Arturo Perez-Reverte: The Seville Communion

SUMMARY:

A"diabolically good" hacker puts a message on the pope's computer, pleading for him to save a seventeenth-century Spanish church-a church that is killing to defend itself.Although Our Lady of the Tears is but a crumbling baroque building in the heart of Seville, it is also the center of a multilayered mystery-one that will force ecclesiastical sleuth Father Lorenzo Quart to question his loyalty, his vow of chastity, and his faith itself.

The hacker broke into the central Vatican system eleven minutes before midnight. Thirty-five seconds later, one of the computers triggered the alarm. Rapid changes on the screen tracked the progress of the automatic security protocols. The letters HK appeared in a corner, and the duty officer, a Jesuit inputting data from the latest census of the Papal State, picked up the telephone to inform his superior. "We've got a hacker," he said:

Father Ignacio Arregui, also a Jesuit, came out into the hallway buttoning his cassock and walked the fifty metres to the computer room. He was thin and bony, with shoes that squeaked as he passed the frescoes in the dimly lit corridor. He glanced out of the windows at the deserted Via della Tipografia and the dark facade of the belvedere Palace, muttering to himself. Being woken bothered him more than hackers in the system. They got in quite often but their forays were usually harmless. Generally they kept to the outer security perimeters, leaving only slight traces of their presence – a message or small virus. Hackers liked attention. They were mostly teenage boys surfing the Net for ever harder systems to crack. Microchip junkies, tech addicts, getting their kicks trying to break into Cliasc Manhattan Bank, the Pentagon, or the Vatican.

The priest on duty was Father Cooey, a plump young Irish Jesuit with glasses. Bent over his keyboard, he frowned as he followed the hacker. He looked up, relieved, when Father Arregui came in.

"You don't know how glad I am to see you, Father."

His superior stood beside him, hands on the table, watching the blue and red icons blinking on the screen. The automatic search system was keeping in constant contact with the intruder.

"Is it serious?"

"It might be."

In the past two years there had been only one serious case, when a hacker had managed to slip in a worm program that multiplied inside the system until it crashed. Decontaminating and repairing the network had cost half a million dollars. The hacker was tracked down after a long and complicated search. He turned out to be a sixteen-year-old boy from a small village in Holland. Other serious attempts to corrupt the system with killer viruses – by a Mormon from Salt Lake City, a fundamentalist Islamic organisation based in Istanbul, and a mad priest who opposed celibacy – had all been stopped before they could do too much damage. The priest, a Frenchman, working from the computer of his lunatic asylum by night, had pestered them for six weeks and managed to infect forty-two files with a virus that filled the screens with Latin insults.

Father Arregui pointed at the cursor, now flashing red:

"Is this our hacker?"

"Yes."

"What have you called him?"

They always gave them a name – it made identifying and following them easier. Some were'like old friends. Father Cooey pointed to a line on the screen:

"'Vespers' " he said, "because of the time he appeared. It was the first name that came into my head."

On the screen, files appeared and disappeared. Father Cooey watched them intently. He moved the cursor to one of them and clicked twice. Now that his superior was there to take responsibility, he was more relaxed, expectant even. Any hacker was a challenge to his expertise.

"He's been inside for ten minutes," he said, and Father Arregui thought he heard a tone of admiration. "At first he just looked at the different entry points. Then he suddenly slipped in. He already knew the way. He must have visited us before." "What do you think he's up to?"

Cooey shrugged. "I don't know. But he's pretty good, and he's quick. He's using a three-pronged approach to get past our defences. He starts by trying simple permutations of names of known users, then tries names from our own Dictionary and finally a list of four hundred and thirty-two passwords." As he said this, the Jesuit twisted his mouth slightly, as if suppressing a smile. "Now he's probing the entrances to INMA VAT."

Father Arregui drummed his fingers anxiously on one of the computer manuals littering the table. INMA VA T was a confidential list of the high-ranking members of the Roman Curia. Access was possible only with a secret personal code.

"Signal tracker?" he suggested.

Cooey jerked his chin towards the monitor at the neighbouring table, as if to say, "I've already thought of that". Connected to the police and to the Vatican's telephone network, the system recorded all information on an intruder's signal. It even contained a trap, a series of paths that slowed intruders long enough for them to be located and identified.

"This won't get us very far," said Cooey after a few moments. "Vespers has hidden his entry point by jumping between different telephone networks. Every time he makes a loop through one of them, we have to trace him right back to the exchange. He'd have to be here a long time before we could do anything about him. And he'd still be able to do some damage, if that's what he wants."

"What else could he want?"

"I don't know," the younger man answered, looking both intrigued and amused. He went on, his face serious again. "Sometimes they just want to have a look around, or leave a message – 'Captain Zap was here', that kind of thing." He paused, watching the screen. "But this one's going to a lot of trouble just for a saunter around the system."

Father Arregui nodded twice, still absorbed in what was happening on the screen, but then he seemed to come to. He glanced at the telephone inside the cone of lamplight. He reached for it, but stopped midway.

"Do you think he'll get into INMA VA T?"

"He just has."

"Dear God." Now the red cursor was flickering rapidly, moving down the long list of files on the screen.

"He's good,"said Cooey, no longer hiding his admiration. "God forgive me, but this hacker is very good." He paused and smiled. "Diabolically good."

He'd given up on the keyboard and was now simply watching, his elbows on the table. The restricted-access list was there on the screen, in full view. Eighty-four cardinals and high-ranking officials, each given with a corresponding code. The cursor moved up and down the list, twice, then stopped with a flicker beside VoiA.

"Swine," muttered Father Arregui.

The data transfer log was registering a tiny decrease in free memory. The intruder had cracked the security lock and was transferring a file into the system. "Who's VoiA?" asked Father Cooey.

Father Arregui didn't answer immediately. He unfastened the collar of his cassock and passed his band over his head. He looked at the screen again in disbelief. Then he picked up the telephone receiver slowly and, after another moment's hesitation, he dialled the emergency number of the Vatican palace secretariat. It rang seven times before a voice answered in Italian. Father Arregui cleared his throat and announced that an intruder had broken into the Holy Father's personal computer.

The Man from Rome

He carries a sword for a reason.

He is God's agent,

Bernard dc Clairvaux,

Eulogy of the Templar Militia

At the beginning of May, Lorenzo Quart received the order that would take him to Seville. An area of low pressure was moving towards the eastern Mediterranean and that morning it was raining on St. Peter's Square, so Quart had to skirt the square, taking shelter under Bernini's colonnade.