The Seville Communion (19 page)

The assistant priest glared at him contemptuously. "Ideas are what made me join the priesthood," he said, as if wondering what Quart's motivation had been. "And Our Lady of the Tears isn't a lost cause yet."

"But if anyone's going to win in this, it won't be you. You're being transferred to Almeria ..."

The young man sat up even straighter, defiandy. "Maybe that's the price I have to pay for my dignity and a clear conscience."

"Nice words," said Quart. "So you're prepared to throw a brilliant career out the window. Is it really worth it?"

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and

lose his own soul?" The assistant priest faced Quart firmly as if there could be no argument with this.

Quart managed not to laugh in Father Oscar's face. "I don't see what your soul has to do with this church," he said.

"You don't see a lot of things. That some churches are more needed than others, for instance. Maybe because of what they hold within them, or symbolise. Some churches are refuges."

Quart remembered Father Ferro's using exactly the same expression during their meeting in Corvo's office. "Refuges," he echoed.

"Yes."

"From what?"

Still facing Quart, Father Oscar stood up and walked with difficulty to the window. He drew back the curtains, letting in the air and the light. "From Our Holy Mother the Church," he said at last. "So Catholic, Apostolic and Roman that it's ended up betraying its original purpose. In the Reformation it lost half of Europe, and in the eighteenth century it excommunicated Reason. A hundred years later, it lost the workers, because they realised it was on the side of the masters and oppressors. And now, as this century draws to a close, it's losing the young and the women. Do you know how this will end? With mice running around empty pews."

Father Oscar fell silent for a few moments. Quart could hear him breathing.

"Above all," the assistant priest went on, "some churches allow us to defend ourselves from what you came to impose here: submission and silence." He contemplated the orange trees in the square. "At the seminary I realised that the entire system is based on appearances, and on a game of ambition without principles. In the priesthood you only get dose to people if they can advance your career. Very early on, you choose a teacher, a friend, a bishop who will further you," Father Oscar laughed quietly. He didn't look so young now. "I thought there were only four types of bow that a priest makes before the altar, until I met priests who were experts at hundreds of bows. I was such a priest myself. People look for a sign from us, and when we fail to give it, they fall into the hands of palmists, astrologers and other charlatans peddling the spirit. But when I met Don Priamo, I saw what faith is. Faith doesn't even need the existence of God. It's a blind leap into a pair of welcoming arms. It's solace in the face of senseless fear and suffering. The child's trust in the hand that leads out of darkness."

"And have you told many people this?"

"Of course. Whoever will listen."

"Well, I think you're going to get into trouble."

"As you know better than anyone, I already am. I could start over, somewhere else. I'm only twenty-six. But I'm not leaving the priesthood. I will stay and fight, wherever they send me . . ." He stared at Quart defiantly. "Do you know something? I think I quite enjoy being a nuisance to the Church."

Pencho Gavira sat back in his black leather armchair, staring at his computer screen. The e-mail message read:

They parted his garments, casting lots upon them, but they could not destroy the temple of God. The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner. It remembers those that were torn from our hand.

For his own amusement, the intruder had also slipped in a harmless virus: an irritating little white ball that bounced around the screen and multiplied. When two balls bumped into each other, they exploded in a mushroom cloud, and then the whole thing started over again. Gavira wasn't too worried; the virus could be deleted. The bank's computer department was already working on it, and checking to make sure there weren't other, more destructive viruses lurking. What worried him was how easily the hacker - a bank employee or just a prankster? - had slipped in the little bouncing balls, and the strange quotation from the Gospels that must have been an allusion to the operation involving Our Lady of the Tears.

Trying to think of something more cheerful, the vice-chairman of the Cartujano looked up from his computer at the painting hanging on the main wall of his office. It was by Klaus Paten and extremely valuable. It had been acquired a little over a month ago, together with the rest of the stocks and assets of the Poniente Bank. Old Machuca wasn't keen on modern art, so Gavira appropriated it when they divided up the spoils. In the past, generals wrapped themselves in flags captured from the enemy, and the Klaus Paten was exactly that: the standard of the defeated army, a
2.2m
x
1.8m
expanse of cobalt blue with one red stroke and one yellow stroke crossing it diagonally, entitled
Obsession No.
5.
For thirty years it had presided over board meetings at the bank recently absorbed by the Cartujano. A trophy for the victor.

The victor. Gavira almost said the word aloud. But he was frowning as he turned back to his computer screen, now covered with little balls bouncing in all directions. At that moment two of them collided and set off the mushroom cloud. Boom. A single ball started the sequence again. Exasperated, Gavira swivelled his chair one hundred and eighty degrees to face the enormous window looking out on the banks of the Guadalquivir. In his world he had to keep moving, like that bloody little ball. If he stood still he was vulnerable, like a wounded shark. Old Machuca, calm and cunning as ever, said to him once: It's like riding a bicycle: if you stop pedalling, you fall. It was Pencho Gavira's fate to keep pedalling, finding new paths, constandy attacking his enemies, real or imagined. Every setback spurred him on, every victory entailed a new struggle. That was how the vice-chairman of the Cartujano Bank spun his web of ambition. He would know his ultimate objective when he reached it. If he ever reached it, that is.

He exited his e-mail, typed his password, and entered a private file to which only he had access. There, safe from prying eyes, was a confidential report that could cause him serious trouble. Commissioned by board members opposed to Gavira's succeeding Octavio Machuca as chairman of the Cartujano, it was drawn up by a private financial information agency and was a lethal weapon. The conspirators were planning to produce it at a meeting the following week. They didn't know that Gavira, by paying a considerable sum, had managed to obtain a copy:

S&-B Confidential

Summary of CB internal investigation re FT deal and others In the middle of last year an abnormal increase was noted in the reserves of the Bank, and consequently in the interbank debt of previous months. Vice-chairman Fulgencio Gavira (who is, in addition, invested with all powers except those that may not be delegated) maintains that said increases occurred principally as a result of funding to Puerto Targa and its shareholders, but that these were specific, provisional transactions which would be normalised with the imminent sale of the Puerto Targa company to a foreign group (Sun Qafer Alley, with Saudi capital). The sale would produce a substantial capital gain for the shareholders and a large commission for the Cartujano. The sale has been authorised by the Junta de Andalucia and the Council of Ministers.

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.