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hour.”
    “You seem to have little faith in our discretion, I must say…”
    Hervé van Reyn chortled. “I have every respect for your candidness,” he retorted.
    “So, the target lives at the address provided and is to be screened for adultery.”
    “You could put it that way, yes.”
    “When do we begin?”
    Van Reyn thought for a moment. “Let’s say early tomorrow morning.”
    “We’ll have to find an appropriate place to keep an eye on the house and a parking space for the liaison vehicle, which will take care of surveillance.”
    “I imagine you will need to get into position under cover of darkness?”
    “Precisely, monsieur .”
    “Agreed. How much should we transfer?”
    “The amount you spoke of earlier.”
    “It’ll be taken care of.”
    “How can I reach you?”
    “I’ll call you three times each day and you can tell me then if you have any news.”
    “That’s a deal.”
    “Fair and square, Mr Marlowe.”
    “I’m not Mr Marlowe, but we’re proud of the company name.”
    “The money should be in your account within the hour.”
    “OK. Would you be good enough to use a code name when you call?”
    Hervé van Reyn thought for a moment. “Perálta, with the accent on the first a,” he said, thinking of Josemaría Escrivá, the self-styled “Marquis of Perálta”.
    “Understood, thank you. I’ll hear from you tomorrow, Perálta. By the way, do you have a photo of the target?”
    “No, but a chauffeur collects him every morning from home.”
    “Thank you.”
    Van Reyn ended the call, walked over to the fax machine, removed the bundle of pages from the tray, put them in a mica-coated folder, placed it on his desk and sat down. His eyes narrowed and his amenable expression faded. How was he going to trace Public Prosecutor Savelkoul’s Swiss bank account? Family connections in the Belgian and Luxembourg bank world had allowed him to establish contact with a Swiss national living in Zurich, a member of the council of commissioners of Credit Suisse and an Opus Dei supernumerary. The man could easily penetrate the closed world of the Swiss banking system with the assistance of a number of Opus Dei cooperators. He had helped van Reyn before with what had seemed at first to be a hopeless case. He had discovered that details of incoming and outgoing telephone connections were stored in the computer of every Swiss bank for twelve months. If they could trace the telephone number in the system, additional connections would allow them to establish the code and bank account numbers of certain customers, allowing automatic access to their portfolio, account activity and balance. But that was only one of the methods. Every case deserved its own approach.
    From an ethical perspective, such procedures were unacceptable, of course, and were even punishable by Swiss law, but Opus Dei had little concern for the law if its own interests were at stake. The members refer to themselves with good reason as humanity’s “general staff ” and to non-members as “the rank and file”. As a consequence, albeit unspoken, everything outside Opus Dei is shut out, excluded, godless, impure, faithless, damned, outlawed.
    When it came to serving the interests of Opus Dei, Hervé van Reyn had no scruples whatsoever. He called this his Sacred Brazenness. He made frequent use of the global network of numeraries and cooperators in the bank world, multinationals, politics, the judiciary, the diplomatic service, the military, the government, journalism, the cultural and academic world, the media, the police, local government. The Opus Dei code word Pax opened every door.
    He consulted his notebook for a second time and used his mobile to call a number in Zurich.
    “ Grüezi. May I speak to Mr Jacobi, please?” His otherwise perfect German had developed a Swiss accent.
    An innocent expression transformed his face as he waited. He smiled engagingly, like an excited camper, and the skin of his face appeared to swell