The Seville Communion

VII

The Bottle of Anis del Mono

In the distant past when, studying the sublime Science,

we would lean over the mystery replete with heavy enigmas…

Fulcanelli, The Mystery of Cathedrals

It was a little after eight in the morning when Quart walked across the square towards Our Lady of the Tears. The sun shone on the faded belfry but had not yet risen above the line of eaves of the houses, painted red-ochre and white, and the orange trees were still in shade. Their fragrance accompanied him to the door of the church, where a beggar sat on the ground, his crutches against the wall. Quart gave him a coin and went inside, stopping for a moment beside the figure of Jesus surrounded by ex-votos. The Mass hadn't yet reached the offertory.

He sat at the back. About twenty of the faithful sat in the pews in front, occupying half the nave. The rest of the pews were still piled up against the wall, amongst the scaffolding. The altarpiece light was on, and beneath the motley ensemble of carvings and images, at the foot of the Virgin of the Tears, Don Priamo Ferro performed Mass assisted by Father Oscar. The congregation consisted mostly of women and old people; people of modest means, pensioners, housewives, office workers on their way to work. Some of the women had baskets or shopping trolleys. Two or three elderly women were dressed in black, and one of them, kneeling not far from Quart, had a veil over her head, the kind women wore to Mass twenty years ago.

Father Ferro came forward to read the Gospel. His vestments were white, and, beneath the chasuble and stole, Quart could see that he wore an amice – the strip of linen that, until the second Vatican Council, priests had worn over their shoulders while performing

Mass, in memory of the cloth that covered Christ's face. Only very traditional or very elderly priests continued to wear the vestment, but it wasn't the only anachronism. Father Ferro's old chasuble, for instance, was bell-shaped, a style that had been replaced by one lighter and more comfortable.

"And Jesus said to his disciples…"

The old priest had read the text hundreds of times during his life and hardly needed the book open on the lectern. His gaze was fixed on some vague point in space before the congregation. He didn't have a microphone, and he didn't need one in such a small church; his loud, flat voice rang out authoritatively in the silence of the nave. It left no room for argument or doubt; nothing but those words, pronounced in the name of the Other, had significance or value. This was the Word.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.

And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you…

"Word of God," he said, returning behind the altar, and the congregation recited the Creed. With little surprise, Quart caught sight of Macarena Bruner. She sat three rows in front of him, her head bowed in prayer. She wore dark glasses and jeans, her hair was tied in a ponytail, and her jacket was draped over her shoulders. Quart looked back at the altar and met Father Oscar's eyes. He was watching Quart inscrutably while Father Ferro continued to celebrate Mass, aware of nothing but the ritual of his words and gestures:

'Benedictus est, Domine, deus universi, quia de tua largitate accepimus panem…'

Quart listened. Father Ferro was pronouncing those sections of the Mass not directly addressed to the congregation or not recited collectively, in the ancient canonical language of the Church. It wasn't a serious offence. Certain churches had a special right to do this, and in Rome the Pontiff himself often celebrated Mass in Latin. But since Paul VI, ecclesiastical regulations stipulated that Mass be said in the language of the parish, so that congregations find it easier to comprehend and participate. Father Ferro had not accepted all the modern reforms of the Church.

"Per huius aquae et vini mysterium.. '

Quart watched him closely during the offertory. Having placed the liturgical objects on the corporal, the priest raised to heaven the Host on the communion plate and then, mixing a few drops of water with the wine brought in cruets by Father Oscar, he also raised the chalice. He then turned to his assistant, who held out a small basin and a silver pitcher, and washed his hands.

"Lava me, Domine, ab iniquitate mea.'

Quart followed the movement of Father Ferro's lips as he whispered the words in Latin. The lavabo was another custom that was almost extinct, although it was still part of the common order of Mass. Quart noticed other anachronisms, rituals that had rarely been performed since he was an altar boy of ten or eleven assisting his parish priest. Father Ferro placed his fingers against one another, beneath the stream of water poured by his assistant, and then, when he dried his hands, he kept his thumbs and index fingers together, in a circle, so that they shouldn't come into contact with anything else. He even turned the pages of the missal with the other three fingers, held rigid. He was observing, to the letter, the usage of old clerics who refused to accept change. All that remained was for him to officiate facing the altarpiece and the image of the Virgin, his back to the congregation, as was the practice thirty years ago. And Quart suspected it wouldn't have bothered Don Priamo Ferro in the slightest to do so, as he recited the canon, his stubborn head bowed with its uneven, bristly hair: Te igitur, clementissime Pater. His unshaven chin sunk into the collar of his chasuble, he whispered – the words perfectly audible in the absolute silence of the church – the prayers of the sacrifice of Mass, exactly as they had been pronounced for the past thirteen hundred years:

"Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso, est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti… '

Despite his doubts about such anachronism and his disdain for Father Ferro, the priest in Lorenzo Quart could not but feel moved by the strange solemnity that the ritual conferred upon the old priest. As if the symbolic transformation being acted out at the altar turned the rough provincial priest into a figure of authority, giving him a spiritual power that made one forget the stained cassock and scuffed shoes, the threadbare chasuble. God – if there was a God behind all the gilded baroque carvings that surrounded the Virgin of the Tears -had without a doubt laid His hand, for a moment, on the shoulder of the grumpy old man bowed over the Host and chalice, performing a symbolic re-enactment of the mystery of the incarnation and death of the Son. At that moment, Quart thought as he observed the faces of the people around him – including Macarena Bruner – it mattered little whether there was a God prepared to punish or reward, to damn or grant eternal life. What mattered, in the silence filled by Father Ferro's harsh voice intoning the liturgy, were the people, their grave, calm faces intent on his hands and voice, whispering with him, whether they understood or not, a text that could be summed up in a single word: solace. It was a friendly hand in the darkness, a warmth to keep out the cold. And Quart, kneeling like them, his elbows on the back of the pew in front, repeated the words of the Consecration. He was uneasy, because he knew he had taken a first step towards understanding this church, its priest, the message sent by Vespers, and the reason he himself was here. It was easier, he realised, to despise Father Ferro than to see him, small and uncouth in his old-fashioned chasuble, creating with the words of the ancient mystery a humble haven where the twenty or so faces, most of them tired or bowed with age, watched – with fear, respect, hope – the piece of bread that the old priest held in his proud hands. He raised the chalice containing the wine, fruit of the vine and of man's labours, and then lowered it, transformed into the blood of Jesus, who Himself gave food and drink to His disciples at the Last Supper with the exact same words that Father Ferro now intoned, unchanged, twenty centuries later, beneath the tears of Carlota Bruner and Captain Xaloc:

Hoc facite in meam commemorationem.

Do this in my memory.

Mass was over. The church was deserted. Quart remained seated, motionless, after Don Priamo Ferro said Ite, missa est and walked away from the altar without glancing once in his direction. The congregation left one by one, including Macarena. She gave no sign of noticing Quart from behind her dark glasses as she passed. For a time, the old woman in the veil was the only other person there. While she prayed, Father Oscar emerged from the door to the vestry and extinguished the candles and the altarpiece light. He left again without looking round. The old woman then departed too, and the IEA agent was alone in the gloom of the empty church.

Despite his views and rigid adherence to the rules, Quart was a clear-minded man. His lucidity was like a silent curse. It prevented him from accepting totally the natural order of things but gave him nothing in return to make such clarity of mind bearable. For a priest, as in any other walk of life that required a belief in the myth that man held a privileged position in the universe, such lucidity was awkward and dangerous, for it said that human life was totally insignificant. In Quart's case, only willpower, expressed as self-discipline, offered protection from the naked truth that gave rise to weakness or apathy or despair. Maybe that was why he remained sitting there beneath the blackened vault that smelled of wax and cold, ancient stone. He looked round at the scaffolding, at the figure of Christ with dirty hair surrounded by ex-votos, the altarpiece in gloom, the flagstones worn by the footsteps of people long dead. He could still see Father Ferro's unshaven, frowning face at the altar pronouncing the mysterious words, and twenty faces looking back at him, momentarily relieved of their human condition by the hope that there was an all-powerful father and a better life where the just were rewarded and the heathens punished. This modest church was far removed from the vulgarity of Technicolour religions where anything went – open-air arenas, giant television screens, Goebbels' methods, rock concerts, the dialectic of the World Cup, and electronic sprinklers for holy water. Like the forgotten pawns who didn't know whether there was still a king to fight for, some pieces chose their square – a place where they could die. Father Ferro had chosen his, and Lorenzo Quart, experienced scalp hunter for the Roman Curia, didn't find it difficult to understand. Perhaps for that reason he now had doubts, sitting in the small, dilapidated, lonely church that the old priest had made into his tower: a refuge where he could defend the last of his flock from the prowling wolves outside.

Quart sat turning this over for some time. At last he stood and walked up the aisle to the high altar, his steps echoing beneath the elliptical dome of the transept. He stopped in front of the altarpiece and beheld the carved figures of Macarena's ancestors at prayer on either side of the Virgin of the Tears. Beneath her regal baldachin, accompanied by cherubs and saints, surrounded by leaves and flourishes of gilded wood, Martinez Montanes's carving was visible in the semidarkness, with light from the windows filtering through the rational, geometrical structure of the scaffolding. She looked very beautiful and very sad, her face turned upwards almost reproachfully, her palms empty, open, held out as if she were asking why her son had been taken from her. Captain Xaloc's twenty pearls gleamed gently on her cheeks, her crown of stars and her blue tunic. Beneath the tunic her bare foot rested on a crescent moon crushing a serpent's head.

"… And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed…"

The voice came from behind him. Quart turned and saw Gris Marsala. She had come in noiselessly in her trainers.

"You creep like a cat," said Quart.

She laughed. As usual her hair was tied in a plait, and she wore a baggy sweatshirt and jeans spattered with paint and plaster. Quart pictured her applying makeup in front of a mirror before the bishop's visit, then her cold eyes multiplying in the fragments of shattered mirror. He looked for the scar. There it was: a pale line three centimetres long on the inside of her right wrist. He wondered if she'd meant to kill herself.

"Don't tell me you came to Mass," she said.

Quart nodded. She smiled indefinably. She noticed that he was looking at her scar, and turned her arm to hide it.

"That priest," said Quart.

He was about to add something but didn't – those two words said it all. After a moment she smiled again, as if at a private thought! "Yes," she said quietly, "that's exactly it." She seemed relieved and stopped hiding her wrist. She asked if he'd seen Macarena. Quart nodded.

"She comes here every morning, at eight," she said. "With her mother on Thursdays and Sundays."

"I would never have imagined she was so devout."

He hadn't intended it to sound sarcastic, but Gris Marsala stiffened and said, "Look, I really don't like your tone."

He took a few steps towards the altarpiece, regarded the Virgin, then turned to the woman again: "I'm sorry. But I had dinner with her last night, and she confuses me."

"I know you had dinner." Her blue eyes were fixed on him. "Macarena woke me at one in the morning and kept me on the phone for almost half an hour. One of the many things she said was that you would come to Mass."

"That's impossible," said Quart. "I came on impulse."

"Well, she was sure. She said that you would come, and would begin to understand." She stopped and looked at him with curiosity. "And have you?"

"What else did she tell you?" He tried to sound casual, ironic, but was afraid it was obvious that he wanted to know what Macarena had told her friend the nun. He was annoyed with himself.

Gris Marsala pursed her lips thoughtfully. "She said lots of things. That she likes you, for instance. And that you're not as different from Don Priamo as you think. She also said you're the sexiest priest she's ever seen." She smiled mischievously. "That was exactly how she put it."

"Why are you telling me this?" "Because you asked."

"Please, don't make fun of me. I'm too old for that. Look, my hair's grey, like yours."

"I like your hair that short. So does Macarena." "You haven't answered my question, Sister Marsala." She laughed, and her eyes crinkled.

"Drop the title, please." She pointed to her dirty jeans and the scaffolding against the walls. "I don't know if any of this is appropriate for a nun."

It wasn't, thought Quart. Nor was her part in the strange triangle formed by the two of them and Macarena Bruner. And maybe a fourth, Father Ferro, should be included. Quart couldn't picture Gris Marsala in a convent, in a nun's habit. She had come a long way since Santa Barbara.

"Will you ever go back?"

She took a moment to answer, looking down the nave at the pews piled up by the door. She hooked her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans, and Quart wondered how many nuns could have worn jeans like that – she was as slim as a young girl. Only her face and hair showed age. There was still something very attractive about her, about the way she moved.

"I don't know," she said thoughtfully.*Maybe it depends on this church, on what happens here. I think that's why I haven't left." She spoke without looking at Quart, squinting at the sunlight in the doorway. "Have you ever suddenly felt a void where you thought your heart was? The feeling lasts only a moment, then everything goes on as before, but you know that things aren't the same and you wonder what's wrong."

"And do you think you'll find the answer here?"

"I have no idea. But we search in places that may have answers."

Quart shifted uneasily from one leg to the other. He didn't like this sort of conversation, but he had to persevere – it might yield clues.

"I think," he said, "we spend our whole lives roaming round our tombs. Maybe that's the answer."

To make it sound less important, he smiled, but she wasn't fooled by the smile.

"I was right. You're not like other priests."

Quart didn't ask what that meant. They were both silent as they walked up the nave, past the walls with flaking paint and the cornices with tarnished gilding. At last she spoke again.

"There arc things," she said, "places, people that leave their mark on you. Do you know what I mean? No, I don't think you do yet. I mean this town. This church. And Don Priamo, and Macarena." She stopped and smiled mockingly. "You need to know what you're getting into."

"Maybe I have nothing to lose."

"It's strange to hear you say that. Macarcna says that's the most interesting thing about you. The impression you give." They were by the door now. "As if, like Don Priamo, you have nothing to lose."

The waiter turned the handle of the awning until Pencho Gavira and Octavio Machuca's table was shaded. A bootblack sat at the old banker's feet, polishing his shoes.

"Could I have the other foot now, sir?"

Machuca obediently placed his other foot on top of the box decorated with gold tacks and litde mirrors. The bootblack positioned the guards so as not to stain Machuca's socks and then proceeded conscientiously with his task. He looked like a Gypsy and was very thin, with tattoos all over his arms and lottery tickets sticking out of his shirt pocket. He must have been over fifty. The chairman of the Cartujano Bank had his shoes polished every day at 300 pesetas a time, while he watched the world go by from his table on the corner of La Campana.

"Some heat," said the bootblack.

He wiped the sweat running down his nose with a hand blackened with polish. Gavira lit a cigarette and offered him one. The bootblack placed it behind his ear without stopping the brushing of Machuca's shoes. With a cup of coffee and the ABC on the table in front of him, the old man looked down with satisfaction at the job the bootblack was doing. When the bootblack finished, Machuca handed him a thousand-peseta note. The bootblack scratched the back of his neck, confused.

"I don't have any change, sir."

The chairman of the Cartujano smiled and crossed his legs. "Well, charge me tomorrow, Rafita," he said. "When you get some change."

The bootblack returned the note, raising his hand in something that vaguely resembled a military salute, and headed off towards the Plaza Duque de la Victoria, his little seat and box under his arm. Gavira saw him pass Peregil, who was waiting at a respectful distance outside a shoe shop, a few steps away from the dark-blue Mercedes at the kerb. Machuca's secretary was going through some papers at a nearby table, quiet and efficient as always.

"How's that business with the church going, Pencho?"

It was a routine question, like asking after the health of a relative. Old Machuca picked up the newspaper and leafed through it vaguely, until he came to the obituaries, which he read with great interest. Gavira leaned back in his wicker chair and watched the patches of sun gaining ground at his feet and moving slowly towards the Calle Sierpes.

"We're working on it," he said.

Machuca was engrossed in the obituaries. At his age it was comforting to see how many acquaintances had died before him. "The members of the board are losing patience," he said without looking up. "Or, to be more exact, some of them are. Others are hoping you'll fall flat on your face." He turned a page, smiling wryly at the long list of relations praying for the soul of Mr Luis Jorquera de la Sintacha, illustrious son of Seville, Commander of the Order of Mafiara, who passed on after having received extreme unction, etc. Machuca and all Seville knew that the deceased had been a complete crook who'd made his fortune smuggling penicillin in the years after the Civil War. "There are only a few days left before the board meets to discuss your plans for the church."

Gavira nodded, his cigarette in his mouth. The Saudis of Sun Qafer Alley would be landing in Seville twenty-four hours before the meeting to purchase Puerto Targa at last. And with a signed contract on the table, nobody would dare say a word.

"I'm putting the final touches on it," he said.

Machuca nodded slowly a couple of times. He looked up from his newspaper to stare at the passers-by.

"The priest," he said. "The old one."

Gavira paid attention. But Machuca was silent for a moment, as if trying to find the right words. Or maybe he simply wanted to needle his successor. Whatever the old man's reasons, Gavira said nothing.

"He's the key," said Machuca. "Unless he gives in, the mayor won't sell, the archibishop won't secularise the land, and your wife and her mother won't back down. That Thursday Mass will really screw things up."

He insisted on referring to Macarena as Gavira's wife. Although technically it was true, it made Gavira very uncomfortable. Machuca refused to accept the end of the marriage he'd brokered. It was also a kind of warning: Gavira's succession wasn't assured while his marital situation remained equivocal and while Macarena went around publicising that fact. High society in Seville never forgave certain things. It had accepted Gavira when he married the daughter of the dukes of El Nuevo Extreme Whatever Macarena did with bullfighters or priests, she was high society. Gavira wasn't. Without his wife, he was just a parvenu.

"Once I've dealt with the church," he said, "I'll sort things out with her."

Machuca looked sceptical as he turned the pages of his newspaper. "Don't be too sure you'll be able to. I've known her since she was a child." He leaned forward and sipped his coffee. "You might manage to get the priest out of the way and level his church, but the other battle you'll lose. Macarena has taken it personally."

"What about the duchess?"

The banker gave a hint of a smile. "Cruz respects her daughter's decisions. And she's in complete agreement with her over the church." "Have you seen her recently? The duchess, I mean." "Of course. On Wednesday, as usual."

One afternoon a week, Octavio Machuca sent his car to collect Cruz Bruner while he waited for her at the Parque de Maria Luisa, where they took a stroll. They could be seen there, under the willow trees or sitting on a bench in the Glorieta de Becquer on sunny afternoons.

"But you know what your mother-in-law is like." Machuca's smile widened. "We just chat about the weather, and the plants and flowers in her garden, or Campoamor's poetry… And every time I recite that bit, 'The daughters of the women I so loved kiss me now as one kisses a saint,' she laughs like a young girl. It would be vulgar to mention her son-in-law, or the church, or her daughter's failed marriage." He motioned at the defunct Levante Bank, on the corner of the Calle de Santa Maria de Gracia. "I bet you that building that she doesn't even know you're separated."

"You mustn't exaggerate, Don Octavio."

"I'm not exaggerating."

Gavira sipped his beer and said nothing. It was an exaggeration, of course. But it summed up the personality of the old lady. She lived cloistered like a nun in the Casa del Postigo – among shadows and memories in an old mansion now far too large for her and her daughter, at the heart of a historic district that was all marble, tiles, wrought-iron gates, and flower-filled courtyards complete with rocking chairs, canaries, piano music, and siesta. She was unaware of what went on outside her house, except on her weekly walks full of nostalgia with her late husband's friend.

"I'm not trying to interfere in your private life, Pencho." The old man watched him from beneath half-lowered lids. "But I often wonder what happened between you and Macarena."

Gavira shook his head stoically.

"Nothing in particular, I can assure you," he said. "It was just that life, my work, all created tensions, I suppose…" He took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled smoke through his nose and mouth. "And, you know, she wanted a child right away." He hesitated a moment. "I'm in the middle of a battle to secure my position, Don Octavio, I don't have time for nappies. So I asked her to wait…" He took another sip of beer, because his mouth suddenly felt very dry. "To wait a little, that's all. I thought I'd managed to convince her and that everything would be fine. Then suddenly one day, that was it. She left, slamming the door behind her, and declared war on me. Maybe it coincided with our disagreement over the church." He frowned. "I don't know, maybe everything coincided."

Machuca stared at him coldly, curiously. "The business with the bullfighter," he suggested, "was a low blow."

"A very low blow." So was mentioning it, but Gavira kept that observation to himself. "And there were a few others, after she left me. Men she knew before she was married, and that Curro Maestral, who was already hanging around." He threw his cigarette down and ground it out viciously with the heel of his shoe. "It's as if she wanted to make up for the time she wasted on me."

"Or to get her revenge."

"Maybe."

"You must have done something wrong, Pencho." The old banker shook his head with conviction. "Macarena was in love with you when she married you."

Gavira looked around without seeing anything. "I swear to you I don't understand," he said. "Revenge for what? I didn't have my first affair until a good month after she left me, by which time she'd been seen with that winemaker from Jerez, Villalta. By the way, with your permission, Don Octavio, I've just refused him credit."

Machuca raised one of his bony, claw-like hands, brushing it all aside. He knew of his successor's recent liaison with a well-known model. No, Macarena had too much class to create a scandal over her husband's skirt-chasing. If all wives did that, Seville would be in a real mess.

Gavira fiddled with his tie. "Well, we're in the same boat, Don Octavio. The godfather and the husband both in the dark."

"With one difference," said Machuca, and a smile appeared again beneath his sharp, cruel nose. "The church and your marriage are both your business, aren't they? I'm just an onlooker."

Gavira glanced over at Percgil, who was still standing by the Mercedes. His jaw tensed. "I'll step up the pressure."

"On your wife?"

"On the priest."

The old banker's rasping laugh rang out. "Which one? They've been multiplying like rabbits lately." "The parish priest. Father Ferro."

"Right." Machuca too glanced at Peregil out of the corner of his eye. He sighed deeply. "I hope you'll have the good taste to spare me the details."

Some Japanese tourists passed, carrying huge rucksacks and looking very hot. Machuca put the newspaper down and said nothing for a moment, reclining in the wicker chair. At last he turned to Gavira. "It's hard walking a tightrope, isn't it?" he said, the predatory eyes mocking. "That's how I spent years, Pencho. From the time I smuggled the first consignment from Gibraltar after the war. And then when I bought the bank, wondering what the hell I was getting myself into. Anxious, sleepless nights…" He shook his head. "Suddenly one day you find you've crossed the finishing line and you don't give a damn anymore. No one can touch you, however hard they try. Only then do you start enjoying life, or what's left of it."

He smiled wearily.

"I hope you get there, Pencho," he said. "Until then, you must pay the price without complaining."

Gavira motioned to the waiter and ordered another beer and another coffee. He ran a hand over his hair and glanced absent-mindedly at the legs of a passing woman. "I've never complained, Don Octavio," he said.

"I know. That's why you have an office on the main floor on the Arenal and a chair beside me here, at this table. While I read the paper and watch you."

The waiter brought the coffee and the beer. Machuca put a lump of sugar in his coffee and stirred it as two nuns from Sor Angela de la Cruz walked by in their brown habits and white veils.

"By the way," the old banker asked suddenly, "what's happening with that other priest?" He stared after the nuns. "The one who had dinner with your wife last night."

It was at moments such as these that Pencho Gavira showed his mettle. He forced himself to watch a car turn into the street and then disappear around the corner, while he tried to still the pounding in his ears. He took about ten seconds before he arched an eyebrow and said, "Nothing. According to my information, he's still carrying out his investigation on behalf of Rome. Everything's under control."

"So I hope, Pencho." Machuca raised his cup to his lips with a slight grunt of satisfaction. "Nice place, La Albahaca." He took another sip. "I haven't been there for some time."

"I'll get Macarena back. I promise."

Machuca turned to face him, "You have a brain. There could be no better future for Macarena than with you. That's how I saw it from the start…" He laid a hand lightly on Gavira's arm; the hand felt bony and dry. "I appreciate your qualities, Pencho. Maybe you're the best thing that could happen to the bank now. But the fact is, at this point I couldn't care less about the bank. It's your wife I care about. And her mother."

Gavira felt trapped. He had to keep pedalling, he told himself, or else he'd fall off the bicycle. "The church," he said bitterly, "is their future."

"And yours, Pencho." Machuca shot him a malicious glance. "Would you sacrifice the church deal and the Puerto Targa operation to get your wife back?"

Gavira didn't answer immediately. This was the crux of the matter, and he knew it better than anyone.

"If I lose this chance," he said evasively, "I lose everything."

"Not everything. Only your prestige. And my backing."

Calm, Gavira allowed himself a smile. "You're a hard man, Don Octavio."

"Possibly." The old man stared at the PENA BETICA sign opposite. "But I'm just. The church deal was your idea, and so was your marriage. Although I may have helped things along a little."

"Then I'd like to ask you something," Gavira said, putting his hands on the table. "Why won't you help me now, if you're so fond of Macarena and her mother? You could make them see reason."

"Maybe, maybe not," Machuca said, narrowing his eyes. "But if I helped you, you see, it would mean that I'd allowed Macarena to marry a fool. Let's understand each other, Pencho: for me this is like owning a racehorse or a boxer or a good fighting cock. I enjoy watching you fight."

He made a sign to his secretary. The audience was over.

Gavira stood up, buttoning his jacket. "Do you know something, Don Octavio?" He put on his Italian designer sunglasses and stood by the table, cool, immaculate. "Sometimes I think you don't want a definite outcome… As if deep down you don't care about any of it: Macarena, the bank, me."

Across the street, a young woman with long legs and a very short skirt came out of a clothes shop with a bucket and started washing down the shop window. Old Machuca watched the girl thoughtfully. At last he said: "Pencho, did you ever wonder why I come here every day?"

Gavira stared at him, surprised, not knowing what to answer. What did this have to do with anything? he thought. Damn the old man.

There was a glint of mockery in the banker's eyes. "Once, a long time ago," he said "I was sitting at this very table when a woman walked by. She was beautiful, the kind of woman that takes your breath away… I watched her go by, and our eyes met. I thought of getting up, stopping her. But I didn't. Social convention carried more weight. I was known in Seville… She continued on her way. I told myself I'd see her another day. But she never walked past here again."

His voice was flat as he told the story. The secretary approached, briefcase in hand. With a nod in Gavira's direction, Canovas sat down in the chair that Gavira had just vacated. Settling back into his own chair, Machuca smiled coldly at the young vice-chairman of the Cartujano. "I'm a very old man, Pencho," he said. "In my lifetime, I've won some battles and lost others. But now I don't feel involved in any of it." He took one of the documents his assistant handed him. "What I have now, more than a desire for victory, is a sense of curiosity. Like someone who puts a scorpion and a spider in a bottle and waits to see what happens. With no sympathy for either of them."

He turned his attention to the document, and Gavira muttered a goodbye before going to his car. He had a deep vertical line on his forehead, and the ground felt shaky beneath his feet. Peregil, smoothing his hair over his bald head, looked away as Gavira approached.

Sunlight bounced off the corner of the white-and-red-ochre Hospital de los Venerables. Across the street, beneath a poster for that Sunday's bullfight at the Maestranza bullring, two pale-skinned tourists, looking on the verge of sunstroke, sat outside the Bar Roman, recovering. Inside, Simeon Navajo carefully peeled himself a prawn and then looked at Quart.

"The Computer Crime Department didn't come up with anything," he said. "No previous records."

He ate the prawn and gulped down half his beer. He was always having extra breakfasts, snacks, sandwiches, and Quart wondered where the skinny deputy superintendent put it all. Even the.357 magnum was so bulky on his slight frame that he carried it in a strong-smelling, fringed leather bag over his shoulder. With his ponytail and baggy flower-print shirt, Simeon Navajo made a sharp contrast with the tall, soberly dressed priest.

"We have nothing on our files," the policeman went on, "on any of the persons you asked me to check… We've got young students playing pranks on their computers, a pile of people selling pirated copies of computer programs, and a couple of guys who get into systems they shouldn't from time to time. But there's no sign of what you're looking for."

They were standing at the bar, beneath rows of cured hams hanging from the ceiling. The policeman took another prawn, tore off its head and sucked it with relish, and then began expertly peeling the rest. Quart's own glass of beer was almost untouched.

"Did you make the enquiry I asked you to? Those companies, and Telefonica?"

"I did," said Navajo with his mouth full. "Nobody on your list bought any computer equipment from them, at least not using their real name. As for Telefonica, the head of security there is a friend of mine. According to him, your Vespers isn't the only one who gets on the network illegally and makes calls abroad, to the Vatican or wherever. All the hackers do that. Some get caught, some don't. Yours seems pretty sharp. Apparently he uses a complicated loop system to get on and off the Internet. He leaves behind programs that wipe any trace of him and make detection systems go bananas." He ate another prawn and ordered another beer. A piece of prawn shell had got caught in his moustache. "That's all I can tell you."

Quart smiled at the policeman: "It's not much, but thanks anyway."

"You don't have to thank me," Navajo said, eating. A pile of prawn shells was growing at his feet. "I wish I could do more. But my bosses made it very clear: I can only help you unofficially. On a personal basis, between you and me. For old times' sake. They don't want to get involved with churches, priests, Rome and all that. It would be another story if someone had committed a crime, within my jurisdiction. But the two deaths were ruled to be accidental… The fact that a hacker from Seville is pestering the Pope isn't something we can get too excited about," he said and noisily sucked a prawn head.

The sun slid slowly over the Guadalquivir, and there wasn't a breath of air. On the bank opposite, the palm trees looked like sentries guarding La Maestranza. El Potro del Mantelete was at the window against the glare from the river, a cigarette in his mouth, as motionless as the bronze figure of his hero Juan Belmonte. Don Ibrahim sat at the table. The smell of fried eggs with morcilla wafted from the kitchen, along with La Nina Punales's song:

Why do I wake trembling and shaking and look out onto the dark, deserted street?

Why do I have the feeling that you're going to tell me it's over?

The former bogus lawyer nodded approvingly, moving his lips to the words that La Nina sang in her husky voice. An apron over her polka-dot dress, spatula in hand, she was frying eggs, making them nice and crispy, just as Don Ibrahim liked them. When the three partners didn't get by on tapas from the bars in Triana, they ate at La Nina's place on the Calle Betis. It was a modest apartment on the third floor, but it had a view of Seville – with the Arenal a stone's throw away, and the Torre del Oro and La Giralda – that kings and millionaires and film stars with all their cash would have killed for. La Nina's window facing the Guadalquivir was the only asset she owned. She bought the apartment years before, with the meagre profits from her momentary fame, and that was one thing at least, as she often said to cheer herself up, that hadn't gone to rack and ruin. She lived there with a few pieces of old furniture, a gleaming brass bed, a print of the Virgen de la Esperanza, a signed photo of Miguel de Molina, and a chest of drawers where the embroidered bedcovers, tablecloths and sheets of her trousseau lay yellowing. With no rent to pay, she could afford the monthly instalments she'd sent for the last twenty years to El Ocaso, S. A., that went towards a humble plot and stone in the San Fernando Cemetery, in the sunniest corner. Because La Nina really felt the cold. She sang:

You looked at me and your love flowed through my veins on a river of song…

Don Ibrahim muttered ole automatically and went on with the task at hand. His hat, jacket and walking stick were on the chair beside him, and elastic bands held his shirtsleeves up over his elbows. There were patches of sweat under his plump arms and around his neck, and he'd loosened his blue-and-red-striped tie. He claimed that the tall Englishman, Graham Greene, had given him the tie in exchange for a copy of the New Testament and a bottle of Four Roses when he was in Havana writing a spy novel. The tie, in addition to being of sentimental value, was a genuine Oxford tie.

Unlike La Nina, neither Don Ibrahim nor El Potro del Mantelete owned his own place. El Potro lived nearby in a houseboat, a dilapidated tourist boat that a friend from his bullfighting and army days sublet to him. Don Ibrahim lodged in a modest boarding house in El Altozano; it was run by the widow of a civil guard who'd been shot by ETA in the north. The other residents were a travelling salesman who sold combs and a mature lady of faded beauty and dubious employment.

Can't you see how loving you like crazy from my soul to my mouth turns my heart upside down…

No one, not even Concha Piquer or Pastora Imperio, could sing like that, thought Don Ibrahim as he listened to La Nina finish her song with the style and verve that the rabble of critics and impresarios and idlers had refused to recognise. It was a stab to his heart to hear her in Holy Week, when, on any street corner where the fancy took her, she started singing a saeta to the Virgen de la Esperanza or her son, the Cachorro de Triana. It silenced the drums and gave everyone goose bumps. Because La Nina Punales embodied the cante and the copla, and Spain itself. Not the Spain of cheap flamenco for tourists but the other Spain, the real Spain. The legend that smelled of smoky bars, green eyes, and the sweat of a lifetime. The dramatic memory of a people that sang to relieve its sorrows, and exorcised its demons by desperately clutching knives. Knives gleaming like the slices of moon that lit El Potro's way as he jumped over fences at night, naked so as not to tear his only shirt, convinced that he would conquer the world and pave his path with banknotes – before the bulls beat him and left him with a look of defeat in his eyes. The same Spain that ripped down posters of La Nina Punales, the best flamenco voice of Andalusia, of the century, and didn't even give her a pension to get by on. The distant motherland of which Don Ibrahim dreamed during the nights of his youth in Cuba and to which he planned to return some day like the emigres of the past, with a Cadillac convertible and a cigar, but she greeted him with nothing but incomprehension, derision and abuse after the wretched business of his bogus law degree. But even sons of bitches owed a debt to their mothers, Don Ibrahim reasoned. And loved them. And ungrateful Spain did have places like Seville, districts like Triana, bars like Casa Cuesta, faithful souls like El Potro, and beautiful, tragic voices like La Nina's. And even if things didn't turn out well, the three of them would dedicate their Temple to that voice. On nights of fino, Manzanilla, cigarette smoke and conversation, they could picture it: formal, solemn, with wicker chairs and silent old waiters – the impassive El Potro would be usher – bottles on the tables, a spotlight on the stage, and a guitar strumming real tunes for La Nina, now returned to her public with even more talent and more feeling. They would admit who they wanted, allow no tourist parties or bores with mobile phones. All Don Ibrahim asked for was a dark table at the back, where he could sit slowly sipping a drink, a smouldering Montecristo in his hand, listening to La Nina with a lump in his throat. And that the takings should be good. It didn't hurt to dream.

Very carefully he poured more petrol into the bottle, making sure not to spill any. He'd laid sheets of newspaper on the table to protect the varnish, and he wiped any petrol dripping down the neck of the Anis del Mono bottle with a cloth. The petrol was unleaded and the best, 97-octane, because, as La Nina had so sensibly pointed out, you shouldn't use cheap stuff to set fire to a consecrated church. So they dispatched El Potro with an empty olive-oil can to the nearest petrol station to bring back a litre. A litre would be plenty, Don Ibrahim said. He claimed he had acquired expertise in these matters when Ernesto "Che" Guevara explained to him, as they drank mojitos in Santa Clara, how to make a Molotov cocktail, a Russian invention of Karl Marx's.

The petrol bubbled and spilled down the side of the bottle. Don Ibrahim mopped it with the already soaked cloth and then put the cloth in an ashtray on the table. The incendiary bomb was intended to function with a somewhat primitive, but effective, device of which Don Ibrahim was the proud inventor: a candle, matches, a wind-up alarm clock and two metres of twine to make the bottle topple. Ignition was to take place once the three partners were sitting in a bar with witnesses, because it didn't do to overlook one's alibi. The pews piled against the wall and the old roof beams would take care of the rest. They didn't need to destroy the church totally, Peregil had said when he gave them their instructions. Substantial damage would do, although if the whole place went up, so much the better. The main thing was – he had said, staring anxiously at each of them – it had to seem like an accident.

Don Ibrahim poured in more, and for a moment the smell of petrol smothered the smell of fried eggs. He would have loved to light a cigar, but you couldn't be too careful with all that petrol about and the cloth soaked with it in the ashtray. La Nina had been dead set against the plan at first, the church being a holy place. They convinced her only by reminding her that with all the money they'd get from the deal she'd be able to order a truckload of Masses to atone for it. Anyway, according to the ancient principle of ad auctores redit sceleris coacti tamarindus pulpa, or something like that, they were committing a crime on someone else's behalf. The causal party was Peregil. Even after such a legal explanation, La Nina still refused to have anything to do with the incendiary act and agreed to perform only backup tasks, such as providing fried eggs with morcilla. Don Ibrahim respected her views, since he was all for freedom of worship. As for El Potro, his thought processes were hard to fathom. If he had any. He just nodded impassively, fatalistic, ever loyal, always waiting for the bell or bugle to make him spring from his corner or emerge from behind the barrier like an automaton. He didn't object when Don Ibrahim mentioned setting fire to the church. Although he'd been a bullfighter – and, as far as Don Ibrahim knew, all bullfighters believed in God – El Potro wasn't devout. But on Good Friday he donned the navy blue suit he had worn for his ill-fated wedding and a white shirt buttoned to the neck but without a tie, slicked back his hair with eau de Cologne, and joined La Nina amid the candles and drums in the procession behind the Virgen de la Esperanza. As a freethinker, Don Ibrahim could not take part in obscurantist rites, so he just watched them file past behind the Virgin, La Nina in a black mantilla, praying, and El Potro, holding her arm, silent and upright.

Don Ibrahim smiled to himself, with fatherly tenderness, as he watched El Potro's hard profile at the window. He was proud of El Potro's loyalty. Many of the earth's powerful men could not have purchased such devotion. But maybe some day, when he was on his last legs, Don Ibrahim would be asked if he had done anything worthwhile in his life. And he would answer, with his head held high, that he had had a faithful friend in El Potro del Mantelete, and that he had heard La Nina Punales sing "Cape of Red and Gold".

"Come and get it," said La Nina at the kitchen door, wiping her hands on her apron. Her black kiss-curl, fake beauty spot and blood-red lipstick were all immaculate but her eyeliner was somewhat smudged, because she'd been chopping onion for the salad. Don

Ibrahim noticed that she cast a critical glance at the bottle of Anis del Mono. She still didn't approve of what they were doing.

"You can't make an omelette," he said in a conciliatory tone, "without breaking a few eggs."

"Well, the ones I've just fried are getting cold," answered La Nina, setting her jaw stubbornly.

Don Ibrahim sighed resignedly and poured the last few drops of petrol into the bottle. He mopped up the spillage and put the cloth back in the ashtray. Then he placed both his hands on the table and levered himself with effort out of his chair.

"Trust me, my dear. Trust me."

"Churches shouldn't be burned down," she insisted, frowning. "That's for heretics and communists."

El Potro, silent as ever, moved away from the window and raised his hand to the cigarette in his mouth. I must tell him not to come near the petrol, Don Ibrahim thought fleetingly, still concerned with La Nina.

"God works in mysterious ways," he said, to say something. "Well, this way doesn't look good at all."

La Nina's failure to understand pained Don Ibrahim. He wasn't the kind of leader who imposed decisions on his troops. He preferred to reason with them instead. They were his tribe, his clan. His family. He was searching for an argument that would settle the matter, at least until after their fried eggs, when out of the corner of his eye he saw El Potro head past the table on his way to the kitchen, and instinctively go to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray. Just where the petrol-soaked cloth was lying.

Ridiculous, Don Ibrahim thought. Of course El Potro wouldn't do such a thing. But he turned to him anxiously anyway.

"Hey, Potro," he said.

But El Potro had already thrown his cigarette end into the ashtray. Don Ibrahim, trying to stop him, knocked over the bottle of Anis del Mono with his elbow.