Ignacio Arregui

Ignacio Arregui is a Jesuit priest and member of the Vatican’s computer-security team, charged with monitoring Vísperas, the elusive hacker who has entered the Vatican network. His role makes the investigation concrete: the contest between an anonymous intruder and the institution’s defenses unfolds through shifts, decoy systems, network traces, and the careful interpretation of what appears on a screen.

Identity and Assignment

A week after Vísperas first made contact, Arregui and his Jesuit computer experts are still watching the Vatican’s central system in twelve-hour shifts. Shortly before one in the morning, Arregui leaves the monitoring room to get coffee. The vending machine takes his coins and gives him an empty cup and a little sugar; on his second attempt, he gets coffee without sugar and uses the first cup to sweeten it. He returns burning his thumb and forefinger through the plastic. This weary, ordinary interruption places the surveillance operation in the labor of an overnight watch rather than in the realm of effortless technological mastery.

The Counter-intrusion

When Cooey alerts him that they have found the intruder, Arregui watches over his colleague’s shoulder as colored icons and files race across a computer reproducing Vísperas’s movements. Garofí works at a second machine, trying to identify and locate the hacker. Arregui asks whether the intruder is Vísperas; the team’s first task is not simply to observe activity, but to determine who is behind it.

The team’s countermeasure is a set of traps they call “Sadducean traps”: decoy areas arranged like a network at a river’s mouth, intended to confuse hackers or expose information that can help identify them. Against Vísperas, the traps form elaborate electronic mazes, where the intruder may reveal vulnerabilities while navigating what seems to be a useful route. The design depends on luring the hacker into making choices that disclose something about the path, rather than merely placing a barrier in the way.

Arregui’s team has prepared a specific trap for anyone attempting to reach the Pope’s personal terminal, VOIA. An outsider entering INMAVAT unknowingly carries a hidden code; at VOIA, the code blocks access to the real destination and diverts the hacker to a fictitious terminal, VOIATS. The intruder can then leave a message believing it has reached the Pope, while the actual system remains protected. When the cursor stops at VOIA, Arregui and the others wait through ten seconds of silence before it clicks through and the screen shows a waiting clock. Cooey whispers that the hacker is entering. The trap has brought Vísperas to the false destination, but the brief suspense of the pause shows how closely the team follows each step.

Reading the Hacker

Arregui’s response to the intrusion is not uncomplicated hostility. As Vísperas moves through the decoys, he recognizes the skill of the work and feels professional excitement at watching a clandestine hacker operate with such precision—even though the intruder is a criminal who has kept him awake for a week. His fascination makes the pursuit a contest between practitioners: the hacker’s ability commands admiration even as it threatens the system he is assigned to defend.

The trap produces a further, unexpected clue when the message appears. Cooey recognizes the biblical text as Psalm 73, “Lamentation over the Devastated Temple,” and Arregui corrects his first guess at the psalm. The identification establishes that the intruder’s message draws on scripture as well as technical play. The computer’s screen then fills with bouncing balls that multiply and burst into tiny mushroom clouds, each explosion producing the word “boom.” Cooey calls the hacker a joker. The team has not unmasked Vísperas, but it has encountered a distinctive combination of religious reference and mischievous humor.

Limits of the Investigation

Later, Simeón Navajo reports that none of the companies on Quart’s list bought advanced computer equipment under its own name and tax number. The telephone company’s security chief tells him that clandestine use of its network is not unique to Vísperas: hackers routinely use it to reach foreign networks, the Vatican among them. Some are caught and some are not. Vísperas appears particularly capable, using complicated loops and programs that erase traces and make detection systems ineffective. This account supplies the broader technical context for Arregui’s watch: monitoring the Vatican system can register an intrusion, but tracing a hacker who deliberately obscures the route remains difficult.

The eventual revelation that Vísperas is Cruz Bruner recasts the earlier pursuit without diminishing the work of Arregui’s team. Cruz explains that a Roman contact, known online as Deus ex Machina, provided useful leads; she found the protected INMAVAT file, tested ways in, and entered the system. The surveillance scenes therefore show Arregui confronting a genuine intrusion by an unexpected actor, while the indirect routes, decoys, and anonymous contacts that shape the investigation help explain why technical activity alone does not immediately disclose the hacker’s identity.

Narrative Significance

Arregui’s scenes connect institutional defense to the hacker’s own methods. The Vatican team builds a false destination inside a protected network; Vísperas navigates through telephone networks and concealed routes; each side uses misdirection to control what the other can see. The encounter is not a simple story of a powerful institution tracking a lone genius. It is a patient, fallible exchange between skilled operators, with Arregui’s exhausted watch and brief flashes of admiration revealing the human labor behind the screens.