Sean Chercover - The Trinity Game

Father Nick drummed his fingers on the desk.

“Yes, I’m sorry. Anyway, I played the Trinity tape backward. It sounded like English on Quaaludes. I sped it up by a quarter, then a third.” He stopped rubbing the stump and his hand swept up in a triumphant gesture. “And there it was! Trinity was speaking English backward at two-thirds normal speed. Amazing. I recorded every broadcast since. Whenever he does his tongues act, they manifest the same phenomenon.”

“Thank you, Giuseppe,” said Father Nick. “That’ll be all.”

The abrupt dismissal set Giuseppe to rubbing his stump even faster as he took his leave. Nick watched him go and didn’t look at Daniel until the door had closed behind.

Daniel shrugged. “So Trinity’s upped his game, learned a new parlor trick.”

“And he’s very good at it, which makes him dangerous,” said Nick, pulling a mini tape recorder from the case file. “Listen. This is what it sounds like.” He pressed play.

The crowd noise in the background was now strange, but Tim Trinity’s voice sounded natural. He was saying, “…on the south coast of Georgia, there will be an unexpected thunderstorm tomorrow in the late afternoon. So all you folks down by Brunswick, all the way up to Darien, be sure to pack an umbrella…”

Father Nick clicked the tape off.

“You have got to be kidding me,” said Daniel. “If this were anybody but you, I’d expect the door to fly open and the Candid Camera people to come in.”

“I told you it was gonna get weird,” said Nick.

“OK, weird. But a weather report ?”

“Not exactly the kind of message you’d expect from God.”

“Not exactly. What else does he say?”

“He says a lot of trivial crap. A few bigger things too, things that are going to get him noticed. Nothing earth shattering. Thing is, he makes predictions. Sometimes he’s gonna be right—law of averages. He lucked out on that weather report, for example. We checked. And he guessed the winner of the Superbowl. He also gets things wrong, but it’s like reading your horoscope in the paper. You forget all the days it didn’t make sense and remember the times it resonated.”

“OK, so he’s got a new con,” said Daniel, “but I don’t see our interest here. We already know he’s a fake, and he’s not even Catholic.”

“Think about it, Daniel. Think about how it’ll play out if Trinity isn’t exposed as a fake. He’ll just keep going on like this, and soon he’ll have a pretty big record of correct prophecy. And when he does, he’ll reveal how to decode what he’s saying. People will go crazy. Not a few people, millions of people. Catholics, Protestants, Mormons—it won’t matter. People are hungry for miracles, and they’ll be led away from God—they’ll follow a false prophet. We need him debunked before that happens. Question is can I trust it to you? I know things ended badly between you two, and I don’t want you to take the case if you don’t think you can handle it. This can’t be personal. It isn’t about what happened between you and your uncle.”

Twenty years ago, when Daniel was just thirteen, Tim Trinity had been the closest thing to a father that Daniel had ever known. A lot of water under the proverbial bridge since then, but some wounds never fully heal.

“Personal involvement won’t be an issue,” Daniel said. “I have no problem exposing Tim Trinity as a fraud.”

Nick removed his reading glasses. “Then we may just be able to outflank Conrad after all. I can sell His Eminence on my need to assign the case to you, based on your knowledge of Trinity. And if you can nail this case shut fast, I think it’ll convince him that you’re indispensable to the ODA.”

“Thank you.”

“Just don’t make me look like an idiot for assigning it to you.” Father Nick pushed the file folder across the desk. “Transcripts are in the case file—you can read them on the flight to Atlanta.”

Daniel took the folder, stood, and walked to his boss’s four-centuries-old oak office door. Carved in the wood was Saint John, the Baptist, kneeling in the Jordan with his arms open, while Jesus instructed him to fulfill all righteousness.

And a voice came out of the heavens, “You are my beloved Son; in You I am well-pleased.”

After completing his morning prayers, Daniel skipped rope for fifteen minutes, working up a good sweat. Then he donned the gloves and worked out on the heavy bag that hung in the corner of his bedroom, enjoying the electric jolt that ran up his arm each time he landed a particularly vicious blow. The bag bucked and the chains rattled and the feeling of power spurred Daniel on. He put even more into his punches, employing his legs, his lower body, and the bag bucked harder and the chains rattled louder. He kept at it until his shoulders and wrists begged for mercy and the muscles of his arms began to twitch from fatigue.

As he pulled the gloves off, his gaze fell to the framed photo on the dresser. From the center of a boxing ring, eighteen-year-old Danny Byrne looked back at him with a prideful grin. The teenager wore silk trunks—purple and gold—and his bare chest, not yet as hairy as it was now in the mirror above the dresser, glistened with sweat. He held a Golden Gloves trophy above his head.

Sometimes it felt like yesterday. Sometimes, a hundred years ago. Daniel couldn’t decide which feeling was the sadder.

Daniel drank espresso in the first-class lounge, waiting for them to call his flight, thinking: One week, at most, and you can wash your hands of the man again.

Usually he was thrilled when a case brought him back stateside. He loved America, always missed it, occasionally ached for it, often fantasized about someday returning “back home” for good.

But this case did not thrill him one bit.

One week, he told himself again. Get in, debunk, get out.

Turning toward the flight-status monitors, Daniel caught a glimpse of the pretty redhead from the check-in line, now sitting three tables away. She’d been standing directly behind him in line, and she’d asked to borrow his pen. The skirt of her Chanel suit stopped a couple inches above the knee and the jacket hugged her narrow waist. She looked about his age—thirty-three—but her manner suggested late thirties as she took the pen and smoothly launched into small talk. She was a buyer for a chain of upscale women’s clothing stores—twenty locations spread across the South—and she loved expense account trips to Rome but was happy to be heading home to her papillon and her yoga classes, both of which she missed terribly whenever she was away. She was clearly single, and interested, and he’d tried to be friendly without encouraging further interest.

And now she sat three tables away, watching him over the top of her Marie Claire , trying to be just obvious enough that he’d get the feeling of being watched, look over, make eye contact. This was the downside of not wearing his clerical collar. And, if he was honest, it was the upside as well. Daniel wasn’t devoid of ego and it was nice to be reminded that women found him attractive. But it was also a bitter reminder of the woman he’d left to join the priesthood, the love he’d cast aside and tried so hard to forget. And the truth was he didn’t need a reminder.

Because he thought of her, every damn day.

Daniel’s father confessor was the only other person who knew. They’d talked about it countless times, most recently just a month ago...