The Seville Communion by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

his confident expression grew dark as he approached the table where the man to whom he owed his present and his future sat in front of a coffee and half a buttered muffin. Gavira's face grew darker still when he inadvertently glanced to his left and saw the cover of Q&S prominently displayed at a newspaper kiosk. He walked on as if he hadn't seen it, sensing Peregil's eyes on the back of his head. The black cloud was taking over, and his belly, its muscles firmed by a daily workout, was tense with fury. The magazine had been lying on his desk for two days now, and Gavira was as familiar with the photographs as if he'd taken them himself. The cover picture was slightly grainy from the use of a telephoto lens, but he could clearly recognise his wife, Macarena Bruner de Lebrija, heiress to the tide of El Nuevo Extremo and descendant of one of the three most noble families of the Spanish aristocracy - Alba and Medina-Sidonia were the other two - as she was leaving the Alfonso XIII Hotel at four in the morning with a bullfighter, Curro Maestral.
    "You're late," said the old man.
    Gavira knew, without even glancing at his expensive watch, that he wasn't. It was just that Don Octavio liked to keep up the pressure. Indeed, Gavira himself used the tactic having learned it from Don Octavio. Peregil, with his ridiculous hairdo, was his victim.
    "I don't like people arriving late," Machuca insisted loudly, as if he were telling this to the waiter standing by the table waiting to take his order. They always reserved the same table for him, by the door.
    Gavira nodded, calmly taking in Machuca's words. He ordered a beer, unbuttoned his blazer and sat down in the chair the chairman of the Cartujano Bank indicated next to him. After bowing his head abjectly a couple of times, Peregil went and sat at a table further off, where Canovas was putting documents away in a black leather briefcase. Canovas was a thin, mouse-like man, a father of nine and morally beyond reproach. He had worked for the banker since the days when Machuca smuggled cigarettes and perfume from Gibraltar. Nobody had ever seen Canovas smile, maybe because his sense of humour had been crushed beneath the weight of family responsibility. Gavira didn't like Canovas and secretly planned to dismiss him as soon as the old man decided to vacate his office on the Arenal.
    Like his boss and patron, Gavira looked in silence at the passing pedestrians and cars. When his beer arrived, he leaned forward and took a sip, taking care not to let any drip on his perfectly pressed trousers. He dried his lips with a handkerchief and sat back.
    "We have the mayor," he said at last.
    Not a muscle moved in Octavio Machuca's face. He stared straight ahead, at the green-and-white sign of the PENA BETICA (1935) on the second-floor balcony across the street, beside the neo-mudejar building of the Poniente Bank. Gavira considered the old financier's bony, claw-like hands covered with liver spots. Machuca was thin and tall, with a large nose and eyes circled with dark rings as if from permanent insomnia. He scanned his surroundings like a bird of prey. The years had imparted not tolerance or mercy to those eyes but weariness. A lookout and smuggler in his youth, later a moneylender in Jerez and, by the time he was forty, a banker in Seville, the founder of the Cartujano Bank was about to retire. Now his only known ambition was to have breakfast every morning at the cafe on the corner of the calle Sierpes, opposite the Pena Betica and the head office of the rival bank. Which the Cartujano had recently annexed, having engineered its gradual downfall.
    "About time," said Machuca, still staring across the street. Following the direction of his gaze, Gavira wasn't sure whether
    he meant the Poniente Bank takeover or the fact that they now had the mayor's support.
    "I had dinner with him last night," Gavira said, glancing at the old man's profile out of the corner of his eye. "And this morning I had a long