The Trinity Game

by Sean Chercover

  “Seen it on the news. What are you following?”

  “Got a call in to Sheriff Alatorre. Figure I’ll talk to a couple survivors, work some human interest to carry us through the next cycle until Trinity reappears.”

  “OK, I want you to get with Kathryn Reynolds, she’s a producer at CNN. You’ll be working with her for the duration.”

  “Oh God, gimme a break.”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Julia. You know the drill—we’re broke, and they offered to pay your expenses. And we need the profile. So it’s either that or we call you home and send Sammy to work with them. Your story, your choice.”

  Julia blew out a long breath. “Fine, but I answer to you. Can’t serve two masters.” She wrote down the number Herb read over the phone, said, “I gotta run.”

  “Hey, one more thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Nice job on GMA this morning.”

  “Thanks. On two hours sleep, but yeah, I think I did OK.”

  “Better than OK, you did great. The camera really likes you.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “Look, I know we don’t pay television money—hell, we barely pay newspaper money—but…I hope you’ll stay with us when this is all over. I mean, you’ll be able to write your ticket now—”

  “Don’t sweat it, Herb. New Orleans is home. And I’m a newspaper gal, I bleed ink.”

  She hung up, towel-dried her hair and tied it back in a ponytail, and switched on the television.

  The city had indeed gone insane. Lunatics were flooding in from all over the country, clogging the streets, pitching tents in the parking lot of Trinity’s church. And it would only get worse. The television outlets were having some kind of tantric orgasm over the story, decoding Trinity’s past predictions, confirming their accuracy, and reporting each as Breaking News, around the clock, reporting each with the same breathless intensity as the refinery explosion.

  This just in: Reverend Tim Trinity accurately predicted a traffic jam three weeks ago!

  This just in: Reverend Tim Trinity declared that jambalaya is good!

  Asinine.

  Julia really was a newspaper gal, and she did bleed ink. Television is a possum with a tapeworm, she thought; always hungry and it’ll feed on any garbage. But the newspaper industry was in trouble—many would say mortal danger—and nobody knew what the hell to do about it.

  Julia watched the muted television for a minute—a helicopter shot of the congested highways leading into Atlanta. How to make sense of all these people? It wasn’t really fair to label them all as lunatics—after all, there were hundreds of thousands of them and growing by the minute. But really, what was going through their heads? Why were people so eager to embrace religious explanations for the things they didn’t understand?

  Julia was an atheist, sure. But unlike many of the other skeptics she’d known, she didn’t consider herself intellectually superior to the vast majority of humans who did believe. She felt, rather, like a bit of a mutant. Like maybe 10 percent of the world’s population had somehow been genetically deprived of whatever neurological wiring caused the other 90 percent to perceive this thing called God.

  That didn’t mean there was a God. It just meant the mass illusion was invisible to her. There was a level on which she would never be able to relate to believers, and while they might derive great comfort from their belief, that didn’t excuse turning a blind eye to all the destructive influence of religion in the world.

  All the wealth and time and labor we pour into propping up our respective priests and reverends, rabbis and imams, monks and gurus, building grand cathedrals, churches, temples, mosques, and mansions; sacrificing our young on the altar of war, war over whose imaginary friend is the real imaginary friend (might as well print My God Can Beat Up Your God T-shirts); the bigotry, misogyny, subjection, intolerance and guilt. All that human energy, wasted, in response to the simple fact that we know we are going to die, and we don’t know what happens after, and we’re afraid that this life is all there is. The question haunts us—from the chilling childhood moment when we realize that we and everyone we love will die, until we exhale our final breath. And if a kind of mass self-hypnosis called Religion helps us cope with our fear, fine, but we have to look at the unintended consequences of embracing an irrational philosophy. We don’t have to look far. Ground Zero in Manhattan will do. Or the Gaza Strip, if you’ve got some air miles burning a hole in your pocket. While you’re over there, make a stop in Africa, where the pope is preaching to a country ravaged by tribal war, overpopulation, chronic food shortage, and AIDS. The pope tells them to stop using condoms, or the all-powerful and all-loving God will cast their souls into the fiery furnace of eternal damnation. Nice.

  So much for journalistic objectivity. Clearly this story was pushing all her bias buttons. She would have to watch herself, tread carefully.

  Her cell phone vibrated on the table. She glanced at the little screen, picked it up.

  “Sheriff, thanks for getting back.”

  “You may be the only civilized human being in your profession,” Sheriff Alatorre groused. “Your colleagues are operatin’ under the misguided notion that talking to them is my primary function. Can’t get a minute to do my goddamn job around here.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Been a long couple days.”

  “It’s all right,” said Julia, thinking: Make him your ally. She put a smile in her voice. “Have to admit, that’s a true assessment of a great number of my colleagues, Sheriff. And I do appreciate your time.”

  “That’s why I’m talking to you. Your message said you’re looking to interview survivors.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Young lady, I am about to make your day.” He rumbled a baritone chuckle in Julia’s ear. “Get out your pen. I got a survivor you are definitely gonna want to talk to.”

  The home number rang unanswered. Julia punched in the cell number and Andrew Thibodeaux picked up on the second ring. She identified herself and asked him to repeat what he had told the sheriff. As he spoke, she scribbled shorthand in her notebook.

  “Well, it’s like I told the man,” Andrew said. “Went to work, foreman said he’d got a crazy call from Reverend Trinity, sayin’ we gotta shut down the refinery, and there’s gonna be an accident. Something about visions and tongues. Foreman thought he was drunk.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “I seen him on the TV night before. Just surfin’, you know?—and suddenly my remote goes on the fritz, and I’m stuck on Reverend Trinity, and Reverend Trinity is talking to me—I mean, right at me—and I got the idea he’s talking for God. Don’t know how I know it, but I just know it, like a feeling kinda knowing. So next morning, when I hear about the phone call, then I know it for sure, and I’m like, ‘Shazam! I’m outta here.’”

  “Uh, wow.” Thinking: He’s about a peck short of a bushel. “Please, go on. What happened next?”

  “That’s it. Reverend Trinity saved my life, and the Lord saved my soul. I told the guys at work to come with me, but they stayed. Foreman fired my ass on my way out the door too. I left anyway. Best decision I ever made.”

  “Can’t argue that,” said Julia. “Andrew, that’s an incredible story. I’m in Atlanta, but I can be in New Orleans this afternoon, if you’ll meet with me.” What the hell—might as well fly back and forth on CNN’s tab. “I’d like to do a full interview, a profile piece on you.”

  “You can be in New Orleans, but I ain’t gonna be. The Lord has beckoned me, and I’m on the road. Call ya when I get to Atlanta.”

  Julia put the phone down, thinking: That boy needs a head-doctor.

  Goose bumps rose on her forearms, and a shiver rolled over her. That’s exactly what you thought when Danny called, she reminded herself, and over one hundred men paid for your arrogance with their lives.

  Shit…

  Her stomach knotted, and for the first time in a long while, she wanted a cigarette. Great. After Danny entered the seminary,
she’d graduated from social smoker to simply smoker, and she’d maintained that status longer than intended. Finally kicked the habit five years ago, and she was damned if she’d go back to it.

  Danny…

  The very topic she’d been avoiding. OK, subconscious mind, Julia thought, you want to talk about it? Fine, we’ll talk about it.

  Truth was, seeing Danny again had stirred up emotional silt, thankfully long settled and now unwelcome. But that was to be expected. He was, after all, the first real love of her life. The first and, so far, the most profound love of her life.

  When he left her for the priesthood, the heartbreak was crippling, and Julia spent the next few months doing her job on autopilot and smoking pot on her days off. Her self-esteem had taken a pounding. Hard enough if a man leaves you for another woman, but Danny left her for his imaginary God-Daddy. Left her for a life of celibacy. And what did that say about her feminine charms? It was a rough blow.

  She had no intention of grieving forever, and she soon forced herself to shake it off and get back in the game. A rebound romance with an old college boyfriend turned into an ill-advised marriage that lasted two years—two-and-a-half, if you include the engagement.

  Her fault; she was never really in love with Luc. Then again, Luc had that Cajun brand of macho, allowed no woman past the wrought iron gates of his mind, wouldn’t have proposed to a woman who insisted on knowing him well enough to achieve a profound love.

  When she woke up to the fact that she wasn’t in love with her husband, she resolved to get closer, figuring if she could really know him, she could fall in love with him. But Luc would not reveal himself, resented the pressure, and the relationship quickly went to hell.

  Danny never kept her out. He had the same wrought iron gates as all men, but he opened them for her, and once inside, she had found her home. And then he’d ripped it away from her.

  And now he was back.

  She caught a fleeting image of the previous night, in the bar. The way Danny rotated his pint glass on the coaster, a quarter turn after each sip, an unconscious gesture that cleaned the foam from the inside of the glass as he drank. He was still doing it, fourteen years on.

  She wondered what else hadn’t changed. Had he really been celibate for fourteen years? Hard to imagine. He’d been a passionate lover—of course, who isn’t at eighteen?—but unlike most young men, his passion included the desire to see her needs satisfied, and not just to bolster his credentials as a lover, but because he wanted her to be happy. Danny had been afraid of many things, but intimacy was not one of them.

  They’d been good together. Really good. Her girlfriends thought it a bit creepy, a woman in her twenties taking up with a teenager, and she had her own moments of doubt and discomfort over the age difference, but Danny was not your average teenager. In ways that mattered, he was more of a man than most of her friends’ boyfriends, and he was certainly more mature than Luc had been.

  Still, however grown up Danny presented himself, he was only eighteen, and the relationship always felt star-crossed, fated to end on his next birthday, and she forced herself not to push too hard. It would do neither of them any good if Danny chose her over the priesthood only to resent her for it later.

  All she could do, in the end, was let him go.

  And now he was back. Not as a lover, but there was no denying the sexual spark—still alive for both of them, she knew—and he’d grown into quite a handsome man. And when she’d hugged him hello, she couldn’t help but notice the muscles of his arms, tight and defined through the cotton shirt—

  Snap out of it, girl—he’s a priest.

  “I believe in God,” he said last night in the bar, “but I’m starting to think my religion doesn’t describe Him very well.” Might that mean…

  Stop. You are not going to seduce a priest. Shut it down, and focus on the job.

  Andrew Thibodeaux stopped at the tollbooth, paid his dollar, and chugged on up the Greater New Orleans Bridge. The old pickup backfired, protesting the climb, her payload piled high with the sum total of Andrew’s life—at least, all he intended to keep—a blue nylon tarp tied down over everything, its corners flapping in the briny breeze, waving good-bye to the Crescent City. He had $357 in his pocket, another thousand in the bank, no job, and no idea what lay ahead.

  None of that mattered. Through Reverend Tim, God had saved Andrew. Reverend Tim was in Atlanta, so God wanted Andrew in Atlanta.

  It was that simple.

  He pressed down on the accelerator, patted the cracked dashboard.

  “You’re a good old girl,” he said. “You’ll make it.”

  Rome, Italy…

  Daniel deplaned and crossed the tarmac in the dark, feeling energized but slightly disconnected from his body, not quite like watching himself in a movie, but as if his consciousness were hovering along, about a foot above his head.

  Not unreasonable. The last week had been an emotional whirlwind, and he’d just slept through the flight—the first full night he’d gotten since the girl in Nigeria with the holes in her hands. But it hadn’t been night—he’d actually slept through the day—and with the six-hour time difference, he now felt as though he were living in a parallel world of perpetual nighttime.

  Even blindfolded, he’d have known he was back in Rome. The air here was softer than Atlanta, and carried a distinctly vegetal base note. Like New Orleans, Rome was (for good and ill) a proudly aromatic city, and that fertile base note was the constant denominator, never letting you forget that the city is a living thing.

  He collected his motorcycle from long-term parking and headed up A91, through the warm Italian night, toward the bright lights of the city, leaning into the curves, gunning the throttle on the straightaways, feeling more alive than he had in years. In no time at all, he was in front of the Vatican, pushing down the kickstand, wading through waves of tourists, passing the Swiss Guard sentries, cartoon colorful but deadly as coral snakes, and bounding up the ancient marble steps.

  “Oh, hello, Daniel.” Nick’s secretary, George, was standing in the outer office. He spoke in a rough Belfast brogue and his smile showed gaps where a few teeth had been knocked out over the years. “Father Nick’s been tied up in meetings, and it’s getting on. He said go home, get a good night’s rest, and he’ll meet with you in the morning.”

  “I slept on the plane.”

  “Well, he didn’t.”

  Daniel moved to go around, and George sidestepped to intercept. “Not so fast, boyo.”

  He was in his late forties, a little thick around the middle, but there was hard muscle under the padding. Rumor among the priests was George had been a Provisional IRA thug in his youth, and Daniel had no reason to disbelieve it. And boxing skills don’t often tip the scales against a seasoned Provo street fighter.

  “I need to see him, George. Now.”

  George put his hand gently on Daniel’s shoulder and spoke soft menace. “The man said ‘tomorrow.’”

  Daniel spun, pivoting around George, bolted for the oak door, ripped it open, and said, “I gotta see you, Nick.” As he crossed the threshold, Father Nick dropped a file folder on his desk blotter, removed his reading glasses, and stood.

  From behind, George clamped Daniel’s shoulder in a vise, found the pressure point on the joint, and dug in with a thumb that felt like an ice pick. He spoke into Daniel’s right ear. “You investigators think the sun shines from yer arseholes. Got news for ya: It don’t. So you can quit acting like you’re fucking Bono.” Then, to Nick, “Father Nick, if I may be so bold: Perhaps it’s time you let me take our little rock star downstairs, teach him some manners.”

  “Appreciate the offer, George, but I’ll take the meeting.” He nodded assurance. “I’ll be fine, please close the door on your way out.”

  The pain in Daniel’s shoulder eased into a dull throb as George let go. The door clicked shut behind him.

  “Didn’t you get my message?” Daniel said.

  “Which one?”
>
  Daniel now heard the sharpness in Nick’s tone, saw the anger behind his eyes.

  “Way I see it,” Nick went on, “you’ve been sending very mixed messages. And here’s one that confuses me: Under orders to stand down, you instead call a member of the press? Who happens to be your ex-girlfriend?”

  “Are you spying on me?”

  “Looking out for you. And starting to have serious doubts. This isn’t just a job, Daniel, we take an oath.”

  “OK, look, it’s—well, complicated.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  “Not what you’re thinking.” Daniel raised his hands, took a slow breath. “I know, I disobeyed a direct order, and I’m sorry, but there were exigent circumstances, and the thing is, you’ll understand once you hear my report.” He pulled his notebook from the breast pocket of his jacket, flipped it open. “The thing is, Nick, we’ve got a real miracle on our hands.”

  Nick sighed, ran a hand over his head. “Holy Mother of God. I didn’t send you to find a miracle. I sent you to debunk a cheap, gaudy Holy Roller, who you already know is a con man. And not only did you blow it—he converted you.”

  “It’s not like that. In fact, I’m angry at God for choosing him. But I can’t deny the evidence of my eyes, and they’ve seen the impossible. Did you even read my e-mail?”

  Nick nodded. “And I think you’ve been played for a sucker. Trinity’s got tons of cash, he could’ve paid the trucker to take out the billboard at a pre-arranged time.”

  “Not possible. You weren’t there, you didn’t see how it went down.”

  “And quite conveniently, there’s no videotape.”

  “The chip blew in the camera. That’s why the accident happened.”

  “Or that’s the way it was staged. Did you check the camera?”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “Then how do you know Trinity didn’t pay off the cameraman?”

  “Stop,” Daniel said, a little too loud. He started walking the floor to keep the tension out of his voice. “Just give me a chance. Believe me, if you’d been there…You can talk to the other witnesses, the state trooper—”