The Trinity Game

“Father Daniel Byrne. Devil’s Advocate, clearance code: UG-8806.”

“Go ahead.”

“I need a plane, in Atlanta. Destination is Rome, and I need to leave in”—a glance at his watch—“two hours.”

“Um, that’s pretty tight, I’m not sure—”

“Just make it happen,” said Daniel. “Priority One.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else?”

“Yeah, get a message to the DA. Tell him I’m coming in. And tell him we’ve got a positive.”

He hung up, shaved, showered, and dressed. He hadn’t worn the uniform since his last visit to the Vatican, and as he adjusted his clerical collar in the mirror, he saw a priest looking back. In recent years, he’d felt increasingly like an imposter, the uniform increasingly like a costume.

But not anymore.

The sky was still dark as Daniel walked across the tarmac to the white private jet with a gold holy cross painted on its tail. He climbed the aluminum steps and entered the lush cabin, was greeted by the smell of fresh leather. The seats were wide and soft, and could swivel, and each had a gold cross embroidered into the headrest. Side tables of polished burl wood and silk curtains on the windows. At the back of the cabin, a well-stocked bar and flat-panel television on the wall.

As they reached altitude, Daniel reclined his seat and closed his eyes.

Julia wrapped her wet hair in a towel and picked up her cell phone. The display said it was her editor at the Times-Picayune calling from New Orleans.

“Haven’t found him yet,” she said.

“Shit.”

“Left messages with his office, got his unlisted number and left messages at the house too. Nothing else I can do right now on that angle.”

“There is no other angle, Julia. Trinity is the story.”

“I get it, Herb, you don’t have to yell at me. Nobody knows where he is, what the hell do you want me to do? Anyway, you have no idea what it’s like here. Atlanta’s gone insane.”

“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