Puerto Targa is a company with an original share capital of five million pesetas. Its aim is the creation, in a protected zone near the Coto de Donana National Park, of a golf course and a development of luxury villas with a marina. The administrative restrictions on construction in a protected zone have recently and unexpectedly been lifted by the Junta de Andalucia. The Junta previously vehemently opposed the project. Seventy-eight per cent of the shares in the company were purchased by the Bank at the request of the vice-chairman (Gavira), following an increase that raised the capital to nine billion pesetas. The other twenty-two per cent has remained in private hands, and we have good reason to believe that the company H. P. Sunrise, based in St. Barthelemy in the West Indies, which retained a substantial block of shares, may have links with Fulgencio Gavira.
Time has passed, and the sale of Puerto Targa still has not been concluded. Meanwhile the risk mounts. For his part, the vice-chairman has continued to maintain that the increase noted was caused partly by the liquidation of assets, paper discount, and pure funding, but that the sale of shares will take place imminently, thus ensuring the expected significant reduction in exposure. Our investigation has, however, revealed that the increase in exposure is due to items that were deliberately concealed at the time and that came to light only upon probing. These amounted to twenty billion pesetas, of which only seven corresponded to the Puerto Targa operation. The vice-chairman continues to maintain that the purchase of the Puerto Targa shares by Sun Qafer Alley will rectify the situation.
The investigation has revealed that Puerto Targa is a company that, following a complex operation revolving around Gibraltar-based companies, has been financed, from its foundation to the present day, almost entirely by the Cartujano Bank. This situation has been kept hidden from the majority of Board members. It could be said that the company was set up, firstly, to record a fictitious profit on the previous balance sheet of the Cartujano Bank, in that the seven billion pesetas spent on the purchase of the company were entered as profits, when the Bank actually paid itself that sum when it sold itself Puerto Targa through the Gibraltar companies acting as fronts for the operation. The second purpose of the company was, with the capital gains produced by its subsequent sale to Sun Qafer Alley, to restore the Bank's balance sheet. In other words, to restore the shortfall of over ten billion pesetas produced at the Cartujano Bank by the present vice-chairman's dealings and the burden resulting from previous transactions.
The sale, which, according to the present vice-chairman, will triple the value of the company, has not yet taken place. A new date for the sale has been set for the middle or end of this month of May. It is possible that, as the vice-chairman maintains, the Puerto Targa operation may return the bank's internal situation to normal. But, for the time being, it is definite that the systematic concealment of the true situation is proof of a cover-up in the income statement of the Cartujano Bank. This means that for the past year, the Board has been kept in the dark concerning the risks of the situation and the lack of positive results, as well as with respect to management errors and irregularities, although in truth the vice-chairman cannot be held entirely responsible.
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 risk-taking 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 that the vice-chairman has intervened in transactions with clients and, although this is not proven, has received certain sums as commission.
For the reasons set out above, and quite apart from the management irregularities uncovered, it is evident that the failure of the Puerto Targa operation would place the Cartujano Bank in serious difficulties. Another cause for concern is the possible negative effect that knowledge of the operations carried out by the vice-chairman involving the church of Our Lady of the Tears and the entire Puerto Targa project might have on public opinion and on the traditionally middle-class, conservative and Catholic customer-base of the bank.
In general terms, it was all true. In the past two fiscal years, Gavira had needed to perform great feats of juggling in order to present his management of the bank in a favourable light. He had taken over a bank damaged by uninspired, conservative policies. Puerto Targa and other, similar operations were simply ways of playing for time while he strengthened his position at the helm of the Cartujano. It was like building the staircase on which one climbed; but until the final coup, which would ensure his position, this was the only possible tactic. He needed a breathing space and credit, and the deal involving Our Lady of the Tears - bait for the Saudis buying Puerto Targa - was crucial: it would turn north Santa Cruz into a prime location for upmarket tourism. The project was a small, exclusive luxury hotel only five hundred metres from Seville's ancient mosque, a personal whim of Kemal Ibn Saud, brother of the King of Saudi Arabia and principal shareholder of Sun Qafer Alley. The file with all the plans was protected by a password on his computer, along with the report on his management of the bank and a few other sensitive documents. Copies on diskette and CD were stored in the safe just below the Klaus Paten. He couldn't let four board members ruin things. There was too much at stake.
He glanced at the screen again, frowning. The intruder and his little bouncing ball worried him. It was unlikely, but possible, that the hacker had cracked the password and got into the file. The thought made Gavira feel hot; it wasn't pleasant imagining a hacker wandering about so close to that kind of information. As old Machuca would say, better safe than sorry. Gavira deleted the file.
Afterwards he stared at the grey-green Guadalquivir and the Calle Beds running along the opposite bank. Sunlight glinted on the river, and the glare framed the compact outline of the Torre del Oro. It could all be his one day. He lit a cigarette and opened his desk drawer. For the hundredth time he pulled out the magazine with the photographs of his wife outside the Alfonso XIII Hotel with a bullfighter. Again he felt a morbid fascination as he turned the pages and looked at the photographs that were already burned in his memory. He glanced from the magazine to the silver-framed photograph on his desk of Macarena in a white off-the-shoulder blouse. He had taken the photograph at a time when he thought she was his - his all the time, not just during sex! Then things went wrong, this business with the church, Macarena wanting a child, Macarena becoming bored in bed.
He shifted uneasily in his leather armchair. Six months. He remembered his wife sitting naked on the edge of the bath. He was taking a shower, unaware that they would never make love again. She looked at him as she had never done before, as if he were a stranger. She left suddenly, and when Gavira came into the bedroom in his dressing gown, she was dressed and packing her suitcase. Not one word of reproach. She just looked at him darkly and went to the door before he had time to say or do anything. Six months ago today. And she had refused to see him since.
He put the crumpled magazine away and stubbed out his cigarette viciously. If only he could stub out the old priest, and that nun who looked like a lesbian, and all those priests in their confessionals, and the catacombs, and the dark, useless past, everything that was complicating his life. If only he could stub out miserable, moth-eaten Seville; this city that was only too pleased to remind him that he was nothing but a parvenu the minute the duchess of El Nuevo Extremo's daughter tu
rned her back on him. Gritting his teeth, he knocked the photograph of his wife face down with the back of his hand. By God, or the devil, or whoever was responsible, he was going to make them all pay dearly for the humiliation. First they'd taken his wife, now they were trying to take the church, and his future.
"I'll wipe you out." He spat the words. "All of you."
He switched off the computer and watched the rectangle of light on the monitor shrink and disappear. A few priests out of circulation, taught a lesson - a broken hip or something - wouldn't cause Pencho Gavira any remorse. He picked up the telephone, determined.
"Peregil," he said into the receiver, "are your people reliable?"
Solid as rocks, the henchman answered. Gavira glanced at the picture frame lying on his desk. His face had the fierceness now that had earned him the nickname Shark in Andalusian banking circles. It was time to take action. Those damned priests were going to learn a lesson.
"Set fire to the church," he ordered. "Do whatever you think necessary to settle this once and for all."
VI
Lorenzo Quart's Tie
All the women in the world are in you. Joseph Conrad, The Golden Arrow
Lorenzo Quart had only one tie. It was navy blue silk, and he'd bought it at a shirt maker's on the Via Condotti a hundred and fifty paces from where he lived. He always bought the same kind: a very traditional cut, slightly narrower than was fashionable. When it became worn or dirty, he bought another, identical, to replace it. He rarely wore the tie - no more than a couple of times a year. Mostly he wore black shirts with a Roman collar that he ironed himself with the precision of a veteran soldier preparing for inspection by superiors obsessed with regulations. Quart's life revolved around regulations; he had adhered to them rigorously ever since he could remember - long before he was ordained a priest, face down on cold flagstones with his arms out. At the seminary, from the very start, he accepted Church discipline as an efficient way of organising his life. In return he was given security, a future, and a cause to devote his talents to. Unlike his fellow students, he had never sold his soul to a patron or powerful friend, neither then or since. He believed - and this was perhaps his only point of naivety - that following the rules would gain him the respect of others. Many of his superiors were indeed impressed by the young priest's intelligence and discipline and helped him in his career. He spent six years at the seminary, two at the university studying philosophy, theology, and the history of the Church, and was then awarded a scholarship to Rome for a Ph.D. in canon law. There, the professors at the Gregorian University put his name forward to the Pontifical Academy for Ecclesiastics and Noblemen, where Quart studied diplomacy and relations between Church and State. After that, the Vatican Secretariat assigned him to a couple of European nunciatures, until Monsignor Spada formally recruited him into the Institute for External Affairs. Quart was just twenty-nine. It was then that he went to Enzo Rinaldi and paid 115,000 lire for his first tie.
That was ten years ago, and he still had trouble tying the knot. He knew how to do it in theory, but, standing in front of the bathroom mirror and looking at the white shirt collar and the blue silk tie in his hands, he felt vulnerable. He felt particularly vulnerable to be without his Roman collar and black shirt for a dinner with Macarena Bruner. Like a Knight Templar setting aside his armour to go and parley with the Mamelukes beneath the walls of Tyre. The thought made him smile uneasily as he glanced at his watch. There was just enough time to dress and walk to the restaurant. He'd found it on the map, in the Plaza de Santa Cruz, a stone's throw from the ancient Arab wall. The connotations of which the modern Knight Templar found rather disturbing.
Lorenzo Quart was as punctual as the robot-like Swiss Guard at the Vatican. He always worked out his schedule by dividing the hours precisely and making efficient use of every second. He had enough time to deal with the tie, so he made himself do the knot calmly, adjusting it carefully. He liked to move slowly, because his self-control was a source of pride. In his dealings with the world he was constantly striving to avoid a hurried gesture, an inappropriate word, an impatient move that might break the serenity of the regulations. Even when he broke rules that were not his own - something that Spada, with his gift for euphemism, called "walking along the outer edge of the law" - the appearance of morality was safe with him. In his case the old curial saying, Tutti i preti sono falsi, wasn't accurate. He was quite indifferent as to whether or not all priests were frauds; he would be an honourable Knight Templar.
Maybe that was why, after regarding himself for a moment in the mirror, he removed the tie and white shirt and put on a black shirt with a round collar. As he buttoned the shirt, his fingers brushed the scar beneath his left clavicle, a memento of the American soldier who struck him with the butt of his rifle during the invasion of Panama. It was the only scar Quart had acquired in the line of duty; the red badge of courage, Spada called it wryly. His Grace and the pusillanimous head-hunters in the Curia were impressed. Quart himself would have preferred for the lunatic with the Kevlar helmet, M-16, and badge that said J. KOWALSKY on his bulletproof vest - "Another Pole," Spada said later caustically - to have taken Quart's Vatican diplomatic passport more seriously when it was brandished under his nose at the nunciature, the day that Quart negotiated General Noriega's surrender.
Apart from the broken-shoulder incident, the operation in Panama had proceeded flawlessly, and the IEA considered it a classic of diplomacy in a crisis. Following a hazardous flight from Costa Rica, Quart landed in Panama a few hours after the American invasion and Noriega's admission to the Vatican diplomatic legation. Officially, his task was to assist the nuncio, but really he would be monitoring the negotiations and keeping the IEA directly informed. He had come to relieve Monsignor Hector Bonino, an Argentine-Italian who had no diplomatic experience. The secretary of state didn't trust Bonino to handle a matter like this. It was indeed an unusual situation. The Americans, behind wire fences and tank traps, had installed powerful loudspeakers blasting out rock music twenty-four hours a day to psychologically weaken the nuncio and his refugees. Inside the building, spread throughout the offices and corridors, an assortment of people sat waiting: a Nicaraguan, head of Noriega's counterintelligence; five Basque separatists; a Cuban economic adviser who kept threatening to commit suicide if he wasn't returned safe and sound to Havana; an agent for CESID, the Spanish central' intelligence agency, who went in and out of the building as he pleased to play chess with the nuncio and keep Madrid informed; three Colombian drug traffickers; and General Noriega, Pineapple Face himself, on whose head the Americans had put a price. In return for asylum, Monsignor Bonino required that his guests attend Mass daily; and it was moving to see them wishing each other peace - Noriega all prayers and chest beating - under the watchful eye of the nuncio, with Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA blaring outside. On the crucial night of the siege, when Delta commandos with their noses painted black tried to storm the nunciature, Quart maintained telephone contact with the archbishops of New York and Chicago until President Bush agreed to call off the raid. At last Pineapple Face gave himself up without laying down too many conditions, the Nicaraguan and the Basque separatists were discreetly transported out of Panama, and the drug traffickers ran - to reappear later in Medellin. Only the Cuban, who came out last, had problems. The Marines found him in the trunk of an old Chevrolet Impala that Quart had rented. The CESID agent had agreed to drive the man out of the nunciature, just for the hell of it, risking his career. The agreement negotiated for the Cuban's release was kept secret, so Marine Kowalsky knew nothing about it, nor was he particularly concerned about the subtleties of diplomacy. So Quart, despite his collar and Vatican passport, ended up with a broken shoulder when he attempted to mediate. As for the Cuban, a nervous type by the name of Gir6n, he spent a month in a Miami jail. And not only did he break his promise to commit suicide, but on his release he obtained political asylum in the United States after giving an interview to Reader's Digest entitled "I Too Was
Fooled by Castro".
As Quart came out of the lift the man waiting in the lobby stood up. Quart had never seen him before. He was about forty and rather thick around the waist. His lank, thinning hair was lacquered down, and he had a double chin that seemed an extension of his cheeks.
"The name's Bonafé," the man said. "Honorato Bonafé."
Quart thought he'd never met anyone with a more inappropriate name. This person looked anything but honourable. His cunning little eyes seemed to be calculating how much he'd get for Quart's suit and shoes if he stole them.
"Could we talk for a moment?" Bonafé's smile made him more repellent still. It was a grimace, both obsequious and malicious, like a priest of the old school trying to curry favour with a bishop. In fact, Quart thought a cassock would have suited the man much better than the crumpled beige suit and the leather bag in his hand. His hands were small and podgy, promising a limp handshake.
Quart stopped. He was prepared to listen but didn't drop his guard. He glanced over the man's head at the clock on the wall. Fifteen minutes till his appointment with Macarena Bruner. Bonafé followed Quart's gaze, said again that he would take only a moment of his time, and raised his hand as if to place it on the priest's arm. Quart stared hard at the hand, stopping Bonafé dead. The hand remained in midair while Bonafé told him what he wanted in a conspiratorial tone. Quart didn't want to listen, but the name Q&S magazine set alarm bells ringing. "To sum up, Father, I'm at your disposal."