An Inside Job with Daniel Silva

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1:04Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk to some of the brightest minds about everything surrounding the written word. That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Before we dive in, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad, I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. And I can take the hits. So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Now let's get into it.

1:47Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci, and this is my favorite time of the year, but it's also my favorite author. I do have to confess this, so other authors out there, please don't be mad at me. But Daniel Silva, who I have read for probably 15 years, one of the greatest American spy novelists ever. And he's a returning guest and a great friend of mine and a friend of this show. And the title of the book is an inside job. And it is a great title apropos to what's going on in this book, Daniel. So you are my favorite. it's the best way to start the summer is to read about my favorite protagonist, Gabriel Alon.

2:29And you can say whatever you want, Mr. Silva. I know you are. I know you are Gabriel Alon. I know that's how you think, how you live. But tell me what we're doing this summer. Why do you think readers? Because he's older now. He's lost a step. He's got a little bit of a pouchy midsection, which unfortunately I can relate to and empathize with, why is he still connecting with readers so deeply? Well, first of all, the guy doesn't have one ounce of fat on his body. He's a slender, slim, incredibly fit. Okay, let me rephrase. You describe him as a little slower. You describe him as a little slower when he's in a situation, a little older.

3:18Well, let me go back to the beginning. We'll go to the origin story. You know, when I when I created him, he was never supposed to be a continuing character. OK, he was supposed to appear in in one book and one book only. And he was completely age appropriate for for that novel. and he was someone who had done a number of very high profile important operations for Israeli intelligence, lost his family to a car bombing in Vienna and left the service and was out and was just living basically as a recluse and working privately as an art restorer. And that's the character I created. Pretty good character.

4:09And my publisher at the time talked me into writing another one. And I say I was opposed to it. I did not think it was a good idea. I did not think that someone who was Israeli or even Jewish was going to work as a truly mass market character. I was concerned that there was too much anti-Israeli sentiment in the world and frankly too much anti-semitism and i actually resisted um and my publisher at the time said you're wrong write another one and i i had a book ready to go and it involved um um the conduct of the swiss banks um during the second world war and actually Gabriel was a perfect fit for it i plugged him in there that book did better um and then i wrote my third book um which was it was a vatican thriller um it seems crazy to think it now but when i first conceived the novel gabriel was not supposed to be in it i turned it into a gabriel lawn book and at that point i realized that i had a series um and i until recently i let this series progress basically in sync with the real calendar okay maybe maybe it's slightly off um and so yeah he he is older now um i love him and i've changed the stories as a result you know i don't want to pretend that that that he's still you know 40 or 45 years old and doing these things although he's still a dangerous guy and you wouldn't want to mess with him.

5:50But also it's just the, it's frankly, the way he is now was the way I always wanted him to be. And I was pressed and pressured and advised and counseled to make him a very violent, tough guy. You know, the whole tough guy thing was really working at that time. And a part of me regrets that because this is the way, this is who he really is. So he is, he is, multilingual. His grandfather was one of the great German expressionist paintings. His mother was a very prominent painter. So he, as I write of him in this book, he's born with a paintbrush in his hand. He was born in Israel, but his first language is German.

6:37So he speaks German, Hebrew, uh italian french and he speaks perfect perfect english uh so he's a he's incredibly brilliant guy um he as i point out in this novel as well he never finished his any has no formal education because his education was interrupted by by war and terror um but he's a very erudite um amazing individual um with a unique skill set um and and i have tailored the stories now um to to to to fit a character like that he's he's he's more robert langdon and a little less you know jason born and jack reacher yeah but i mean i love i mean listen i first of all i learn something every summer.

7:29I've learned about the Vatican, my church. Obviously, as you and I both talked about, I'm a practicing Catholic. I've learned about your prediction skills. I do know you're a little bit of a mystic. You're able to see into the future and portend some of the things that are going to happen to us, whether they're acts of terrorism or strategic alliances that are happening in the world, wars that are about to take place. Let's go to the novel. It kicks off in Venice where with Gabriel, he's restoring an altarpiece. Why that city? The Titian altarpiece, I should say. Why that city? Why that painting?

8:09What drew you to the story there? Well, Venice is where we sort of met Gabriel. That's where he was living early on in the series. um it's where he trained as as um as an art restorer it's where he served as a his apprenticeship um he is um by popular acclaim by universal acclaim he is he is the greatest restorer of italian renaissance paintings in the world um so he lives in venice uh he and his wife um um run a the most prominent restoration uh firm in venice uh they are they are taking care of all those uh those catholic churches there and all the art inside them and they are doing big restoration projects of of of all the churches and buildings and and art in venice so they're a very prominent couple in venice um and yeah so we um we meet him in this novel he's working on one of the titians in the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute.

9:24That's that gorgeous basilica that you see. It stands right near the mouth of the Grand Canal on the Dossaduro side of the canal. One of the stunning landmarks of Venice. And, you know, during his mid-morning coffee break one day, he goes out to the end of the point there, and he's looking across the water towards Montiori, and he thinks he sees something out there. And he asks a water taxi driver to take him out there. And what he discovers is a badly decomposed body of a young woman. And we're off to the races. And the Italian police ask for his help in the investigation, not to be too too graphic here but the corpse is badly decomposed and they need to produce a forensic sketch and we see a new skill set that Gabriel has his ability to to produce a forensic sketch which is a a something that's just always fascinated me you know trying to either turn a skull or or badly decomposed human remains into something that we can use to help identify a decedent.

10:49And we see that he's able to do this. And one thing leads to another. And he's on the trail of a long lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved its relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EbGliss, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

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12:05When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets Mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. You think there's one out there? Do you think that there is a long-lost Leonardo somewhere that we have? You know, this is something that I went into before I even started working on the novel with my contacts and my people inside the art world.

12:51um and the short answer is i would say there probably are um a handful of of paintings that you know we do not have complete documentation of that very very busy studio of his we don't know every single painting that was made um and and where every painting went um And so I researched it with my people and people who have worked on Leonardo's before and who are Leonardo experts. There's a difference of opinion out there, but I say that there's a distinct possibility that there are a handful of Leonardo oils still to be found. So what is a Leonardo though? Okay, that's the next question you have to ask yourself.

13:44Is a painting that's a product of his studio that other assistants worked on, and maybe he put some finishing touches on that. Is that a Leonardo? I say it is. There's a painting that he might have supervised. I say it is. And so what I did is I turned one of my favorite Leonardo sketches, one of my very favorite Leonardo sketches, it's regarded as one of the greatest sketches ever made by art historians. It's a sketch called Head of a Young Woman is what we call it now. But it was a preparatory sketch that he made. It's one of the most beautiful sketches ever made. And he used this unknown, probably Milanese young girl as the prototype, as the model for the archangel Gabriel in a painting called Virgin of the Rocks.

14:45I think I always thought, my goodness, he should have painted her the way he painted, he drew that sketch. Look how few strokes of his silver point pen he used to make that. Look at the penetration of character. Look at that, the perfection of that image. Just one of my favorite paintings of all time. So, the Salvador Mundi. Yep. Which, just a reminder. Here we go. are going to get into some trouble. Let's have this conversation because it is tied in because this makes the book so fascinating because you're on the trail of the past, but what makes the book so fascinating, you're on the trail of the past to apex geniuses.

15:33Da Vinci to me is an apex genius. Newton, Isaac Newton is an apex genius. And there are some people in the Western world over the 5 ,000 years of our recorded history that would literally realm in any time. They would be the leaders of their time. And so that's what makes it so fascinating. You're on this trail. So let's talk about the Salvador Monday for a second. For those people listening in that may not know it, the Salvador Monday was discovered in Louisiana. It was brought to a few restorers, and some of them drew the conclusion that it was a da Vinci and some, I guess it was a woman - I think it was brought to one.

16:13It was... The woman, right? There was a woman. Diane Modestini, yeah. A very prominent restorer. And so they found the painting, and I think they paid$1 ,100 for it from this auction house in New Orleans. um and it you know not to go too deep in the weeds but you know we know how to restore paintings now for for centuries though they were subjected to barbarous restorations or what i would call them repaintings um this thing was covered with layer upon layer upon layer of of overpaint as we call it um and diane um stripped it as we say she took all that stuff off all the dirty varnish and all of the overpaint and she says oh my goodness um you know move the thumb right what made her think that it was all there were there were two thumbs uh on the blessing hand as we call it um and there were which suggests that um if you look at um if you were to be able to look under one of my favorite paintings um uh the deposition of christ by caravaggio at the at the vatican i don't know if you've been to the vatican museums under jesus's the hand that we see i think there are about four or five other hands down there where caravaggio keeps moving it around and so So pentimenti like that is suggestive of an original work, not a copy.

18:03If you're just copying something, you're not going to be making changes like that. And so that thumb is suggestive of... I have hedge fund managers that were thinking about bidding on it, and they were worried that it wasn't real. They didn't say that it wasn't real. They just were worried that it wasn't. was inclusive to them was a conclusive to you is the salvador monday real um you know i'm going to leave that to uh people who know a lot more about it than i do um i i have um i've come to the conclusion that um that it is it is at a bare minimum a studio work uh that came out of of Leonardo's studio.

18:50Um, I know someone who was involved in that whole process, who was looking at that thing under microscopes and everything else. And, and it is, is convinced that, that, that he can, can see the brushwork of Leonardo in there. Um, I'm not going to, uh, you know, I'll leave that to, to people who I'm not. I find it fascinating. Yeah. I find it fascinating. There were some issues with it. out. What makes your book so great, and I think it's important for me to tell people why you are my favorite spy novelist, and what makes your book so great is you're not just a spy novelist, you're an art historian, you're a travelogue, you're a beta curse, frankly.

19:37I feel like I know restaurants that you've been to. I know places in Cornwall. I know places in Venice. I know restaurants in Washington, some of which you've blown up, that I have frequented. But I want to go to the Vatican for a second. Sure. So, because I'm trying to talk to you in a way, Daniel, where I'm not trying to give away too much of the plot. Oh. Because I want to talk about our guy. He's super tough. He's very charismatic. He's good looking. He's got a young wife. He's had tragedy in his life. He's a Renaissance man. He knows his wine. He knows his art. But he also knows how to beat the daylights out of somebody and be an assassin if necessary.

20:24But you pick things for a reason. So story set in Venice, you've explained that. You've talked about what we're looking for, which is fascinating because that's part of our world right now. We found one and obviously the crown prince owns it. But why the Vatican? Why put the Vatican in this story? and by the way and by the way once again mr silva yeah the vatican becomes a huge important part of 2025 yes because we got a new pope you took the vatican before that happens boom here we are why the vatican um well as as the fans of the of the series know i mean you know there there are subsets to the Gabriel books.

21:06There's a Russian subset of novels. There are art subsets, but one of the most important subsets of the novels are the Vatican thrillers. And as I said a moment ago, Gabriel first encountered the Vatican in a book called The Confessor. is one of my, I think, one of the best entries in the series. And he formed an incredible friendship with a man named Luigi Donati. At that time, he was the private secretary to the fictitious Pope Paul VII. And now Luigi Donati is the Pope. And so there are a number of for the books have been set at the Vatican, and Gabriel has worked as an art restorer for the Vatican.

22:02And that's why he's on a first-name basis with everyone at the museum in this novel. He has restored numerous paintings for the Vatican, including the aforementioned Deposition of Christ by Carabaggio. He's a, as we say at the Vatican, he's a man of trust. He walks through St. Anne gate into the palace without two bronze doors, without anyone checking. And for me, it's a guilty pleasure because I'm fascinated by the Vatican. I love writing books about the Vatican.

22:41And I think this one might be my favorite one yet in terms of the, because there is a, yes, He is trying to track down this missing and stolen Leonardo. But it's also a story about sort of what was going on inside the Vatican during the papacy of the previous pope. and just the war inside the Vatican between Pope Francis, the reformer, who wanted to clean up the financial mess, and the old guard, who didn't want him doing that sort of thing. You know, the Vatican. Yeah. And I love my church. Obviously, you know, there's an expression in Italian, which I'll translate it fine. So do I, by the way.

23:35So do I. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. Now, has my church has its problems? had there been scandals. There's been obviously the sex issues, which has hurt the church and in many ways weakened the church, but there's also been some corruption inside the Vatican. And so the corruption that you're detailing, and again, I don't want to go into it, I don't want to ruin the plot, but the corruption that you're detailing in the Vatican, how much of it is rooted in actual events? In my story? Yeah. It is, as I say in the author's note. It's not quite a Romanocle, but it was inspired by the scandal involving Cardinal Becciu, who was one of, he was the sustituto.

24:22So he's the third most powerful prelate in the Roman Catholic Church for a time. And he got involved in a massive financial scandal involving this terrible investment in a commercial office building in London. And Francis made an example of him, and he's the first cardinal in history of the church to be tried before a Vatican tribunal. He was convicted of embezzlement and fraud. And it was quite a scandal. And so I drew from that and mixed it in with my art caper. But I was inspired by that scandal. And many before it, it must be said. I mean, that was just the most recent one. And I think that much of the Vatican's woes when it comes to the financial scandals and the Vatican Bank, I'll go back to Pope Paul's decision to hire and ask his friend Michele Sindona to be the Vatican's financial advisor.

25:36That's not the guy you wanted to be. You know who he is. Yeah, of course. With his record here in the United States. That's to me that's where it all stems from. Those that are anti-Catholic and those that are, you know, it hurt the church. Let's go to a fascinating detail in this book. and this is about Mussolini's 1929 payment to the church yeah yeah so why was that piece of history important to you and important to the story well but we have to go back further okay so you know um unlike you and i a lot of people don't realize that that um until the late 19th century there's no such thing as a place called italy okay it was a collection of the duchies and principalities and republics and then that it we created a country but one of the most the largest and most important um little independent statelets in the italian peninsula were the papal states big hunk of of of central italy um was controlled by by the church and and and the pope um and that land and those estates produced a lot of income for the church okay that's um just like any like a let's say you know someone who owns a big chunk of land in in in england okay the rents and the everything that's where the church made a lot of money so when Italy was created through war and conquest.

27:24The church lost the papal states. And with it, all of that income. And from the 19th, you know, from the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century, you know, the Vatican did not have a lot of money. and so when Mussolini we had the Lateran Treaty you know that that is the sort of the origin of of the Vatican's modern wealth was when they got a big cash payout and they brought in a financial advisor and and the Vatican became in effect an international holding company it bought huge stakes invested huge stakes uh mainly in in in uh the Italian economy may had controlling stakes in many of Italy's largest companies.

28:14And then as the decades went by, began investing abroad. And so we learned in the last couple of years, you know, exactly how much real estate, for example, the Vatican controls. And it's a great deal of real estate in Europe. So I see the Vatican as the church, but it also feels like a global corporation. I mean, in the book, it... Well, it's multiple things. It is a sovereign country. The Pope is an absolute monarch. The Secretary of State is something like the foreign minister and prime minister of the church. So it has embassies around the world. So it has a government like any other little mini.

29:05It's a very small state, but it has a government and embassies around the world. And so, yes, it's a religion, but it also acts in world events as a nation state. So, again, we have the church. We have arguably one of the most famous artists. And, you know, when we think of the word Renaissance man, I mean, you got to think of Da Vinci, Michelangelo, others, but Da Vinci is really the guy. And we have this brilliant former Mossad agent. And you've got murder, corruption, history. It's all blended in here. Love the book. I'm going to tie it up with the five words. And you may remember this from other times you've done this with me.

29:56My producer and I picked out five words. And we'd like you to give us the Rorschach test. a few words about it a sentence i'm going to say the word vatican what comes to mind you say what um you know i have spent a lot of time at the vatican i love the vatican um i was able to spend several days in close proximity to pope benedict when i was working on a book i i love the place i really revered the place and i have been all through it and inside that inside the restoration labs and and and at the museums and so i am utterly fascinated by the place by the faith by the history of the church um the good and the bad and i just love every second that i spend at the vatican okay power think about power power yeah say the word power you say what

31:03you know i i um

31:08i i'm just like i'm i'm liking that word less and less and less to be honest with you yeah i hear the word corruption unfortunately when i i hear the word power i that's what i I think of Lord Acton, sir. I think power, corruption. And I don't know if you, we didn't get a chance to discuss the Pope in this novel, Pope Donati. And I don't know if you got a chance to read the sermon that he delivers in Palermo.

31:45And that is the, set aside everything else. That's the most important moment of the book and why I'm so pleased. Why I personally, which, you know, Francis was not a perfect person. He was not a perfect Pope, but gosh, did we need him. And he was an important, important Pope. And we have someone in the Francis mold in Leo, I hope. and when I hear the word power right now, I guess that my first thoughts goes to the powerless. That's where I am right now. It's interesting and I'm going to bring this up. You could react. I think we have an American Pope because the Vatican, and by the way, he's a great guy.

32:36And I had the opportunity to meet him when we were restoring St. Patrick's Cathedral. King Langone had him in town with Cardinal Dolan, and we spent a lot of money. Us New York Catholics spent a lot of money restoring the cathedral. But he's a great guy, and he's now Leo, the 14th, but we were calling him Father Bob back then. And he's a great guy. but I think we have him because the Vatican's hurting. And the Vatican knows that the dough, the Catholic dough is in the US. We have a poor clergy. If you look at the 2 billion Catholics and you look at where they are around the world, it's an indigent population.

33:23And Vatican has a little bit of a short foregone, could be from the sexual scandal payments, other things. And I think Father... It was going to be a prolific fundraiser for them. Sorry, what were you going to say, Dan? The Vatican very skillfully siloed itself off from that scandal. It drew a firewall and kept it. The payouts were made at the diocesan level, and that's why we bankrupted so many American dioceses, as well as other dioceses around the world. so yeah there were there were huge huge payouts but um you know the vatican took steps to protect um but sort of the core holdings of the church in my opinion yeah listen to the church's gonna this is a long after we're gone you and me my friend the church is gonna be here you know the church the people i hope so well i i believe well i'm a catholic i believe that let's go to the word art i say the word art you say what uh gosh i i'm just one of those people that just gets weak in the knees in front of art um if you could see behind me all the art books um you know i'm very lucky um that that my life revolves around around my own writing um great books um great art and and great music um it's just so important um and uh um i can't i i'm at a loss for words how much art means to me and how important art is and it's it's it should be more than than just a uh fungible asset it should be more than just an asset class i know a lot of people are put tons of money into art and they and they do it for investment reasons um i wish it were all in public display and not locked in the geneva throughput this is so interesting you know when i when i hear the word art i think of eternal i think this is the expression from human beings the chip of creativity that's going to outlast all of us well we see so you know we see gabriel you know he's standing atop this platform restoring the titian and he's actually talking to Titian, you know, because he's right in there with Titian's original breaststrokes.

35:50Imagine that, putting it on your, you know. There you go. And there'll be somebody after Gabriel, 2145, you know, 21, 2235, it'll be doing something similar. There's a conversation being threaded over the millennial through our art. What about the word Daniel Silva? when I say the words Daniel Silva? Oh, gosh. You know, as I can start to see

36:28the end of my career and thinking more and more what I'm going to leave behind. You know, yes, I write spy novels. I mean, this is not a spy novel by any means. It's a mystery. It's actually sort of a novel, to be honest with you, more than anything else. um and um i guess what i hope people will remember about me is um in my books is that they um they aren't about pure power and about um um you know bad guys shooting up the place that uh i i hope that people will understand um um the what uh my kindness and my humanity as a writer okay yes i do write popular fiction uh yes i do write commercial fiction uh but there's a message in in all my books and they're they're much more than that and i hope that um when i when i'm pause up as i like to say that But that's what I'll be remembered for.