The Cathar Secret: A Lang Reilly Thriller Page 19

  Lang was fully aware that the time when American law enforcement could intrude at will into crimes against citizens abroad had passed five decades ago. European cops guarded their own turf as zealously as their American counterparts. Perceived interference from this side of the Atlantic was more likely to produce more xenophobic friction than results. Any involvement of American authorities would involve as much diplomacy as police work.

  He put a comforting hand over Wynton's. "It would take a day or more to assemble a team to send over there, and we sure don't want the German cops spending time figuring out how to work with us instead of tracking down whoever has Wynn-Three, right?"

  Wynton nodded reluctantly. "Yeah, I guess so."

  Graves stood, giving Lang a nod of appreciation. "That's all the info I have at the moment."

  Lang and Wynton stood and Lang gave Wynton a gentle push toward the door. "Let me speak a moment with Special Agent Graves, if you don't mind."

  When the door shut, Lang said, "Thanks for your time. I'd take it as a personal favor if you could keep me updated on developments. Here's my card. You can get me on the cell day or night."

  Graves's eyes went to the card and back again before he spoke, the ill will still in his tone. "Word came down straight from the Hoover Building to give you whatever you want. Your friends in Washington must be pretty far up the food chain. Care to enlighten me?"

  Lang smiled, reaching to shake the agent's hand. "Believe me, Special Agent Graves, you're better off not knowing."

  What Lang didn't say was that so was he.

  CHAPTER 46

  Ten Minutes Later

  ON THE RIDE BACK TO ANSLEY PARK, Wynton was quiet, his mind turning over possibilities like a kid looking for fishing worms under rocks. Fact: Reilly's wife had demonstrated that she took martial arts more seriously than just exercise if Paige's description of what happened in the park was anywhere near correct. Fact: The Reilly house with steel doors and cameras indicated more than the ordinary homeowner's interest in security. Fact: Lang and Gurt had worked in Europe, whatever that might imply. And the final tidbit: According to Paige, the Atlanta homicide cop who had investigated the attempt in the park had been well acquainted with Reilly, said some things that had led Paige to believe their next-door neighbor might have been involved in some pretty violent stuff. Their conversation the day before sure indicated Reilly was no stranger to Detective Morse.

  Then there were those rumors about Lang Reilly's past. Ephemeral but persistent. He never mentioned anything that predated the law practice. It is only human nature to invent a past for someone who never spoke of his. Wynton had little trouble draping a wealthy, nice-looking and successful couple with the mantle of some previous cloak-and-dagger lifestyle. It made titillating conversation among the ladies of the Ansley Park Garden Club between tulip and azalea seasons.

  But what was the truth?

  Ordinarily, Wynton couldn't care less, but what he had in mind wasn't going to float on a sea of Chablis-inspired speculation. He needed help, special help, from a special person.

  His attention momentarily shifted to the rumbling of a Corvette to his right. Wynton wasn't sure but the Bondo streaks on the body were a good guess it wasn't a new one. The driver had the top down despite the temperature and was gunning his engine at the stoplight, looking for a little competition from the turbo Porsche.

  "Middle management out for a thrill," Lang deadpanned before seeming to ignore him.

  When the light went green, there was a throaty roar that almost muffled the shriek of rubber. Wynton was pressed back against his seat and the Corvette was gone as though by the wave of a magician's wand. A split second later, it reappeared in the rearview mirror on Wynton's side of the car.

  Lang changed to the inside lane to turn right into Ansley Park a few blocks ahead and leaned forward to fiddle with the sound system. "Childish, I know. Proves men never grow up. Guess it beats drugs and chasing women, though."

  Wynton had never had the nerve to try either. He turned in his seat to see the Corvette change lanes to pull up on Lang's side. The driver motioned for Lang to roll down the window.

  It was obvious Lang had no intention of doing so. "Guess middle management has something to say."

  Not that it mattered. The Corvette driver was loud enough to be heard through iron, let alone safety glass.

  "Guess you rich bastards think you're pretty fuckin' smart, what with that German piece of shit! You too good to buy American?"

  "Correction: unemployed UAW member."

  Lang did roll down his window as the other driver climbed out of his car. The man was big even without the beer gut. At least a head taller than Lang and, fifty or so pounds heavier. Through the Corvette's open door, Wynton could see an open beer bottle and several empties. Two hit the pavement and shattered.

  "Wonder what there is to celebrate at this hour?" Lang asked of no one in particular. "Please get back in your car," he then said evenly.

  "Please get back in your car," the big man mocked, imitating a child's voice as he reached for the Porsche's door handle.

  Wynton expected to hear the click of the door lock. Instead, Lang sighed as he shifted into neutral and snapped on the hand brake.

  As the Corvette driver touched the door, Lang swung it open, slamming it into the man's knees. Howling with pain, he stumbled backwards.

  Lang exploded from the Porsche, ramming a shoulder into the man's midsection. There was an expulsion of breath that Wynton could smell from where he sat. Now the man was both staggering backwards and bent double. Lang's knee met his chin and the man crumpled to the asphalt.

  Lang stood over him one second, perhaps two, before clapping his hands gently as though to rid them of any trace of the man on the ground. He stopped long enough to straighten his tie and stepped back toward the Porsche.

  "Lang, look out!"

  Too late, Wynton feared. The big man had come off the street with a speed that belied both his bulk and the punishment Lang had just administered, reached into the Corvette, and raised a beer bottle above Lang's head.

  With movement almost too fast to follow, Lang sidestepped, catching his assailant's arm as it crashed down on the space he had just vacated. Pirouetting with the grace of a ballet dancer, Lang spun around, using his enemy's momentum to bring the man's forearm up in an unnatural position against his back.

  The would-be assailant howled, and Wynton thought he heard the snap as the man's shoulder went out of its joint.

  There is nothing like the pain of one's adversaries to give complete control. Lang used his command to propel the guy toward the Corvette and then swept a foot in front so the man, still screaming in agony, tripped and spilled head first into the topless car.

  Letting go of the arm, Lang quickly grabbed the car keys that had been left in the ignition. Drawing back his own arm, Lang sent them looping into some scabrous bushes that had somehow managed to survive the daily dose of auto emissions. "Had about all of him I need for one day," Lang said, walking back to the Porsche.

  The show over, horns blared angrily.

  Lang ignored them long enough to carefully check the Porsche's door, nodding in approval. "Not even a dent."

  He adjusted his suit coat before getting back in the car and shifted into gear as calmly as though it were in his own garage.

  Two blocks later, the Porsche turned right onto 15th Street. Not a word had been said, but Wynton had made up his mind. Whatever the truth about Lang Reilly, he hadn't learned what Wynton had just seen studying for the bar exam.

  Wynton had thought himself self-sufficient, but this was no legal proceeding. Still, he hated to ask, "Lang, will you help me?"

  Without turning his head, Lang shot him a glance. "Help you?"

  "Help me, me and Paige. To get our son back?"

  "What makes you think I can do a better job than the German police and the FBI?"

  "I, I'm not sure," Wynton admitted, "but I think you can. Look, we're more than willing
to pay your hourly rate . . ."

  This time Lang turned and looked at him. "I don't think you're talking legal services here."

  "No, I guess not."

  "You want whatever it takes."

  "Whatever it takes," Wynton admitted.

  Lang nodded slowly as though answering some question he had asked himself. "I'll ask Gurt."

  Ask Gurt? Wynton was asking the help of machismo personified, a guy who not only had just stomped the shit out of a bigger man but also had traction powerful enough to arrange a briefing by the FBI—and he had to ask his wife?

  Wynton almost blurted his thoughts out but managed to keep silent before saying, "Could you ask her today?"

  CHAPTER 47

  Gasthaus Schelling

  Herrengasse 29

  Rothenburg ob den Tauber

  Germany

  The Same Time

  2:40 P.M. Local Time

  ROTHENBURG WAS IN A TIME WARP and its residents intended to keep it that way.

  A tourist stop on Bavaria's Romantische Strasse, the Romantic Road, which followed the old Roman Via Claudia through the heart of medieval Germany, Rothenburg sat strategically on a hill above a meander of the River Tauber. Its ancient walls had withstood plague, fire, and siege. During the Thirty Years' War, the city succumbed after a lengthy siege and would have been devastated but for the impressive drinking prowess of its mayor. According to the town legend, the mayor wagered with the Catholic General Tilly that if he, the mayor, could drink a massive tankard of wine in one drink, Tilly's forces would not destroy the town. The mayor won the bet, and Rothenburg kept its picturesque architecture and character intact.

  Those same stone walls and towers that witnessed the legendary drinking bout would, centuries later, watch Friedrich Gratz pass through the town gates. The building where he and his companions found room and board also likely dated from the 1600s.

  One of its inhabitants, not its history, was why Friedrich Gratz and his remaining confederate were here.

  Frau Schelling, the old woman who owned the stone Gasthaus, with the typical inverted funnel roof, had been delighted to rent rooms on the second floor to the two men and their young American nephew. She felt sorry for the little boy, whom she could hear sobbing last night. Too young to be so far from home. He must be homesick indeed. But then, that was hardly her business. Some rental income in the low season, paid in advance, was a gift from heaven.

  Although the two men's avowed purpose was to show their small charge this historic area, Frau Schelling noticed that they had not left the rooms all day. Instead, they had summoned the only full-time physician in town, the elderly Herr Doktor Griff. Perhaps the child had taken ill. Twice she had knocked on the door, offering to help in any way she could. Twice Herr Grun had stood in the doorway, blocking her view, and politely, if firmly, declined. She had no intention of snooping, of course; but, judging by the length of the Doktor's visit, she reasoned that the child must be truly sick. The beamed ceiling was not thick enough to prevent her hearing what seemed to be the physician's voice. The overhead planks muffled the words to the extent that she could not make out exactly what was being said. Naturally, she did not want to intrude on her guests' privacy, but the tone seemed to imply some sort of business was being discussed. She strained to listen as she stirred a pot on the stove. The lentil soup had been done half an hour ago, but this was the best place in her apartment to hear.

  Herr Doktor Heinz Griff had been astonished, if less than delighted, to hear from the son of one of his former acquaintances who had once known him as Aribert Heim. In his midnineties, Griff, or Heim, had tired of running. His medical experiments lasted for only two short months at the Auschwitz concentration camps but had prompted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to place a half-million-dollar bounty on his head after the war. During the Allies' witch hunt for those so-called war criminals, he had managed to pay to have his file disappear. Rather than risk being caught up in the net that had snared so many of his SS brethren fleeing Germany, he had not even attempted to return to his native Austria. Instead, he settled in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

  Where better to hide a grain of sand than on a beach?

  Unlike many of his contemporaries, he had avoided socializing with former SS officers, knowing from his previous close encounters that the Jews and their sympathizers kept a close watch on men like him.

  His gynecological clinic in Baden-Baden blossomed to the extent that he could afford to purchase a forty-two-unit apartment building in Berlin in 1958. Thinking the war long over and himself safe, he listed his property in his own name. But Eichmann's capture and subsequent show trial in Israel ended that dream. Somehow his file came to light, and he barely managed to escape with a single suitcase before the Jew-loving German authorities arrived to arrest him in September of 1962.

  Die Spinne, the network of SS officers that had facilitated the escape of so many of his Kameraden, had long ago disbanded, and he was unsure whether Argentina or Brazil still welcomed immigration by German-speaking holders of Swiss or Vatican passports.

  So he had come to Rothenburg, old, near penniless, but willing to practice general medicine in an obscure Bavarian village that had lost its resident physician to death three years earlier. The town elders had been less than eager to inspect the dentures of this apparent gift horse. They had done no background or identity check, accepting without question their good fortune to have a local doctor again.

  After years of obscurity, it was understandable why Heim was less than thrilled to be contacted by the son of a guard he had known only briefly before the man had been transferred to the much larger camp at Auschwitz. The damned old man passed along not only Heim's present name to his son but somehow his location as well.

  Gratz's son was an idiot. That was clear to Heim. The small American boy was no more his nephew than the doctor was. The child did little but cry and call for his "Mommy." There was little doubt the boy was not here voluntarily. Not only had the younger Gratz subjected himself to kidnapping charges, but he was also likely to bring the authorities down on Heim's head, too.

  Heim had every intention of dying in bed, not in prison. Or, worse, should the Israelis be alerted to his whereabouts, at the end of a rope. He had hoped as years passed the Federal Republic would see the absurdity of the oxymoron of "war crimes," relent, and let old men live out their lives. But no, world Jewry would never permit it. Heim was facing a very real possibility of hanging if he didn't get rid of Gratz, his friend, and the little boy in a hurry.

  But how to make the best of a very bad situation?

  Not only was Gratz stupid; he was insane. He was babbling some sort of rubbish about the boy being the incarnation of a prisoner at Auschwitz who knew where treasure was hidden. Heim supposed he should be thankful the man was imbalanced in the head. A sane man would have simply turned him in for the reward, claiming only to be a good German.

  "Yes," Heim admitted reluctantly, "I am familiar with the process of hypnotism. It has been taught in Austrian medical schools since Freud."

  "That is why I contacted you," Gratz said, as though bragging of an accomplishment. "My father said you sometimes used it in your, er, work. Particularly posthypnotic suggestion."

  Heim tried not to squirm in his chair, a carved wooden rocker that provided more local Bavarian color than actual comfort. Damn the senior Gratz for his loose lips! He had tried posthypnotic suggestion to see if he could make a man forget the pain of surgery, a boon to an army running out of anesthetic. Of course, some sort of trials had to be performed on the prisoners before the experiment had any validity; the more painful, the better.

  He lifted a half-full cup of coffee, long cold, before recalling the last acidic sip, and returned it to the table. "There is a problem with what you suggest: a person, even a child, must be a willing subject."

  The man who called himself Schect stubbed out a cigarette into an overflowing ash tray and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the dark wood of t
he table. "That should be no problem. You hypnotized prisoners."

  Once cut open, a man becomes willing to try anything to diminish the pain, Heim thought. But he said nothing.

  "Easy enough," Gratz said. "We tell him we only want to make him sleep so we can return him to his mother."

  "And when you have what you want?" Heim asked, knowing the answer.

  "That is not your concern, Herr Doktor," Gratz said.

  Schect ran a finger across his throat.

  Heim slowly got to his feet, shaking his head. "Not only do I doubt the child can be regressed under the circumstances you suggest, posthypnotic suggestion lasts at best only a few minutes after the subject is brought back. Besides, killing Jews is one thing; murder of a little Aryan boy is quite another." He turned toward the door, then stopped, speaking over his shoulder. "And, if you believe in reincarnation, you surely are expecting Rot Bart to emerge from his mountain at any moment."

  The reference was to Germanic legend that Emperor Frederick "Red Beard" Barbarossa had not died on the Third Crusade but slept under a mountain, awaiting his subjects' greatest hour of need.

  "In any event, I'm not interested."

  "Not quite so fast, Herr Doktor." Gratz was standing. "You have no idea of the riches that we can share."

  Heim snorted. If these men were willing to kill a child, what were the odds they would let him live? "At my age, I have few needs, only a desire to be left alone. Now, if you will . . ."

  "Perhaps you have no need." Gratz's voice had turned ugly. "But we do. In fact, we'll all share the treasure or my friend and I will share the reward reporting you to the authorities would bring."

  Heim came close to reminding Gratz that a kidnapped child might be difficult to explain but held back. The better idea might be to play along with these fools for the moment and wait for an opportunity to shed himself of them.

  Perhaps even rescue the little boy.