Vatican Vendetta: A thrilling battle of power and politics

by Peter Watson

  One evening they were strolling back from the jetty, past the fashionable end of the port, where the bigger yachts overnighted, when suddenly Bess stopped. ‘Look!’ she said, pointing.

  The others followed the direction of her arm.

  ‘Jeesus!’ said Ned. On the side of one enormous yacht was painted a name and black silhouette they knew all too well: the ‘Pietà’.

  ‘It must be Wilkie’s boat,’ said David. ‘That’s just the kind of thing he’d do.’

  Just then, as if to confirm David’s supposition, Wilkie himself came on deck. David and the others made to hurry off, but they were too late. ‘Colwyn! Is that you? Hey – that’s really something. What are you doing here?’ He answered his own question. ‘Having a vacation, I guess, just like me. Don’t run away, come aboard, have a drink. I’ve got something to show you.’

  They were caught, unable to escape without being rude. A crewman appeared and slid a gangplank between the stern of the boat and the jetty. Ned went first and the others followed.

  ‘Come below,’ said Wilkie after David had introduced the others. ‘It’s air-conditioned and cooler.’ And so, regretfully, they foresook the warm, sensual night outside, the stars and the breeze, for the clammy interior. Wilkie fixed them all drinks at a flashy brass and mahogany bar in the saloon. Then he said, ‘I suppose you noticed that I’ve renamed the boat? Neat, eh? There’s more than that up my sleeve, though. You’d better just come along with me. Have I got something to show you.’ He led the way forward to a cabin that was obviously his office. Here he reached into a wide, shallow map drawer and took out a series of designs. ‘What do you think of these?’

  David stared. So did Bess and Ned.

  They were architectural drawings of Michelangelo’s ‘Pietà’ set in several different, recognizably American scenes. There was the ‘Pietà’ outside the Pentagon, outside the White House, near the ice rink at Rockefeller Centre in New York, with San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in the immediate background, as part of the Bel Air Hotel complex in Beverly Hills, as part of the waterfront in Chicago, in the main hall of Caesar’s Palace hotel in Las Vegas.

  ‘What is all this?’ David asked, knowing the answer. Bess was silent.

  ‘My plan’s to get the “Pietà” maximum exposure. I need eventually to find a permanent home for it. I don’t think my own office building in Washington is the right place, after all. Not enough people can see it. So, I’m planning to send it on tour – three months in each of these sites. Then, wherever it looks best will be its permanent resting place.’

  ‘But . . . Caesar’s Palace . . . is a casino.’ Bess was appalled.

  ‘Sure. You don’t think that’s suitable? I think the more unusual the better. Millions of people will see it in Caesar’s Palace. It’ll stand out more there than in some museum.’

  ‘It’ll stand out anywhere.’ Bess couldn’t believe the drawings. She did believe them.

  ‘You don’t like them, do you?’ Wilkie’s voice had an edge to it. ‘Too bad.’ He collected them up and slid them back into their drawer. ‘Sorry if my crude ways offend you but I think it’s a good idea and I own the damn stuff. I can do what I like with it.’ He led the way back to the main saloon, where the drinks still waited. ‘Here, you’d better have these,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ve got to see the captain.’ And he disappeared.

  Soon afterwards a crewman approached them and said, ‘Mr Wilkie sure hopes you’ll forgive him but he’s had to call America and just can’t leave the wireless room. Maybe I could see you good people ashore.’

  And so, not twenty minutes after they had stepped aboard, David and Bess and Ned found themselves back on the jetty walking quickly away from Wilkie’s yacht. Bess was beside herself with anger. ‘Showing the “Pietà” outside the Pentagon, indeed, or in a Las Vegas casino . . . I’d like to sink Wilkie’s boat. Right now.’

  Next morning they carefully examined the harbour from the hotel before they ventured out and were relieved to see that Wilkie must have set sail during the night. For the rest of the week the weather continued hot, and a little Etna bianco at lunch each day ensured that they all, Ned included, fell asleep for a short while each afternoon. Then they swam, or went out on hired bicycles along the coast. In the early evenings they went to church. At night, after Ned had gone to bed, Bess and David lay together, looking out to sea. Their room had a private balcony from which the view was stupendous. The light was out and they could see the stars.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ said David during one of their silences on their last night.

  ‘That this place is subversive.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s so peaceful here, so quiet. I think I like it.’

  ‘What’s so subversive about that?’

  ‘Because I shouldn’t like it. I like work, really. And I like movement, action, change, speed. When I was a girl I loved cycling. I biked everywhere.’ She turned to David and rested her head on his chest, placing his hand on her thigh the way she liked it. ‘One evening I’d been out somewhere and left it very late. It was getting dark and I had no lights on my bike. They were strict in those days about lights on bikes. I was with Patrick and we decided to race home. I was in the lead – and going very fast. But it was getting dark and a bit scary. A car came up behind me but didn’t overtake, just kept me in its headlights. All sorts of horrible thoughts went through my head and I didn’t dare look round. Boy, was I scared! I peddled harder. Then, after what seemed ages, the car pulled alongside – and I saw it was police car! Part of me was relieved: it wasn’t what I thought it was. But the policeman shouted for me to pull over, so I got worried all over again about not having any lights. I stopped and he stopped and I said, “I’m sorry, sir, I know it’s getting late and I was hurrying like mad to get home before it’s really dark. I know I don’t have any lights.” He looked at me and grinned. “Don’t worry about that, kid,” he said. “That don’t bother us none. We just thought you’d like to know – you were breaking the speed limit back there!”’ Gently, Bess bit into David’s flesh. ‘I like to be doing things, David, you know that. I like racing around. A place like this makes me doubt the whole direction of my life.’ She turned to him and touched his arm lightly. ‘Do something to me now, darling.’ She grinned. ‘Let’s have some action.’

  Next morning was Sunday. They couldn’t make the drive back from Agrigento to Rome in a day so they planned to spend the night at Messina, catch an early ferry next morning to Reggio di Calabria and drive the seven hundred kilometres nonstop next day. They ate that night at Pippo Nunnari’s, the best of Messina’s restaurants. Monday morning they made an early start and had breakfast on the ferry. David had grabbed an English language newspaper on the stand in the port. It was the previous day’s Observer. He didn’t look at it until they had settled with their brioches and coffee, by which time the boat was already out of the harbour. But when he opened the paper he knew at once that his holiday was over. Sir Edgar Seton had disappeared.

  *

  The story was headed: ‘Queen’s art expert looted Nazi pictures, bugged politicians.’ During the Second World War Seton had worked in the Allied Monuments and Fine Arts Commission, whose job it had been to recover art works looted by the Nazis. According to the newspaper, on three separate occasions Seton had recovered looted paintings – a Rubens, a Poussin, a pair of El Grecos – but, instead of returning them to their rightful owners, he had passed them secretly to the Russians. Much more damaging, after the war Seton had worked in collaboration with another art expert, one Philip Lloyd, who had opened a gallery in Old Bond Street. In the course of his job as Surveyor of the Queen’s pictures, Seton had come across many prominent people interested in art. These he had referred to Lloyd, and with help from the Russian embassy in London, Lloyd had fitted bugging devices into the frames of any pictures he sold to important politicians.

  The scheme didn’t always work. But often usefully compromising or informative conversations were c
onducted in rooms where these pictures hung. The Observer reporters had visited the homes of three unsuspecting politicians, together with an electronics expert and found bugs hidden in the frames of the pictures, or else in the wood, when they were painted on panel.

  By far the most damaging part of the story was the fact that both Lloyd and Sir Edgar Seton had disappeared.

  Buckingham Palace had refused to comment, so the story ran, and said it would not do so until Seton reappeared and had the chance to defend himself against the charges. But by the time the Observer went to press on the Saturday evening, he had been missing for four days. Suspicions were growing that Lloyd and Seton had skipped the country for Russia.

  David passed the paper to Bess. The scandal didn’t include him in any way, but he couldn’t help feeling involved. After all, the royal sale was now only weeks away. How would that be affected? He reminded himself that Hamilton’s had held on in the face of the attempts to stop the Dead Sea Scrolls sale, but he wasn’t sure he could count on that again.

  He decided he had to get back quickly. At Reggio he phoned Sally Middleton, made some other calls and then decided to aim not for Rome but for Naples, which was nearer and where he and Ned could catch a plane later that day.

  He arrived back in London not a moment too soon. Two days after the Observer story, the Guardian carried one noting that each of the international art conferences Seton had attended in the past five years – in places like Siena, Antwerp, Munich or Vienna – had also been attended by Sergei Litsov, Keeper of Paintings at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and also the brother of Gregor Litsov, now known to be a high-ranking official in the Soviet security services. Was this how Seton maintained secret contact? the paper speculated.

  As before, Buckingham Palace refused to comment. But the chief effect of this discovery was that no one now believed that Seton would turn up again. It therefore made front page news when he did so.

  The Russians stage-managed his reappearance in the most brazen manner. An exhibition of Sienese painting had been scheduled in Leningrad for some time and, when it opened a few days later, a prominent guest at the reception was Sir Edgar Seton. He gave no interviews, and was very clearly ‘accompanied’ by two bodyguards, but the Russians were proud of their propaganda coup and if they didn’t allow interviews, they positively encouraged photographs. The picture of Seton sipping a vodka while talking to the wife of the curator of the museum, was in every paper. David also noticed, in the background, the new director of the Hermitage, Dorzhiev, the bald, jowly man who had been pointed out to him by Ed Townshend, that day in the Louvre. David had seen him somewhere else, and recently, but he couldn’t pin down the occasion.

  Two days after Seton’s appearance in Russia, David was summoned not to Windsor, not to Buckingham Palace, but to the Lord Chamberlain’s office in St James’s Palace. It was so close to his own offices he walked.

  The Lord Chamberlain was a small man, superbly groomed, balding a little and tough as a torpedo. He showed David into his office himself and came straight to the point. ‘Her Majesty has decided the sale cannot go forward as planned.’

  David had half-anticipated the news, but was still shocked. For a moment he couldn’t think what to say.

  ‘We shall of course reimburse you for whatever you have already had to spend. But, in the circumstances, you must appreciate that the sale is unthinkable.’

  ‘Aren’t you playing into Seton’s hands? If you abandon the sale, won’t Her Majesty look needlessly foolish?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Colwyn, perhaps. We doubt if Seton planned this all along, just in order to embarrass Her Majesty. Presumably he fled because he was flushed out by the Observer. But whatever the reason, the result is much the same: Her Majesty is embarrassed.’ He lit a cheroot and offered David one. David declined. ‘But this Seton debacle isn’t the Palace’s only reason for cancelling the sale. The British Heritage Preservation Trust have made it very clear to us that they intend to go to court to prevent it. Normally such groups don’t have the sort of funds to risk an expensive court case, but there are some wealthy people in the BHPT who have now said they will support the legal action financially. Her Majesty feels that, coming on top of the Seton business, and continuing government opposition, she should not now proceed. I am very sorry for the inconvenience you have been caused and, yes, we do realize this will make the Palace look irresolute. However, it is better for us to grin and bear it. All I ask is that if Sir Edgar wrote anything for the catalogue, you let me have it. His material might be innocuous but it could embarrass us further.’

  The announcement from the Palace came later that day. By then David had recovered enough to tell Sally and the firm’s press department to go home and he, too, went missing. (He had dinner, alone, in his club.) He knew he couldn’t stop the newspapers printing more or less what they wanted, but if no one with authority to speak could be found, coverage would be that much less.

  Next day it seemed that David’s low-profile policy had paid off. All the papers concentrated on the embarrassment caused to the Queen by Seton’s disappearance and, secondarily, on the discreet jubilation among the heritage lobby. There was also passing reference to the Pope, comparing the success of his sales with the fiasco of the royal one.

  Thomas, in any case, was also back in the news, and in the wrong way.

  Repubblica was first with the story that the St Patrick’s Fund had underperformed disastrously. The Holy Father had never been as popular in Rome as elsewhere and the financial news did nothing to change this. But what chilled David more than anything was a report he spotted in the Naples paper, II Mattino, two days later. The Holy Father was far more popular in the south of Italy, given the success of the Vizzini fund in Sicily and the papers there were thus more sympathetic. The article, which must have been leaked to the paper by someone either on Bess’s staff, or in Thomas’s household, had the headline: ‘Vatican Fund: Failure or sabotage?’

  It read: ‘Sources in the Vatican suggest that there is more to the failure of the St Patrick’s Fund than meets the eye. Besides the official report, due to be released next week, we understand there is also circulating a private commentary on the investment activity of the fund, written by one of the members of the commission set up to administer it. Details are not to hand but it would appear that this report, by comparing the dates of market movements and the dates when the fund sold or acquired certain shares, concludes that the fund was made to underperform deliberately. This evidence has been sent to the Holy Father but no action has yet been taken.

  ‘The investment strategy of the Fund, although overseen by the Institute for Religious Works, was actually run on a day-to-day basis by two Swiss banks, Credit Lausanne and Banque Leman. One of the directors of the Banque Leman is Dott. Aldo Massoni, brother of Cardinal Massoni who resigned some months ago as Secretary of State in protest at the Holy Father’s decision to sell off the Vatican treasures to create the St Patrick’s Fund.’

  David stared at the article. Neither he nor Bess had known of the Massoni/Banque Leman link. Did it mean that the Cardinal had actually prevailed on his brother to help the fund fail, because he disagreed with Thomas? Was that why the Cardinal had not written about the fund’s failure? Because it was too close to home? Thomas would surely have to act now to prevent Massoni doing any more damage?

  Before David even had a chance to discuss it with Bess, however, there was another bolt from the blue. A report in the New York Times alleged that the victims of the Vietnam dam disaster were still waiting for relief, still in the makeshift homes they had moved to after the disaster, and the dam itself was still in ruins. Furthermore, two officials appointed to administer the Vatican fund had absconded, taking the money with them.

  Given that James Roskill, now in the middle of his presidential campaign, had had a son killed in Vietnam, the media eagerly awaited his response to the latest news. It came in a televised press conference at the White House. A journalist from the Los Angeles Times put t
he question everyone wanted to ask. ‘Mr President, a report in the New York Times suggests that the money sent by His Holiness the Pope to the Vietnam flood victims has been drained away in some other direction, perhaps stolen. What’s your reaction to that?’

  The President took his time answering. He composed his features into a sad frown. These signs said he was a reasonable man, and a compassionate one. ‘First, I am of course angry that the poor and needy should have lost out yet again. It’s disgraceful. But I think the episode shows something more, something more important. As I have said before, I am a greater admirer of the Holy Father. But this episode, like others in the recent past, merely confirms that the world is a complicated place. It’s full of people you cannot trust. Governments you cannot trust, bureaucrats you cannot trust – in Great Britain they have discovered royal advisors you cannot trust,’ he added with a snort. ‘Many of us were against the Pope’s plan to send money to Vietnam in the first place. He disregarded our views and went ahead. Now the plan has backfired, just like some of his other plans have backfired. I think this merely shows that attempts to eliminate poverty in the world, to move forward to peace, if these efforts are to succeed at all, they should be undertaken by legitimate world leaders backed up by the careful research that can only be provided by a professional diplomatic corps. I guess the Holy Father, for all his undoubted virtues, is meddling in things he knows little about. He’s an amateur. A rich amateur, maybe. But an amateur nevertheless.’

  The press love rivals – and who better than two of the most powerful men in the world? Roskill’s words bore on the presidential race, too. Though there were those in America who agreed with him about the Vietnam episode, most Americans reckoned he was playing with fire, taking on the Pope so publicly this close to an election.