair and a small knee-hole desk for a laptop.

     The room served as Lang's home office even though he still referred to it as "The Closet." Seated, he touched a key and the screen blazed into life, showing a photograph of Manfred and Grumps. Booted up, he called up Google and after viewing several headings, found what he wanted. He squinted at the print on the small screen, nodding as though in agreement with what he saw.

     Minutes later, he collected his drink from the kitchen table and went back into the den. "Listen to this."

     Gurt looked at him over her book. "Listen to what?"

     "It's a copy of the tape that woman recorded while Wynn-Three was hypnotized."

     Resigned to the interruption, Gurt lowered the book. "You cannot simply tell me what is so interesting?"

     Lang sat on the couch facing her. "Okay, I will. The guy Wynn-Three supposedly was in a prior life was a 1940s version of a computer geek at the Auschwitz concentration camp. From the tape, he remembered being transferred to someplace he thought might be Austria."

     Gurt scowled, a normal reaction from most Germans when reminded of something the national memory would very much like to forget. "There is a point to this?"

     Undeterred, Lang plunged forward. "You bet! The reason he was
moved, in the dead of winter, by the way, was to inventory art and jewelry being stored in an old mineshaft."

     "And where was all this treasure? Surely Wynn-Three—or the person he supposedly was—was more specific than 'Austria'?"

     Lang held up the tape recorder. "He speaks with a definite accent. I can't make quite make it out, the place where the stuff was stored in a mine. I thought maybe . . ."

     Gurt sighed, careful to mark her place with the book's dust jacket before setting it down. "Okay, then, play it."

     Lang did.

     Gurt shook her head. "The accent is Polish, not German."

     "And?"

     "
Ober
something. I can't be sure."

     "There must be a dozen towns, cities, and locations in Germany and Austria beginning with that prefix: Oberammergau . . ."

     "It is in Germany."

     "But right on the Austrian border. Then there's Obersalzburg, Oberhausen . . ."

     "And the Oberpfalz district . . ."

     Lang went to the built-in bookcase that lined the wall on either side of the fireplace and pulled out an atlas. He flipped through the pages to the index. "I see eight—no, nine 'Ober's listed for Austria and Germany."

     Gurt sank deeper into her chair. "Perhaps you will tell me why you have interest?"

     Lang replaced the book and returned to the sofa. "Assuming Wynn-Three was kidnapped because he—or this Mustawitz person—knew where the Nazis stashed all that loot . . ."

     Gurt was looking at him as though he had suddenly grown horns. "You are saying the child was taken because this, this
spirit
, might know something?"

     "It's a bit of a reach, I know, but consider the following." He held up a finger. "First, he was snatched
after
that newspaper article about being a reincarnated Auschwitz prisoner." A second finger. "He was abducted by Germans who took him all the way to Germany." The third digit. "And there has been no ransom demand."

     "And so?"

     "If I'm guessing right, whoever took Wynn-Three intends to have him—or Mustawitz—show up at this Ober wherever place to look for that mineshaft."

     Gurt smiled, returning to her book. "So, all you have to do is contact the FBI, Interpol, and the Federal Republic police and tell them to cover every place that is named something beginning with 'Ober.' Or perhaps they can use their equipment to slow down the tape enough to understand what the man is saying."

     "Either way, they'd think I'm nuts."

     "And I should know better?"

     "Okay, you come up with a better theory."

     Gurt put the book in her lap with the exaggerated motion of one running out of patience. "You have decided to become, er, involved in this matter?"

     Lang moved to the edge of his seat on the sofa. "I thought we had discussed this. I mean, if it were Manfred . . ."

     "Our discussion had to do with doing what we could here in the U.S. We're now at that bridge from which to jump." Gurt leaned forward and her novel fell to the floor. She didn't notice. "You want to go to one or more of these 'Ober' places."

     Lang stood, preparing to go to the kitchen to freshen his drink. "Not exactly. The odds of guessing the right one are too slim. I want to go to Auschwitz."

Excerpt from The Scrolls of Issa

I
SSA REACHED THE CITY OF LADAKH
, where he was joyfully received by both monks and poor people, and he taught in the market place.

     He spoke of many things, of seed on fertile ground and of a poor widow who gave her last coins to those more in need than she and a man who found a stranger on the road near dead from robbers and helped him.

     And even the most learned monks came away surprised at wisdom in one so young and from so far away, marveling that such a person knew the Vedas.

Lang Reilly

John Paul II International Airport

Balice, Poland

Two Days Later

9:20
A.M.
Local Time

T
HE GULFSTREAM V'S TIRES KISSED THE
runway just as Lang was finishing a breakfast of eggs, toast, and coffee, all hot from the airplane's galley. He forced himself to return the smile of the young woman removing the dishes from the aircraft's small galleried table. Chronically unable to sleep on the plane despite the comfort of the Gulfstream's bedroom, he saw little to be so damn happy about.

     Rather than his normal futile efforts at sleeping or watching a film, he had read the book Wynn-Three's child psychologist had mentioned to Paige,
Old Souls.
In describing a University of Virginia professor's research on people who claimed to have lived past lives, the book was persuasive. The phenomena seemed to have no other explanation than reincarnation.

     The mention of small children in the book made him recall his son's face as Manfred and Gurt had stood in the terminal at Fulton County Airport, waving good-bye. The child had been grumpy that he, too, was not making this trip. As far as Manfred was concerned, the special treatment from the crew, the on-board movies, and a readily available supply of his favorite snacks made travel by Gulfstream as much or more enjoyable than any destination.

     Lang had pledged to Gurt he would simply check the records the museum's website had promised and speak with her about any further action.

     Now he understood Grump's reservations about his leash.

     Looking out of the window, he could see the shiny new terminal. Like
most of eastern Europe, Cracow was slowly removing evidence of its Communist past by replacing the massive eyesores, architecture Lang referred to as Stalinist Gothic, with contemporary structures. The abstract shapes and designs might not be any more aesthetically pleasing, but they promised functioning toilets, eating establishments whose menus would not be limited by chronic shortages, and other proof the Communists were no longer in control.

     As the Gulfstream lumbered onto the sector of the tarmac reserved for private aircraft, he was surprised at the number of planes he saw. Business jets and smaller prop aircraft had replaced the military planes that had occupied the space on his previous visit.

     Capitalism must be flourishing in Poland.

     Within minutes, the Polish Customs and Immigration agents were on board, far more interested in the jet's opulent furnishings than the possibility of contraband. A blond woman who looked to be no more than sixteen bared crooked teeth in a smile as she returned Lang's passport and glanced at the form he had filled out before landing.

     "You are here for business?" she asked in heavily accented English.

     Her tone said she was skeptical anyone could afford such an aircraft merely for pleasure.

     Lang pointed to the form where he had checked "Business" as the reason for the trip. "The foundation I represent wants to look at a couple of children's clinics. And I may do a little sightseeing while I'm here."

     The prospect of tourist dollars was always welcomed.

     She motioned to the straight wooden cane on which he was leaning. "Perhaps you will visit one of our State clinics. It is possible they may be able to help you."

     "Not unless they have access to the fountain of youth."

     "You do not appear old."

     "Tell that to the knee I injured."

     Again the smile. "Enjoy your stay."

     As Polish officialdom left the plane, Lang stood on two firm legs. He lifted the walking stick, smacking in the palm of his other hand. As a passenger in a private aircraft, he would not be subjected to the metal detectors, X-ray scans, and baggage searches that provided airport jobs for the otherwise unemployable the world over.

     It was a good thing. The simple wooden cane would have flunked the most superficial test. He would have preferred his Browning HP 9mm, but Gurt would have noted its absence.

     He needed no weapon for the simple task of checking some old records. But it never hurt to be sure.

     A few minutes later, he was in the back of a chauffeured Mercedes, covering the twelve kilometers into Cracow. No Polish language skills and the difficulty of locating the clinics he wanted to visit made a car and driver a desirable alternative to city bus 192 that made the circuit every twenty minutes.

     Had he noted the old man in the worn jeans and slouch cap who was selling newspapers, he might have regretted the choice. The man stared at Lang, surreptitiously checked a small photograph, and looked again. He waited until the Mercedes was out of sight before taking a cell phone from a pocket.

Gasthaus Schelling

Rothenburg ob den Tauber

The Same Time

F
RIEDRICH GRATZ WAS INCREDULOUS. "WHAT THE
hell do you mean you can't regress the child?"

     Dr. Heim looked up from the table where he was drinking a cup of coffee. "I never said I could not. I said I
would
not. Not this morning, anyway."

     "And perhaps you will be so kind as to tell me why?"

     Heim pushed the cup away. "Two reasons: first, I have other patients I need to see. If I abandon them, people will start asking questions, questions I would guess you would rather not be asked."

     "And?"

     "And no one really understands the effects of regressing under hypnosis, although it has been done for purposes of psychotherapy at least since Freud and Jung. The fear is that following one session too closely upon another may do damage to the patient's mind."

     Gratz sat across the table from the physician so that their eyes met. "Doctor, I do not care about the 'patient.' I need information that little boy has somewhere in his head, be it his subconscious or whatever. And I need it quickly."

     Heim drained his cup and stood, reaching for his coat. "I think you will care very much if the child becomes ill, or a raving maniac. You will have some explaining to do to the local authorities. If he possesses it, I
will get you the information you wish. But it will take time. Whatever knowledge this man, Monowitz, Mustawitz, has that you wish to discover has been around for over seventy years. A few more days cannot hurt." He finished buttoning up his coat. "Be patient."

     Gratz stepped between Heim and the doctor. "One more thing."

     "Yes?"

     "This information has to do with a location, a very specific location. Would it be somehow possible to take him there and have him point to an exact place?"

     His hand still on the top button, Heim's eyebrows arched in surprise and he thought before answering. "As far as I know, it has never been done. Once the child is regressed, he does not see with his own eyes but those of the person he once was. What implications that may have, I can only speculate. The danger would be if this is a public place. Any noise might suddenly awake him from the hypnosis, and I think you would not like to have him screaming with people around."

     Without thinking, Gratz grasped the Mauser in his pocket. "Let me worry about that,
Herr Doktor.
"