The Cathar Secret: A Lang Reilly Thriller Read online

  Paige recalled the articles in the paper that appeared with alarming regularity: children left with crack or meth addicts, suffering starvation, even death because neither the State Department of Human Resources nor county Department of Family and Child Resources had taken timely notice once the plight of children had been called to the department's attention. They would find nothing of that sort in her home.

  Dr. Weiner seemed to read her thoughts. "If Wynn-Three is otherwise well cared for, suffering no immediate harm, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. In the meantime, make every effort to watch him even more closely than I'm sure you do, keep him away from that Marcie person, and let me see him, say, every Monday and Thursday afternoon around 4:00. And I'll need an hour with his father."

  Paige shook her head slowly. "That won't be possible for a while yet. He's starting a three-week trial tomorrow."

  Dr. Weiner nodded, perhaps a little too knowingly for Paige's comfort. "All things end, including trials. I need to see him as soon as possible. It's a very important part of treating Wynn-Three, deciding if I can help him and the type of therapy. The most important thing, though, is to make sure that, if the child has been subjected to molestation, as I believe, the guilty party be identified and that course of conduct prevented in the future. Reincarnation or not, I do believe, if there's a hell, a special place has been reserved for those who abuse children."

  Paige scooped Wynn-Three up from the couch and headed for the door. She stopped halfway there, a puzzled expression on her face. "Dr. Weiner, one final question."

  The woman's eyebrows lifted in anticipation. "If I can answer it."

  "This reincarnation thing. Assuming there's some validity to it, could that be the source of what's disturbing him?"

  Dr. Weiner frowned. "You might as well ask me if possession by demons could cause the problem. If we could scientifically accept a prior life, we might be able to view that as the problem. Since we have no sure proof of such a thing, we're limited to what we know: Wynn-Three's conduct is indicative of abuse, not recycled souls. We will get to the bottom of it all and we will make him well."

  As Paige carried her still sleeping son to the car, she wondered why she felt a sense of impending doom rather than reassurance.

  CHAPTER 25

  480 Lafayette Drive

  Sunday Morning

  The Next Week

  7:40 A.M.

  WYNTON HAD GLANCED AT THE SPORTS section of the paper and checked the recycled Peanuts for Charlie Brown's latest predicament, as he drank a cup of coffee prior to leaving for the office. As in all trials, Swisher & Peele insisted on daily copy, a day-by-day transcription of the proceedings. Today, he would read over Friday's copy, making notes for Glen Richardson to review before court resumed tomorrow. He also had to answer several days of mail, both electronic and regular, that had accumulated while he had been in court. His immediate subordinate, Nat Changer, had prepared responses to some interrogatories, questions to which written answers under oath had to be made, in a product liability case during the week. Wynton needed to review those before giving Nat the go-ahead to send them out. The workload did not diminish while in court; it was simply postponed.

  With a little luck, he might be able to meet Paige and Wynn-Three for brunch at the Piedmont Driving Club before working into the afternoon.

  The phone rang.

  Wynton tried to wash down his anxiety with the last swallow of coffee. Nobody called this early on a Sunday morning with good news. His father's health, though good as of late, was subject to the whims of Parkinson's disease. It could change without notice. Paige's parents, healthy the last he knew, were also subject to sudden ravages of age.

  "Hello?"

  "Wynton, good morning. Bill Sharpe."

  Sharpe, another junior partner at the firm, handled real estate transactions for the banks the firm represented. Although he and Wynton were pleasant acquaintances, Wynton could think of no reason the man would be calling, particularly at this hour on a Sunday. Real estate lawyers lead boring lives and didn't work weekends.

  "Morning, Bill. What's up?"

  "You seen this morning's paper?"

  Wynton glanced suspiciously over to the pile of newspaper as though the ads, flyers, and coupons that composed most of the Sunday edition might contain something more noxious than its editorial pages. "This morning's paper?"

  "Take a look at the Sunday Living section. Seeing as how you were on trial, I figured you might be headed down to the office before you had a chance to see it. By the way, good luck!"

  Puzzled, Wynton searched the various sections until he came to the one Sharpe had mentioned. He felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach as he saw a snapshot of Wynn-Three someone, probably Marcie, had taken. He sucked in his breath at the headline below:

  REINCARNATED SOUL OR IMAGINATION?

  By Marcie Rollens

  You don't have to travel to far-off places like India to find reincarnation; there seems to be an example right here in Atlanta's fashionable Ansley Park.

  Wynton Charles III, three, known to his family as Wynn-Three, recalls being a prisoner at Auschwitz, the notorious World War II Nazi death camp. He even remembers the number that was tattooed on his arm, 14257.

  Although too young to know other numbers, Wynn-Three writes these with the one and seven in the European manner, with the "1" as an inverted "V" and the seven crossed. He also writes a triangle under the numbers, a symbol the Germans used to distinguish Jewish prisoners from captured Russians, Gypsies, homosexuals and other minorities considered undesirable. He has even used a pin or sharp object to write them on his own arm, as though they were a real tattoo.

  Wynn-Three first drew a nursery school picture of a man in a uniform very similar to those worn by Auschwitz prisoners, including what could be described as the yellow Star of David patch required of Jews at the camp.

  Hypnosis has been used to explore his possible past lives. Wynn-Three's response, once hypnotized, was to speak in foreign-accented English and begin recounting what life was like in the largest and most infamous of the Nazis' death camps.

  "It was so cold" was his primary complaint. He actually shivered while talking about his experience as Solomon Mustawitz, a Polish Jew from Warsaw who apparently was imprisoned at Auschwitz from 1943 until he escaped.

  So far as is known, Wynn-Three had no previous knowledge of World War II, the Nazis or their anti-Jewish policies.

  Dr. Pesha Balisha, the hypnotist and member of Atlanta's Hindu community, said, "I am far from surprised. Souls of the dead find a home in the living as a matter of the natural order. We continue the cycle until our lives reach perfection."

  Reincarnation is hardly a radical belief. It has been shared in one form or another for thousands of years by many Eastern religions but is not confined to that part of the world. A number of prominent Western thinkers have believed souls found new hosts. Among them number German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, America's Ben Franklin, American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, British writers and poets W. B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The list also includes Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, Spanish artist Salvador Dali and American novelist J. D. Salinger.

  It is unclear what Wynn-Three's parents, Wynton and Paige Charles . . .

  The doorbell rang.

  Wynton dropped the paper on the floor, crossed the kitchen, and walked down the hall to the accompaniment of impatient ringing. Who the hell . . . ?

  He opened the door and was staring into a vaguely familiar female face: blond hair perfectly coifed, late twenties to early thirties. And with an extended microphone in her hand. Behind her, the glassy fish eye of a camera stared.

  "Mr. Charles? I'm Linda Gravener with Channel Four First Alive News. We'd like to speak to your son . . ."

  Stunned and not entirely sure he was hearing correctly, Wynton stammered, "My son? He's only three."

  Linda Gravener smile
d with teeth too perfect to have originally been in her mouth. "We know. We want to ask him about his prior life . . ."

  It was then Wynton noted the truck with all the antennae and fully realized what was happening. Another vehicle, this one with the Channel 2 logo emblazoned on its side, was pulling to the curb behind the first. The news jackals, it seemed, had scented the kill.

  He pulled the door closer to being shut, leaving room between it and the frame for just himself.

  "Wynton, what's going on?"

  He turned to see Paige, wrapped in a tatty housecoat, standing in the hall.

  Linda Gravener seized the opportunity to shoulder her way almost past Wynton, microphone extended. "Mrs. Charles, when did you first realize your son had experienced a prior life?"

  Wynton lowered a shoulder and shoved the reporter back outside like an offensive tackle moving a linebacker.

  The new arrival, a man, attempted to get by. Wynton used a leg to block his path. "What other symptoms is Wynn-Three showing?"

  Finally, Wynton managed to get the door shut and locked. To his right, through the living room windows, he could see the frenzy quickly spreading alongside the house and into the back yard, trampling the short new sprouts of the jonquil bulbs Paige had spent a weekend planting.

  "Paige," Wynton shouted, "the back door, lock it!"

  The rattling of the doorknob said she had done so not a moment too soon.

  The doorbell was pealing angrily when the phone began to ring again. If the People's Right to Know could not physically get into the house, they would do so telephonically.

  By this time a crowd of media and neighbors were visible through the windows at the front of the house.

  Paige looked terrified and Wynn-Three definitely was, clutching his arms around his mother's legs, whimpering. "Wynton, what are we going to do?"

  He was wondering the same thing when the reflection of blue light caught his eye. Two police cruisers were slowly plowing through the mob on the street. A burly black cop made his way to the door while Wynton watched with much the same feeling Custer might have viewed reinforcements.

  This time he was eager to open the door.

  "You Mr. Charles?" the officer demanded.

  Wynton admitted he was.

  "Whatever you doin', you blockin, th' street."

  Wynton nodded. "It's my not my 'doin.' If you could get these people off my property, I'd be obliged."

  The officer turned to take in the scene. By now all four of Atlanta's network TV stations were represented by trucks. There was enough communication gear to cover a moon landing.

  The cop's snort said he was no fan of the press. He produced a police whistle and its shrill noise soon had everyone's attention. "Lissen up! I can't make you leave but I sure can haul in the nex' person who steps on Mr. Charles's property, you heah?" The comparative silence was followed by grumbling. "An' yo freedom o' the press don' include blockin' the street, okay? Ansley Park got permit parkin' an' I don' see no permits on them trucks. They here fifteen minutes from now, the tow trucks'll be here quicker'n you can 'splain to your boss why a million bucks of TV equipment done been impounded."

  The big cop watched with evident satisfaction as disgruntled news crews retreated to the street and began packing gear before he turned to Wynton. "I ain't overly optimistic 'bout them keeping their distance, but one o' them folks so much puts a toe on your property, you got the right to prosecute f' criminal trespass."

  "Is there any way to keep them from telephoning?" Paige asked. "The thing hasn't stopped ringing."

  The officer shook his head. "As a practical matter, I'd suggest you take it off th' hook an' use yo' cell phones. Tomorrow, get an unlisted number. Oh yeah, buy disposable, prepaid cells, too. Take 'em about a day to get the numbers you got now."

  Thirty minutes later, the crowd on the sidewalk had been reduced to three or four reporters and a couple of portable cameras. The lack of excitement had dispersed the neighbors. Wynton dared to get in his car and make a run for the office.

  He was still in the driveway that separated his lot from Lang Reilly's when his neighbor approached the car and signaled for Wynton to roll down the window.

  "Hope you don't mind," Reilly began, "but Gurt called the cops. Figured your line would be jammed."

  "Mind?" Wynton managed a chuckle. "Like I'd mind being hit in the head with a life preserver, I was drowning. Thanks. How'd you know we couldn't use the phone?"

  Reilly backed away from the car. "Newsies feed like sharks: anyone in the area's likely to get bitten. Privacy, sensitivity, private property are just obstacles to getting a story. When it comes to being the first with the news, they'd sell their own mother, not to mention jamming her phone with questions."

  Wynton thought of Marcie. "Or certainly friends who trust them."

  The first reporter at their door, Linda Gravener, now stood at the end of the drive, blocking his access to the street. With the hand not holding the mike, like Reilly, she motioned for him to roll down his window. He stopped and began to inch forward. He would prefer not to run over her but she was blocking his path. As it became clear he had no intent of either stopping or rolling down his window, those pouty, Botox lips curled into a snarl. As the car pushed her aside and he eased into the street, he could see her in the rearview mirror. She held up a hand, this time with a single finger raised.

  By the end of the block, a question popped into his head. How did his next-door neighbors know so much about the manners, or lack thereof, of the Fourth Estate?

  CHAPTER 26

  The Vatican

  Monday Morning

  10:04 A.M. Local Time

  FATHER HEINZ STEINMANN KEPT A PRECISE schedule. He arose at 5:30 A.M. each morning, prayed kneeling at the foot of the bed in his small apartment, and then turned on the coffeemaker to let it brew while he showered. He was dressed and at mass in the Jesuit chapel near his office on the west side of the Vatican by 6:15 A.M. He was behind his desk an hour later, poring through a selection of western European newspapers. That was his job. Father Steinmann monitored the media for signs of trends the Church might want to either discourage or stop altogether. As a young priest he could not have imagined such an atypical role, but he served in whatever capacity His Holiness asked of him. It did not hurt that Steinmann also seemed to have a knack for the work. His office was called The Office of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Although its name and methods had changed over the years, its purpose had not.

  Until fairly recently it had been known as The Office of the Holy Inquisition.

  He had enjoyed some successes. A parish in the resort area of Spain's Costa del Sol had begun special masses for homosexuals. Father Steinmann's boss at the time, Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, called on the local bishop to put a stop to that heretical practice. Another priest, at a church in Florence, had openly advocated birth control for the poor. He was now ministering to the Aborigines in northern Australia.

  Contraception, female clergy, possible reunification with Protestantism, Father Steinmann had faced them all; and, in turn, those deviations from orthodoxy had taken their toll. He kept a supply of nitroglycerin capsules near at hand. The tightness and pain in his chest, the shortness of breath could come at any time. The pills had been prescribed by a doctor outside the Vatican, one who would keep Steinmann's health problems secret. Exposure of a heart condition would likely result in the father being removed from the rigors of his post. There was far too much of God's work remaining to be done and far too few of those who would do it with Father Steinmann's zeal.

  Finished with Le Figaro, he picked up the Süddeutsche Zeitung. After scanning the headlines, he always enjoyed turning to the brief summaries of unusual stories gleaned from the world press. No reason he could not have some diversion while he worked. But halfway down today's column he stopped, one hand grasping the fourth knot of the rope he wore around his cassock, the extra knot of the Jesuit.

  He re
ad the article a second time and then a third.

  He reached for the telephone and punched in a series of numbers that would connect him with the Vatican switchboard, probably one of the last real, old-fashioned, plug-in types left in the world.

  "I wish to speak with the bishop of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, Georgia."

  "Do you know what time it is in the Eastern United States?" the operator asked.

  He removed the phone to glare at it as though the operator could see his displeasure. "I'm fully aware of the time difference, thank you."

  For good measure, he slammed the receiver down.

  He was rereading the article yet a fourth time when the phone rang.

  "I have the bishop on the line."

  Steinmann cleared his throat and spoke in perfect English. "Good morning. I hate to disturb you at such an hour, but I have a matter of some urgency."

  Mere priests did not normally go about rousting bishops from their slumbers, but those who were attached to this office were not normal priests. They were assumed to speak for the pope himself.

  The sleep was audible in the bishop's voice. "How may I be of service to the Holy Father?"

  "There was an article in your local paper yesterday, some nonsense about a small boy's supposed former life."

  "I read it." A sigh.

  Father Steinmann was touching the knot again. "I wish to know everything possible about the child and his family."

  "I can have someone check birth records, see what other public information might be available. There are some things, credit and financial data, that are not readily available."

  Father Steinmann started to remark that he was not interested in what the bishop was unable to do. The Vatican had more than ample resources to obtain whatever information it sought, but Steinmann had decided to keep the matter on a local level for now.