I, you know what I, um,

A few years ago, you know, I allowed my character to retire from his position at the Israeli Secret Service.

And I have, you know, used that sort of.

Not to use a cliche, but I turned a page with the character.

And I retired him and I settled him in Venice.

Readers of the series knows that his cover job for years and years was that he was an art restorer.

a very good art restorer, one of the best in the world.

If Gabriel Alon is an Israeli agent, with what is going on in the Middle East now, are you writing anything differently since the conflict over there?

I, you know what I, um,

A few years ago, you know, I allowed my character to retire from his position at the Israeli Secret Service.

And I have, you know, used that sort of.

Not to use a cliche, but I turned a page with the character.

And I retired him and I settled him in Venice.

Readers of the series knows that his cover job for years and years was that he was an art restorer.

a very good art restorer, but you know, one of the best in the world.

If Gabriel Alon is an Israeli agent, with what is going on in the Middle East now, are you writing anything differently since the conflict over there?

I, you know what I, um,

A few years ago, you know, I allowed my character to retire from his position at the Israeli Secret Service.

And I have, you know, used that sort of.

Not to use a cliche, but I turned a page with the character.

And I retired him and I settled him in Venice.

Readers of the series knows that his cover job for years and years was that he was an art restorer.

A very good art restorer.

If Gabriel Alon is an Israeli agent, with what is going on in the Middle East now, are you writing anything differently since the conflict over there?

How did this story even come to you?

I I start with broad brushes.

OK, so I finished an inside job, which was it was a. Gabriel tracked down a missing Leonardo.

And I was like, okay, so, you know, what's next? What's next? And I, my wife is my is my primary editor and this, I said, we have a shorthand, you know, we can, I said, this is what I'm thinking about.

I think it's time for this kind of story.

Um, and this is what, how I want to do it.

And, and I, I, we could shorthand a novel and honestly we could plot a novel in about five minutes, just bouncing it back and forth and, and, um, with, with, with her.

oh my god and and the way that you bring words together even while you speak it's so amazing do you believe in stream thinking in the way of using the subconscious mind as your guide and how did you learn how to trust it

Sure.

You know, the KGB is, uh, uh, the SVR, um, is, is the equivalent of the CIA now.

During Soviet times, it was a, almost a, a, its own separate state in a way, and it had border functions, internal security functions.

Uh, it had...

I, I forget how many directorates there were of the old, of the old KGB.

But now the new SVR is the foreign intelligence opera- By the way, it, it does its fair share of, of, of, of, uh, wet work and other special operations.

But the- GRU, specifically Unit 29155 of the GRU, is really this, the, a sledgehammer.

W- was that on your mind when you sat down, or did that come in the course of the, just something to educate the readers about?

Mm-hmm.

The Iranians are arguably using drones to great effect as well.

This Pandora's box is now fully open.

Um, it's never gonna close again.

We're gonna have, um, you know, drones are gonna be a, a, a feature of, of warfare, and in, in the case of Russia, clandestine warfare right now.

What I would, you know, point out in the book is that, yes, they are at w- you know, at a, in a, a war of conquest in Ukraine right now.

But they are waging a clandestine war of, of sabotage and subversion against all of the countries in Western Europe right now.

... and writing before coming in here?

I hear questions people ask all the time.

But, but, no, I, no, I'm going, I'm gonna, um, and I've discovered very late in my career that it, that I really do have a process.

And I don't start with a blank page, you know, but, but, uh, and I like, I see maybe about that much by...

If, if it's an arc like this, I see 100 pages or so of, of, of what, what's going on.

And I, I get to work as quickly as I can.

I mean, typically I start the new book the day after I finish the old one, in part because I, I, I'm very uncomfortable when I'm not writing every day.

Uh, but second, it's the only way I can get the previous book out of my head, you know? I'm, I'll sit and fiddle with it till the very end.

Yeah.

Mm

...

in Cornwall, one of my favorite places in the world.

And as you point out in the introduction, he is asked to, uh, track down, um, this, uh, missing British socialite named Alice Winter, glamorous, uh, dazzling beautiful woman.

Um, and one thing leads to another, as is often the case in a Gabriel Allon book, and he finds himself drawn back into the world, um, he thought he had left behind.

It's a, it's a page-turner.

It's a work of, of high-gloss entertainment.

Yeah.

And I guess, uh, has dirty money replaced the KGB as a great antagonist for spy fiction?

[laughs] For me, it has.

Um, and, and look, my character's an art restorer.

Um, and everyone who reads my books know that the art world, the art world is almost a character in, a long, long-running character in this series.

And the art world is a wonderful confluence of all kinds of different people.

Uh, people are attracted to art f- uh, for its beauty, uh, but also for the, the instant, uh, patina of, of, of, of elegance and gravitas that it conveys on the, on the holder of art.

Um, art is a great place to launder money.

Do you think democracies, and I'm really focused on the American and the UK democracies, do they possess the strategic patience or has social media made long-term thinking nearly impossible for them now?

And as, uh, James Patterson said, uh, "Silva can really write, the bastard."

[laughs] I love that quote.

As we, as we s- I told you at the be- we were chatting, uh, off air, uh, uh, before we started, and I, I, I just love that quote.

It's, it's, it's...

It sounds like something that Hemingway would have said about Scott Fitzgerald.

It's the best blurb I've ever, ever gotten.

Um, so this is, believe it or not, 26, as, uh, I think you pointed out at the beginning, um, in...

... an event in 2025 in Denmark with drones?

I do

... and, and, um, you know, Gabriel, throughout his, his, uh, his long and varied career has had to do some, some hostage negotiations a couple of times, and, and I actually had to learn how to be a hostage negotiator to give him that skill.

Um, and so, I, what you see in, in, um, the way he conducts himself trying to get this woman back is, is he behaves very much like a, a, a good old-fashioned, they call them K&R experts, you know.

Um, these are, these are professional negotiators, kidnap and ransom specialists that you're in, you know, if you're a very wealthy businessman or you're, you're, you, you're an executive who works in a dangerous place, your company generally takes out an insurance policy on you for this sort of thing.

And when you do get kidnapped, they bring in people like, like, like, like, someone like Gabriel Allon to, to negotiate you out.

And, um, I borrowed and learned from their techniques and gave those also Gabriel.

Um, the, the hostage negotiation chapter of the book is really one of my favorites.

Right.

How did this all come together?

Well, it fit in that the art world provided Gabriel with his cover.

And I'll tell you, those weeks that I spent in Cornwall, it just took over that first book.

And I was able to write about these characters in a way that i had not written about other any other characters and and um so i know we're talking about the craft of writing but um you know the the character himself or herself for me sort of determines the voice and the way you write.

And so one of my favorite points of view within the series has always been the point of view of this eccentric art dealer in London named Julian Isherwood.

And Julian was basically recruited to help provide Gabriel his cover.

And he has the most magnificent point of view.

Okay.

So what do you think is that magic sauce with this particular story?

Uh, it, it, um, look, it deals with a, a, a serious issue, uh, and that is, you know, we all know that Russia is, you know, waging a, a terrible war of conquest in Ukraine, but it's also waging this secret clandestine war against the countries of Western Europe right now, trying to destabilize them.

And one of the weapons that they're using are drones.

Uh, so it, it, it deals with a real world issue, but it is told in a way, it's set around a, a kidnapping story of a, of a British heiress.

Um, so it's ...

You know, I've never written a, a truly traditional espionage novel.

I have my own way of doing things, but I think this one just, I got it, I got it r- I got it right.

[laughs]

How did you come up with him?

He was a combination of a typical character construction process with a little bit of serendipity and good fortune.

When I created him, I knew his professional and personal backstory, at least a part of it.

As I was building him and constructing him, my wife Jamie and I were strolling through Georgetown one day and she reminds me, "Don't forget we have dinner with David Bull tonight." Who is David Bull? David Bull is, truly was, he passed away this winter sadly, was one of the world's finest art restorers and he lived around the corner from us in Georgetown, worked at the National Gallery.

And I stopped in my tracks and I said, "That's it.

Gabriel Allon's cover job is that he's an art restorer." And had dinner with David that evening, I pulled him aside at dinner and I said, "Listen, you know, I have this crazy idea.

I'd like to turn an Israeli assassin into an Italian art restorer.

At what point did it occur to you that his mother would be an artist?

Something happens to your main premise in the course of the book.

Uh, I, uh, I guess like everyone who, who pays attention to what's going on, uh, at the Vatican, I mean, we could, we could s- see that, um, that Pope Francis was, was failing, um, and a couple of friends, um, suggested to me that the, that the papacy was, was nearing its end.

I think it had a...

Uh, you know, something to do with my decision to, to write a Vatican book this year.

Um, I have, I have to say that, um, I have...

That Pope Francis was not a, a perfect pope, and he had some bumps along the way in his career, but I really admired Francis greatly, uh, for his, for his devotion to the poor.

And, um, I wanted to write about, uh, uh, about that in, in this novel.

E- explain that to the listener.