The Seville Communion Read Online Free PDF Page A

clearly. "What about the Spanish police?" he asked.
    "They say both were accidents. That's what makes the line about 'a church that kills to defend itself so disturbing." Spada frowned. "And now, thanks to some cheeky computer hacker, the Holy Father is worried about it too. So it's the job of the IEA to ease his anxiety."
    "Why us?"
    The archbishop laughed under his breath. His profile reminded Quart of an old engraving of the centurion who crucified Christ. His big, strong hands now rested in front of him on the table. Beneath the rough exterior of a Lombard peasant, the Mastiff held the key to all the secrets of a state that had three thousand employees in the Vatican itself, three thousand archbishops around the world, and responsibility for the spiritual guidance of a billion souls. It was rumoured that during the last conclave he'd dug up the medical records of all the candidates to the papacy and examined their cholesterol levels in order to get an idea how long the new pontiff would last. The director of the IEA had forecast Wojtyla's investiture and the swing to the right even while the smoke issuing from the Sistine Chapel was still black.
    "Why us?" he said at last. "Because in theory we have the Pope's confidence. Any pope's. But there's more than one faction vying for power in the Vatican, and lately the Holy Office has been gaining in influence at our expense. We used to work together as brothers in
    Christ." He waved his hand dismissively. "You know about that better than anyone."
    Quart did indeed. Until the scandal that caused the entire financial apparatus of the Vatican to be dismantled and until the swing of the Polish team towards orthodoxy, relations between the IEA and the Holy Office had been cordial. But the hounding and defeat of the liberal element had unleashed a pitiless settling of old scores within the Curia.
    "These are difficult times," the archbishop said with a sigh, absorbed in staring at the picture on the wall. Then he sipped his drink and sat back in his chair, clicking his tongue. "Only the Pope is allowed to die there," he added, pointing to Michelangelo's dome in the background. "Forty hectares containing the most powerful state on earth, but with the structure of an absolutist medieval monarchy. A throne now bolstered only by a religion that has become little more than a show - televised papal visits and that totus tuus business. But underneath it all there is the reactionary fanaticism of Iwaszkiewicz and company."
    He looked away from the picture almost contemptuously. "Now it's a fight to the death," he went on sombrely. "The Church can function only if its authority goes unchallenged and its structure remains compact. The trick is keeping it that way. In that task, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is such a valuable weapon that it's been growing in influence since the eighties, when Wojtyla took to going up Mount Sinai and chatting to God every day." His mastiff eyes looked around vaguely, in a pause charged with irony. "The Holy Father is infallible even in his errors, and reviving the Inquisition is a good way of keeping the dissidents quiet. Who remembers Kung, Castillo, Schillebeeck, or Boff now? Throughout history the Church of Peter has resolved its struggles by silencing the disobedient or eliminating them. And we still use the same weapons: defamation, excommunication and the stake . . . What are you thinking, Father Quart? You're very quiet."
    "I always am, Monsignor."
    "True. Always loyal and careful, isn't that so? Or should I say professional?" The prelate's tone was light-hearted, if grudging. "Always that damned discipline that you wear like chain mail . . . You would have got on well with Bernard de Clairvaux and his gang of Knights Templar. If you'd been captured by Saladin, I'm sure you'd rather have had your throat cut than renounce your faith. But not from devotion, from pride."
    Quart laughed. "I was thinking of His Eminence Cardinal