"Was that what you wanted?" Quart was in control of himself again. "To show me off like a trophy?"

She looked at him wearily, knowingly. "Perhaps," she said. "Women are so much more complicated. Men are so straightforward in their lies, so childish in their contradictions… So consistent in their vileness." The head waiter brought the coffee; with milk for her, black for him. Macarena added one lump of sugar and smiled thoughtfully. "You can be sure that Pencho will know all about this tomorrow morning. God, some things have to be paid for very slowly." She sipped her coffee and looked at Quart. "Maybe I shouldn't have said 'God'. It sounded like an oath. Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain after all."

Quart placed his spoon carefully on his saucer. "I sometimes do it too," he said.

"It's strange." She leaned forward on her elbows, and her silk shirt brushed the edge of the table. Quart could sense what was inside: heavy, brown, soft. He needed more than a cold shower. "I've known Don Priamo for ten years, since he first came to the parish, but I can't imagine a priest's life from the inside. I'd never thought about it until now, looking at you." She gazed again at his hands and then up at his dog collar. "How do priests manage with the three vows?"

If ever there had been an untimely question. He stared at his wine glass and summoned all his composure. "Each of us gets by as he can," he replied. "Some think of it as negotiated obedience, shared chastity, and liquid poverty." He raised his glass as if to make a toast, but put it down untouched and sipped his coffee instead. Macarena laughed. Her laugh was so open and contagious that Quart almost laughed too.

"And you?" she asked, still smiling. "Do you observe your vows?"

"I tend to." He put down his cup, wiped his mouth, folded his napkin carefully and placed it on the table. "I make sure I think through the implications, but I always follow the rules. Some things don't function without obedience, and the firm I work for is one of them."

"Do you mean Don Priamo?"

Quart arched his eyebrows with calculated indifference. He hadn't been alluding to anyone in particular, he said. But yes, now that she mentioned it, Father Ferro wasn't exactly an exemplary priest. He did his own thing, to put it charitably. Deadly sin number one.

"You don't know anything about his life, so you can't judge him."

"I'm not judging. I just want to understand."

"No you don't," she insisted. "For most of his life he was the parish priest in a tiny village up in the Pyrenees. It was cut off by snow for weeks at a time, and sometimes he had to trudge eight or ten kilometres to give a dying man extreme unction. His parishioners were all old and died off one by one. He buried them with his own hands, until there was nobody left. The experience gave him a certain view on life and death, and on the role you priests have in the world. To him, this church is terribly important. He believes it's needed, and that every church closed or lost is a piece of heaven that- disappears. Nobody takes any notice, but instead of giving in, he fights. He says he lost enough battles up there, in the mountains."

That was all very well, said Quart. Very moving. He'd even seen a couple of films like that. But Father Ferro was still subject to Church discipline. We priests, he said, can't go through life proclaiming independent republics where we please. Not with things as they are now.

She shook her head. "You don't know him well enough."

"He won't let me get to know him."

"We'll fix that tomorrow. I promise." She pointed. "You obviously meant what you said about liquid poverty. You've barely touched your wine. But you don't look so poor in other respects. You dress well. I know expensive clothes when I see them, even on a priest."

"It's because of my work. I have to deal with people. And have dinner with attractive duchesses in Seville." They looked into each other's eyes, and neither of them smiled this time. "This is my uniform."

There was a brief silence.

"Do you have a cassock?" she asked.

"Of course. But I don't often wear it."

The waiter brought the bill. Macarcna wouldn't let Quart pay. She invited him, she said firmly. So he just watched while she took out a gold American Express card. She always let her husband pay the bills, she said mischievously when the waiter had gone. It worked out cheaper than alimony.

"We haven't discussed the last of your three vows," she said then. "Do you also practise shared celibacy?"

"I'm afraid I'm celibate, period."

She nodded slowly and looked round the restaurant before turning to him again. She stared at him, assessing him. "Don't tell me you've never been with a woman."

There are some questions that can't be answered at eleven at night in a restaurant in Seville, by candlelight. But she didn't seem to expect an answer. She carefully took a pack of cigarettes from her bag, put one in her mouth, and then, with a brazenness both calculated and natural, she took a plastic lighter from beneath her bra strap. Quart watched her light the cigarette, forcing himself to think of nothing. Only later did he allow himself to wonder what the hell he was getting himself into.

In a closed world governed by the concept of sin, where contact with women was forbidden, the only even unofficially accepted solution to sex was masturbation or a clandestine liaison later atoned for through the sacrament of penance. For Quart, life as a diplomat and his work for the Institute of External Affairs facilitated what Spada – always good at euphemism – referred to as tactical alibis. But in fact, as a result of his education in Rome and his work over the past ten years, Quart's attitude to sex had become different from that of other priests, who were dominated by the sordid gossip of the seminary and the ways of the Church. The general good of the Church, considered as an end in itself, sometimes justified certain sins; so the success of a handsome nunciature secretary with the wives of ministers, financiers and ambassadors, women who yielded readily to the temptation to adopt an interesting young priest, opened many doors that were barred to older, more leathery monsignors or eminences. Spada called it the Stendhal Syndrome, after two of that writer's characters, Fabrice del Dongo and Julien Sorel. When Quart joined the IEA, Spada recommended that he read the novels. For the Mastiff, culture wasn't at odds with duty. It was left to the moral discretion and intelligence of each priest, God's soldier on a battlefield where the only weapons were prayer and common sense. Risks accompanied the advantages gained from confidences given at receptions, or during private conversations or confession. Women came to priests, seeking a substitute for unavailable men or indifferent husbands. And nothing was more troubling to Old Adam, who lurked beneath most cassocks, than the innocence of a young girl or the pleas of a frustrated woman. Ultimately, the unofficial permission of superiors was more or less assured – the Church of Peter in its wisdom had thus survived for centuries – as long as there was no scandal and results were achieved.

Quart's faith, on the other hand, was that of a professional soldier, and his celibacy was a question of pride – and therefore a sin rather than a virtue. But sin or not, it was a rule that governed his life. Like some of the ghosts he saw when he stared into the darkness, the Knight Templar whose sword was his only weapon beneath a godless sky needed such rules if he was to face with dignity the thunder of Saracen cavalry roaring down from the hill of Hattin.

He returned to the present with difficulty. Macarena was smoking, one elbow on the table, supporting her chin with the hand that held her cigarette. Somehow he could feel the troubling proximity of her legs. She was very close. He could have reached out and brushed her skin with his fingers. But with the same hand that tingled with the desire to touch her he took the postcard to Captain Xaloc from his jacket pocket instead and placed it on the table.