The Trinity Game (45 page)

“OK.” Daniel drank some beer and they sat in silence some more. The silence was growing heavy, uncomfortable. Daniel said, “Go ahead, hit me.”

“I know you don’t want to hear it.”

“When did that ever stop you?”

“Fine. If the government decides to put him away for life, he’ll go away for life. Believe me, I know how these guys work—they’ll find a charge and make it stick.” Daniel didn’t answer. Pat sipped his root beer. “You need to convince your uncle to take their offer.”

Daniel shook his head. “That dog won’t hunt, man. Forget it. He’s willing to die tomorrow, you think prison is gonna scare him? I already told him, I made it abundantly clear we’re playing exceptionally long odds. He understands.”

“What’d he say?”

“Said just do our best to get him to the podium, and whatever happens after that is exactly what’s supposed to happen. He’s gone all fatalist on me. And the truth is, after everything that’s gone down, I can’t say he’s wrong.”

“But what’s to be gained? Even if nobody puts a bullet in his head, the feds will snatch him up before he gets to the podium.”

“Well, I’m just gonna make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“And how you gonna do that?” said Pat.

Daniel signaled the bartender for the check. “I have no idea.”

T
he bell jangled above Daniel’s head as he opened the door and stepped inside the voodoo shop. Priestess Ory was behind the cash register, ringing up a nervous Yankee couple. She glanced his way, then turned her attention back to her customers and gave the young man his change. “Use it in good health,” she said.

The young woman holding the paper bag said, “Thank you, we will,” and punctuated it with an unnecessary giggle.

Daniel passed them as they left the store. The bell jangled and the door closed, and they were alone.

“May I interest you in a tarot reading, sir?” Ory deadpanned. “Some love potion perhaps? Money-drawing powder? A protection-from-enemies mojo?”

He deserved that, and acknowledged it with a nod of his head. “Fair enough,” he said. “Guilty as charged, Your Honor.” His smile went unreciprocated. But she looked more troubled than angry.

“Been near a television in the last hour?” she said.

“What is it this time? Another prediction come true?”

“No, it’s Memphis. The tent city in Riverside Park. After Tim went on CNN last night and announced he was in New Orleans, the mood in Memphis fell pretty low. And when the heat rose today, it turned to anger and…well, things turned ugly. Then the
police moved in, in full riot gear, and proceeded to make the ’68 Chicago convention look like a love-in.”

“Jesus.”

Ory shuddered visibly. “Way it looked on television, it was almost a pleasant surprise to hear that the dead only numbered in the teens.”

Agent Hillborn’s promise rang in Daniel’s ears:
Tim Trinity will not be making any more public speeches, tomorrow or the next day or next week or next year.

“I realize I’m not in any position to ask you for favors, Mama Anne,” he said. “But we really do need your help.”

Ory looked at him for a few seconds and then offered a gracious smile that showed only a little reluctance around the edges. “We’re on this road together,” she said. “In my dream, you told me to remember that.” Her smile warmed. “I haven’t forgotten, and neither should you.”

The sidewalks were as packed as midtown Manhattan at the height of rush hour. The police kept everyone moving along, but this being the Southland, everyone still shuffled at a pace that would drive any self-respecting New Yorker to murder.

The sun was sinking in the western sky, but it still must’ve been ninety-five degrees with the additional heat generated by so many bodies. And Daniel couldn’t take off his windbreaker without exposing the gun. So he just kept pressing onward, sweating his way out of the Quarter as quickly as the crush of pedestrians would allow.

He stopped at the Everything Shoppe on Canal Street and cooled off while picking up supplies. Sandwiches and Zapp’s chips
for dinner, cigarettes for Trinity, a bottle of red wine, and some energy drinks for morning. Stepping back outside with his groceries felt like walking into a hot, wet blanket.

He spotted a man unlike anyone else on the sidewalk, watching him from under a palmetto. The man was in his late sixties, with thinning hair, perfect posture, and a Savile Row suit that easily cost eight thousand dollars but didn’t need to brag about it. A silver and black Rolls Royce Phantom sat idling at the curb behind him.

The man approached, and Daniel caught a hint of his cologne as he got close. He smelled like old money. What some people still insisted on calling
good breeding
. He said, “Congratulations. You’ve kept to the path, and I daresay you’ll know the truth before much longer.”

You’ve kept to the path…you’ll know the truth.
The words resonated in Daniel’s ears like an echo.
Walk the path, find the truth.
The note that had been waiting for him at the Westin, written in an elegant hand on expensive stationery.

“Papa Legba, I presume.”

The man smiled. “Quite.” He gestured to the Rolls. “Allow me to offer you a lift back to Saint Sebastian’s. It’s cool inside, and we can chat along the way. You must be very uncomfortable in that jacket.”

The man poured thirty-year-old Macallan Single Malt into a couple of crystal glasses, handed one to Daniel, and settled back into the deep green leather seat as the Rolls Royce gently rocked into motion. He said, “We’ve been most impressed by you, Daniel. You’ve shown all the makings of a top field operative.” His accent was maddeningly neutral. Probably an American who’d spent
many years living in England and, to a lesser extent, continental Europe. Or maybe a Brit who’d moved to America decades ago and purposely lost the boarding school accent of his youth.

“Who’s
we
?” said Daniel. “And for that matter, who the hell are you? I think Legba wants his name back.”

The man’s smile was utterly confident. A smile that would seem arrogant on a younger man, but on this man signaled the calm perspective that comes with a lifetime of wide experience. “We are an organization you’ve never heard of: the Fleur-de-Lis Foundation. My name is Carter Ames, and I’m the managing director. And as you already know, we’ve been your ally from the start.”

Daniel tasted the scotch. It went down like liquid silk. “Why? What’s your interest here?”

“The mission of the Fleur-de-Lis Foundation is to bring the truth to light, so the public can make informed choices about our civilization’s future,” said Carter Ames. “Unfortunately, there are other people, equally powerful, who do not trust the public with the truth. So we struggle against each other. It is a game we’ve been playing for many years, a game that may never end. But it must be played, lest we lose what’s left of our freedoms.”

“Do they have a name, these powerful people you’re struggling against?”

“Indeed. They call themselves the Council for World Peace. But don’t let the name fool you.” He sipped his scotch. “Oh, they might accept world peace, but only on their terms, under their control. Peace without freedom. For us, that is too high a price. We do not consider slavery, however peaceful, to be a viable future.”

“Slavery? Come on.”

“Of course they don’t see it as such. They prefer words like
security
and
stability
. But it all comes down to control, in the end.
The council’s roots—and the foundation’s, for that matter—go back to the Middle Ages, albeit both under different names. The council began simply as a network of spies—a freelance espionage agency, if you will—gathering intelligence around Europe and the eastern trade routes and selling what they learned to monarchs and popes and wealthy merchant families, greasing the wheels of commerce. But over time their actions went far beyond intelligence gathering. They grew ever more powerful and became their own biggest client, really.”

“And how did the foundation begin?” asked Daniel.

“We were one of their clients—a huge merchant shipping dynasty, with interests spread across the civilized world—one of the most powerful families in France at the time. But this family held some sense of
noblesse oblige
, and as the heirs saw what the council was becoming, how it was concentrating power into fewer and fewer hands, they established the Fleur-de-Lis Foundation to thwart the council.

“And what the hell does this have to do with my uncle?”

Carter Ames shook his head. “What’s happening with your uncle, as significant as it is, is but one more battlefront in a war that has been raging for centuries. There have always been people who think like us and people who think like them, fighting behind the scenes of world events. What I’m trying to tell you, Daniel, is that the world as you know it is just what you’re allowed to see. The council and the foundation have left their fingerprints on almost any major world event you care to mention. The Kennedy assassination? Sure, but also his rise to the presidency. The alliance between the United States and Russia to stop Hitler? Yes, but also the alliance between Hitler and Hirohito. Even the American Revolution. I’m saying that
history
, as you know it, is just the edited version.”

“OK, thanks for the drink, Mr. Ames,” said Daniel, “but that sounds all kinds of crazy. You expect me to believe that these two organizations have been shaping history, and the world has never even heard of them? I don’t buy it.”

Carter Ames smiled placidly. “I don’t expect you to, not yet. But consider this: if you’d done the job the Vatican had sent you to do, the world would never have known about the Trinity Phenomenon. And that would just be one more piece of history kept secret.”

The truth of it hit Daniel like a gut punch. If he’d not discovered the alterations of the transcripts Nick had given him, the world would never have known. How many other world events, what other strange phenomenon had been successfully covered up and kept secret from the public? He felt like a door had just been cracked open to another world, and the opening was too narrow to see more than a sliver of what lay beyond.

“I need more,” he said. “What’s the bigger picture, the truth you’re trying to expose?”

“You’re not quite there yet, Daniel,” said Carter Ames. “If and when you do get there, I think you will want to join us, but it isn’t something to be taken lightly. While the hours are brutal, the pay is excellent and the job comes with a first-class expense account. You will likely not live to see old age, but you might. And whenever you die, you’ll die knowing that you’ve helped save the world from another Dark Ages.” His face darkened as he spoke. “That’s why I became involved. I wanted to be able to look my granddaughter in the eye knowing I’d done everything I could, on my watch, to make things better. Or at least to hold back the darkness.”

Hold back the darkness…
The words sent a chill through Daniel.

Carter Ames put his glass down and reached into his breast pocket. “At any rate, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Right now you need to focus your attention on keeping your uncle alive.”