The Seville Communion (49 page)

"The Holy Father received your report."

Quart nodded, helping himself to sugar, and then stood while he stirred his coffee. His sleeves were rolled up above the elbow, and his collar was unbuttoned.

The Mastiff peered over his cup, inclining his heavy gladiator's head. "He also received," he said, "a report from the archbishop of Seville in which your name is mentioned."

The rain intensified, and the splashing on the terrace drew the two men's attention for a moment. Quart placed his cup on the tray and smiled, a sad, distant smile. "I'm sorry if I've caused you problems,

Monsignor." Disciplined and respectful, as usual. Though he was in his own apartment, he remained standing, almost lining up his thumbs with his trouser seams.

The director of the IEA gave him an affectionate look and then shrugged. "You haven't caused
me
any problems," he said gently. "On the contrary: you completed your report in record time, carried out a difficult assignment, and made the appropriate decisions with regard to Father Ferro's surrender to the police and his legal defence." He paused, considering his own huge hands. "Everything would have been perfect if you had limited yourself to that."

Quart smiled sadly again. "But I didn't."

The archbishop, his eyes streaked with brown, watched his agent for some time. "No. In the end you decided to take sides," he said with a frown. "To get involved, I suppose that's the word. And you did so at the least appropriate time and in the least appropriate way."

"It didn't seem so to me, Monsignor," said Quart.

The archbishop bowed his head benevolently. "Of course. I know. But it did seem so to the IEA." He put his cup on the tray and looked at Quart curiously. "Your orders were to remain impartial."

"I knew it was futile," said Quart. "A symbolic gesture, nothing more." He was lost in thought for a moment. "But there are times when a gesture seems important."

"Well, in fact, it wasn't entirely futile," said Spada. "According to my information, the nunciature in Madrid and the archbishopric of Seville have this morning received instructions to preserve Our Lady of the Tears and to appoint a new parish priest." He gave Quart an ironic and good-humoured wink. "Those final remarks of yours about a little piece of heaven disappearing, the patched skin of the drum, and all the rest of it certainly had an effect. Very moving and convincing. Had we known about your rhetorical abilities earlier, we would have made greater use of them." The Mastiff fell silent. Your turn to ask the questions, his silence implied. Make things a bit easier for me.

"That's good news, Monsignor," said Quart. "But good news can be given over the phone . . . What's the bad news?"

The prelate sighed. "The bad news is His Eminence Jerzy Iwaszkiewicz." He looked away and sighed again. "Our dear brother in Christ feels that he let the mouse escape, and he wants to get his own back. He's made much of the archbishop of Seville's report. According to which, you exceeded your authority. Iwaszkiewicz has also given credence to certain insinuations made by Monsignor Corvo regarding your personal conduct. The fact is, between the two of them, they're going to make things rather difficult for you." "And for you, Your Grace?"

"Oh, well." Spada raised a hand dismissively. "I'm less easy to attack, I have files and things like that. And I have the relative backing of the secretary of state. Actually they've offered to leave me in peace for a small price."

"My head."

"More or less." The archbishop stood up and paced the room. His back to Quart, he studied a small framed sketch on the wall. "It's symbolic, of course. Like your Mass last Thursday. It's unfair, I know. But life is unfair. Rome is unfair. That's how it is. Those are the rules of the game, and you've known them all along." He turned to face Quart, hands crossed behind his back. "I'll miss you, Father Quart," he said. "You're still the good soldier. I know you did the best you could. Maybe I placed too many burdens on your shoulders. I hope that the ghost of that Brazilian, Nelson Corona, will rest in peace now."

"What will they do with me?" The question was neutral, objective, with no trace of anxiety.

Spada raised his hands in disgust. "Iwaszkiewicz, always so charitable," he said, "wanted to have you sent to some obscure secretariat." He tutted. "Luckily I held a few good cards. I'm not saying I risked my neck for you, but I took the precaution of getting out your CV, and I reminded them of your excellent record, including the business in Panama and the Croat archbishop you got out of Sarajevo. So in the end Iwaszkiewicz agreed simply that you should be dismissed from the IEA." The Mastiff shrugged his square shoulders. "The Pole will be taking one of my bishops, but the game has ended in a draw."

"And what was the verdict?" asked Quart. He pictured himself far from all of this. Maybe it won't be so difficult, he thought. A bit harder and a bit colder, but it's cold inside too. For a moment he wondered if he'd have the courage to give it all up if the sentence was too harsh. To start over somewhere else, without the black suit to protect him. The problem was that, since Seville, there were fewer places to go.

"My friend Azopardi," Spada was saying, "the secretary of state, has agreed to help. He's promised to deal with your case. The idea is to find you a post as an attache to a nunciature, in Latin America if possible. After a time, if the situation becomes more favourable and I'm still at the head of the IEA, I'll request your return." He seemed relieved when he saw that Quart remained calm. "Consider it a temporary exile, or a mission that's longer than usual. To sum up, you are to disappear for a time. After all, Peter's work may be eternal, but popes and their teams come and go. Polish cardinals grow old, retire, or get cancer. You know how it is." He smiled crookedly. "And you're young."

Quart went to the window. Rain was still splashing the tiles. Below his feet, it slid in grey sheets across the roofs of the nearby houses. He breathed in the damp air. The Piazza di Spagna shone like a newly varnished oil painting. "What news is there of Father Ferro?" he asked.

The Mastiff arched an eyebrow. That's out of my hands, it meant. "According to the nunciature in Madrid," he said, "the lawyer you found him is doing a good job. They believe Father Ferro will be released on grounds of senility and lack of evidence, or, if the worst comes to the worst, he'll get a lenient sentence under Spanish law. He's getting on in years and there are lots of things that could predispose a judge in his favour. For the time being he's in the prison hospital in Seville, under fairly comfortable conditions. They may request that he's sent to a rest home for retired priests. I don't think he'll care much either way."

"No," said Quart. "I don't think he will."

Spada poured himself another coffee. "Quite a character, that old priest. Do you think he did it?" He looked at Quart, cup in hand. "We haven't heard from Vespers again. It's a pity you didn't find out who it was. If you had, I would have been able to defend you better against Iwaszkiewicz." He sipped his coffee gravely. "That would have been a tasty bone for the Pole to gnaw."

At the window, watching the rain, Quart nodded in silence, and the light made his short hair look even greyer. Drops of rain splashed on his face. "Vespers," he said.

His last evening in Seville, he went down to the lobby and found her there, just as he had the first time, sitting in the same armchair. Only a week had passed since that first day, but to Quart it seemed as if he'd been in Seville for ever. Like the huge stone nave standing a few metres away, across the square, with its pinnacles and flying buttresses. Like the disorientated pigeons crossing the area of night lit up by the spotlights. Like Santa Cruz, the river, the Almohad Tower, and La Giralda. Like Macarena Bruner, who now watched him approach. When she stood up in the middle of the empty lobby, Quart knew that her presence still moved him to his very core. Luckily, he thought as he walked towards her, she didn't love him.

"I've come to say goodbye," said Macarena. "And to thank you."

They went out into the street. It was indeed a farewell: short sentences, monosyllables, cliches, the kind of polite remarks that passed between strangers, and not a single reference to the two of them. Quart noticed the formality of her tone. She was relaxed yet avoided his eyes. For the first time, she seemed intimidated. They spoke of Father Ferro, of Quart's journey the following day. Of the Mass he had conducted at Our Lady of the Tears.

"I never imagined I'd see you there," said Macarena.

Occasionally, as on the night they had walked around Santa Cruz, their steps happened to bring them into contact, and each time Quart experienced an acute, physical sense of loss. They walked now in silence, as everything between them had been said; to continue talking would have required words that neither wished to say. The light of the street lamps cast their shadows against the Arab Wall, and they stopped there, facing each other. Quart beheld her dark eyes, the ivory necklace against her tanned skin. He felt no bitterness towards her. He knew she had used him - he was as good a weapon as any, and Macarena believed she was fighting for a just cause - and he had let himself be used. His thoughts were beginning to return to some sort of order. Soon, only the emptiness of his loss would remain, duly kept in check by his pride and self-discipline. But neither the woman nor Seville would ever be erased from his memory.

He searched for a sentence, a word, at least, before Macarena disappeared from his life for ever. Something that she would remember, that wouldn't jar with the ancient wall, the iron street lamps, the illuminated tower in the background and the sky where Father Ferro's icy stars shone. But he found only a blank. A long, resigned weariness that could be expressed only by a look or a smile. So he smiled in the darkness. And now she looked him in the face, as if a word she couldn't find hung on her parted lips. Quart turned and walked away, feeling her gaze on him. He thought stupidly that if she had at that moment shouted, "I love you," he would have torn off his dog collar and gone back, taken her in his arms like an officer in an old black-and-white movie throwing away his career for a femme fatale, or like those other poor fools, Samson and Holofernes. The thought amused him. He knew - had always known - that Macarena Bruner would never say those words again to any man.

"Wait!" she said suddenly. "I want to show you something."

Quart stopped. They weren't the magic words, but they were enough for him to turn. She was still standing where he had left her, her shadow on the wall. She threw back her head, shaking back her hair in a defiant gesture directed at herself rather than at him.

"You've earned it," she said with a smile.

The Casa del Postigo was silent. The English clock in the gallery struck twelve as they crossed the courtyard with the tiled fountain, among geraniums and ferns. All the lights were out, and in the moonlight their shadows swept across the mosaics, which were glistening wet after the recent watering of the plants. In the garden, crickets chirped at the foot of the dark tower that housed the pigeon loft.

Macarena led Quart across the gallery, through a small sitting room, and then up a wooden staircase with an iron handrail. They came to the glassed-in gallery on the floor above, surrounding the patio, and proceeded to a closed door at the end of it. Before Macarena opened the door, she stopped and whispered to Quart, "Nobody must ever know about this."

She put a finger to her lips and opened the door. Strains of
The Magic Flute
greeted them. The first room, in darkness, was full of furniture under dustcovers. Moonlight filtered through the window.

The music came from another room. There, through an open glass sliding door, a lamp lit up a desk covered with computer equipment: two big Sony monitors, a laser printer, a modem. And, staring at the screen flashing with icons and letters, with the Romero de Torres fan and two empty bottles of Coca-Cola on top of a pile of copies of
Wired
magazine, absorbed in the journey that provided a nighdy escape from the house, Seville, herself, and her past, Vespers travelled silently through boundless cyberspace.

She didn't even seem surprised that they were there. She was typing carefully, her eyes glued to one of the monitors. Quart noticed how she did everything with great attention, as if afraid of pressing a wrong key and ruining something important. He looked at the screen: all the numbers and signs were meaningless to him, but the hacker seemed entirely at ease with them. She wore a dark silk robe, slippers, and, around her neck, the beautiful pearl necklace. Quart shook his head. Suddenly all the signs on the screen were replaced by new ones, and the eyes of Cruz Bruner, duchess of El Nuevo Extremo, shone brightly. "There it is," she said and began typing again. After a moment she pressed Enter and leaned back, satisfied. Her eyes, reddened by staring at the screen, gleamed with malice when at last she looked up at her daughter and the priest. "'For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night'," she said to Quart. "Isn't that right, Father? First epistle to the Thessalonians, I think. Five, two."

Her daughter placed a hand on her shoulder and looked at Quart. The old lady tilted her head to her. "If I'd known I'd be getting a visit at this time of night, I'd have done myself up," she said, touching her pearl necklace and sounding gently reproachful. "But as it's Macarena who's brought you, it's all right." She squeezed her daughter's hand. "Now you know my secret."

Quart still couldn't quite believe it. He looked at the empty Coca-Cola bottles, the piles of computer magazines - in both English and Spanish - the manuals filling the desk drawers, the boxes of diskettes. Cruz and Macarena Bruner watched him, one with amusement, the other grave. He couldn't deny the evidence of his senses: from this desk a seventy-year-old lady had given the Vatican the runaround.

"How did you do it?" he asked.

Cruz Bruner took her hand away from her daughter's and slid it over the keyboard. A piano, thought Quart. Elderly duchesses played the piano, did embroidery or gave themselves up to nostalgia; they didn't turn into computer hackers by night.