Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Parada looks up when Antonucci comes in.

“Can you get us some more coffee?” Parada asks. “It’s going to be a long night.”

And a longer day tomorrow.

Guilty pleasures.

Hot, strong coffee. Fresh warm bread.

And thank God Antonucci is Italian and smokes, Parada thinks as he draws into his lungs that guiltiest of all guilty pleasures, at least among the ones available to a priest.

He exhales the smoke and watches it rise to the ceiling, listening as Antonucci sets his cup down and says to the minister of the interior, “I have spoken to His Holiness personally, and he wishes me to assure the government of his beloved people of Mexico that the Vatican stands ready to offer whatever aid it can, despite the fact that we still do not enjoy formal diplomatic relations with the government of Mexico.”

Antonucci looks like a bird, Parada thinks.

A tiny bird with a small, neat beak.

He was dispatched from Rome eight years ago with the mission of bringing Mexico formally back into the fold after over one hundred years of official government anti-clericism, since the Ley Lerdo of 1856 had seized the vast church-owned haciendas and other lands and sold them off. The revolutionary constitution of 1857 had stripped the power of the Church in Mexico, and the Vatican retaliated by excommunicating any Mexican who took the constitutional oath.

So for a century an uneasy truce has existed between the Vatican and the Mexican government. Formal relations have never been resumed, but not even the most rabid socialists of the PRI-the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the Institutional Revolutionary Party that has ruled Mexico in a one-party, pseudo-democratic government since 1917-would try to totally abolish the Church in this land of faithful peasants. So there have been petty harassments such as the ban on clerical garb, but mostly there has been a grudging accommodation between the government and the Vatican.

But it has always been a goal of the Vatican to regain formal status in Mexico, and as a politician from the Church’s arch-conservative wing, Antonucci has lectured Parada and the other bishops that “we must not lose the faithful of Mexico to godless Communism.”

So it’s natural, Parada thinks, that Antonucci would view the earthquake as an opportunity. See the deaths of ten thousand of the faithful as God’s way of bringing the government to its knees.

Necessity will force the government to eat a lot of crow over the next few days; it has yet to humble itself by accepting aid from the Americans, but it will. And it has yet to crawl to the Church for help, but here it is.

And we’ll give them the money.

Money that we’ve collected from the faithful, rich and poor, for centuries. The coin in the collection plate, untaxed, invested at great profit. So now, Parada thinks, we will extract a price from a prostrate country to give it back the money we took from it in the first place.

Christ would weep.

Money changers in the temple?

We are the money changers in the temple.

“You need money,” Antonucci says to the minister. “You need it quickly, and you’re going to have a hard time borrowing it, given your government’s already precarious credit ratings.”

“We’ll issue bonds.”

“Who’ll buy them?” Antonucci asks, a hint of a satisfied sneer playing at the corners of his mouth. “You can’t offer enough interest to tempt investors for that kind of money. You can’t even service, never mind repay, the debts you already have. We should know; we already hold a stack of Mexican paper.”

“Insurance,” the minister says.

“You’re underinsured,” Antonucci says. “Your own Department of the Interior has turned a blind eye to all the hotels’ practice of underinsurance, to encourage tourism. The stores, the apartment buildings-same thing. Even the government ministries that collapsed were grossly underinsured. Or self-insured, I should say, without the funds to back it up. It’s a bit of a scandal, I’m afraid. So while your government might hold the Vatican in official disdain, the financial institutions have a somewhat better opinion of us. I believe it’s referred to in the jargon as 'Triple A.’ ”

Machiavelli could only have been an Italian, Parada thinks.

If it weren’t such a hideously cynical piece of extortion, you’d almost have to admire it.

But there’s too much work to be done, and it’s urgent, so Parada says, “Let’s cut through the shit, shall we? We will gladly bring whatever aid we can, financial and material, on an informal basis. You, in return, will allow our clergy to wear the cross and clearly label any material aid as coming from the Holy Roman Catholic Church. You will guarantee that the next administration, within thirty days of taking office, will commence good-faith negotiations on establishing formal relations between the state and the Church.”

“That’s in 1988,” Antonucci snaps. “Almost three years away.”

“Yes, I did the math,” Parada says. He turns back to the minister. “Do we have a deal?”

Yes, they do.

“Just who do you think you are?” Antonucci asks after the minister leaves. “Don’t you ever supersede me in a negotiation again. I had him on the run.”

“Is that our role now?” Parada asks. “To keep needy people on the run?”

“You do not have the authority to-”

“Am I being taken to the woodshed?” Parada asks. “If so, please be quick about it. I have work to do.”

“You seem to forget that I am your direct superior.”

“You can’t forget what you don’t acknowledge in the first place,” Parada says. “You’re not my superior. You’re a politician sent by Rome to conduct politics.”

Antonucci says, “The earthquake was an act of God-”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

“-which provides an opportunity to save the souls of millions of Mexicans.”

“Don’t save their souls!” Parada yells. “Save them!”

“That is sheer heresy!”

“Good!”

It isn’t just the earthquake victims, Parada thinks. It’s the millions living in poverty. The literally countless millions in the slums of Mexico City, the people living on garbage dumps in Tijuana, the landless peasants in Chiapas who are in reality little more than serfs.

“This 'liberation theology’ doesn’t fly with me, “ Antonucci says.

“I don’t care,” Parada says. “I don’t answer to you-I answer to God.”

“I can pick up this phone and have you transferred to a chapel in Tierra del Fuego.”

Parada grabs the phone and hands it to him.

“Do it,” he says. “I’d be very happy being a parish priest at the ends of the earth. Why aren’t you dialing? Shall I do it for you? I’m calling your bluff. I’ll call Rome, and then I’ll call the newspapers to tell them exactly why I’m being transferred.”

He watches little red spots appear on Antonucci’s cheeks. The bird is upset, Parada thinks. I have ruffled his smooth feathers. But Antonucci regains his calm, his placid exterior, even his self-satisfied smile, as he sets down the receiver.

“Good choice,” Parada says with a confidence he doesn’t feel. “I’ll head up this relief effort, I’ll launder the Church’s money so as not to embarrass the government, and I’ll help bring the Church back to Mexico.”

“I’m waiting for the quid,” Antonucci says, “in the pro quo.”

“The Vatican will make me a cardinal.”

Because the power to do good can come only with, well, power.

Antonucci says, “You have become something of a politician yourself.”

It’s true, Parada thinks.

Good.

Fine.

So be it.

“So we have an understanding,” Parada says.