The Seville Communion Read online

  The Seville Communion

  Book Jacket

  Tags: Novel

  SUMMARY:

  A“diabolically good” hacker puts a message on the pope’s computer, pleading for him to save a seventeenth-century Spanish church—a church that is killing to defend itself.Although Our Lady of the Tears is but a crumbling baroque building in the heart of Seville, it is also the center of a multilayered mystery—one that will force ecclesiastical sleuth Father Lorenzo Quart to question his loyalty, his vow of chastity, and his faith itself.

  THE SEVILLE COMMUNION

  Arturo Perez-Reverte was born in Cartagena in 1951. He has been a journalist and television reporter specialising in covering the world's trouble-spots. Since the publication of his first novel, The Fencing Master, Perez-Reverte has become one of Spain's best-selling authors. The Flanders Panel was awarded the Grand Prix Annuel de Litterature Policiere. The Dumas Club has been made into a film entitled The Ninth Gate, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Johnny Depp.

  Sonia Soto is half Spanish and was educated at the French Lycee in London and at the University of Cambridge. She is a translator from Spanish, French and Russian and is the translator of The Ages of Lulu by Almudena Grandes.

  ALSO BY ARTURO PEREZ-REVERTE IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

  The Fencing Master

  The Flanders Panel

  The Dumas Club

  Arturo Perez-Reverte

  THE SEVILLECOMMUNION

  TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY Sonia Soto

  VINTAGE

  Published by Vintage 2003

  2468 10 9753

  Copyright © Arturo Perez-Reverte, 1995 English translation © Sonia Soto, 1997

  Arturo Perez-Reverte has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published with the title La piel del tambor by Alfaguara S.A., Madrid in 1995

  First published in Great Britain in 1998 by The Harvill Press

  Vintage

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009 www.randomhouse.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0 09 945396 7

  Papers used by Random House are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey

  To Amaya, for her friendship, To Juan, for keeping at me, And to Rodolfo, for doing his bit

  Clerics, bankers, computer hackers, duchesses, and scoundrels - the characters in this novel are all imaginary. And any resemblance to real events is entirely coincidental. Only the setting is true. Nobody could invent a city like Seville.

  Contents

  I

  The Man from Rome

  i

  II

  Three Villains

  24

  III

  Eleven Bars in Triana

  49

  IV

  Seville Oranges and Blossom

  75

  V

  Captain Xaloc's Twenty Pearls

  100

  VI

  Lorenzo Quart's Tie

  127

  VII

  The Bottle of Anis del Mono

  153

  VIII

  An Andalusian Lady

  175

  IX

  It's a Small World

  194

  X

  In Ictu Oculi

  225

  XI

  Carlota Bruner's Trunk

  250

  XII

  The Wrath of God

  276

  XIII

  The Lovely

  293

  XIV

  Eight O'Clock Mass

  316

  XV

  Vespers

  327

  The hacker broke into the central Vatican system eleven minutes before midnight. Thirty-five seconds later, one of the computers triggered the alarm. Rapid changes on the screen tracked the progress of the automatic security protocols. The letters HK appeared in a corner, and the duty officer, a Jesuit inputting data from the latest census of the Papal State, picked up the telephone to inform his superior. "We've got a hacker," he said:

  Father Ignacio Arregui, also a Jesuit, came out into the hallway buttoning his cassock and walked the fifty metres to the computer room. He was thin and bony, with shoes that squeaked as he passed the frescoes in the dimly lit corridor. He glanced out of the windows at the deserted Via della Tipografia and the dark facade of the belvedere Palace, muttering to himself. Being woken bothered him more than hackers in the system. They got in quite often but their forays were usually harmless. Generally they kept to the outer security perimeters, leaving only slight traces of their presence - a message or small virus. Hackers liked attention. They were mostly teenage boys surfing the Net for ever harder systems to crack. Microchip junkies, tech addicts, getting their kicks trying to break into Cliasc Manhattan Bank, the Pentagon, or the Vatican.

  The priest on duty was Father Cooey, a plump young Irish Jesuit with glasses. Bent over his keyboard, he frowned as he followed the hacker. He looked up, relieved, when Father Arregui came in.

  "You don't know how glad I am to see you, Father."

  His superior stood beside him, hands on the table, watching the blue and red icons blinking on the screen. The automatic search system was keeping in constant contact with the intruder.

  "Is it serious?"

  "It might be."

  In the past two years there had been only one serious case, when a hacker had managed to slip in a worm program that multiplied inside the system until it crashed. Decontaminating and repairing the network had cost half a million dollars. The hacker was tracked down after a long and complicated search. He turned out to be a sixteen-year-old boy from a small village in Holland. Other serious attempts to corrupt the system with killer viruses - by a Mormon from Salt Lake City, a fundamentalist Islamic organisation based in Istanbul, and a mad priest who opposed celibacy - had all been stopped before they could do too much damage. The priest, a Frenchman, working from the computer of his lunatic asylum by night, had pestered them for six weeks and managed to infect forty-two files with a virus that filled the screens with Latin insults.

  Father Arregui pointed at the cursor, now flashing red:

  "Is this our hacker?"

  "Yes."

  "What have you called him ?"

  They always gave them a name - it made identifying and following them easier. Some were'like old friends. Father Cooey pointed to a line on the screen:

  "'Vespers' " he said, "because of the time he appeared. It was the first name that came into my head."

  On the screen, files appeared and disappeared. Father Cooey watched them intently. He moved the cursor to one of them and clicked twice. Now that his superior was there to take responsibility, he was more relaxed, expectant even. Any hacker was a challenge to his expertise.

  "He's been inside for ten minutes," he said, and Father Arregui thought he heard a tone of admiration. "At first he just looked at the different entry points. Then he suddenly slipped in. He already knew the way. He must have visited us before." "What do y
ou think he's up to?"

  Cooey shrugged. "I don't know. But he's pretty good, and he's quick. He's using a three-pronged approach to get past our defences. He starts by trying simple permutations of names of known users, then tries names from our own Dictionary and finally a list of four hundred and thirty-two passwords." As he said this, the Jesuit twisted his mouth slightly, as if suppressing a smile. "Now he's probing the entrances to INMA VAT."

  Father Arregui drummed his fingers anxiously on one of the computer manuals littering the table. INMA VA T was a confidential list of the high-ranking members of the Roman Curia. Access was possible only with a secret personal code.

  "Signal tracker?" he suggested.

  Cooey jerked his chin towards the monitor at the neighbouring table, as if to say, "I've already thought of that". Connected to the police and to the Vatican's telephone network, the system recorded all information on an intruder's signal. It even contained a trap, a series of paths that slowed intruders long enough for them to be located and identified.

  "This won't get us very far," said Cooey after a few moments. "Vespers has hidden his entry point by jumping between different telephone networks. Every time he makes a loop through one of them, we have to trace him right back to the exchange. He'd have to be here a long time before we could do anything about him. And he'd still be able to do some damage, if that's what he wants."

  "What else could he want?"

  "I don't know," the younger man answered, looking both intrigued and amused. He went on, his face serious again. "Sometimes they just want to have a look around, or leave a message - 'Captain Zap was here', that kind of thing." He paused, watching the screen. "But this one's going to a lot of trouble just for a saunter around the system."

  Father Arregui nodded twice, still absorbed in what was happening on the screen, but then he seemed to come to. He glanced at the telephone inside the cone of lamplight. He reached for it, but stopped midway.

  "Do you think he'll get into INMA VA T?"

  "He just has."

  "Dear God." Now the red cursor was flickering rapidly, moving down the long list of files on the screen.

  "He's good,"said Cooey, no longer hiding his admiration. "God forgive me, but this hacker is very good." He paused and smiled. "Diabolically good."

  He'd given up on the keyboard and was now simply watching, his elbows on the table. The restricted-access list was there on the screen, in full view. Eighty-four cardinals and high-ranking officials, each given with a corresponding code. The cursor moved up and down the list, twice, then stopped with a flicker beside VoiA.

  "Swine," muttered Father Arregui.

  The data transfer log was registering a tiny decrease in free memory. The intruder had cracked the security lock and was transferring a file into the system. "Who's VoiA?" asked Father Cooey.

  Father Arregui didn't answer immediately. He unfastened the collar of his cassock and passed his band over his head. He looked at the screen again in disbelief. Then he picked up the telephone receiver slowly and, after another moment's hesitation, he dialled the emergency number of the Vatican palace secretariat. It rang seven times before a voice answered in Italian. Father Arregui cleared his throat and announced that an intruder had broken into the Holy Father's personal computer.

  The Man from Rome

  He carries a sword for a reason.

  He is God's agent,

  Bernard dc Clairvaux,

  Eulogy of the Templar Militia

  At the beginning of May, Lorenzo Quart received the order that would take him to Seville. An area of low pressure was moving towards the eastern Mediterranean and that morning it was raining on St. Peter's Square, so Quart had to skirt the square, taking shelter under Bernini's colonnade. As he walked up to the Portone di Bronzo, he saw the sentry standing with his halberd in the gloomy marble-and-granite corridor and preparing to ask for his identification. The man, tall and strong with a crew cut, was wearing the red, yellow, and blue-striped Renaissance uniform and black beret of the Swiss Guard. He stared at Quart's well-cut suit, matching black silk shirt with a Roman collar, and his fine, handmade leather shoes. Definitely not, the guard seemed to be thinking, one of the grey bagarozzi - the officials of the complex Vatican bureaucracy who passed through every day. But neither was the visitor a high-ranking member of the Curia, a prelate or monsignor. They wore a cross, a purple trim or a ring at the very least, and they definitely didn't arrive on foot in the rain. They entered the Vatican palace by another gate, St. Anne's, in comfortable chauffeur-driven cars. Anyway, despite grey hair cut short like a soldier's, the man looked too young to be a prelate. He stood politely before the guard and searched amongst the various credit cards in his wallet for his ID card. Very tall, slim, sure of himself, he looked calmly at the guard. His nails were well kept, and he wore an elegant watch and simple silver cufflinks. He couldn't have been over forty. "Guten Morgen. Wie ist der Dienst gewesen ?v

  The guard stiffened and held his halberd straight, not so much at the greeting - in perfect German - as at the sight of the letters IEA in the upper right-hand corner of the man's identity card, next to the tiara and the keys of St. Peter. The Institute of External Affairs was entered in the thick red volume of the Pontifical Yearbook as a department of the secretariat of state. But even the newest recruits to the Swiss Guard knew that for two centuries the Institute had been the executive arm of the Holy Office and now co-ordinated all the secret activities of the Information Services of the Vatican. Members of the Curia, masters of the art of euphemism, referred to it as God's Left Hand. Others called it the Dirty Work Department, but only in a whisper.

  "Kommen Sie herein"

  "Danke."

  Quart walked past the sentry through the ancient Portone di Bronzo and turned right. He came to the wide staircase of the Scala Rcgia and, after stopping at the checkpoint, mounted the echoing marble steps two at a time. At the top, beyond glass doors guarded by another sentry, was the Courtyard of St. Damaso. He crossed it in the rain, watched by yet more sentries in blue capes. There was a sentry at every door of the Vatican palace. After another short flight of steps Quart stopped outside a door with a discreet metal plate: ISTITUTO PER LE OPERE ESTERIORE. He took a tissue from his pocket and dried the rain from his face, then bent down and wiped his shoes. He screwed the handkerchief into a ball and threw it into a brass ashtray by the door. At last, after checking his shirt-cuffs and smoothing his jacket, he rang the bell. Lorenzo Quart was perfectly aware of his failings as a priest: he knew he lacked charity and compassion, for instance. And humility, despite his self-discipline. He may have been without these qualities, but he was thorough and adhered strictly to the rules. This made him valuable to his superiors. The men waiting behind the door knew that Father Quart was as precise and reliable as a Swiss Army knife.

  The room was in semidarkness. There was a power cut in the building and the only light - from a window facing the Belvedere Gardens -

  was dim and grey. A secretary left, closing the door behind him, as Quart entered and stood in the middle of the room. Quart knew the room well. Its walls were lined with bookshelves and wooden filing cabinets partly covering frescoes of the Adriatic, Tyrrhenian, and Ionian seas by Antonio Danti. Ignoring the figure standing at the window, he nodded briefly to a man sitting at a large desk covered with files.

  "Monsignor," he said.

  Without a word, Archbishop Paolo Spada, director of the Institute of External Affairs, smiled at him conspiratorially. He was from Lombardy, a strong, solid, almost square man, with powerful shoulders beneath a black suit that bore no emblem of his ecclesiastical rank. With his large head and thick neck, he resembled a truck driver or boxer, or - perhaps more appropriately in Rome - a veteran gladiator who had exchanged his sword and helmet for a priest's habit. This impression was reinforced by his black, bristly hair and huge hands, with no sign of an archbishop's ring. He held a brass paperknife shaped like a dagger and waved it in the direction of the man at the window.
/>   "I assume you know Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz."

  Only then did Quart look to his right and greet the motionless figure. Of course he knew him. His Eminence Jerzy Iwaszkiewicz, Bishop of Krakow, promoted to cardinal by his compatriot Pope Wojtyla, and Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, known until 1965 as the Holy Office, or Inquisition. Even as a thin dark shadow at the window, Iwaszkiewicz and what he represented were unmistakable.

  "Laudeatur Jesus Christus, Eminence."

  The director of the Holy Office remained silent. It was Monsignor Spada's husky voice that intervened. "You may sit if you wish, Father Quart. This is an unofficial meeting. His Eminence prefers to remain standing."

  He'd used ufficioso for "unofficial", and Quart caught the nuance. In Vatican parlance, there was an important distinction to be made between ufficioso and ujficiale. Ufficioso conveyed the special sense of what is thought rather than said, or even, what is said but always disowned. Quart glanced at the chair the archbishop had indicated, and gently shook his head. He clasped his hands behind his back and stood in the centre of the room, calm and relaxed, like a soldier awaiting orders.

  Monsignor Spada regarded him approvingly. The whites of the archbishop's small cunning eyes were streaked with brown like those of an old dog. This, together with his solid appearance and bristly hair, had earned him a nickname - the Mastiff. But only the most high-ranking, secure members of the Curia dared use it.

  "Pleased to sec you again, Father Quart. It's been some time."

  Two months, thought Quart. Then, as now, there had been three men in the room: himself, Monsignor Spada, and a well-known banker, Renzo Lupara, chairman of the Italian Continental Bank, one of the banks involved with Vatican finances. Lupara had an untarnished reputation. He was handsome, elegant, and a happy family man blessed with a beautiful wife and four children. He had made his fortune using the cover of Vatican banking activities to get money out of the country illegally for businessmen and politicians who were members of the Aurora 7 lodge, of which he himself was a member and holder of the 33rd degree. This was exactly the sort of worldly matter that required Lorenzo Quart's special skills. He spent six months trailing Lupara through offices in Zurich, Gibraltar, and St. Barthelemy in the West Indies, and produced a lengthy report on his findings. Lying open on the desk of the director of the IEA it left the banker two choices: he could go to prison, or he could make a discreet exit, thus saving the good name of the Continental Bank and the Vatican, not to mention Mrs Lupara and her four offspring. Staring blankly at the fresco of the Tyrrhenian Sea in the archbishop's office, the banker had clearly grasped the thrust of Spada's speech, which was most tactfully expressed and illustrated with the parable of the bad slave and the talents. Then, despite the salutary moral that, technically, an unrepentant mason always died in mortal sin, Lupara went straight to his beautiful villa in Capri and leaped, apparently without saying confession, from a terrace over the cliff. According to a commemorative plaque, Curzio Malaparte had once drunk vermouth at that very spot.