The Seville Communion Read online

"That's the awkward part. Without it, this would have been just one more conflict over a plot of land involving speculators and a great deal of money. The church would simply have been pulled down when it became too dilapidated and the money from the sale of the land used for the greater glory of God. But these deaths complicate matters." Spada's eyes, streaked with brown, gazed distractedly out of the window. The Fiat was now caught in traffic leading up to the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. "Within a very short time two people involved with Our Lady of the Tears have died. One of them was a municipal architect carrying out a survey of the building for the purpose of declaring it a ruin and ordering it to be vacated. The other was a priest, Archbishop Corvo's secretary. He was there, apparently, putting pressure on the parish priest on behalf of His Grace the Archbishop."

  "I don't believe it."

  The Mastiff turned to look at Quart. "Well, you'd better start believing it. As from today you're dealing with it."

  They were stuck in a huge and noisy traffic jam. The archbishop craned his neck and glanced up at the sky. "Let's get out and walk. There's plenty of time. I'll buy you a drink in that cafe you like so much."

  "The Greco? That would suit me, Monsignor. But your tailor awaits. Cavalleggeri himself. Not even the Holy Father would dare keep him waiting."

  The prelate, already getting out of the car, laughed huskily. "That's one of my rare privileges, Father Quart. After all, not even the Holy Father knows some of the things I know about Cavalleggeri."

  Lorenzo Quart was very fond of old cafes. Almost twelve years earlier, when he'd just arrived in Rome to study at the Gregorian University, he'd been immediately captivated by the Caffe Greco with its imperturbable waiters and two-hundred-year history as a port of call for travellers such as Byron and Stendhal. Now he lived just around the corner, in a top-floor apartment rented by the IEA at 119 Via del Babuino. From the small terrace he had a good view of the church of Trinita dei Monti and the azaleas in bloom on the Spanish Steps. The Greco was his favourite place to read. He'd go and sit there at quiet times of the day, beneath the bust of Victor Emmanuel II, at a table said to have been Giacomo Casanova's and Louis of Bavaria's.

  "How did Monsignor Corvo take his secretary's death?"

  Spada was peering at his vermouth. There weren't many people in the cafe: a couple of regulars reading the paper at tables at the back, a smartly dressed woman with Armani and Valentino shopping bags talking into a mobile, and some English tourists taking photos of each other at the bar. The woman with the phone seemed to make the archbishop uncomfortable. He glanced disapprovingly at her before answering Quart.

  "He took it badly. Very badly, in fact. He swore to raze the church to the ground."

  Quart shook his head. "That sounds extreme. A building doesn't have a will. And certainly not to cause harm."

  "I hope not." The Mastiff looked serious. "Better for everyone that way."

  "You don't think Monsignor Corvo's simply looking for an excuse to demolish the church and have done with it?"

  "It's definitely an excuse. But there's something else. The archbishop has a personal grudge against that church, or against its priest. Or both."

  He fell silent and stared at the picture on the wall: a Romantic landscape depicting Rome when it was still the city of the pope as monarch, with Vespasian's arch in the foreground and the dome of St. Peter's in the background, surrounded by roofs and ancient walls.

  "Were there any suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths?" asked Quart.

  The archbishop shrugged. "It depends on what you consider suspicious. The architect fell from the roof, and a stone from the vault fell on the priest."

  "Definitely spectacular," said Quart, raising his glass to his lips.

  "And bloody. The secretary was quite a mess." Spada pointed at the ceiling. "Imagine a watermelon crushed by a ten-kilo chunk of cornice. Splat."

  Quart winced. He could picture it clearly. "What about the Spanish police?" he asked.

  "They say both were accidents. That's what makes the line about 'a church that kills to defend itself so disturbing." Spada frowned. "And now, thanks to some cheeky computer hacker, the Holy Father is worried about it too. So it's the job of the IEA to ease his anxiety."

  "Why us?"

  The archbishop laughed under his breath. His profile reminded Quart of an old engraving of the centurion who crucified Christ. His big, strong hands now rested in front of him on the table. Beneath the rough exterior of a Lombard peasant, the Mastiff held the key to all the secrets of a state that had three thousand employees in the Vatican itself, three thousand archbishops around the world, and responsibility for the spiritual guidance of a billion souls. It was rumoured that during the last conclave he'd dug up the medical records of all the candidates to the papacy and examined their cholesterol levels in order to get an idea how long the new pontiff would last. The director of the IEA had forecast Wojtyla's investiture and the swing to the right even while the smoke issuing from the Sistine Chapel was still black.

  "Why us?" he said at last. "Because in theory we have the Pope's confidence. Any pope's. But there's more than one faction vying for power in the Vatican, and lately the Holy Office has been gaining in influence at our expense. We used to work together as brothers in

  Christ." He waved his hand dismissively. "You know about that better than anyone."

  Quart did indeed. Until the scandal that caused the entire financial apparatus of the Vatican to be dismantled and until the swing of the Polish team towards orthodoxy, relations between the IEA and the Holy Office had been cordial. But the hounding and defeat of the liberal element had unleashed a pitiless settling of old scores within the Curia.

  "These are difficult times," the archbishop said with a sigh, absorbed in staring at the picture on the wall. Then he sipped his drink and sat back in his chair, clicking his tongue. "Only the Pope is allowed to die there," he added, pointing to Michelangelo's dome in the background. "Forty hectares containing the most powerful state on earth, but with the structure of an absolutist medieval monarchy. A throne now bolstered only by a religion that has become little more than a show - televised papal visits and that totus tuus business. But underneath it all there is the reactionary fanaticism of Iwaszkiewicz and company."

  He looked away from the picture almost contemptuously. "Now it's a fight to the death," he went on sombrely. "The Church can function only if its authority goes unchallenged and its structure remains compact. The trick is keeping it that way. In that task, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is such a valuable weapon that it's been growing in influence since the eighties, when Wojtyla took to going up Mount Sinai and chatting to God every day." His mastiff eyes looked around vaguely, in a pause charged with irony. "The Holy Father is infallible even in his errors, and reviving the Inquisition is a good way of keeping the dissidents quiet. Who remembers Kung, Castillo, Schillebeeck, or Boff now? Throughout history the Church of Peter has resolved its struggles by silencing the disobedient or eliminating them. And we still use the same weapons: defamation, excommunication and the stake . . . What are you thinking, Father Quart? You're very quiet."

  "I always am, Monsignor."

  "True. Always loyal and careful, isn't that so? Or should I say professional?" The prelate's tone was light-hearted, if grudging. "Always that damned discipline that you wear like chain mail . . . You would have got on well with Bernard de Clairvaux and his gang of Knights Templar. If you'd been captured by Saladin, I'm sure you'd rather have had your throat cut than renounce your faith. But not from devotion, from pride."

  Quart laughed. "I was thinking of His Eminence Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz," he said. "They don't condemn people to the stake anymore." He swallowed the last of his drink. "Or excommunicate them."

  Spada grunted ferociously. "There are other ways of casting someone into darkness. Even we've done it. You have yourself."

  The archbishop fell silent, watching Quart's eyes. He wondered if he'd gone too far. But he'd spok
en the truth. In the early days, when they hadn't been in opposing camps, Quart supplied Iwaszkiewicz's henchmen with ammunition. Again Quart saw Nelson Corona - his myopic frightened eyes, his glasses misted, sweat running down his face. He'd been defrocked a week later, and a week after that he was dead. That was four years ago, but the memory was as sharp as ever.

  "Yes, I have," he said.

  Spada studied Quart, curious. "Corona, still?" he asked gently.

  Quart smiled. "May I speak frankly, Monsignor?"

  "Yes."

  "Not just him. Also Ortega, the Spaniard. And the other one, Souza."

  There had been three priests, proponents of so-called liberation theology. They had opposed the reactionary tide from Rome. And in all three cases the IEA had done the dirty work for Iwaszkiewicz and his Congregation. Corona, Ortega, and Souza were prominent progressive priests working in marginal dioceses, poor districts of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. They believed in saving man here on earth, not waiting for the Kingdom of Heaven. Once they'd been identified as targets, the IEA set to work, finding the weak points to put pressure on. Ortega and Souza soon gave in. As for Corona - a popular hero in the favelas of Rio and the scourge of local police and politicians - it had been necessary to remind him of certain dubious details of his work with young drug addicts. Quart had spent several weeks investigating the matter, not leaving a stone unturned. But the Brazilian priest refused to mend his ways. Hated by the extreme right, Corona was murdered by death squads seven days after he was suspended a divinis and expelled from his diocese. His photo was on the front pages of all the papers. They found the body on a rubbish dump near his former parish. His hands were tied and he'd been shot in the back of the head. COMUNISTA E VEADO: Communist and fag, read the sign around his neck.

  "Father Quart. Corona forgot his vow of obedience and the priorities of his ministry. He was asked to reflect on his mistakes. That's all. But things got out of hand. It had nothing to do with us. It was Iwaszkiewicz and his Congregation. You were just obeying orders. What happened wasn't your fault."

  "With all due respect, Your Grace, it was. Corona's dead."

  "Well, we both know others who died. The financier Lupara, for instance."

  "But Corona was one of us, Monsignor."

  "One of us, one of us . . . There is no 'us'. We're all on our own. We answer to God and the Pope." The archbishop paused deliberately. "In that order." Popes died, but God was immortal.

  Quart looked away, as if he wanted to change the subject. Then he lowered his head. "Your Grace is right," he said, inscrutable.

  Exasperated, the archbishop clenched his huge fist as if to bang the table. But he didn't raise it. "Sometimes," he said, "I detest your damned discipline."

  "What am I to say to that, Monsignor?"

  "Tell me what you think."

  "In situations like these I try not to think."

  "Don't be ridiculous. I'm ordering you to tell me."

  Quart said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. "I still believe that Corona was one of us. And an honest man." "A man with weaknesses."

  "Maybe. What happened to him happened precisely because of that, a weakness, a mistake. But we all make mistakes."

  Spada laughed. "Not you, Father Quart. I've been waiting for you to make a mistake for ten years. The day it happens, I'll have the pleasure of giving you a hair shirt, fifty lashes, and a hundred Hail Marys as punishment." Suddenly his tone became acid. "How do you manage always to be so virtuous?" He passed his hand over his bristly hair. He shook his head, not waiting for an answer. "But about that unfortunate business in Rio, you know the Almighty works in mysterious ways. It was just bad luck."

  "Luck or not, Monsignor, it's a fact. It happened. And some day I may have to answer for what I did."

  "When that day comes, God will judge you as he judges all of us. Until then - only in official matters, of course - you know you have my general absolution, sub conditione”

  He raised one of his large hands in a brief gesture of blessing. Quart smiled.

  "I'll need more than that. But can Your Grace assure me that we would do the same today?" "By ‘we' do you mean the Church?"

  "I mean the Institute for External Affairs. Would we be quite so quick now to bring those three heads on a tray to Cardinal Iwaszkiewicz?"

  "I don't know. A strategy consists of tactics." The prelate broke off, looking worried, and glanced sharply at Quart. "I hope none of this will affect your work in Seville."

  "It won't. At least I don't think so. But you did ask me to speak frankly."

  "Listen. You and I are both career churchmen. But Iwaszkicwicz has either bought or intimidated everyone in the Vatican." He looked around, as if the Pole might appear at any moment. "Only the IEA hasn't yet fallen into his hands. The Secretary of State, Azopardi, went to college with me. He's the only one who still puts in a good word for us to the Holy Father."

  "You have many friends, Your Grace. You've done favours for a lot of people."

  Spada laughed sceptically. "In the Curia, favours are forgotten and slights remembered. We live in a court of tattling eunuchs, where promotion comes only with the support of others. Everyone rushes to stab a fallen man, but otherwise nobody dares do anything. Remember when Pope Luciani died: to determine the hour of death it was necessary to take his temperature but nobody had the guts to stick a thermometer in his rectum."

  "But the Cardinal Secretary of State . . ."

  The Mastiff shook his bristly head. "Azopardi is my friend, but only in the sense that the word has here. He has to look out for his own interests. Iwaszkiewicz is very powerful." He fell silent for a few moments, as if weighing Iwaszkiewicz's power against his own. "Even the hacker is a minor matter," he said at last. "At any other time it wouldn't have occurred to them to give us this job. Strictly speaking, it's a matter for the archbishop of Seville and the parishioners of his diocese. But with the situation as it is, the slightest thing gets blown out of all proportion. The Holy Father shows an interest, and it's enough to set off another round of internal reprisals. So I've chosen the best man for the job. What I need above all is information. We need to present a report this thick"- he held his thumb and index finger five centimetres apart - "which leaves us looking good. Let them see that we're doing something. It'll satisfy His Holiness and keep the Pole quiet."

  A group of Japanese tourists peered inside the cafe admiringly. A few of them smiled and bowed politely when they saw the priests. Monsignor Spada smiled back absently.

  "I think highly of you, Father Quart," he went on. "That's why I'm letting you know what's at stake here, before you leave for Seville ... I don't know whether you're always 'the good soldier', but you've never given me reason to think otherwise. I've kept an eye on you since you were a student at the Gregorian University, and I've grown fond of you. Which may cost you dear, because if I fall from grace some day, you'll be dragged down with me. Or you might go first. You know how it is, the pawns are sacrificed."

  Quart nodded, impassive. "What if we win?"

  "We'll never really win. As your fellow countryman Saint Ignatius Loyola would have said, we've chosen what God has to spare and others don't want: torment and struggle. Our victories only postpone the next attack. Iwaszkiewicz will be a cardinal for the rest of his life, a prince by protocol, a bishop whose investiture is irrevocable, a citizen of the smallest and - thanks to men like you and me - most secure state in the world. And, for our sins, one day he may even be pope. But we'll never be papabili, and possibly never even cardinals. As they say in the Curia, we've got an impressive CV but not much of a pedigree. We do have some power, however, and we know how to fight. That makes us formidable opponents, and for all his fanaticism and arrogance, Iwaszkicwicz knows it. We can't be crushed like the Jesuits and the liberals in the Curia, to the benefit of the Opus Dei, the fundamentalist Mafia, or God on Sinai. Totus tuus is all very well, but they'd better not mess with me. Mastiffs don't go down without a fight."

  The a
rchbishop looked at his watch and called the waiter. He put his hand on Quart's arm to stop him paying the bill and put some banknotes on the table. Eighteen thousand lire exactly, Quart noticed. The Mastiff never left a tip. His childhood had been poor.

  "It's our duty to fight, Father Quart," he said as he stood up. "Because we're right, not Iwaszkiewicz. He and his friends would like to go back to imprisoning and torturing people, but the Church can be strong and retain authority without that. I remember when Luciani was appointed pope - he lasted thirty-three days. That was twenty years ago, before your time, but I was already involved in this kind of work." The archbishop frowned. "When he made that speech just after his investiture, about 'the Almighty being more of a mother than a father', Iwaszkicwicz and his hard-liners were climbing the walls. And I thought to myself, 'This isn't going to work.' Luciani was too soft. I suppose the Holy Spirit got rid of him before he could cause too much trouble. The press called him the smiling pope, but everyone in the Vatican knew his was a strange smile." He grinned mischievously, baring his teeth. "A nervous smile."

  The sun had come out and was drying the paving stones of the Piazza di Spagna. Flower sellers were removing tarpaulins from their stalls, and tourists were coming to sit on the still-damp steps leading to Trinita dei Monti. Quart walked up the steps with the archbishop. He was dazzled by the light - an intense Roman light, like a good omen. Halfway up, a tourist - a young woman with a rucksack on her back, in jeans and a striped T-shirt - was sitting on one of the steps. She took a photo of Quart as the two priests came level with her. A flash and a smile. Spada half-turned, irritated but also amused. "Do you know, Father Quart? You're too good-looking to be a priest. It would be crazy to appoint you to a convent." "I'm sorry, Monsignor."

  "Don't be sorry, it's not your fault. But how do you manage? To keep temptation at bay, I mean. You know, woman as the Devil's creation and all that."

  Quart laughed. "Prayer and cold showers, Your Grace."

  "You always follow the rules, don't you? Aren't you bored with being so good?"