The Trinity Game (5 page)

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...

“God doesn’t expect you to be perfect, Daniel,” said the father confessor. “You’re supposed to
emulate
Jesus, not
be
Him. And as He was tempted, so are you. This woman is your temptation.”

“It’s more than just a passing temptation. I’m still in love with her.”

“So that’s your cross to bear. You love her, but you choose to love God more.”

The words rang hollow in Daniel’s ears.

Singapore…

C
hulia Street was so perfectly paved the airport limousine seemed almost to float as it cruised along, the soft hum of its tires the only evidence of contact with the road. On either side, young trees rose from evenly spaced planters along spotless sidewalks. As the newly built Sato Kogyo-Hitachi building slid by on the left, Conrad Winter set his watch ahead to local time.

Seven hours ahead, twelve spent in the air, for a net loss of five hours. A negative way to frame it, no doubt, but Conrad was not looking forward to this meeting. At least he’d have a night in Singapore before flying out again.

Conrad loved Singapore for all the reasons he didn’t love Rome. Rome was a city that fetishized the past, lived in the present, and made no plans for the future. But Singapore was
all about
the future. Singapore tore down her outdated relics and built gleaming new skyscrapers at a furious rate, always thinking big, always looking forward. The seven-hour time difference between the two cities might as well be seven centuries. No wonder the council kept its headquarters here.

There were many good men at the Vatican but, like the city that surrounded them, they were not sufficiently forward-focused. They were wearing blinders that obscured the future. Most of them, but not all. Besides Cardinal Allodi, Conrad knew five other council operatives within the Holy See itself, although there were surely others as yet unknown to him. The council was not the sort of organization that published a list. The Church demanded undivided loyalty, and affiliation with the Council for World Peace was grounds for excommunication. But that was a rule made by the good men wearing blinders. Conrad’s loyalty was not divided. Conrad’s loyalty was to God.

And God would never leave the fate of the world to good men wearing blinders.

The council had operatives everywhere and introductions were on a need-to-know basis. So he couldn’t say who had alerted the director to the setback in Nigeria, but someone had and now he would have to explain himself. It was just as well, since he had other, more important news to report.

The limousine pulled to the curb and Conrad instructed the driver to take his bag on to the Raffles Hotel. He stepped out into the hot, muggy air and headed toward the entrance of UOB Plaza One, stopping briefly, as he always did, to look at the large Salvador Dali bronze,
Homage to Newton
.

The grotesque figure stood rigid, arms stretched out to its right, a sphere hanging from its right hand by a thin metal thread. This sphere was supposed to be Newton’s proverbial apple, the one that hit him on the head and taught him about gravity. There was another sphere, representing the heart, suspended in Newton’s wide-open torso, and there was also a gaping hole in his head. Art critics said this represented “open-heartedness and open-mindedness.”

To Conrad, it mostly looked painful.

Inside, the building’s atrium was all granite and glass and brushed steel and high ceilings. Conrad plucked the fabric of his shirt away from his chest, moist from the brief time outdoors, made clammy by the arctic air conditioning. Stepping into the elevator, he remembered his last visit, at the conclusion of a successful project. The deputy director had taken him to lunch at Si Chuan Dou Hua on the sixtieth floor—they’d ordered honeyed lotus root at the chef’s suggestion, and it was excellent—and the director himself had joined them for a drink at the end of the meal to thank Conrad personally for his work on the assignment.

Conrad’s finger moved past the restaurant level and pressed the button for the sixty-seventh floor. Today there would be no celebratory lunch.

The director of the council stood behind a vast marble desktop. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the surface of the Singapore Strait glittered like a field of broken glass. He did not extend his hand or offer a chair. He said, “Your last report indicated the project was on schedule.”

“Yes, sir,” said Conrad. “I’m taking care of it.”

“But this investigator…” The director waved his hand in the air for a prompt.

“Daniel Byrne.”

“He refused to certify.”

Conrad nodded. “Any other investigator, we’d have been fine. Bad luck we got him. But it had to look like a routine case, Cardinal Allodi couldn’t insert himself without signaling an agenda.”

“The insurgents are getting smarter, targeting infrastructure. If we lose the town where that girl lives, the oil stops flowing. Unacceptable.”

“We’ll hold the town. I always had a Plan B in place, and it’s now in motion. A few days at most.” Conrad said it with enough confidence and the director seemed somewhat mollified. “But sir, a much bigger issue has come up. Another anomaly has surfaced—as strong as the one we had last year in Bangalore—and this time the Church knows about it.”

The director let out a long breath. “Where?”

“United States. Atlanta. A television evangelist named Tim Trinity.”

“He’s on
television
?”

“Yes, sir, it’s not good. And Nick has assigned the same priest to it.”

“Really? Is it possible that this Daniel Byrne is working for the foundation?”

“No sir, I’ve been keeping tabs on him. He doesn’t know the foundation exists, or the council for that matter. I’m quite sure he doesn’t even know the
game
exists.”

“All right, wrap up Nigeria ASAP and make Trinity your top priority.”

“Will do.”

“Top priority,” the director repeated. “If you need backup, call for it. Any sign of foundation involvement, you send up the alarm, straight to my office.”

Conrad had heard it said that the Fleur-de-Lis Foundation had almost as many operatives embedded in the Church as did the Council For World Peace, and he had suspicions about a few of the fathers, but he’d seen nothing conclusive. “Sir, I don’t think they—”

“Don’t make the mistake of underestimating your opponent, Conrad. The foundation threatens our very existence. And despite his genteel façade, Carter Ames is the most dangerous man you will ever meet.”

Atlanta, Georgia…

F
or years, Daniel avoided hotels like the one he was staying in now. The luxury had just felt inappropriate for a man who’d taken a vow of poverty.

The meth-lab fire in Detroit changed his mind.

Daniel had flown there to investigate a spontaneous cancer remission that turned out to be a misdiagnosis. At the airport, he rented a Toyota Corolla. He checked into a generic chain motel near the freeway. Late that night he sat in his motel room, reading his e-mail, when there came a muffled
whump!
and a flash of light outside his window.

The room directly across the parking lot was ablaze, black smoke pouring from the open door. A man staggered out of the burning room, carrying the porcelain lid of a toilet water tank, cradling it like a baby. Daniel ran to help. The man saw him coming, wound up, and heaved the lid at his head. Daniel ducked the flying toilet tank lid and it shattered on the blacktop. It was then he saw the wild look in the man’s eyes.

Fire—crappy motel—meth-lab fire—crazed junkie
all raced through his brain in the moment it took for the man to draw a knife
from a belt sheath and close the distance, slashing at the shrinking space between them. Daniel broke the man’s nose, dropped him with a kidney punch, and took the knife away from him.