Vatican Vendetta: A thrilling battle of power and politics

by Peter Watson

  David nodded.

  ‘Then, unless you have any questions, we need detain you no further.’

  ‘Just one,’ said David. ‘How long does all this take?’

  ‘Ah yes. Normally it would take us three to five months to reach our verdict. When it goes to Rome add another year. The Holy Father usually takes six months to make up his mind. In this case, however, Monsignor Hale has been a good friend to several members of the tribunal, Mr Colwyn, so you are lucky. Expect our reply in a month. After that, it’s out of our hands.’

  David left the archbishop’s house fairly satisfied. Jasper Hale was an important ally. He had good contacts in Rome and was no doubt able to make useful representations on behalf of the Catholic hierarchy in Britain. If this thing came off, he told himself, he owed the apostolic delegate a favour.

  When he got home Bess was in the air, travelling back from Rio, so David couldn’t call her with the news of the tribunal. And next morning, before he had a chance to place his call to Rome, Sally Middleton buzzed him and said: ‘Michael Callaghan on two.’ He raised his eyebrows. Callaghan was press secretary at Buckingham Palace.

  He lifted the receiver. ‘Colwyn.’

  ‘Ah, good. I’m glad I’ve got you.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’ David didn’t know Callaghan well. They had met, of course, in arranging the exhibition of pictures which the Queen intended to sell. David found him rather distant and obviously capable.

  ‘If you will forgive me for being rather blunt, Mr Colwyn, the answer to your question is: “Keep your mouth shut”.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I have just had a call from the editor of The Times. You will probably get one any minute. It seems they are publishing a letter tomorrow by three art professors. The letter is very critical of Her Majesty’s decision to sell some of her paintings.’

  ‘Oh no!’ David’s heart sank. Lister must have lost his battle. ‘Are they Heritage Trust people?’

  ‘Yes – and that’s part of the reason I’m calling you. The Times’ editor was very courteous. It seems he’s running a front-page story about the background to the letter. There’s been a hell of a row in the BHPT between those who want to oppose the sale and those who think that the fund will lose a lot of financial support if they attack Her Majesty. For the time being, according to The Times’ editor, the activists have lost – but three of them have decided to go ahead on their own, as individuals.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I’ll come to that in a minute. First I want to tell you our thinking.’

  ‘Okay, go ahead.’

  ‘Well, Her Majesty is naturally upset at having her judgement criticized. Although she’s used to it, she never gets used to it, if you see what I mean. But she is determined to go ahead with the sale. We have discussed the matter with Sir Edgar Seton, who knows the people who have written the letter, and have decided that our best course is to offer no comment for the time being. The Times letter will presumably spark off others and we would like to gauge the overall picture before we say anything. Her Majesty would prefer it if Hamilton’s declined to comment also. What do you say?’

  ‘We’re naturally willing to cooperate in any way. But it rather depends on what the letter says. If it attacks Hamilton’s as well as the Queen, the board might feel obliged to defend itself.’ And that would be another opportunity for Averne to make trouble, David reflected.

  ‘I’ve had the letter read over to me. It does not mention Hamilton’s or even refer to you by implication. The wording is clear: forceful without being offensive, but the message is unmistakable.’

  ‘Very well,’ said David. ‘If that’s the case I see no problems. I’ll wait for The Times to call and if there are any snags I’ll call you back.’

  ‘Good. Thank you. Otherwise, let’s talk again tomorrow, after the letter has been published.’

  Sure enough, no sooner had he put down the phone on Callaghan than it buzzed again. David didn’t rate the editor of The Times himself, merely a reporter. But in any case the conversation didn’t last long. The reporter was not persistent and David did not need to call Callaghan back.

  He put his call through to Bess but she had left Rome again already, he was told, on a flying visit to Sicily with the Holy Father. They had gone in the papal helicopter and would be back that evening, but very late. He left a message that he would call the next day. Then he called Anthony Wilde and told him Ned had agreed to treatment. They fixed the first appointment for a week later.

  Next morning, when David picked up The Times, he saw that the front page article was headed: ‘Art Experts Attack Royal Sale.’ It, and the letter inside, was a fairly straightforward account of what he already knew from his conversation with Callaghan. David was quoted, but only in passing, saying that the sale would go ahead as planned.

  The interesting development, however, came not in The Times but in other papers. Inevitably the rest of Fleet Street had picked up The Times story, and the reaction David liked most was emblazoned across the front the Daily Express.

  ‘HOW DARE THEY!’ ran the banner, and underneath, ‘Three eggheads in shock attack on the Queen!’

  David didn’t much care for the language used by the popular papers but he hoped their sense of outrage would be widely shared.

  He had a meeting that morning at the British Museum – he was seeing Jeanette Soane about the Elisabetta Gonzaga letters in the Vatican – but as soon as he got to the office after lunch he called Callaghan. The press secretary was phlegmatic. ‘My instincts still tell me to do very little. There are plenty of people who support Her Majesty in this and presumably some of them are writing to The Times even as we speak. If this controversy remains simply a letters’ wrangle in The Times, it will eventually fizzle out. The main thing is not to make matters worse by overreacting. Agreed?’

  ‘Ye-e-es,’ said David doubtfully. ‘I still have to hedge my bets in case anyone attacks Hamilton’s. After all, the heritage lobby has been building for years. This could be the issue the activists have been waiting for. Especially as they must know the government is not exactly your ally. Anyway, we obviously should keep in touch.’

  Almost immediately the phone buzzed again. ‘Bess! Am I glad to hear you! How was Sicily? Come to that, how was Rio?’

  ‘Rio was fantastic. I found Thomas some lovely Portuguese tiles for his bathroom. Yellow and white – very papal. Sicily was fantastic. I even managed to find the most fantastic piece of black patterned velvet. But it’s even more fantastic to be back here in my little apartment.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Tell me your news.’

  At last he could tell her about Hale’s discovery and the tribunal.

  ‘Oh David! That’s wonderful. I feel ten foot taller. Are you going to come to Rome so we can celebrate?’

  ‘Soon – but I don’t know just when. We’re having a bit of bother with the Queen’s sale today. Three professors have attacked her in the press.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Some of the Italian papers have already been on to me for our reaction.’

  ‘That was quick. What are you saying?’

  ‘Nothing. No comment. That we are flattered your Queen is emulating Thomas and that we hope the sale will go well. But we don’t want to get involved in an internal British matter.’

  ‘I’ve had a bad feeling about this sale ever since the beginning. I never felt the same about Thomas’s ideas.’

  ‘One piece of advice, David darling. Don’t just sit back and wait for the story to develop. See if you can take it forward yourself, with some new angle. If you keep the press reporting, you delay their thinking. Delay it long enough and something else often happens to take their minds off you completely.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice – but enough about me. When am I going to hear all about Rio?’

  ‘As soon as you get your body out here. So much happened it will last through several plates of Gina’s pasta. At the moment th
ough, we’re rather worried by what’s coming out at the trial in Cuba. It doesn’t look good and if I’m difficult to get hold of, it’ll be because I’m trying to talk to our contacts in Havana.’

  After David hung up, he thought over what Bess had said, about not sitting back and waiting for the attack on the Queen to develop. What could he do?

  He went to the window and stared down at St James’s Square. On the steps of the London Library he recognized two famous authors chatting together. He noticed that one gave the other some change which the man then put in a parking meter.

  The simple action gave David an idea. That was it! Yes, it might work. Otherwise things might get out of hand. He went to the phone.

  ‘Callaghan.’

  ‘David Colwyn, at Hamilton’s.’

  ‘Oh yes. Problems?’

  ‘No. Not really. I wondered if you were free for a drink tonight. I’ve had a thought.’

  ‘Let’s see. No, there’s nothing I can’t get out of. This can’t be done on the telephone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very well then, any time after six thirty.’

  ‘Good, let’s say Booth’s at six forty-five.’

  *

  Douglas Kirkhill was angry. He was a big Ulsterman, raw and fiery. His red hair seemed to shoot out of his head and the veins on his cheeks made it seem as though his face had been polished with a red glaze. This morning he was actually more than angry; he was close to tears.

  He parked his big black Ford in the bay provided for him and stepped out into the rain. He immediately marched across the yard to a pair of double white doors over which a blue sign announced: ‘Kirkhill Construction.’

  ‘May!’ he called to his startled secretary. ‘Tell Michael Molyneux I want to see him.’

  Molyneux was the union shop steward at Kirkhill’s and when he hurriedly arrived at his boss’s door he found, to his great surprise, that the man had a glass of whiskey in his hand.

  ‘Sit down, Michael. Have a drink.’

  Molyneux didn’t like the look of this. Kirkhill was a fair boss, and he never touched the whiskey before seven in the evening. That was how he had made the firm such a success. Kirkhill’s built houses, roads, even bridges and hospitals, and they always delivered on time and within their budget. Molyneux poured a small whiskey and sat down. He looked around. The office was like the man: solid and unflashy. A modern desk, a table for meetings, a photograph of his wife, now dead, and his boy, also dead, killed by the IRA, stupid bastards, when they had blown up a restaurant by mistake. The office of a man who had no home life, who lived for his work and spent most of his days away from it on building sites all over the six counties.

  Kirkhill looked at him. A phone sounded in the outer office. Almost as Kirkhill spoke Molyneux knew what was coming and closed his eyes.

  ‘We’ve lost another tender. The bridge, the new one across the Bann at Coleraine,’ said Kirkhill. ‘That makes four in the last seven weeks.’

  ‘Who . . . who got it this time?’

  Kirkhill glared at him. ‘Foley’s. Again.’ Foley’s was a relatively new firm. A Catholic firm. ‘And for the same reason.’

  ‘Money?’

  The boss nodded. ‘I was told their tender undercut ours by thirteen per cent. The materials have to be same. The labour. I doubt if their office costs, or transport are even as good as ours.’ He poured more whiskey down his throat. ‘But since that damn fund of the Pope’s, they can get their money cheaper. That’s what screws us. It’s so unfair!’

  The two men sat opposite each other, gloomily staring at the rain which rattled against Kirkhill’s office window. The boss had been increasingly morose of late, and Molyneux had grown used to sitting with him, until he had talked himself out. He had never known him this bad so early in the day.

  ‘There was a time, Michael, when a Protestant firm would have got these contracts, whatever the figure on the tender. That was unfair, too – you know I think that. But now it’s gone the other way. It’s the Catholics who get all the breaks.’

  Molyneux nodded. The boss didn’t need to convince him.

  Kirkhill breathed out loudly and lifted himself to his feet. He lumbered to the window and looked down, through the rain at the machinery, the supplies, the small architect’s office he was so proud of. He went to pour himself another whiskey but then thought better of it. Instead he turned and pointed the bottle at Molyneux. ‘Four tenders, Michael, four lost in seven weeks. That leaves only one that’s anywhere near happening. That cinema in Lame. It comes up the week after next.’ He put the bottle back in the cupboard. ‘If we don’t get that, I’m going to have to start laying off men.’

  *

  However worried the Holy Father and Bess might feel about events in Cuba, in Beirut success followed success. The Christian security forces there found that as a result of the St Patrick’s Fund the quality of their information began to improve dramatically. Several telling arrests were made, and three huge discoveries of weapons and ammunition, forcing the Muslim paramilitary to backtrack. The clinics and camps set up by the St Patrick’s Fund also struggled to life.

  David had his secretary clip anything in the newspaper about fund activity. He was in no way responsible for the uses to which the money was put, but soon the first dividends would be declared and he needed to keep in touch.

  In general, David was feeling fairly buoyant. Ned was seeing Wilde; he himself was to receive his papal honour soon and when he went to Rome for that he would take Ned, so the great meeting between his son and Bess would finally take place; he had been to see the tribunal again – they thought he had a case and had taken his evidence on oath. Also, David’s idea to deflect criticism of the Queen’s sale appeared to be working.

  It had been planned during his drink at Booth’s with Callaghan. Together David and the Queen’s press secretary made a formidable pair, well able to twist a few aristocratic arms, and within a week David was ready to make an announcement. It made the front page of the serious papers and showed that Bess had been right: by thinking up a scheme to move the story on, the papers were obliged to report developments, rather than merely sit back and criticize.

  ‘Other collectors’, ran the subhead in The Daily Telegraph, ‘follow the Queen’s example and sell art to help the poor’. The text continued: ‘Hamilton’s, the Fine Art Auctioneers, announced last night that several British collectors, impressed by the Queen’s decision to sell part of the royal collection in order to raise funds for international relief, have lent her their support by donating paintings of their own, which will be added to the sale.

  ‘The collectors include Lord Haddon, who will sell his Breughel, “Peasants skating”, Mr David Berry, chairman of IMI, who is putting up Canaletto’s “Torcello”, in the family for generations, Sir Frank Richter, the publisher, who will send his small Rembrandt etching, “The Lesson”, to the sale, and the Earl of Stow, who is to make available the famous “Bull Fight” by Goya, now on loan to the National Gallery of Wales.

  ‘This remarkable show of support for the Queen’s proposal comes only days after three professors of art attacked Her Majesty’s sale as being against the national interest. Mr Michael Callaghan, the Queen’s press secretary, last night welcomed the news. He said, “These donations show, I believe, what support Her Majesty has in the country”.’

  David had personal reasons to be gratified with the story. He knew that he had impressed Callaghan both with the idea itself and with the way in which he had subsequently carried it out.

  Letters about the sale still appeared in The Times but, since Hamilton’s announcement, the Queen’s critics had lost a lot of force. Or had seemed to.

  *

  Charlie Winter sat in his pale blue Pontiac on the New York street and lightly touched the gun under his jacket. He was definitely nervous. He often was at this stage of an operation. His partner, Harry Weizack, sat next to him, not speaking. For the past three days, acting on a tip-off for which they had paid
good money, and would have to shell out a great deal more if this stakeout came to anything, they had been following three men. The tip-off said the men were heroin dealers and were about to take delivery of a bulk order with a street value of seven million dollars. Charlie and Harry, special investigators of the US Customs branch, had picked them up at Kennedy airport three days before, where two of them had met the third off a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt.

  The tip-off had identified the incoming passenger from a glass observation booth in the arrivals hall (where he had received the first instalment of his pay). The two men who met the passenger had escorted him to a van and before the van entered the mid-town tunnel, the customs’ department computer in the World Trade Centre in Lower Manhattan had identified it as being registered in the name of a New Jersey meat company suspected of being part-owned by the Cicognani family, one of the five mob families of New York. By the time the van had turned south on Lexington Avenue, Charlie had three other cars in support: only with a ‘box’ of four cars could customs be sure of tailing the van without being spotted.

  For seventy-two hours the van had been discreetly followed. It was possible that the man who had been met at Kennedy was the supplier. He had been identified by the customs’ officer at the airport as Hellmut Ewald, of German nationality, but was not known to Interpol or the German police, nor was he included in the customs’ computer. At a guess he had arrived ‘clean’ – his ‘merchandise’ had probably been smuggled in some days before, from a different country, and was now being stored secretly. The men meeting him were almost certainly link men, go-betweens who took the risks on behalf of the Cicognani family.

  Charlie and Harry had settled down to a long wait. They knew, from previous experience, that the German would want to ensure he wasn’t being followed, or lured into a trap. He would want to see the colour of the Cicognani money. He would want to know about security.

  He had checked into the Grammercy Square Hotel, in the name on the passport he had used. He had gone to the movies and eaten at a brasserie uptown on 54th Street. He had been picked up by the van twice and taken to two separate addresses, one at Mercer Street in Soho and another at 18th Street just off Broadway. Then, this Sunday morning, he had been picked up a third time, very early, and brought here to Union Street in Queen’s. Charlie hoped something was going to happen now. He was getting impatient.