The Trinity Game

nods of the head, wringing their rough country hands. They would sit in the kitchen and drink tea from chipped china, and when they returned an hour later with a cup of tea for the girl, their footfalls were loud and they paused a little too long between knock and enter.
    Willful blindness. He tried not to hate them for it.
    On the third day, during one of the girl’s “rests,” Daniel excused himself from the kitchen table and headed for the bathroom, exactly as he had done the previous days. But this time he walked straight to the girl’s room and threw the door open.
    She sat smiling on her bed, quietly singing “Jesus Loves Me,” while jabbing a nail straight through the palm of her left hand. Then twisting the nail, enlarging the hole as blood dripped into her lap.
    Conrad wasn’t wrong about what was at stake. The twisted, fundamentalist brand of Islam that Boko Haram was selling in Nigeria was beyond regressive—it was violent, misogynistic, and apocalyptic. Their name meant “Western education is sacrilege.” They’d vowed to kill all the Christians living in their territory, and they were making good on it. They’d already killed over a thousand, burned over three hundred churches. Last Christmas Day, they slaughtered forty-two Catholics. The moderate Muslims struggling to govern the country in cooperation with the Christian minority were losing ground to the Islamist radicals, and after years living under the imminent threat of civil war, no one wanted to admit that the war was in fact well underway. The politicians still used the term
insurgency
, but it came out sounding like wishful thinking.
    Of course there was no argument with Conrad’s goal, and yes, faking a miracle might help win the current battle, but it could very well lose them the longer war. And the mandate of the ODA was to always take the long view and evaluate miracle claims honestly.
    And then there was the girl with the holes in her hands, the girl who needed help from a psychologist, not validation of her neurosis from the Vatican. Calling this a miracle would only guarantee her complete destruction.
    Conrad was willing to jettison this girl—condemn her to a life of mental illness—for the
greater good
, and call it collateral damage. Call
her
collateral damage. But to Daniel, you cross that line and now you’re cutting God’s grass. It’s one thing to try and do God’s will, quite another to start making His decisions for Him. If pride was Daniel’s sin, it seemed a little less monstrous by comparison.
    Daniel said a long prayer for the girl, crossed himself, and returned his attention to the road ahead.

    “I can’t believe you’re letting this happen.”
    Father Nick, head of the Office of the Devil’s Advocate, shrugged broad shoulders, leaned back in his chair. “Out of my hands. His Eminence oversees both departments—if he wants you in World Outreach…”
    “I’m an
investigator—
I have no business over in Outreach. You know that.”
    “Easy, Dan. Your skills as an investigator are not in question.” Nick gestured at a chair across the desk. “Sit.”
    Daniel sat. “It’s politics, isn’t it? Conrad’s pissed because I won’t fake one for him, and he got Cardinal Allodi to go along.”
    “That would be my theory,” said Nick. “His Eminence didn’t share his deliberations with me. I lobbied for you, but…” He rose to the antique mahogany wet bar, poured golden Armagnac into a couple of crystal snifters. “I’ve skimmed your e-mails on the case. You say there’s no miracle.”
    “No miracle. Just a messed-up teenager sticking nails into her hands and feet when everyone’s back was turned.” Daniel took theoffered glass. “And their backs were turned a lot. Everyone wanted it to be real.”
    Nick sat. “OK. I know it’s rough sometimes.”
    “The girl started self-mutilating at twelve. For
three
years
, the whole town—family, friends, even her priest—treated her like a gift from God. I spent three days in that madhouse, and I can tell you, that girl is seriously broken.” He took a long swallow of brandy. “And we’re the ones who teach them that stigmata exists.”
    Father Nick fixed the younger priest with a firm stare. “Just because you haven’t seen it yet doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
    But in a decade investigating miracle claims for the Vatican, Daniel hadn’t seen
anything
yet. Ten years of stigmatic self-mutilators and schizophrenics hearing voices and