The Trinity Game by Sean Chercover Read Free Book Online Page A

natural. And your name is very simple, no problematic consonant digraphs like ‘st’ or ‘th’ or ‘dl’. Add to that, you want to speak it, what? Slowed down by a third?”
    Cindy Elder said, “Gerry’s right. You could work with a speech pathologist for ten years, and you still wouldn’t be able to pull it off. I just don’t think it’s possible.”
    Daniel pointed at the computer screen. “Gerry, can you access the Internet on that?”
    “Can do, Padre.”
    After giving them a quick summary of the Trinity Anomaly, Daniel directed Gerry to the Tim Trinity Word of God Ministries website, to the page where Trinity’s broadcasts were archived as Quicktime movies. Checking his transcript notes, he said, “April twenty-third broadcast, beginning forty-two minutes in, lasting for a minute-thirty. Can you record that?”
    Gerry did, and they all watched as Tim Trinity did his tongues routine.
    “Audio manipulation?” asked Daniel.
    “Must be,” said Cindy Elder.
    “Looks smooth too,” said Gerry. “But you can’t fool
el waveform monitor
.” He flicked the switch on a little round monitor, and the screen glowed green, like an old radar screen. Then he tapped on the computer keyboard, brought the downloaded video to the end of the tongues act. “Speed it by a third, you said?”
    “Yeah, he speaks it at two-thirds normal speed.”
    Gerry let out a broad smile. “Whoa, dude.”
    “What?”
    “Two-thirds. That’s 66.6 percent. Number of the Beast.” Then he made a noise like a cartoon ghost. “Oooh, spooky.”
    “Gerry, please,” said Cindy Elder.
    “Just sayin’, is all,” Gerry shrugged. He tapped the percentage into his computer, spoke to the video image of Trinity on the screen, “Get ready to be busted, Mr. Holy Roller.” He hit the enter key.
    Trinity gave the same weather report Daniel had heard in Nick’s office, his inflections sounding completely natural.
    Green lines danced around the screen of the waveform monitor, mapping the audio profile of Trinity’s speech patterns. Gerry stared hard at the screen, and his smile disappeared.
    “Damn,” he said.
    “What do you see, Gerry?” said Cindy Elder.
    “That’s the problem. I don’t see anything. Can’t believe it, but I don’t see any evidence that the audio’s been messed with.”
    “There must be a mistake,” said the professor. “He just said ‘thunderstorm.’ Impossible to say backward. Would never sound natural.”
    “I calibrated the monitors this morning. I’m telling you, this is for real.”
    Daniel stood stock-still, feeling like the floor had just been removed from under his feet. Like the dream of falling that jerks you back from the edge of sleep.

Las Vegas, Nevada…
    W illiam Lamech sat behind bulletproof glass in the wood and leather lounge of his Bentley limousine, a crocodile-skin briefcase on his lap. Inside the briefcase was something more explosive than dynamite, more dangerous than powdered anthrax.
    Inside was something that could take down the entire gambling industry, or at least the sports books. And William Lamech was
not
going to let that happen, whatever the fuck he had to do. He’d been in the gambling business fifty-three years, had survived the cowboys and mob wars and the F-B-fucking-I, all while quietly building a personal fortune of over one hundred million dollars and earning many times that amount for his employers. He had a talent for turning peril into opportunity, and he thought he’d seen it all. But he’d never seen a threat remotely like the one now sitting in the briefcase on his lap.
    Lamech was not your average septuagenarian. At seventy-three, he still swam lengths in the casino pool an hour each morning, did crunches and push-ups in reps of fifty, and worked with weights three days a week. People often said he wore his age like Clint Eastwood. He preferred to think of himself more like JackPalance, but most people had already forgotten Palance, a mere fifteen years