The Order (Gabriel Allon #20) - Daniel Silva Page 0,107
there was his decision to reside not in the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace but in an unadorned suite in the Casa Santa Marta. His first Angelus, delivered to an audience of some two hundred thousand pilgrims crammed into St. Peter’s Square, left little doubt he intended to guide the Church in a new direction.
But who was this man who now occupied the throne of St. Peter? And what were the circumstances of his shocking and historic election? The author of the Vanity Fair article hopscotched from network to network, describing the magnetic archbishop she had christened “Luscious Luigi.” Several profiles explored his Jesuit roots and the period during which he served as a missionary in war-torn El Salvador. It was widely assumed, though never proven, that as a young priest he had been a supporter of the controversial doctrine known as liberation theology. This did not endear him to certain segments of the American political right. Indeed, one conservative referred to him as Pope Che Guevara. Another wondered whether the flooding in Venice, where he had worked for several years, might be a sign of God’s displeasure in the conclave’s choice.
Bound by their vows of secrecy, the cardinal-electors refused to discuss what had transpired inside the Sistine Chapel. Even Alessandro Ricci, the dogged investigative reporter from La Repubblica, appeared unable to penetrate the conclave’s armor. Instead, he published a lengthy article on the links between the European far right and the Order of St. Helena, the reactionary Catholic fraternity about which he had written a best-selling book. Three of the figures implicated in the false-flag bombings in Germany—Jonas Wolf, Andreas Estermann, and Axel Brünner—were alleged to be secret members of the Order. So, too, were Austrian chancellor Jörg Kaufmann and Italian prime minister Giuseppe Saviano.
Kaufmann immediately denied the report. He was forced to issue a clarification when La Repubblica published a photograph from his wedding, which was officiated by the Order’s superior general, Bishop Hans Richter. For his part, Saviano brazenly dismissed the story as “fake news” and called upon Italian prosecutors to file charges of treason against its author. Informed that no such offense had been committed, he issued a tweet calling on his thuggish soccer-hooligan supporters to teach Ricci a lesson he would not soon forget. After receiving hundreds of death threats, the journalist fled his apartment in Trastevere and went into hiding.
Bishop Richter, secluded at the Order’s medieval priory in Canton Zug, refused to comment on the story. Nor did he issue a statement when lawyers in New York filed a class action suit in federal court, accusing the Order of extorting money and valuables from desperate Jews during the late 1930s in exchange for promises of false baptismal certificates and protection from the Nazis. The lead plaintiff in the case was Isabel Feldman, the only surviving child of Samuel Feldman. In a sparsely attended news conference in Vienna, she unveiled a painting—a river landscape by the Dutch Old Master Jan van Goyen—that her father had turned over to the Order in 1938. The canvas, which had been removed from its stretcher, had been returned to her by the noted Holocaust investigator Eli Lavon, whose schedule did not permit him to attend the press briefing.
The exact circumstances of the painting’s recovery were not made public, which gave rise to much unfounded speculation in the Austrian press. A website that regularly trafficked in false or misleading stories went so far as to accuse Lavon of being an Israeli agent. The story happened to be accurate, thus proving Rabbi Jacob Zolli’s contention that the unimaginable can happen. Normally, Gabriel would not have bothered with a response. But given the current climate of anti-Semitism in Europe—and the ever-present threat of violence hanging over Austria’s tiny Jewish minority—he thought it best to issue a denial through the Israeli Embassy in Vienna.
He was less inclined, however, to repudiate a British tabloid report regarding his presence in the Sistine Chapel on the night of the historic conclave, if only to annoy the Russians and the Iranians, who were rightly paranoid about his capabilities and reach. But when the story jumped from publication to publication like a contagion, he reluctantly instructed the prime minister’s irascible spokeswoman to dismiss it as “preposterous on its face.” The statement was a classic example of a nondenial denial. And with good reason. Numerous Vatican insiders, including the new supreme pontiff and the 116 cardinals who elected him, knew the story to be true.