Vatican Vendetta: A thrilling battle of power and politics

by Peter Watson

  ‘Pressure from the President, I see,’ said David, bending down and kissing Bess. It was the Saturday after Roskill’s press conference, and David had arrived in Rome for his first weekend with her since Sicily. He planned another stint in the Vatican Archives. ‘How’s Thomas taking it?’ As usual they met at Gina’s in the Via dei Banchi Vecchi. He waved to Gina and ordered a whisky.

  Bess shrugged. ‘He’s okay. You can’t win them all, David, and the balance sheet is better than you might think. We’ve had our setbacks here in Rome, in Vietnam and in Northern Ireland, but our plans are a great success in South America, where Thomas is now regarded as a saint, in Sicily, in the Pacific, in Eastern Europe. And it’s a draw in Central American and Beirut. That’s not so bad – a better score than the foreign policies of America or Britain can claim, anyway.’

  ‘You don’t think Thomas is beginning to lose the propaganda war? Roskill seems to be gaining more attention.’

  ‘Our standing rises and falls, David. My office can have some effect but it’s limited by what the Holy Father wishes to do. We had a setback in Vietnam – fair enough, we acknowledge that. But when the China trip comes off, Thomas will be hugely popular all over again.’

  ‘What about here in Rome? There isn’t a fund meeting for another month. What do you hear?’

  ‘Your report stirred up everyone, as you must know. And, indirectly, exposed the Massoni/Banque Leman link. But Thomas cannot fire Massoni, since he doesn’t really have a proper job any more. He could appoint him to a far-off post but Massoni would just refuse to go. But at least I hear that Banque Leman is to be replaced as soon as possible. Of course, that’ll be front page news, too, when it gets out.’

  ‘And the fund?’

  ‘Thomas is determined not to lose momentum – there’s so much to do – so for this year he’s making up the short-fall out of capital. Now that you have found why the Fund is underperforming, he thinks the fund will build up again in this coming year. So he’s willing to top up the forty-Five million dollars dividend to the seventy-five million dollars it should have been.’

  ‘And spend it on?’

  ‘Two programmes. The first is the Invisible Vatican in the Eastern Bloc. We’ve earmarked another thirty-five million dollars for that – to pay the salaries of the secret clergy there; and for an underground newspaper, a version of the Osservatore Romano.’

  ‘Isn’t that playing with fire?

  ‘Of course! But how else can you combat communism? With diplomacy? Roskill’s wrong there. Look at what happened in Poland. The trade union movement shook them up far more than any diplomacy.’

  ‘And the other forty million dollars?’

  ‘Ah, now there I’m worried. That’s where we may be heading for trouble. Four million dollars are to go to each of ten cities around the world with deprived inner areas, where there has been racial violence or riots in the past months. Marseille in France, Amritsar in the Punjab, Bogota in Colombia, Naples, Algiers, Santiago, Liverpool, Soweto, Manila, and Detroit in the United States.’

  ‘Hmm. And Detroit is Roskill’s home town. I see what you mean.’

  Bess nodded glumly. ‘By giving Detroit this aid Thomas is not only putting it on a par with Third World cities, an insult in itself, he’s also saying that Roskill’s policies still leave his own home town in need of outside help.’

  ‘But he can’t deny that Detroit has had trouble.’

  ‘Yes, but that isn’t the point. However deserving Detroit may be, the fact of the matter is that this thing between Roskill and Thomas is getting personal.’

  *

  David drew another blank in the Secret Archive. The file on d’Oggioni was as uninteresting as that on Boltraffio. Leonardo had had a sizeable entourage, David knew, but there was only one other assistant whose name was known with any certainty. This was one Giacomo Salai, an unwholesome character, a liar and a thief who became only a third-rate artist. David decided to check Salai’s file on his next trip, but not with any real expectation of success. He returned to London.

  There he found Sam Averne back from his Long Island holiday and at first sight a changed man. He oozed friendliness, referred hardly at all to the failure of the Queen’s sale, and stayed out of the way until the first board meeting of the new season.

  But at the board meeting all was explained. At the end of it, under any other business, Averne announced that during the summer he had spent a long weekend at Newport, Rhode Island, with Mrs Isobel Miller, head of the Miller clan which owned Cleveland Ore Inc and whose collection of French Impressionist paintings was one of the best in the world outside a museum. Her late Monets alone, it was said, were worth sixty million dollars. Averne had persuaded her to sell, through Hamilton’s. Her only son had died tragically about a year before and she wanted to set up a medical foundation in his name, devoted to combatting the disease that had killed him.

  A buzz went round the boardroom but Averne held up his hand. ‘Mr Chairman, that’s not all. In August it was also my privilege to be a guest at the home of John Iridopoulous, the Greek shipping magnate. His house in Palm Beach, as you surely know, contains some of the greatest Old Master drawings in private hands. Rembrandt’s “Judas”, Tiepolo’s “Apollo”, Veronese’s silverpoint study for “Rebecca at the Well” among them. This information should go no further than this room but I guess it’s no great secret that world shipping has suffered a slump – and Iridopoulous is forced to sell.

  ‘And finally –’ The board members gasped. Averne had more? ‘– and finally, I was approached in Long Island by Gordon Flaxman, son of the late actor. The son does not share his father’s passion for art and would like to auction the pictures with us. George Flaxman did not have a large collection but he did have four jewels: Turner’s watercolour of Westminster Bridge, a Monet view of the same subject, one of Van Gogh’s views of the bridge at Aries – it seems Flaxman had a thing about bridges – and a Cezanne watercolour, a self portrait. Mr Chairman, I have asked the relevant expert departments and, all together, I estimate that these three collections should bring in at least one hundred and twenty-eight million dollars. The commission on each sale will be the full ten per cent so it’s easy for the board to work out our share.’

  He sat back smiling as an appreciative buzz broke out. The Earl of Afton brought the meeting to order. ‘Sam, that’s wonderful news, especially at this moment, when we’re still recovering from the Queen’s decision not to sell her paintings. We must announce this at once. The board is in your debt – you may be sure of that.’ He paused. Discreet applause broke out. Afton nodded. ‘Well, I think that closes the meeting. Until next month.’

  Afton and David walked back to their offices together. ‘Come in a second, David, please,’ said the chairman as they reached his door. He closed it behind them and they both sat down. ‘Well, what do you make of that?’ he asked, fishing out a cigar.

  ‘It’s wonderful news,’ said David ungrudgingly. ‘Great news. Sam’s hardly had time to get brown this summer. He was working too hard.’

  ‘He wants your job.’

  ‘I know. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Do? I’m not going to do anything. Sam can’t run this company as well as I can, you know that. Just because he’s found three collections doesn’t mean he should automatically take over. God, how quickly people forget. Just because the royal sale didn’t come off, and through no fault of mine, I’m suddenly under threat. I thought that at least I might count on you.’

  ‘David!’ the Earl said gently. ‘You will always have my support. But there is a reason why I asked you in here today. Look at me.’

  David stared at the Earl.

  ‘Notice anything?’

  ‘No. No. Should I?’

  ‘Hmm. I’m losing weight. It’ll start to show soon. I’m ill, my boy. At my age you can guess what’s wrong. You’re the first to know, naturally, just as you’re the first to hear what I’m going to s
ay now. I shall resign at the end of the year. I plan to announce it at next month’s board meeting.’

  ‘Oh no! I’m so sorry –’

  ‘Don’t be. I’ve had a good run for my money. I’d have told you first anyway, of course, but I mightn’t have told you today if it hadn’t been for Sam’s little show in there.’

  ‘Why? What difference does that make?’

  ‘Look, David, Averne wants more than your job. He wants to transfer the main activity of Hamilton’s to New York. With me out of the way your position on the board is much weaker. You have your enemies there and Sam is their leader. Once they find out I’m going they’ll hang on and bide their time until the new year. Therefore, my advice to you is to provoke a boardroom battle with Averne now, something you can win on. But you have to get to him before or at the next board meeting. If you beat him, then I can announce my resignation and make a recommendation that you be chairman as well as chief executive. That would settle things. But you have to find an issue and find it quickly.’

  David went back to his office, his mind in a whirl. The Earl was asking a lot, expecting him to come up with a plan in so short a time. David had no doubt, though, that Afton’s analysis of Averne’s intentions, and his strength, was accurate. He stood at his office window and looked at the October day outside. He had often worried about Ned’s career. But until now he had never really worried about his own.

  *

  Bess was right about the reaction to Thomas’s plan in Detroit. Far from welcoming the Holy Father’s gift, many people in the city were angry at having their city lumped in with ‘Third World Dumps’, as one newspaper called them. It didn’t help that anti-Detroit jokes increased on American television. The baseball team, for instance, was derisively entered for the ‘Third World Series’ and so on. The city’s pride was easily injured.

  But the Americans were not the only ones incensed. The Russians, stung by the thirty-five million dollars earmarked for the Invisible Vatican in Hungary and other Iron Curtain countries, issued a statement through Pravda which, strangely, echoed Roskill’s earlier remarks. It accused the Pope of amateur meddling in world affairs, in the internal politics of other countries, and described him as irresponsible and subversive.

  That, of course, only gained Thomas more support in the west. Two days later, however, a further announcement was made through Pravda headed: ‘Subversive cardinal killed, resisting arrest.’ It read: ‘Hungarian police this morning tried to arrest Constantin Kharkov, aged 61, near Kaposvar, a hundred miles south of Budapest. A religious fanatic and subversive, Kharkov is understood to be the secret cardinal created by Pope Thomas to lead the underground church in Hungary.

  ‘Kharkov was discovered at five a.m., sleeping in the basement of a school on the outskirts of Kaposvar. He resisted the arresting officer, and tried to flee. He was injured in the abdomen and died soon after his arrival in hospital.

  ‘The shooting comes after weeks of civil disobedience in the region, where Sunday strikes have been common, schools have been used as illegal meeting places, and tuition in schools has been tampered with.’

  By a sad irony, the news of Kharkov’s murder increased the Holy Father’s prestige around the world. Religious movements in the Soviet Bloc wouldn’t stop because one of their leaders had been killed and in fact his death only served to show how seriously the authorities in Budapest and Moscow took the threat he represented. In many people’s eyes the Church, the Catholic Church of Rome, was the only power on earth doing anything about the evil of communism.

  Thomas himself, however, was distressed. Kharkov had not been a close friend but the two men had met several times and the Holy Father had developed an enormous respect for him. How his identity had been discovered was a mystery. A special mass was held for the dead cardinal in St Peter’s.

  Thomas then announced that a clear line of authority had been established when the underground movement had first been set up. This very danger had been foreseen, and so the leadership of the Invisible Vatican now automatically passed to the next in line, as did the ‘in petto’ title of Cardinal. This was a new imaginative touch – a cardinalate given to the position, not to the man – and it was popular, too.

  The following weekend, as part of his campaigning in the presidential race, Roskill went home to Detroit. On the Sunday night he was to address a mass meeting of party faithful in the open air at the football stadium. His staff let it be known in advance that he would use the opportunity to make a major speech, a speech which might change the course of the campaign. In consequence all the networks were there and most of the serious foreign press.

  It was a warm night, unseasonally so, with a soft breeze that carried the tang of the lake with it. For an hour, from seven to eight, the arriving crowd was entertained by some of Roskill’s friends from showbiz – singers, comedians, actors and actresses who gave fund-raising homilies. There were no jokes about the Third World.

  Just after eight the lights of the stadium were dimmed. A solitary bright beam came one, highlighting the lectern on the stage. The crowd hushed. Then a loud but disembodied voice came over the speaker system: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States of America . . . born and raised in Detroit . . . James Roskill.’

  As the last two words were spoken Roskill himself stepped quietly out of the shadow and into the light. This was a local boy back among his friends. Back home and no different, an ordinary American, no less unassuming than when he went away to become President. Cheering broke out spontaneously and swelled. Roskill raised both arms to acknowledge the ovation. The lights came back on and as he turned to face each section of the crowd a louder cheer swept in a slow wave around the stadium.

  The cheering lasted for close on four minutes. Then, as Roskill shuffled his papers and the lights around the stadium went down again, the noise subsided. Roskill took out his spectacles and put them on. The noise died away completely.

  He didn’t speak. Roskill knew exactly the value of keeping his listeners waiting. Then he folded the papers in front of him and put them away. This was to be no set speech, dry and careful. He showed that in his very first words.

  ‘It’s damn good to be back. I’d forgotten what the lake smelled like.’ He paused. ‘Despite all the knocking some folks give it, I like Detroit!’ Cheering filled the stadium again. This was going to be one of Roskill’s combative speeches. This is what his audience liked, what they had come to hear. He let the noise die away completely before leaning forward again to speak into the microphone.

  ‘We meet tonight four million dollars richer. Four million. Four million to be spent in the city helping the victims of the recent racial troubles and those who live in poor areas. Now I’m a practical politician and I’m not dumb enough to look a gift horse in the mouth. Four million dollars is four million dollars. Provided it gets spent to benefit the public and isn’t skimmed off into some very private pockets, then I say to the Holy Father, thank you. Thank you very much.

  ‘But, like you friends here tonight, I am from Detroit. Like you I love this city and I’m somewhat puzzled by the Pope’s gestures. I’m surprised that we come so high up on his list of relief priorities. Until now I hadn’t thought of us as one of the world’s major problem areas. Yes, we have our local difficulties – who doesn’t? But, I must confess, I did not think of us as the Manila of Michigan, or the Amritsar of America. And nor did you my friends, I’ll bet. I had never imagined Bogota as one of the great industrial foundries of the world, as Detroit is . . . Like you, to me it came as a bit of a shock. A great shock! I had never imagined that, in the midst of America, in the midst of plenty, there was this desert called Detroit. I had never imagined us as the Vatican’s poor relation . . . And so, before coming here tonight, I did some research. I wanted to find out just how beat-up Detroit is, how badly it compares with other cities. And I needed, of course, somewhere to compare it with. Somewhere that doesn’t merit the Holy Father’s attention as this city does . . .
So my friends, which city did I choose? I chose Rome.’

  Roskill paused, knowing that a murmur of interest would rustle round the stadium. Then he went on. ‘What did I find? Let me treat you to some figures, some official statistics. Let’s start with unemployment, everyone makes so much of that these days. In Detroit unemployment is running at nine per cent. That’s too high, but what is it in Rome? In Rome, friends, it’s eleven per cent. Now let’s ask about child mortality, since that’s supposed to be a guide as to how healthy a society is. Here in Detroit child mortality runs at about nine deaths per thousand population, as against eleven per thousand in the US as a whole. But what’s the figure for Rome? Eighteen, my friends, eighteen. Double what it is here.

  ‘Now let’s ask about standard of living. In Detroit ninety-five per cent of people have telephones – and in Rome the figure, friends, is seventy per cent.

  ‘There’s more, so keep listening, keep listening good, as my mother used to say. The number of doctors in Detroit is forty-seven per one hundred thousand people. In Rome? Twenty-seven. In Detroit the number of children in care, because their parents are for some reason unfit to look after them, is two per one hundred thousand of the population. In Rome? Seven.

  ‘Now let’s look at crime. Burglaries in Detroit ran last year at about thirty-seven per one hundred thousand of the population. The figure in Rome? Fifty-three. Crimes of violence in Detroit rose last year by four per cent; in Rome they rose by seven per cent, nearly double.

  ‘Finally, I can tell you friends that we, here in Detroit, spend one hundred and nineteen dollars and fifty cents each per year on welfare, helping out the less fortunate people of the city. What do they spend in Rome? Not even fifty dollars a head, friends. The official figure in Rome is forty-six dollars exactly.’

  Roskill’s figures were biased, of course. He had chosen only those which showed Detroit to advantage. He had mentioned for example only the rise in crimes of violence, not the absolute levels, which were much higher in Detroit than in Rome. He had mentioned nothing that showed the extent of racial discrimination in Detroit. But it was the emotion of the speech that interested the crowd, not the facts.