The Trinity Game

Daniel figured, but just enough to make Trinity look legit and protect his tax-exempt status with Uncle Sam.
    The bio said that God spoke to Reverend Tim after Trinity’s church was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and instructed him to relocate to Atlanta. Trinity obeyed.
    At the bottom of the page was a quote:
    “The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” Isaiah 53:11
    It was a strange choice, because it was a passage from the Old Testament. Or, as Trinity had always jokingly called it (behind closed doors), “the Jew book.” But what was really strange, the thing that stopped Daniel cold, was that Isaiah 53 was held by Christians to be a prophecy of the life of Jesus, and placing it in this context, at the end of Tim Trinity’s biography, seemed like an attempt to apply it to Trinity himself.

A lmighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
    —P RAYER FOR L ENT

Rome, Italy…
    A s he told the taxi driver to take him to Piazza del Popolo, Father Giuseppe Sorvino was careful to speak in broken Italian with a heavy German accent. He barked the destination as an order, waving a tourist map in the air between the seats, and he did not say please. Giuseppe’s brother was a taxi driver and had complained about German tourists often enough—they were supposedly the only ones ruder than Americans. Accurate or not, that was the stereotype, and it fit Giuseppe’s need to come across as a
type
, not an individual. Just another tourist. Forgettable.
    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