"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 amp;-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.