Sean Chercover - The Trinity Game

But it’s harder to be forgettable when you’re missing an arm, so Giuseppe was wearing his special windbreaker. The left sleeve below the elbow was filled with foam rubber and a tennis ball was glued inside the elastic cuff and pinned inside the left pocket. It wouldn’t pass close inspection, but if you stayed in motion, moving through people’s field of view, you didn’t jump out as an amputee. Otherwise he was dressed as any other casual tourist, with nice blue jeans and a lime-green polo shirt under the windbreaker. Nothing to identify him as a priest.

Sticking with bad Italian and still holding the map out, he added, “I know where it is, so do not get the idea to take me for a long ride.”

The driver sneered and turned to face the road. “ Si, mein Führer ,” he said as he threw the Fiat into gear.

At the west end of the piazza, Giuseppe told the driver to stop, paid the fare, and got out beside the fountain of Neptune and his two pet dolphins. He walked—not too quickly—toward the center of the vast oval, which had served in centuries past as a favorite location for public executions. Reaching the center, he put on his sunglasses and stopped at the Egyptian obelisk of Ramesses II.

The obelisk had been brought to Rome by Augustus in 10 BC and later moved to this spot in 1589, and every Roman knew its history. Giuseppe had seen it thousands of times, but he stopped and pretended to be a German seeing it for the first time. He walked slowly around it while scanning the tourists milling about the piazza to be sure he wasn’t followed. Then he shoved the map in his windbreaker and pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the back pocket of his jeans. He strode to the east side of the piazza, where he lit a cigarette and puffed away, not enjoying it. He normally smoked Marlboro Lights, but for the next taxi driver he would be French, and so these were Gitanes Brunes, which carried a distinctive odor that would linger in his hair.

This time he spoke French, with a perfect Parisian accent. “Je vais a la Trinità dei Monti, s’il vous plaît.” He checked over his shoulder as the taxi pulled into traffic. No one was following. He breathed slow and deep to calm his nerves, again fighting the urge to touch the stump end of his left arm.

It happened whenever he was particularly tired or stressed, this feeling of the phantom limb. Years ago it had been painful, like paper cuts on his fingertips, bee stings on his forearm. The pain had faded over time, but what lingered was the aggravating feeling that he had fingers, a hand, a forearm, where there were none. The doctors had told him to apply sensory stimulation to the skin covering the stump whenever the phantom limb reappeared. They said this would train his brain to stop imagining the missing appendage. And it worked, temporarily, but the damn thing always came back. After five years, Giuseppe had just about given up hope that it would ever go away completely.

The driver stopped in front of the French church. Giuseppe waited until the taxi was out of sight before crossing the street and descending the Spanish Steps, navigating around tourists and college kids, all the way down to the Piazza di Spagna and past the Fontana della Barcaccia, which to Giuseppe’s eye was the least interesting fountain in Rome. He crossed the square and rounded the corner to a small newsagent and tobacco shop—the sign above the door read Edicola Moderna .

Giuseppe entered and browsed magazines while the old man behind the counter announced he was closing for lunch. Once the shop was empty of customers, the old man looked at him and said, “Lock the door.”

Giuseppe locked the door and stepped forward to the counter, now rubbing his stump through the windbreaker. “I need to speak with Carter Ames.”

The old man shook his head. “You have something to report, you file a report, let it work its way up the chain. Foundation protocol.”

“This is not just a report. And we don’t have time.”

The old man looked at him for almost a full minute. “Do you know what you’re asking?”

“I do.” Giuseppe scratched his stump harder, willing his phantom hand to recede. “I do understand. But it’s already in motion and they’ve sent a priest to investigate. Tell Mr. Ames it is about a preacher named Tim Trinity. And tell him I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Emory University – Atlanta, Georgia…

Professor Cindy Elder, head of Speech Pathology at Emory University, led Daniel into her book-lined office and offered him a seat. “I haven’t spoken to Father O’Connor since my wedding,” she said. Then she peered over the rims of her elegant glasses. “Sorry to say, I’m a bit of a lapsed Catholic.”

Daniel smiled. “We’re all lapsed, in one way or another. Anyway, I came for your professional advice. I promise I’m not here to measure your faith.” Then he added, “I told Father O’Connor I needed the best.”

The professor seemed appropriately flattered. “Well, I’m happy to help in any way I can.”

Daniel opened his notebook. “If I wanted to learn how to speak backwards, how would I go about that?”

Cindy Elder’s eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon?”

“Speaking English backwards, say, so if you recorded it and played it in reverse and sped it up a bit, it would sound normal.”

Cindy Elder shook her head and smiled. “I’m guessing you don’t know anything about speech pathology.”

“You’re guessing right,” said Daniel.

She picked up the telephone receiver, punched in a number. “Gerry, is the sound lab free? Great, meet me there in five. Thanks.” She hung up the phone and stood. “Let’s go,” she said.

The lab looked like a scaled-down control room at a recording studio—a large mixing board on a counter, facing a window that looked onto a small room with microphones and sound-deadening foam lining the walls. Alongside the mixing board was a computer screen and a panel with various recording devices and visual sound monitors and other gizmos.

Cindy Elder introduced Daniel to Gerry, a graduate student who looked like a California surfer dude. Daniel told Gerry what he was after—a way to speak English backwards at two-thirds speed so it sounded natural reversed and sped up.

Gerry laughed, incredulous. “You serious?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“’Cause it’s not possible, Padre.” He caught himself. “Mind if I call you Padre?”

“Whatever makes you comfortable.”

“Cool.” Gerry smiled. “I could tell you were one of those hip priests.” He flipped a couple switches on the mixing board, brought up a couple of faders. “Here, check it out.” He pointed to a microphone on the counter. “Say your name into the mic.”

Daniel leaned forward, said, “Daniel Byrne.”

Gerry tapped on the computer keyboard, and Daniel’s voice came through the monitors. Gerry tapped some more. “Here’s what it sounds like backward. Listen carefully, I’ll play it a few times.”

Daniel listened as Gerry played his name, in his own voice, backwards, five times. Gerry pointed at the microphone again. “Now try and say what you just heard.”

Daniel did.

“Again.”

Daniel did it three more times. Gerry tapped on the keyboard some more, recording Daniel’s efforts. “Now I’ll run that backward,” Gerry said.

It didn’t sound close to natural. It didn’t even sound much like his name.

“But with practice,” said Daniel, “I’d get better.”