of his and Ariana’s love-child, while others held that the family fortune had gone to finance an abortive monarchist coup d’état . Even those who repeated the most likely story – that Ludovico’s inveterate love of gambling had extended itself to share dealing, and that his portfolio had been wiped out when the Wall Street market collapsed on ‘Black Monday’ – were careful to avoid the charge of credulous banality by suggesting that this was merely a cover for the real drama, which involved a doomsday scenario of global dimensions, involving the CIA, Opus Dei and Gelli’s P 2 , and using the Knights of Malta as a cover.
Thus when word spread that Ruspanti had taken refuge with the latter organization following his disappearance from circulation about a month earlier, the story was widely credited. The official line was that Ruspanti was wanted for questioning by a magistrate investigating a currency fraud involving businessmen in Milan, but few people were prepared to believe that. Far larger issues were clearly at stake, involving the future of prominent members of the government. This explained why the Prince had chosen a hiding place which was beyond the jurisdiction of the Italian authorities. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta has long lost the extensive territories which once made it, together with the Knights Templar, the richest and most powerful mediaeval order of chivalry, but it is still recognized as an independent state by over forty nations, including Italy. Thus Palazzo Malta, opposite Gucci’s in elegant Via Condotti, and the Palace of Rhodes on the Aventine hill, headquarters of the local Grand Priory and chancery of the Order’s diplomatic mission to the Holy See, enjoy exactly the same extraterritorial status as any foreign embassy. If the fugitive had taken refuge within the walls of either property, he was as safe from the power of the Italian state as he would have been in Switzerland or Paraguay. Whatever the truth about this, Ruspanti had not been seen again until his dramatic reappearance the previous Friday in the basilica of St Peter’s.
This event initially appeared to render the question of the Prince’s whereabouts in the interim somewhat academic, but the letter to the newspapers changed all that with its dramatic suggestion that his death might not be quite what it seemed – or rather, what the Vatican authorities had allegedly been at considerable pains to make it seem. According to the anonymous correspondent, in short, Ludovico Ruspanti – like Roberto Calvi, Michele Sindona and so many other illustrious corpses – had been the subject of ‘an assisted suicide’.
The letter made three principal charges. The first confirmed the rumours about Ruspanti having been harboured by the Order of Malta, but added that following his expulsion, which took place after a personal intervention by the Grand Master, the Prince had been leading a clandestine existence in the Vatican City State with the full connivance of the Holy See. Moreover, the writer claimed, Ruspanti’s movements and contacts during this period had been the subject of a surveillance operation, and the Vatican authorities were thus aware that on the afternoon of his death the Prince had met the representatives of an organization referred to as ‘the Cabal’. But the item of most interest to Zen was the last, which stated categorically that the senior Italian police official called in by the Holy See, a certain ‘Dottor Aurelio Zeno’, had deliberately falsified the results of his investigation in line with the preconceived verdict of suicide.
Almost the most significant feature of the letter was that no more was said. The implication was that it was addressed not to the general public but to those in the know, the select few who were aware of the existence and nature of ‘the Cabal’. They would grasp not only how and why Ruspanti had met his death, but also the reasons why this information was now
Thus when word spread that Ruspanti had taken refuge with the latter organization following his disappearance from circulation about a month earlier, the story was widely credited. The official line was that Ruspanti was wanted for questioning by a magistrate investigating a currency fraud involving businessmen in Milan, but few people were prepared to believe that. Far larger issues were clearly at stake, involving the future of prominent members of the government. This explained why the Prince had chosen a hiding place which was beyond the jurisdiction of the Italian authorities. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta has long lost the extensive territories which once made it, together with the Knights Templar, the richest and most powerful mediaeval order of chivalry, but it is still recognized as an independent state by over forty nations, including Italy. Thus Palazzo Malta, opposite Gucci’s in elegant Via Condotti, and the Palace of Rhodes on the Aventine hill, headquarters of the local Grand Priory and chancery of the Order’s diplomatic mission to the Holy See, enjoy exactly the same extraterritorial status as any foreign embassy. If the fugitive had taken refuge within the walls of either property, he was as safe from the power of the Italian state as he would have been in Switzerland or Paraguay. Whatever the truth about this, Ruspanti had not been seen again until his dramatic reappearance the previous Friday in the basilica of St Peter’s.
This event initially appeared to render the question of the Prince’s whereabouts in the interim somewhat academic, but the letter to the newspapers changed all that with its dramatic suggestion that his death might not be quite what it seemed – or rather, what the Vatican authorities had allegedly been at considerable pains to make it seem. According to the anonymous correspondent, in short, Ludovico Ruspanti – like Roberto Calvi, Michele Sindona and so many other illustrious corpses – had been the subject of ‘an assisted suicide’.
The letter made three principal charges. The first confirmed the rumours about Ruspanti having been harboured by the Order of Malta, but added that following his expulsion, which took place after a personal intervention by the Grand Master, the Prince had been leading a clandestine existence in the Vatican City State with the full connivance of the Holy See. Moreover, the writer claimed, Ruspanti’s movements and contacts during this period had been the subject of a surveillance operation, and the Vatican authorities were thus aware that on the afternoon of his death the Prince had met the representatives of an organization referred to as ‘the Cabal’. But the item of most interest to Zen was the last, which stated categorically that the senior Italian police official called in by the Holy See, a certain ‘Dottor Aurelio Zeno’, had deliberately falsified the results of his investigation in line with the preconceived verdict of suicide.
Almost the most significant feature of the letter was that no more was said. The implication was that it was addressed not to the general public but to those in the know, the select few who were aware of the existence and nature of ‘the Cabal’. They would grasp not only how and why Ruspanti had met his death, but also the reasons why this information was now
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