Sean Chercover - The Trinity Game

“Tell me you got something,” said Nick.

“I think Trinity’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Serious trouble. Out of control. I saw him snort cocaine.”

“Get pictures?”

Trinity had told Daniel everything, including the reason for the cocaine. The story had been so wild that Daniel was left not knowing what to believe. “You sent me to debunk the guy. The fact that he snorts coke doesn’t debunk anything.” He put the camera down. “I met with him. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think he’s in control of the tongues. He claimed no knowledge of the predictions. When I told him, he was pretty shaken up, and I think he’s telling the truth. Maybe.”

Nick snorted a rough laugh in Daniel’s ear. “Trinity hasn’t told the truth since Carter was in the White House. Bottom line, we have to undermine his authority and get him off the air. And you’re wasting time. A coke habit will do the trick.”

“What about the oil refinery?”

“Forget about it. You have a job to do.”

“People are going to die, Nick.”

“If that’s God’s will.”

Daniel’s blood surged, and he tamped down his temper. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “We have the knowledge to stop this from happening.”

“Give your head a shake, kiddo. God is not talking through Trinity. Let’s get that straight.”

“I know that.”

“Then the knowledge in our possession did not come from God. Which means we are not supposed to have it. You think Trinity’s tongues act is otherworldly? Don’t forget, Satan speaks through people too.” Daniel didn’t answer. “What now?”

“I don’t even know if I believe in demonic possession,” said Daniel. Thinking: I don’t even know if I believe in Satan.

Nick sighed into the phone. “Whatever’s happening to Trinity, it’s not God.”

“But—”

“Listen. Disasters happen every day, and people die every day. We can’t know why that is, but if nothing else, we must believe God has a larger plan, beyond what we can see. Because if we can’t believe that much, then all is chaos and there’s no point. You need to take the larger view. If the oil refinery explodes, that is God’s will. Who are you to mess with that? Don’t presume to take God’s place. You are not Him.”

Daniel unclenched his fist, forced himself to breathe deep. “I’m not trying to be God. But Trinity’s batting a thousand so far. Innocent people are probably going to die, and I find it hard to accept that God would not want us to save them.”

“There are no innocent people, Dan. And you need to stop trying to read God’s mind. Now go get me pictures of Reverend Trinity fucking up.”

Nick broke the connection without saying good-bye.

Daniel’s hand shook as he put the phone down. How could Nick be so callous? Why not step in to save those refinery workers? And— Jesus —he’d barely reacted to the news of the altered transcripts. Did he already know? And what would that imply? The questions swirled in Daniel’s mind. He adopted a fighter’s stance and shadowboxed for a few minutes, burning off the excess adrenaline. Still his mind reeled, and the thought of doing nothing made his stomach churn.

This was asking too much.

Daniel dropped to his knees, clasped his hands together, and squeezed his eyes shut.

I know I have been a bad son, and my faith is weak. But Father in Heaven, I need your help, even as I don’t deserve it. I need you to strengthen my faith, because without it, I cannot sit back and do nothing while people burn to death. Please, give me something to hang my faith upon…

But there came no answer. No sign.

Just like always.

After a few minutes, Daniel stood up, feeling vaguely foolish, and wiped his eyes dry.

He picked up the camera again. Trinity made millions hustling poor people with the false promise of prosperity, and he did it in the name of God. He was the worst kind of con man. But as Daniel scrolled through the photos, he saw something more than a crook. He saw a man in deep crisis. And he had come away from their meeting convinced that whatever was happening to Trinity, it wasn’t an act.

But what was it? The man was predicting the future; there was no way around that. Also no way around the fact that the Christian God would never choose Tim Trinity as His spokesman on earth. And that led back to the horrible, terrifying question that had been quietly plaguing Daniel for some time.

What if God isn’t the Christian God?

One thing Nick was right about: This wasn’t about Daniel and his uncle. It wasn’t even about debunking a con man or protecting the sanctity of the Church or searching for a miracle. It was about the dozens of Louisiana oil refinery workers, who Daniel now believed would die the next morning, unless he did something about it.

The head of security at the Belle Chasse oil refinery told Daniel to get back on his meds and hung up in his ear. Understandable, really. He probably would’ve done the same thing in the man’s shoes.

He had known it might come to this, had hoped in vain that it wouldn’t. But now there was only one thing left to do. So he directed his laptop’s browser to the website of the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, found the staff directory, and looked up the telephone extension for Julia Rothman, his heart racing.

Julia was an intern at the New Orleans Times-Picayune when they were together. She’d since worked her way up to senior investigative reporter at the paper. She was quite the maverick, had been fired and rehired more than a few times, had won several regional journalism awards for exposing political corruption in Louisiana. Her series on government failure post-Katrina had been nominated for a Pulitzer. Daniel knew all this because, against his better judgment, he’d followed her career on the Internet all these years, unable to let go completely.

His heart now pounding as he reached for the phone, his mind flooded with the memories of the headiest year of his life…

Eighteen years old, high school graduate, New Orleans Golden Gloves champion, and madly in love. She was twenty-one, unafraid, and scary smart. And the sex was incredible. Not that he had any basis for comparison—she was his first, and would be his only.

They first met at a neighborhood party in the lead-up to Mardi Gras, and the sexual spark was there from the get-go, but she deflected his first advance. He was welcome to hang out in her group of friends, she said, but dating was out of the question. It took two months of “hanging out” in a group, at neighborhood parties, before she finally got over the age difference and agreed to a real date.

One date was all it took. They fell for each other hard and fast, became a steady couple, and spent every free minute together. Daniel was taking a year off after high school, concentrating on his fighting and working at the gym, but he was slated to enter the seminary when he turned nineteen, and time was running out for them. As the months counted down, everything became more intense. The lovemaking, the fighting, the all-night metaphysical debates.

He’d told Julia all about his past, and she understood his need to believe. But to her, God was a human invention—a way for people to strike back at their fear of death. As she saw it, secular miracles were all around us, and that should be enough. Friendship and love and sex and chocolate and children were all miracles. That humans had evolved and survived and thrived in a coldly indifferent universe, had brought meaning and beauty to their lives through art and music and literature, had brought understanding of the world through science—she saw all of that as a miracle. And she saw no place in the universe for a God; didn’t need one.