The Cathar Secret: A Lang Reilly Thriller (19 page)

     Lang opened the door wider. "Nonsense! C'mon in."

     They followed Lang back to what Wynton surmised was the den. Dark paneling showed around the edges of floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled to overflowing. Wynton noted contemporary works mixed with leather-bound classics, fiction, histories, philosophy, and some with which he was
unfamiliar. Impressionist seascapes hung from the remaining wall space. A built-in bar occupied a corner next to floor-to-ceiling mahogany French doors leading into the back yard. Across the room, logs crackled warmly in a fireplace encased by a carved marble mantle. A mound of fur Wynton gathered was the family dog had already gone back to sleep judging by gentle snores. Muted colors of two Kerman carpets softened hardwood flooring. Sitting in the middle of one of the rugs was a black man in jeans and a tweed jacket, playing some sort of card game with Manfred.

     "Er, you sure we're not interrupting?"

     The man started to stand and Wynton saw the clerical collar and rosary. Wynton had no idea Lang and Gurt were Catholics. In fact, he'd never thought of it.

     Lang indicated. "Father Francis Narumba. He comes by once in a while ostensibly to let Manfred stomp him in a slap-jack tournament. His real motives are to try to convert us heathens and make sure I don't keep an excess of single malt scotch on hand." Lang raised a hand to shield his lips but spoke loudly enough for the priest to hear. "At the moment, he's batting five hundred."

     
"Superstitione tollenda religio non tollitur,"
Francis said.

     "Say again?" Wynton asked.

     "Latin," Gurt explained, emerging from the back of the house with a tray in hand, "they both studied it in school and read and speak it. Now the only use for it is each other."

     Lang helped himself to something that looked like a small pastry from the tray. "A quote from Cicero that Edmund Burke translated as 'Religion, not atheism, is the remedy for superstition.' But there are those who would call religion a superstition."

     Francis sighed theatrically. "Only the apostate."

     Wynton smiled at the priest's lugubrious expression, realizing that the barbs being exchanged were friendly. "Without taking a stand on that issue, I wanted to thank Gurt for this afternoon. It seemed appropriate to bring a small gift."

     He extended the champagne bottle.

     Lang took it. "You really didn't have to . . . but I'm glad you did. Thanks."

     Paige spoke for the first time. "I'll never be able to thank her enough."

     Gurt took the bottle. "Many thank yous. I will on ice put it."

     Lang noticed Paige trying not to stare at Father Narumba. "Francis and I've been friends for years. He's the only person I know that can put up with my poor Latin.
Latrante uno, latrat statim et alter canis."

     "When one dog barks, so does another," Francis chuckled.

     "It would be polite to speak English," Gurt commented archly.

     "Uncle Fancy always speaks Latin," Manfred added.

     Wynn-Three was inspecting the tray Gurt had set down. A look from his mother warned him off. "It'll spoil your dinner."

     "No it won't, Mommy."

     Gurt winked at Paige as she handed a small pastry to Wynn-Three. "He has right: it will not."

     One bite and Wynn-Three's face contorted into something close to being ill. He swallowed hard and put the remains back on the tray. "Ugh!"

     "Chicken livers
en croute
," Gurt explained.

     "We really don't intend to stay," Paige offered, changing the subject. "Just wanted to thank you again."

     "Now that you've done that, why not make yourselves comfortable?" Lang asked. "No point in letting the papist here drink all the scotch."

     Paige sat nervously on the edge of the couch. "Well, perhaps for a little while."

     "Thank you," she added as Gurt handed her a frosty glass of white wine. "Just a sip or two."

     Francis was looking closely at Wynn-Three. "Gurt was telling us about what happened today. He's the young man in the Sunday paper, right, the one supposedly who had a prior life?"

     "Do you believe in reincarnation?" Paige asked before she had considered the words. She winced, remembering the man was a priest. "I mean . . ."

     Francis picked up a glass, noting it contained mostly ice and water. "No need to apologize. The Church does not. Period."

     "But you?" Lang asked, smiling.

     Francis stepped over to the bar and helped himself.
"Fuge quaetere . . ."

     "Francis!" Gurt warned. "English, please."

     "Sorry, I forgot," he mumbled without a great deal of remorse. He took his time filling his glass. "You want the short or the long version?"

     The dog got up, shook, looked around the room. Apparently deciding
the guests were of no interest, he collapsed back onto his spot in front of the fire.

     "I'd be interested in whatever you had to say on the subject." Wynton sat beside Paige. "A religious point of view."

     Francis tinkled more ice cubes into his glass, taking an experimental sip. "There was a poll a couple of years back. Over fifty-six million American church members said they believed in some sort of reincarnation or successive lives of souls. That included a number of Catholics."

     "And you?" Paige asked.

     The priest seemed satisfied with his refreshed drink. "I believe souls are separate from God and can become one with God only through Grace, not by other means such as reincarnation."

     "This is the standard Judaic-Christian belief?" Wynton asked.

     "It's gobbledygook," Lang offered.

     Francis ignored him. "It is but hasn't always been."

     "They are just going to talk," Manfred announced to Wynn-Three with a touch of peevishness his card game had been interrupted.

     "Why don't you take Wynn-Three to your room and there play?" Gurt suggested.

     Remembering her earlier suspicions, Paige started to protest. But how do you say something like that to the woman who saved your son's life? Reluctantly, she watched the two boys leave the room. The dog was instantly on his feet, following Manfred.

     Lang noted Paige's apprehension, mistaking it. "Dog's name is Grumps. Don't ask me why. My nephew named him before, before he met with a fatal accident. Grumps loves kids. Wynn-Three is perfectly safe with him."

     "I'm sorry about your nephew," Paige said, thankful Lang had not surmised the real object of her discomfort.

     "You were saying?" Wynton prodded Francis.

     "Belief in reincarnation has been both in and out of Christianity and related religions. For instance, some Polish Hasidic Jews of the eighteenth century believed. Even today, one of the Hasidic bedtime prayers asks forgiveness for 'anyone who has angered or vexed me . . . in this life or any other.' God told the prophet Jeremiah that he knew him before he was conceived. The Druse sect of Islam in Lebanon also believes in a form of reincarnation."

     Francis got up again, this time went to one of the bookcases and removed
a Bible. "Surprising I would find the Book in this household of heretics."

     "We try to keep open minds," Lang smiled.

     Francis thumbed the pages. "Yes, here it is: Jeremiah 1:5. Then there are the twins, Jacob and Esau, grandsons of Abraham. Genesis has God telling Rebekah while she was pregnant that one son would serve the other." More page turning, "Yeah, 25:23. There are those who believe that God favored one unborn over another because of another incarnation. That led to the question of whether God is unjust or whether the boys deserved what they got based on a previous life. St. Paul dodged the issue in Romans 9:11–14. St. Augustine came up with the concept of Original Sin, the idea man is inherently in a state of sin because his original ancestor, Adam, sinned."

     "One of the Church's more dreary dogmas," Lang observed.

     Gurt shot him a disapproving glance.

     "Is reincarnation in the New Testament, too?" Paige asked.

     Francis went to the bar again, this time for more scotch for his drink.

     "Theology can be thirsty work," Lang commented, ignoring Gurt.

     Francis sat back down and took an appreciative taste. "Reincarnation in the New Testament? That argument has been made, certainly. According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there was speculation that Jesus was the reincarnation of one of the prophets. Jesus himself tells us in Matthew 11:14 that John the Baptist was Elijah returned. Then there's the story, John 9:1–7, I think, that tells of a man blind from birth. The disciples debated whether the affliction was visited upon him because of transgressions of the parents or his
own
sins, sins committed before his birth.

     "Reincarnation kept popping up in Christianity. In fact, it was one of the tenets of the Cathars, a Christian sect that was the object of the, what, Fourth Crusade in the early thirteenth century?"

     "But," Paige asked, "exactly
what
do people who accept reincarnation believe?"

     Francis shrugged. "They believe as many different things as Christians. The Cathars believed man was reincarnated to give souls the opportunity to become perfect and thereby obtain reunion with God. Classical Hindu—and the Buddhism that sprang from it—believe we live sequential lives so we may atone for past misdeeds. Once a life is lived that makes up for past behavior, the karma balanced as the Eastern mystics would say, then man transcends mortal form."

     He looked around apologetically. "At least, that's it in an ecclesiastical nutshell."

     There was a moment of silence before Paige spoke, a hint of indignation in her voice. "Are you telling me my three-year-old is actually on the earth to square things up for what someone else may have done in the distant past?"

     Francis eyed her with amusement. "I'm telling you no such thing; I'm merely relating my understanding of a widespread, if misguided, belief. He is as eligible for God's grace as anyone else in the one life he has to live."

     Lang was making himself a drink. He turned to Wynton who shook his head, no. "I knew it: here comes the commercial, a word from his sponsor."

     Paige set her wineglass down on a coffee table and looked at her watch although it was clear this was an afterthought. She stood. "Well, I'm certainly better informed than when we arrived. It's past time to feed Wynn-Three and I'll never get him to bed."

A Few Minutes Later

L
ANG'S AND FRANCIS'S EYES FOLLOWED GURT
as she set a steaming dish of
Sauerbraten
surrounded by red cabbage on the dining-room table.

     Lang nodded to Francis. "Go ahead, but make it brief before dinner gets cold."

     "Uncle Fancy's gonna talk to God," Manfred announced.

     After briefly saying thanks and making sure Manfred was secure in his booster chair, all three adults sat down to eat. Grumps curled up under the table. Although feeding him here was strictly forbidden, small children frequently dropped things including morsels of food.

     "How did you know so much about reincarnation?" Gurt asked.

     Francis paused, fork in midair.
"Vere scire est per causas scire."

     "He means knowledge lies in understanding causes," Lang explained. "Francis here has to understand all the various heresies, right? And if heresies ever cease, well, he might have to work for a living.
Opus opificem probat.
"

     "Just as would you," the priest rejoined jovially, helping himself generously, "if people quit committing crimes." He turned to face Gurt. "That was a truly brave thing you did today."

     
"Manus e nubibus,"
she said calmly, digging into her cabbage.

     Both men stared at her with open mouths before Francis said, "A hand from the clouds? Luck? I think not."

     Gurt and Lang exchanged glances, neither saying anything.

     The priest put down his fork, an unusual occurrence. "Look, I know there are things you don't talk about, but I've known you too long. You don't disable a man with a knife by luck any more than all the 'accidents' Lang has had were mere happenstance or that people were trying to kill him just because he made someone angry."

     Francis had witnessed a couple of those attempts during the brief time he had shared with Lang in Rome during what Lang referred to as the St. James Affair.

     "
Lang im Glück
, Lucky Lang, that's what they used to call me in Germany," Lang said before he saw Gurt's slight shake of the head.

     Francis knew enough about his friend Lang to realize there were substantial unexplained holes in his life, like the period between college and law school, when Francis suspected that Lang had worked for the Agency. The truth was that Lang had joined the Agency with visions of James Bond–like adventures, escapades throughout Europe involving beautiful women and Russian spies. Ironically, he found his Agency training truly useful only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet implosion led to cutbacks at the Agency and to Lang's application to law school. When with the Agency, he had only been in trouble in enemy territory once, yet once he had left, he had been forced to kill a half-dozen men while battling Pegasus, the world's richest and most deadly corporation.

     He had met Gurt during his employment abroad but had married someone else. After his wife died of cancer, he and Gurt had renewed old acquaintances. She not only saved his life; she had salvaged it. Her skills were amazing. A martial arts master and an expert marksman, she had won the overall Agency championship four years in a row. She had given Lang love when he needed it most, comfort while he still mourned, a son he had abandoned hope of ever having. And the wildest sex he could have imagined.

     Francis knew little of this. To tell him would not only disturb a man of God but, possibly, endanger his life. It was possible, even likely, that there were still people out there who would like to see Lang dead even though his current life was confined to the law practice and being CEO of a huge charitable foundation, the latter funded by a less-than-voluntary contribution
from the very thugs who had murdered his sister and nephew.