The Reincarnationist Papers - Origins Prequel Read online

  A haunting silence fell over the group around the Gypsy King as two guards stepped forward and put their arms around his back.

  “It is time for you to go,” the young guard said to Marina and me in a voice that allowed no room for debate. “Our leader is tired and ready for bed.”

  I looked at Marina and could see in her eyes that our time with them was done. I turned and nodded again to the guard that I had understood him.

  We rose to leave, and I squeezed my backpack to double-check on the treasured contents inside. The guards were escorting Perez up the three steps into his caravan camper.

  “Grazie mille, Signore,” I yelled back to him as we took our first steps away.

  Perez stopped in the narrow doorway and turned to us. “If there is a group of those with the tattoo, and if you find them,” he shouted above his distant musicians, “thank them for me. I never had the chance.”

  I nodded and started walking with Marina toward the main part of the abandoned stockyards. Two of the Romani guards walked twenty meters behind us, and I could hear the din of the dance music again as we approached the graffiti-covered triple arches of the entrance. The thundering beats and strobe lights of the popup dance club jolted me out of the fantasy world we had entered.

  We walked through the arch and onto the empty Roman street, our escorts vanishing back into the darkness, leaving us alone.

  I turned to her but didn’t know what to say or how to start talking about what we had just experienced together.

  “That was emotional for me,” Marina said as she started walking along the well-lit curving road to the right. “He held my hand, and I saw the truth in his eyes.”

  “Yes, that part was very real,” I agreed. “So, what do we do now?”

  “Well, you can walk if you want, but I am taking a taxi back to the embassy.”

  I could see that the emotional events of the day had finally caught up with her. “I think there is a taxi stand up ahead, but I meant what do we do about the notebooks?”

  “As I said, I will check my sources and will meet you tomorrow at St. Peter’s.”

  “If you find him, Vasili, I mean, will you help me translate the notebooks word for word into English?”

  “I will. I promise. I just need some time to myself right now,” Marina said, flagging down a passing cab. “Do you want to split it with me?” she asked as she opened the door.

  I shook my head. “I want to walk and think about this for a while. See you tomorrow, partner.”

  Chapter 7

  I carefully navigated through the crowd of Sunday worshipers. “And lastly, we have the tomb of Pope Alexander the VII,” I said in a voice just loud enough to reach the small group of tourists who hovered close to me under the imposing dome of the Basilica. “It was done by Bernini, the same man who made the Baldacchino at the center of St. Peter’s that I just showed you.” I spotted Marina in the distance as she walked toward me. “This would be Bernini’s last major work. He completed and unveiled it when he was eighty years old. The skeleton holding the hourglass is a common symbol of man’s mortality, a mortality that applies even to popes. It was said that Pope Alexander VII loved Bernini’s work so much that he had the artist carve a white marble skull that the Pope kept on his desk to remind him of his short time on earth. Well, that concludes our tour today,” I said and motioned the crowd toward the open door at the far end of the basilica. “I hope you have enjoyed the tour and your time in Rome.”

  Marina smiled at me and waited for the last of the group to slip away before stepping forward. “No tips today?” she asked.

  “It would feel weird taking money in here,” I said, looking around. “Besides, they all paid for the tour yesterday. Did you find anything?”

  Marina smiled and nodded.

  “Come with me. I want to hear everything.” I led her over to one of the smaller side chapels with no parishioners, and we sat next to each other on an empty pew. “Well?” I prompted.

  “I got up early this morning and had breakfast with my friend Tatiana. She has better access to some of the record systems.” Marina paused for a moment and looked out into the main nave of the church. “We ran the name Vasili Blagavich Arda, and it came back with a match, one match.”

  “Was he born in the village that Evan described?”

  Marina pursed her thin lips. “We couldn’t find that out. Sometimes the system does not have records from before the Communist time. But we did find two records.” She brightened. “An internal security service arrest record and a prison record.”

  “Well, that sounds pretty close.”

  “Not close,” she said with a smile, “an exact match. Remember when I told you that Evan wrote about Vasili being arrested?”

  I nodded.

  “The dates in the record match the dates in the notebooks. Even the name of the prison that Evan gives for Vasili’s internment is right. Eric, it’s a match. We have our proof!” she exclaimed and then lowered her voice again under several scolding looks.

  I sat on the pew and felt a rush of excitement. “That’s great Marina, did you bring any printout of data that we could include in the work once we get it translated?”

  She looked at me with a confused look on her face. “I just told you that I found it.”

  “I know, but we will need to reference that proof point with some data or record from your system that we can include in a translation of the work. That’s the proof. That’s what we need.”

  She stiffened visibly on the pew next to me. “I cannot do that,” she whispered. “That is state-protected information. I cannot take anything out of the embassy,” she protested. “I could go to prison, Eric.”

  I could see that she was upset, and I thought about how to phrase the request differently.

  “I could get in trouble even for what I did with Tatiana this morning,” she continued. “What you ask is too much.”

  “But we need some evidence.”

  “I told you I saw it. I saw it only two hours ago. Is that not enough for you?” Marina asked.

  “It is,” I conceded, “but we need something that we can share with others. That’s the way this kind of writing works.”

  “Like to publish?” she challenged. “How do you think that would work out for me?”

  I could feel the anger rising in her. I tried to imagine how she felt about the events that had transpired since I walked into her embassy. I felt like my translator, my partner, and my potential friend might be slipping away from me. “It is enough for me, Marina. I’m sorry if it seemed like I doubted you. It’s just that I was hoping for something about Evan and Vasili that we could share with the world.”

  She sat and stared at me for several breaths. “If you need hard information that ties Evan to Vasili, then it will have to come from our word for word translation of the notebooks, as we agreed yesterday. That is my only offer,” she stated and turned her face forward.

  I studied her, but I didn’t need to think about her proposal. “I’ll take that offer, Marina,” I said and extended my open right hand to her.

  She kept her face forward and gave me a sidelong glance before the corner of her mouth broke into the smallest of smiles as she took my hand. “Partners,” she said.

  Epilogue:

  Marina and I started the translation the next evening. She would come to my modest apartment near the walls of Vatican City, where she would translate the notebooks aloud word for word in English while I typed as fast as I could to keep up with her. It took nearly a month for us to reach the end.

  When we finished, I set about the daunting task of researching the historical events, names, and dates scattered throughout the notebooks in an attempt to get the proof I wanted. A few years later, I compiled that research into detailed footnotes, gave the book an appropriate title, and published the work as-is.

  I thought that might be the end of the story, but it was not. Readers, researchers, and eventually, Hollywood found The Reincarnationist
Papers. You can see Hollywood’s adaptation of The Reincarnationist Papers in the Paramount Pictures movie INFINITE (May 2021), and you can start reading it now at the link below.

  THE REINCARNATIONIST PAPERS

  1st NOTEBOOK

  "As the stars looked to me when I was a shepherd in Assyria, they look to me now a New Englander." Henry David Thoreau, 1853

  Chapter 1

  The noose looked ridiculous…

  You can order The Reincarnationist Papers using the link below:

  AUTHOR BIO

  D. Eric Maikranz has had a multitude of lives in this lifetime. As a world traveler, he was a foreign correspondent while living in Rome, translated for relief doctors during a cholera epidemic in Nicaragua, and was once forcibly expelled from the nation of Laos. He has worked as a tour guide, a radio host, a bouncer, and as a Silicon Valley software executive. THE REINCARNATIONIST PAPERS is his first novel, which has been adapted into the Paramount Pictures film INFINITE, starring Mark Wahlberg in 2021.