There was a notebook open on the desk, with pencil diagrams of a constellation. Quart thought of the old priest peering through his telescope at night, absorbed in the silence of the firmament revolving slowly beyond the lens, while Macarena Bruner sat reading Anna Karenina or the Sonatas in one of the old armchairs, moths fluttering around the lamp. He suddenly wanted to laugh at himself. It made him feel terribly jealous.

He saw that Father Ferro was watching him, as if the look on Quart's face had set him thinking.

"Orion," Father Ferro said, and Quart, disconcerted, took a moment to realise that the priest meant the diagram in the notebook. "At this time of year you can see only the topmost star of the Hunter's left shoulder. It's called Betelgeuse and appears over there." He pointed at a section of the sky, still light, on the horizon. "West by northwest." He still had the cigarette in his mouth, and ash dropped on to his cassock.

Quart turned the pages of the book, which were full of notes, diagrams, and figures. He could identify only the constellation of Leo, his own sign. According to legend, the javelins of Hercules had bounced off Leo's body of metal.

"Do you believe," Quart asked, "that everything is written in the stars?"

Father Ferro grimaced. "Three or four centuries ago," he said, "that kind of question would have cost a priest his life." "I've told you, I've come in peace."

Father Ferro's laughter was sarcastic. A harsh, grating sound. "You're referring to astrology," he said at last. "I'm interested in astronomy. I hope you'll underline the subtle difference in your report to Rome." He fell silent, but went on looking at Quart curiously, as if reappraising him. UI have no idea where things are written," he added after a while. "Although I can tell at a glance that you and I aren't even using the same alphabet." "Please explain."

"There's not much to explain. You work for a multinational organisation that is based on all the demagogy Christian humanism and the Enlightenment filled our heads with: that man evolves to higher states through suffering, that humanity is destined to reform itself, that goodwill begets more goodwill…" He turned to the window, again dropping ash down his cassock. "Or that Truth with a capital T exists, and is enough in itself."

Quart was shaking his head.

"You don't know me," he said. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know who you work for. That's enough." He turned back to the telescope, checking again for dust. He put his hands in his pocket. "What do you or your bosses in Rome know, with your bureaucrats' mentality? All you know of love or hate are their theological definitions, or whispers in the confessional… I can tell at glance, just by the way you talk and move, that you're a man whose sins are those of omission. You're one of the TV preachers, pastors of a soulless church, who speak of the faithful the way companies speak of their customers."

"You're wrong about me, Father. My work…"

The old priest again made the grating sound that was his laughter. "Your work!" He turned abruptly to Quart. "Now you're going to tell me that you get your hands dirty, aren't you? Even though you're always so well groomed. I'm sure you have plenty of justifications and alibis. You're young, strong, your superiors give you room and board, they think for you and throw you bones to gnaw. You're the perfect policeman working for a powerful corporation that serves God. You've probably never loved a woman, or hated a man, or felt sympathy for a miserable wretch. No poor have blessed you for their bread, no sick for their solace, no sinners for their hope of salvation… You follow orders, nothing more."

"I follow the rules," said Quart, and instantly regretted it.

"Do you?" The old priest looked at him with intense irony. "Well, my congratulations. You'll save your soul. Those who follow the rules always go to heaven." His mouth twisted as he took a last drag on his cigarette. "To rejoice in God's presence." He threw the cigarette end out of the window and watched it fall.

"I wonder," said Quart, "if you still have faith."

These were strange words, coming from Quart, and Quart knew it. Quite apart from the fact that such questions – more appropriate to the hounds of the Holy Office – were not within the jurisdiction of his mission. As Spada would have said, at the IEA we deal not with people's hearts but with their actions. Let's stick to being good centurions and leave the dangerous task of probing the human soul to His Eminence Jerzy Iwaszkiewicz.

. And yet Quart waited for an answer in the long silence that followed his remark. As the old priest moved slowly round the telescope, his reflection slid along the polished brass tube.

"Still is an adverb of time," Father Ferro said at last, frowning, possibly reflecting on time, or adverbs. "But I forgive sins," he added. "I help people die in peace."

"It's not your office to forgive," Quart said. "Only God can do that."

The priest looked at him, as if he'd forgotten that Quart was there. "When I was young," he said suddenly, "I read all the philosophers of Antiquity, from Socrates to Saint Augustine. And I forgot them. The only thing that remained of them was bittersweet melancholy and disillusionment. Now I'm sixty-four, and all I know about people is that they remember, they're afraid, and they die."

Quart must have looked surprised and embarrassed, because Father Ferro nodded, his hard dark eyes fixing him for a moment. He looked up at the sky. The solitary cloud – maybe no longer the same one -had gone to meet the setting sun, and a reddish glow now spread over the distant buildings.

"I searched for Him up in the mountains for a long time," Father Ferro went on. "I wanted to have it out with Him, a kind of settling of scores, one to one. I'd seen so many people suffer and die… Forgotten by my bishop and his aides, I lived in atrocious solitude. I emerged only to say Mass every Sunday in a small, almost empty church, or to trudge through rain or snow to give extreme unction to a soul who waited for my arrival to die. For twenty-five years, sitting at the bedside of those who gripped my hands because I was their only comfort in the face of death, I prayed to Him. But I never received an answer."

He broke off. It was Quart who spoke now: "Either we live and die according to a plan, or merely by accident." It was neither a question nor an answer. He was just prompting Father Ferro to continue. For the first time, Quart had some understanding of the man before him; and he knew that Father Ferro could sense this.

The old priest's face softened. "How to preserve, then," he said, "the message of life in a world that bears the seal of death? Man dies, he knows he will die, and he also knows that, unlike kings, popes and generals, he'll leave no trace. He tells himself there must be something more. Otherwise, the universe is simply a joke in very poor taste; senseless chaos. So faith becomes a kind of hope, a solace. Maybe that's why not even the Holy Father believes in God anymore."

Quart burst out laughing, startling the pigeons. "That's why you're defending your church tooth and nail," he said.

"Of course." Father Ferro frowned. "What does it matter whether I have faith or not? Those who come to me have faith. That's justification enough for the existence of Our Lady of the Tears. And it's no coincidence that it's a church of the baroque, which was the art of the Counter-Reformation, which declared, 'Don't think. Leave that to the theologians. Admire the carvings, the gilding, the sumptuous altars, the passion plays that have been the essential means of entrancing the masses since the time of Aristotle… Be dazzled by the glory of God. Too much analysis robs you of hope. See us as the solid rock on which to take refuge from the roaring torrent. The truth kills you before your time.'"