The Seville Communion (50 page)

"I never would have imagined," said Quart.

"That a little old lady could be comfortable with all this?" She straightened, her expression thoughtful. "Well, I admit it's a little unusual, but there you are. One day I took a look, out of curiosity. I pressed a key and found that things happened on the screen. And that you could travel to incredible places and do things you never dreamed of doing." She smiled, and her face was suddenly younger. "It's more fun than watching Venezuelan soap operas on television."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Oh, not long. Three, four years." She turned to her daughter, trying to remember exactly. "I've always been very curious; if I see a line of print, I just have to start reading . . . One day Macarena bought a computer for her work. When she went out, I'd sit at it, awestruck. There was a game, a little ping-pong ball - that's how I learned my way around the keyboard. I have trouble sleeping, as you know, so I ended up spending quite a few hours at the computer. I think I became addicted."

"At her age," said Macarena affectionately.

"Yes." The old lady faced Quart, as if inviting him to express his disapproval. "I was so curious that I began to read everything I could find about computers. I learned English when I was a child, so I signed up for correspondence courses and subscribed to computer magazines." She gave a little laugh and covered her mouth with her hand, as if shocked at herself. "My health isn't too good, but luckily my brain's still all right. I became a bit of an expert in quite a short time. And I assure you, at my age, that's exhilarating."

"She even fell in love," said Macarena.

Mother and daughter laughed. Quart wondered if they weren't both slightly crazy; it all seemed like a big joke. Or maybe he was the one who was going mad. This city's gone to your head, he told himself. Just as well that you're leaving now, before it's too late.

"She's exaggerating," said Cruz Bruner. "I had the equipment, the software, so I started to get around. And, well, yes, I did have a virtual love affair. One night I happened to get into a hacker's computer, a young man of sixteen . . . You should see your face, Father. I've never seen anyone look so astonished."

"You can't expect me to find this normal."

"No, I suppose not." The old lady motioned at the modem and the pile of magazines. "Imagine," she said, "what it was for a woman of almost seventy to discover such a world. My friend called himself Mad Mike. I'll never hear Mike's voice or see his face, but he led me all over this fascinating world. There was an electronic bulletin board, and that's how I came into contact with other addicts, often boys who spent hours up in their rooms getting into other people's computers."

She sounded proud, as if talking about a highly exclusive club. Quart needed no explanations, but he must still have been looking puzzled, because Macarena smiled and told her mother to explain to him what an electronic bulletin board was.

The old lady put a hand on the keyboard. "People post messages and talk. There are chat rooms, too. After a while you reach a certain level in the hacker world. When you call the first time, they ask you for your name and telephone number. You don't give them your real name but an alias and a false number. A certain amount of paranoia is a good quality in a hacker."

"What's your alias?"

"Do you really want to know? It's against the rules, but I'll tell you, since you've got this far, thanks to Macarena." She held up her head with mock pride. "I'm Queen of the South."

Things were happening on the monitor, and the duchess broke off to press a few keys. A long text, in small type, appeared on screen. Cruz Bruner went on. "After that," she said, "I started to visit secret Websites on the Internet. I made friends there. It's great fun. You swap useful tips, tricks, games, viruses. Gradually I learned how to get into all the networks, travel abroad, hide my entry and exit points, get into protected systems. My happiest day was breaking into the Ayuntamiento and changing my tax bill."

"Which is a crime," her daughter said, scolding, and obviously not for the first time. "When I found out, I ran to city hall. Our bill was entered as having been paid until 2005!
I had to tell them it was an error."

"It may be a crime," conceded the old lady, "but it doesn't seem like a crime from here. Nothing does." She smiled at Quart mischievously. "That's the wonderful thing. Now," she went on, "I keep in frequent touch with Mike as well as twenty or so other hackers. Most of them are probably under twenty. I don't know their ages,' genders, or real names, but we have terribly exciting virtual meetings in places like the Gaieties Lafayette in Paris, the Imperial War Museum, or branches of the Confederation of Russian Banks . . . Which, by the way, is so vulnerable that even a child could get in and alter the accounts. The Confederation tends to be used as a training route for novice hackers."

She was Vespers, there was no doubt about it. Quart could see her crouched over her computer night after night, travelling through cyberspace, meeting other solitary travellers on her journey. Unexpected meetings, exchanges of information and dreams, the excitement of violating secrets and crossing the boundary into the forbidden - a secret fraternity for whom time, space, memory, solitude, success or failure had no meaning, who had created a virtual world in which everything was possible and nothing was subject to laws. A wonderful escape route of infinite possibilities. In her own way, Cruz Bruner too was rebelling against the Seville embodied by the handsome man in the hall portrait, beside the painting of the fair young girl by Zuloaga.

"How did you get into the Vatican?"

"By chance. A contact in Rome, Deus ex Machina - I suspect he's a seminarian or a young priest - had wandered about the edges of the system, for fun. We became friends, and he gave me a couple of good pathways. That was about six or seven months ago. The situation at Our Lady of the Tears was just then becoming serious. Neither the archbishop of Seville nor the nunciature in Madrid would take any notice of Father Ferro, and it occurred to me that this would be a good way of getting Rome's attention."

"Did you tell Father Ferro?"

"No. I didn't even let my daughter know. She found out later, when the existence of Vespers - as you called him - became known." The old lady pronounced the name with obvious satisfaction. Quart would have liked to see the faces of His Eminence Jerzy Iwaszkiewicz and Monsignor Spada hearing all this. "At first, I thought I'd leave a simple message in the central Vatican system, hoping it would reach the right quarters. It was only later, when I found my way around, that I thought of getting through to the Pope's computer. By chance I came across a well-protected file called INMAVAT and I realised there was something important there. I made a couple of attempts to get in, using some tricks taught me by my hacker friends, and one night I succeeded. For a week I visited INMAVAT until I understood what it was all about. I found what I wanted, gathered my ammunition, and began my attack. You know the rest." "Who sent me the postcard?"

"Oh that. I did, of course. Since you were here, I thought you ought to see the other side of the problem. I went up to the pigeon loft and found something suitable in Carlota's trunk. It was slightly bizarre, but it had the desired effect."

Despite himself, Quart burst out laughing. "How did you get into my hotel room?"

The old lady looked shocked. "Heavens, I didn't do it myself," she said. "Can you see me tiptoeing along hotel corridors? I used a more dignified method. My maid slipped a waitress some money." She half-turned to her daughter. "When you showed Macarena the postcard, she knew immediately it was I. But she was nice enough not to tell."

Quart found confirmation in Macarena's eyes. He glanced at the computer screen. "Tell me what you're up to now."

"Oh, this. You could call it a final settling of scores. Don't be alarmed. It has nothing to do with Rome this time. Something closer to home. More personal."

Quart took a look.
S&B Confidential,
he read.
Summary of CB internal investigation re PT deal and others.
The names of the Cartujano Bank and Pencho Gavira stood out in the text:

Some of the methods used to conceal the true situation were as follows: frenetic searching for new and expensive sources of funds; false accounting and infringement of banking regulations; and risktaking that — should the expected sale of Puerto Targa to Sun Qafer Alley (forecast to fetch some hundred and eighty million dollars) not take place - will deal a serious blow to the Cartujano Bank and cause a public scandal, considerably diminishing the Bank's high standing with its shareholders, most of whom are conservative by nature and have small shareholdings.

As for the irregularities for which the present vice-chairman is directly responsible, the investigation has uncovered a general lack of financial prudence. Considerable sums have been paid to professionals and private individuals without due documentary proof. These include cases of payments to public figures and institutions that can only be described as bribery. The investigation has also discovered ...

He looked at Macarena, then at the duchess. This was a shot straight at the ex-husband's fleet. He remembered the banker the night before on the quay, and the brief sympathy established between them as they joined forces to free the old priest. "What are you intending to do with this?" he asked.

Macarena shrugged. It was Cruz Bruner who answered. "I just want to even things out a little. People have done so much for the church. You yourself gained us another week by conducting Mass yesterday. I suppose that's why Macarena thought you deserved to come here tonight."

"He won't tell anyone," said Macarena.

"Good," the duchess said. She studied her daughter, frowning, then turned again to Quart. "Although I feel the same as Father Ferro. At my age, many things no longer matter, and you fear less." She stroked the keyboard absent-mindedly. "Now, for instance, I'm about to see that justice is done. Not a very Christian action, I know, Father Quart." She sounded harder now, more determined. "After this, I imagine I'll have to go to confession. I'm about to sin against charity."

"Mother."

"Leave me alone, dear, please." She pointed at the text on the screen. "This is a report on an internal audit of the Cartujano Bank. It exposes all Pencho's machinations involving Our Lady of the Tears. Making it public would be slightly damaging to the bank and extremely damaging to my son-in-law." She smiled. "I'm not sure Octavio will ever forgive me for it."

"Will you tell him?" asked Macarena.

"Of course."

"Where did you get this report?" asked Quart.

"From my son-in-law's computer. His password wasn't hard to crack." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, because I always liked Pencho. But it's the church or him."

A light flickered on one of the devices. Cruz Bruner glanced at it, then turned to the priest with all the haughtiness of generations of dukes of El Nuevo Extremo. "It's the modem," she said, her eyes sparkling. Her smile was cruel, contemptuous. "I'm faxing the report to all the newspapers in Seville."

Standing beside her mother, her face in darkness, Macarena had stepped back and was staring into space. The English clock struck downstairs, among the dark paintings mounting guard in the shadows of the Casa del Postigo. Quart felt sure that at that moment Carlota Bruner's ghost was smiling up in the tower, while a schooner glided upriver, its white sails filled by the breeze that rose every night from the sea.

Cruz Bruner died at the beginning of winter. By then Quart had spent five months as third secretary at the apostolic nunciature in Bogota. He read about it in the international edition of
ABC.
The death notice gave the long list of the deceased's tides and included the request of her daughter Macarena, heir to the dukedom, that prayers be said for her soul. A couple of weeks later he received an envelope with a Seville postmark, containing only a small printed card edged with black and showing more or less the same text as the death notice. It was accompanied not by any letter but only by the postcard of Our Lady of the Tears that Carlota Bruner sent to Captain Xaloc.

In time, Quart learned about the fates of several of the players in the story. A letter from Father Oscar, having followed a circuitous route from a little village in Almeria to Rome and then on to Bogota, said that Our Lady of the Tears was still open for worship and functioning as a parish. The assistant priest added that he had radically revised his opinion of Quart.

The only news of Pencho Gavira was a brief item in the financial section of the Latin American edition of
El Pais,
about Octavio Machuca's retirement from the Cartujano Bank in Seville and the appointment of a new chairman of the board. Quart did not recognise the appointee's name. The article also mentioned Gavira's resignation as vice-chairman and general manager of the bank.

Quart received sporadic information about Father Ferro. The verdict was involuntary manslaughter, and Father Ferro was moved from the prison hospital to a rest home for elderly priests in the diocese of Seville. He was still there, in poor health, at the end of that winter, but according to a brief, courteous note from the director of the home, in response to Quart's enquiry, it was unlikely that the old priest would survive until spring. He spent his days in his room and had nothing to do with anyone; at night, in good weather, he went out into the garden, accompanied by a nurse, and sat in silence on a bench watching the stars.

Of the remaining characters whose paths crossed Quart's during his stay in Seville, Quart heard nothing more. They gradually faded from memory, together with the ghosts of Carlota Bruner and Captain Xaloc, who often accompanied him on his long evening walks through the colonial district of old Bogota. All but one of them disappeared. He caught only a brief glimpse of her and was never absolutely sure it was she. This happened some time later. Quart had just been transferred to another even more obscure secretariat in Cartagena and was leafing through a local paper when he saw a report on the peasant revolt in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The report described life in a small, remote village under guerrilla control. At the local school a group of children were photographed with their teacher. The picture was blurred, and even with a magnifying glass Quart couldn't be sure, but the woman looked very familiar. She was wearing jeans, and her grey hair was gathered in a short plait; her hands were resting on her pupils' shoulders, and she stared defiantly at the camera with cold blue eyes. The eyes that were the last thing Honorato Bonafé saw before he was struck down by the wrath of God.