Word: giovannetti
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Even some of those who went to Moscow found ways to register visible dissent that not even the Soviets could censor. Traditionally, each winner has his nation's flag hoisted and its national anthem rendered when he receives his medal. Luciano Giovannetti of Italy, who won the gold medal in trapshooting, was the first champion to have the Olympic flag and hymn used at his ceremony (Italy and a number of other Western European countries chose to participate in Moscow but to protest by using Olympic symbols instead of their own). Tears rose in his eyes afterward when...
...that Giovannetti is, or ever was, a spy. Nevertheless, the monsignor readily admits that Requiem for a Spy, which he describes as "part autobiographical" and "part political fantasy," is a roman à clef based on his long experience and his personal acquaintance with a number of spies he has known, if not always loved. "I knew all the spies in the U.N. organization itself, but they were not up to much," he says. "The big spies are in the various delegations. In any case the book is not based on any particular episode, and there is no real model...
...point at which Giovannetti says fact swerves most sharply into fiction is a budding romance between the Soviet colonel and a beautiful woman agent in an Israeli intelligence ring he has infiltrated. "I have been told that the Israeli girl is so well described that I must have had such a relationship myself," says Giovannetti. "Not true. Some of the people are real, with names changed, some are half real, but the girl is one of the inventions." Nevertheless he does note that spy and priest, ironically, have something in common in their abstinence and discipline. "Panin could dream what...
...avowed anti-Communist who once wrote a pseudonymous indictment of religious persecution in East bloc countries, Giovannetti intended his novel to dramatize the conflict between Marxism and Christianity. Progressively affected by his priestly role, Panin in the end undergoes a spiritual conversion. He defects to the Vatican, and after offering himself in exchange for the real Righi (who has been kept alive by the Soviets for a possible exchange in case Panin was captured) goes to his execution in Moscow's Lubyanka prison...
...Vatican has officially ignored the book's publication, and Giovannetti says he was cautioned in advance that he was embarking on a decidedly undiplomatic enterprise. Recalled from the U.N. in 1973, he was offered no post that interested him. Giovannetti withdrew from the diplomatic service to the "more congenial" pursuit of writing books. Last week, at his retirement villa outside Rome, the author who came in from the cold said with a philosophic shrug: "I am no longer in the limelight, the airline no longer gives me free tickets, and many of my old friends don't know...