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 turned 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."

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.