Quart accepted this in silence and turned once more to Father Ferro. "What can you tell me about Oscar Lobato?" he asked.
The old priest shrugged. "Nothing. Just that he's a fine young man and an honourable priest." His unshaven chin trembled slightly. "I'll be sorry to see him go."
"Does your assistant know computers?"
Father Ferro narrowed his eyes. His expression was wary now, like that of a peasant watching storm clouds approach.
"You should ask him." He jerked his chin at the door. "He's out there, waiting for me."
Quart smiled almost imperceptibly. He appeared confident, but there was something about all this that made him feel he was crossing a void. Something out of place, a wrong note. Nearly all that Father Ferro said was true, but there was a lie in it somewhere. Maybe only one, and maybe not a serious one, but a lie.
"What can you tell me about Gris Marsala?"
The old priest's lips tensed. "Sister Marsala has a dispensation from her order." He glanced at the archbishop as if for corroboration. "She's free to come and go as she pleases. Her work is entirely voluntary. Without her, the building would have fallen down by now."
"A piece of it did fall down," said Corvo, unable to-stop himself. He was obviously thinking of his secretary's death.
Quart went on questioning Father Ferro. "What kind of relationship does she have with you and your assistant?"
"Normal."
"I don't know what you consider normal." Quart's contempt was calculated to the millimetre. "You old village priests have always had a questionable notion of normality regarding your housekeepers and nieces . . ."
Out of the corner of his eye Quart saw Corvo nearly jump in his chair. Quart had been provocative but with a purpose.
Father Ferro's knuckles were white. "I hope you're not implying . . ." He broke off and glared at Quart. "Someone might kill you for that."
The threat did not seem incongruous, given Father Ferro's style of preaching, rough exterior and hard, dry body now shaking with fury. He seemed capable of violence himself, but his exact meaning was open to interpretation.
Quart looked back at him calmly. "Your church, for instance?" he asked.
"For the love of God!" the archbishop interrupted. "Have you both lost your minds?"
There was a long silence. The patch of sunlight on Monsignor Corvo's desk had shifted to the left, away from his hand. The copy of The Imitation of Christ now fell exactly within it and Father Ferro stared at the book. Quart observed the old man intently. He was reminded of that other priest he'd wanted never to resemble; the man he had almost managed to forget. Since Quart left the seminary, a letter or a postcard had come occasionally; but then, silence. And Quart remembered him only when the wind from the south revived smells and sounds buried in his memory. The sea pounding against the rocks and the humid, salty air, and the rain. The smell of the brazier and the mesa Camilla in winter, Rosa Rosae, Quousque tandem abutere Catilina, Nox atra cava circumvolat umbra. Water dripping on the misted window, bells at dawn, an unshaven, greasy face leaning over the altar and muttering prayers to a deaf God. Man and boy, officiant and server, turned towards a barren land edged by a cruel sea. And thus it was, after the Last Supper. For this is my blood. May you go in peace. And the muffled breathing, like a tired animal's, later in the damp vestry as the young Lorenzo helped him remove his vestments. The seminary, Lorenzo. You will go to a seminary. One day you'll be a priest, like me. You'll have a future, like me. With all his might and memory Quart hated the roughness, the poverty of spirit, the limited existence - Mass at dawn, naps in his smelly rocking chair, rosary at seven, hot chocolate with the pious old women, a cat in the doorway, a housekeeper or niece who one way or another eased the solitude and the passing years. And then the finale: senile dementia, a sordid, barren life ending in a nursing home, soup dribbling down his chin. For the greater glory of God.
"A church that kills to defend itself. . ." Quart made an effort to return to the present, to Seville; to what was rather than what might
have been. "I want to know what Father Ferro thinks this means." "I don't know what you're talking about."
"It was a sentence from the message somebody slipped into the Holy See. It refers to your church ... Do you think there could be an element of Providence in all this?"
"I don't have to answer that."
Quart turned to Corvo, but the archbishop refused to get involved.
"It's true," he said with a diplomatic smile, delighted by Quart's difficulties. "He wouldn't answer me either."
It was a waste of time. The IEA agent realised that he wasn't getting anywhere, but he had to follow the form. So, portentously, he asked Father Ferro if he was aware of what was at stake. The old man answered sarcastically. Impassive, Quart continued to work his way through the questionnaire: the necessity for a report, possible cause for serious disciplinary measures, etc. That Father Ferro was one year away from retirement was no guarantee that his superiors would be lenient. At the Holy See . . .
"I don't know anything about those deaths," the old priest interrupted. He obviously couldn't care less about the Holy See. "They were accidents."
Quart leaped in. "Convenient accidents, from your point of view?"
There was a slight tone of camaraderie, a hint of "Come on, man, open up, and let's sort this out". But the old priest didn't drop his guard. "You mentioned Providence earlier," he said. "Well, why don't you ask God the question and I'll pray that you receive an answer."
Quart took a couple of slow, deep breaths before trying again. What annoyed him most was the thought that His Grace must be enjoying this, wreathed in pipe smoke in his front-row seat.
"Can you state categorically, as a priest, that there was no human intervention in the two deaths at your church?"
"Go to hell."
"I beg your pardon?"
Corvo had again jumped in his chair. Father Ferro looked at him and said, "With all due respect to Your Grace, I refuse to answer any more questions."
Quart wondered if he was joking. In their twenty-minute meeting, Father Ferro had not answered a single question. Corvo just frowned and blew out more smoke; he was only the server here. Quart stood up, and the top of Father Ferro's head reached his chest. The wiry grey hair reminded Quart of another priest. Quart had been back once only since his ordination: a brief visit to his widowed mother, another to the dark shape crouching in the church like a mollusc in its shell. Quart performed Mass there, in the church where he'd been an altar boy for so long. And in the cold, damp nave, haunted by the ghost of the lonely little boy looking out to sea in the rain, he had felt like a stranger. He'd left and never returned, and the church, and the old priest, and the little white village, and the cruel sea had gradually faded from memory; a bad dream from which he'd managed to awaken.
The embodiment of everything he hated now stood before him. He could see it in the dull, stubborn eyes boring into him. "I have one more question. Only one," he said, putting away his cards and fountain pen. "Why do you refuse to leave Our Lady of the Tears?"
Father Ferro looked him up and down. Tough as old leather. That was the best description, though Quart could think of a couple more.
"It's none of your business," the priest said. "It concerns me and my bishop."
Quart expected the answer. He gestured to indicate that the absurd meeting was at an end. To his surprise, Corvo came to his aid. "Answer Father Quart please, Don Priamo." "Father Quart would never understand." "I'm sure he'll do his best. Please try."
The old priest shook his head stubbornly, muttering that Quart had never heard the confession of a poor woman on her knees seeking consolation, the cry of a newborn child, the breath of a dying man whose sweating hand he held. So even if Father Ferro talked for hours, nobody would understand a single damned word. And Quart, despite the diplomatic passport in his pocket, the official support of the Curia, the tiara and keys of St. Peter on his papers, realised that he didn't have the slightest a
uthority over the hostile, wretched-looking old man, the exact antithesis of what any churchman would link with the glory of God. With a sudden stab of anxiety he saw the outline of a ghost from the past: Nelson Corona. He remembered the same distancing from officialdom, the same determined expression.
The only difference was that Quart had glimpsed fear as well as determination in the Brazilian's eyes, while Father Ferro's dull gaze was as firm as a rock. Before resuming his obstinate silence, the old priest concluded by saying that his church was a refuge. It sounded quaint, and the Vatican envoy arched an eyebrow derisively. In search of equilibrium, he tried to reawaken his old contempt for the village priest. Once again he was a dignitary confronting an underling, and the ghost of Nelson Corona faded. "That's an odd way to describe it."
Quart smiled, sure of himself, once more strong, firm and remorseless. Once more he saw only the priest's threadbare, stained cassock and unshaven chin. It was strange how calming contempt was, he thought. Like an aspirin, a drink, or a cigarette. He decided to ask another question.
"A refuge. From what?"
He knew even before he'd finished the sentence that he was going to regret asking. Small and hard, Father Ferro looked up and fixed Quart with a stare.
"From all the bullshit," he said.
Horse-drawn carriages, painted black and yellow, were lined up waiting for customers in the shade of the orange trees. Leaning against the window of a souvenir shop, El Potro del Mantelete watched the entrance to the archbishop's palace. His hands were in the pockets of his tight, checked jacket which he wore over a close-fitting white polo-neck jumper that showed off his hard, lean pectorals. He moved a toothpick rhythmically from one side of his mouth to the other. He narrowed his eyes beneath his scarred eyebrows, his gaze fixed on the gap between the twin columns of the baroque portico. Don't let him out of your sight, Don Ibrahim ordered before he went into the shop to browse. They would look too conspicuous if all three of them hung around outside on the pavement. But they'd had to wait a long time -Don Ibrahim and La Nina Punales had looked through all the postcards, T-shirts, fans, castanets and plastic models of La Giralda and the Torre del Oro under the suspicious gaze of the shopkeeper. El Potro was trustworthy, so they had decided to repair to the nearest bar, on the corner opposite. La Nina was already on her fifth Manzanilla. El Potro, lacking new orders, wasn't taking his eyes off the entrance. The tall priest had been inside a whole hour, and in all that time El Potro had looked away only twice - when a couple of policemen walked past him on their way up the street and back down again. Both times he stared hard at the tips of his shoes. A certain character had been imparted by four gorings in the bullring, two stints in the Spanish Legion and a brain that ran on fixed rails, stunned by blows and the ringing of bells in round after round. Had Don Ibrahim and La Nina forgotten about him, he would have stood there motionless day and night, come rain or shine, his eyes fixed on the entrance to the archbishop's palace until they came to relieve him or he dropped dead. Twenty years earlier, during an awful quarrel in a third-rate bullring, his manager said something like, "If the bull doesn't kill you, you creep, the crowd'll kill you at the exit," and El Potro, sweat on his face and fear in his eyes, went back out into the ring with his red matador's cape at his waist and stood motionless until the bull, known as Butcher, charged and gave him his fourth and final goring, ending his bullfighting career. Later, during similar episodes in the boxing ring, the Legion and prison, his body and brain acquired more scars. El Potro was an idiot, but he had the makings of a hero.
Suddenly the tall priest emerged from the palace. He paused for a moment at the entrance and looked back, as if someone had called him from inside the building. A young man with fair hair and glasses followed him out, and they stood talking at the door. El Potro glanced at the bar where Don Ibrahim and La Nina were waiting, but they were engrossed in their Manzanillas. So he spat the toothpick from his mouth and went to let them know. He walked round the square past the archbishop's palace, and as he came nearer, he got a better look at the priest. But for the dog collar and crew cut the man could have been a movie star. The young priest was scruffy, pale, and spotty, like a teenager. And he looked more like a priest than the tall one.
"Leave him alone," El Potro heard the fair-haired priest say.
The tall one frowned. "Father Ferro's crazy," he said. "He's living in a fantasy world. If it was you who sent the message, you didn't do him, or his church, any favours."
"I didn't send anything."
"We have to have a talk about that, you and I. A quiet talk."
"I have nothing to tell you," said the fair-haired priest, his voice trembling but defiant.
"People keep saying that." The tall priest smiled unpleasantly. "You're wrong. There's a lot you can tell me. For instance . . ."
The conversation faded out of earshot as El Potro moved past. He quickened his pace and entered the bar. Prawn shells and sawdust littered the floor, and sausages and hams hung over the counter. At the bar Don Ibrahim and La Nina drank in silence. On the radio, Camaron was singing:
Wine kills the pain and the memories . . .
Don Ibrahim, separated from the bar by his paunch, was smoking a cigar and dropping ash on his white jacket. Beside him, La Nina had progressed from Manzanilla to Machaquito anis. She raised the lipstick-rimmed glass to her lips. She wore silver earrings and a blue dress with white polka dots. Her eyes were heavily made up and a kiss-curl stuck to her withered forehead: a down-at-heel flamenco singer like the pictures on the covers of the old singles that Don Ibrahim hoarded like gold dust in his room at the boarding house. He had records by Nat King Cole, Los Panchos, Beny Moré, Antonio Machin, and an antediluvian Telefunken gramophone. The former bogus lawyer and La Nina turned to look at El Potro, who jerked his head towards the street. "There," he said.
The three partners went to the door and looked. The tall priest was walking away from the other one, past the mosque. "Some priest," said La Nina huskily.
"Not bad-looking," admitted Don Ibrahim impartially, inspecting him with narrowed eyes.
The drop of Machaquito made the flamenco singer's eyes shine mischievously. uOthu. I wouldn't mind getting the last rites from him."
Don Ibrahim exchanged a grave look with El Potro. When they were on a job, as now, such frivolity was out of place. "What about the old one?" he asked, to concentrate their minds.
"He's still inside," said El Potro.
The former bogus lawyer drew thoughtfully on his cigar. "Let's split up the armed retinue," he said at last. "You, Potro, follow the old priest when he appears. Once he's home, come back here and report to me. La Nina and yours truly will watch the tall priest." He paused and solemnly consulted Don Ernesto Hemingway's watch. "Before taking action, we need information: the mother of victories, and so on. Don't you agree?"
His companions must have, because they nodded. His eyebrows meeting in the middle, El Potro was grave, as if teasing out the meaning of a word pronounced five minutes earlier. With a faraway look, La Nina watched the tall priest walk away. She still held her glass and looked as if she was going to finish off the Machaquito. On the radio, Camaron still sang of wine and longing, and behind the bar the waiter, in white shirt and black tie, clapped quietly in time to the music. Don Ibrahim surveyed his troops and decided to raise morale with a few suitably stirring words. Something about Seville being the greatest place on earth. And this job's in the bag.
"He who dares, wins," he said after a little thought, drawing on his cigar.
"Othu."
La Nina finished her anis. Still frowning, El Potro shook his head and asked, "What does 'retinue' mean?"
Lorenzo Quart's extreme conscientiousness was the source of his composure. So, when he returned to his room, the first thing he did was to open his leather briefcase and take out his laptop. He spent an hour working on his report for Monsignor Spada. As soon as it was finished, he sent it by modem to the director of the IEA. In its eight pages Quart was caref
ul not to draw any conclusions regarding the church, the people involved with it, or the identity of Vespers. He limited himself to a fairly faithful account of his conversations with Monsignor Corvo, Gris Marsala and Priamo Ferro.
Once he'd shut down the computer and gathered up the cables, he relaxed a little. He was in shirtsleeves, collar unbuttoned. He walked round the two canopied beds to the window that looked on to the
Plaza Virgen de los Reyes. It was too early to eat, so he flicked through some guidebooks he'd bought in a small bookshop opposite the town hall. He'd also bought a copy of Q&S on the recommendation of Monsignor Corvo. "So you can acquaint yourself with the situation," the prelate had suggested caustically. Quart looked at the cover and then the photographs inside. "A Marriage In Crisis" ran the headline. Alongside the pictures of the woman and her companion, there was one of a very serious, well-dressed man with perfectly parted hair. "Their separation is confirmed. While financier Pencho Gavira consolidates his position as the strong man of Andalusian banking, Macarena Bruner is out and about in Seville until the early hours." Quart tore out the pages and put them in his briefcase. He suddenly noticed that the copy of the Gideon bible was on his bedside table. He didn't remember leaving it there. He thought he'd put it in a drawer with all the other stuff he wanted out of the way: pamphlets, advertisements, notepaper and envelopes. He opened the bible at random and found an old postcard. The caption read: "Church of Our Lady of the Tears. Seville. 1895." A bleached halo surrounded the central image, but the church, although faded, was unmistakable: the portico with its Solomonic columns, the bell-tower and the figure of the Virgin in its niche, head intact. Everything looked in better condition than it did now. In the square in front there was a stall with a man in a wide belt and typical Andalusian hat selling vegetables to two women dressed in black with their backs to the photographer. On the other side, a donkey carrying two barrels of water was walking away down the narrow street that led off the square, the man on its back scarcely more than an outline, a ghost about to disappear from the picture into the surrounding white halo.