“Gabriel Allon in the last five books has been a key figure in the defense of Western liberty… Restoration is the essential element of the entire series; tikkun olam- repair of the world.”
Daniel Silva is an American journalist and author of thriller and espionage novels. Prior to his novelist career, Daniel became a journalist at the age of thirty-three, directing CNN’s political talks. There is a tremendous amount of historical content worked into all of his novels.
Using the real world as inspiration and backdrop, Daniel Silva’s iconic protagonist Gabriel Allon’s recent storylines have centered around defending Western democracies. This continues in Silva’s latest book The Cellist which revolves around the impact of and defense against dirty foreign money from Russia. Silva recounts watching the January 6th Capitol attack on TV and soon realizing he had to rewrite his already finished book to include the insurrection. Silva worries about the state of America’s democracy and explains the value of the Capitol insurrection to Putin and authoritarians around the world.
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SPEAKER
Daniel Silva
Author
The Cellist
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Intro
2:35 - Creating the Gabriel Allon character and series
8:55 - Newest book: The Cellist
11:30 - Using real world events/themes in storytelling
13:00 - January 6th Capitol attack and DC lockdown
20:02 - Restoring liberal democracy in America and the West
26:03 - Western countries vs. Russia and authoritarian regimes
29:49 - Radicalization of Republican party
31:20 - Musical interests
37:12 - Impact of dirty foreign money laundered in the US and Great Britain
41:38 - Book writing process and the theme of tikkun olam
TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:07)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is John Darsie. I'm the managing director of SALT which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform at the intersection of finance, technology and public policy. SALT Talks are a digital interview series with leading investors, creators and thinkers. And our goal on these SALT Talks is the same as our goal in our SALT Conferences, which we're excited to resume in September of 2021 here in our home city of New York, but our goal is to provide a window into the mind of subject matter experts as well as provide a platform for what we think are big ideas that are shaping the future.
John Darsie: (00:46)
And we're very excited to welcome Daniel Silva back to SALT Talks for his second appearance. I think Daniel is only the second guest that we've welcomed for multiple appearances. So we know it's worth it because he's one of the best authors out there today. I know Anthony is one of his biggest fans. So we're excited to have you back.
Anthony Scaramucci: (01:03)
Danny, I think on the other guests that he's referring to, he allows me to come back on from time to time, so I think it's you and me, Danny.
Daniel Silva: (01:12)
I will try to move up to advanced billing.
John Darsie: (01:15)
I read a little bit more about Daniel for those who haven't tuned into the first episode we did with him or read his fantastic books, but he is an award-winning number one New York Times bestselling author, best known for his long-running thriller series starring spy and art restorer, Gabriel Allon. Silva's books are critically acclaimed bestsellers around the world. They've been translated into more than 30 languages. He resides in Florida with his wife, the wonderful television journalist, Jamie Gangel, and their twins, Lily and Nicholas.
John Darsie: (01:48)
And I will say my parents are now hooked on the Gabriel Allon series. They were not readers before you joined us on SALT Talks the first time and now they can't get enough of Gabriel Allon. And again, hosting today's talk is Anthony Scaramucci, the founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm. And like I mentioned, Anthony might be your biggest fan, Daniel. And he was very excited to get an advanced copy of your book and pour through it. So with no further ado, I'll let Anthony take over.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:15)
Yes, I have to confess there's nothing more delightful than not having to wait for the delivery date of the publisher, Mr. Silva. Getting it from you was fantastic and I do appreciate it, but I got to flip to the back of the book here is a very handsome man. Is this Gabriel Allon, Daniel Silva? That's what I need to know.
Daniel Silva: (02:36)
That is not Gabriel Allon. There are many authors who see themselves in their characters or imagined their characters. I've just never been one of them. I can't do the things that he can do. I wouldn't want to do the things that he can do. Now, does he share certain characteristics of mine? Yeah, lots and lots. But no, I do not imagine myself to be Gabriel Allon. He's much better looking than I am. Not you, but not me.
Anthony Scaramucci: (03:12)
Did you hear that Darsie? I finally got a compliment from one of our guests.
Daniel Silva: (03:15)
You're one of the few guys around that can give him a run for money in that department.
Anthony Scaramucci: (03:22)
All right. Well, that's very sweet and that concludes our SALT Talk. I just want to thank everybody for tuning in. Nothing else that we have to say, Mr. Silva. But in all seriousness, I love these books. This is the 24th book that I've devoured. I find it to be a summer delight for me. Sometimes I pace myself and savor it, as opposed to read it too quickly, but I can read it in a day because of how great a writer you are. It's the 24th book in the series. Did you ever imagine you would become a number one bestselling hero of a long series like this?
Daniel Silva: (04:03)
I didn't. And I think that it's shocking to say this, but Gabriel was never supposed to be a continuing character. He was supposed to appear in one book and one book only. And truth be told, when I finished that book, I knew that I had created a special character. But I didn't think that an Israeli could work long term to be a true mass market, American bestseller. I thought there was too much anti-Israeli sentiment in the world, and frankly, too much antisemitism for him to work long term. And I was talked into writing a second book by a very astute and well-regarded figure in publishing and it sold more than the previous book.
Daniel Silva: (05:02)
It seems difficult to imagine now, but when I made the first notes on The Confessor, which is one of the classics in the series, Gabriel was not supposed to be in that book. And I was told by my publishers and editor, "He must be in that book. It is his book," and that was the case. And so when I finished The Confessor, I felt like, "Okay, [inaudible 00:05:25]," we are 21 books later. No, frankly, I did not anticipate that he would ever be a repeating number one New York Times bestseller [inaudible 00:05:40] more surprised by his success than the person who created him.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:45)
Well, he's a brilliant character. And all of us that are entrepreneurs love Gabriel Allon because he is an entrepreneur. There's a candoism about him. There's a creativity about him. He has a love for his country, love of Israel and a love for Western liberty where he'll stop at nothing to protect it. And I think that those things make him a hero, but there's also complexity there, Daniel, in the sense that he's an assassin, but he's also an art restorer. So at the same time, he's about restoration and renaissance and the rebirth, if you will, but he also recognizes that he has to simultaneously eradicate evil. Explain that duality if you will.
Daniel Silva: (06:32)
I want to I want to go back to something that you said earlier, the question, that is really important and that Gabriel in the last three, four or five books has been a key figure in the defense of Western liberty. Gabriel believes in the global order. Gabriel understands how remarkable it is that that we have essentially had peace in Europe since 1945 with some minor wars on the periphery, how as a survivor of the Holocaust he knows how incredible that is, what an achievement that is. And so he has been, since Moscow Rules, which is, gosh, I'm losing track of time, but about 14, 15 years ago now, fighting Russia. And he has been cast himself in that role of the defender of liberal democracy and taking on Putin.
Daniel Silva: (07:45)
And the duality of the character is what makes him special obviously. It's not that he's a magician and can take a beat-up old painting and make it look like new again. Restoration is the essential element of the entire series, Tikkun Olam: Repair of the World, the obligation to not accept the world as it is but to make it better, to gather up the sparks that were lost to creation in Jewish theology. And it's the central part of the story. And it's not just about paintings, it's about injustice, it's about people. He can make old cars run again. He just has this gift to restore and repair. And that's what gives the series its magic.
Anthony Scaramucci: (08:43)
So I don't want to give away any spoilers, there's a lot-
Daniel Silva: (08:45)
Don't give away lots of spoilers.
Anthony Scaramucci: (08:47)
There's a lot of plot twists here and a lot a lot of fun in the book, but tell us about The Cellist, the woman that enters of Mr. Allon's life.
Daniel Silva: (08:56)
The Cellist is one of my favorite characters that I've ever created. And she's one of those characters that popped from the instant she opened her mouth. A little side note the cover art, that's my wife. We photographed her for the book. That's Jamie on the cover.
Anthony Scaramucci: (09:16)
Looking good, Jamie.
Daniel Silva: (09:17)
Looking good, Jamie.
Anthony Scaramucci: (09:18)
I don't want to get in trouble with the He Too or Me Too Movement, but looking good.
Daniel Silva: (09:23)
Looking good. Her name is Isabel Brenner and she was trained at an early age. She's a young German woman. Musical prodigy, can play the piano. Started playing the cello at eight. Won her very important German competition when she was 17 years old, but decided that she didn't quite have what it took to make it in the very difficult music industry. Like many musicians, she's a very gifted mathematician. So she went to a university at London School of Economics and went to work for a German bank called RhineBank.
Daniel Silva: (10:08)
And in short order, she discovered that this bank that she's working for is really the dirtiest bank in the world and that it was serving as, in effect, a laundromat, the Russian laundromat, helping Russians launder ill-gotten assets and hide them in the West. She decides to blow the whistle by leaking documents to a Russian reporter and one thing leads to another. And before she knows it, she's fighting shoulder to shoulder with Gabriel Allon trying to save Western democracy, and ultimately, democracy here in the United States. The book begins in the summer of 2019 and it's effective conclusion is Inauguration Day 2021.
Anthony Scaramucci: (11:05)
But you see the future in this book. You're known for seeing around the corner. So tell us about catching history and understanding that. You write about the insurrection. Tell us, in your process of writing this, how you come up with or able to distill what the near future is.
Daniel Silva: (11:30)
Well, the near future that I was trying to distill was, and I've written about this, touched on it in about the last three or four books, is that Western democracy, I don't want to say hanging by a thread, but it is under stress, it is battered, it is in trouble. And we now know, from some great reporting, investigative reporting and brilliant writing from some journalists and authors, from the British government, that the degree to which Russian money, that Russia has used its money as a weapon to weaken Western democracy. And so I wanted to write a book that deals with how to counter that threat.
Daniel Silva: (12:29)
And when I started the knob or the book, it was set in a post-Trump, post-pandemic era. I felt that President Trump would lose the election and that this book would be set in a Joe Biden era and that Gabriel and the new Biden administration would really take it to the Russians financially. And so I was working along with the book, had most of it written. On January 6, Jamie calls me. She's at the office, I'm in my office. I do not have a television in my office. She says, "You need to go upstairs." I said, "I'm really working. Is it important?" "Just go upstairs." And I turn on the TV in the kitchen and our Capitol is overran by supporters of the of the American president. And it became clear that Donald Trump had formed the mob inside of the mob, unleashed the mob and we had ineffective armed insurrection against our capital. Our capital had fallen for the first time in our history.
Daniel Silva: (13:51)
And within a few days, I just realized I had to write about this in the book. It fits so perfectly with what I was already working on, that I said to my wife, I said, "Look, I got to do this. I don't know how quite to do it." So I quickly plotted a new ending to the novel and I started writing that at that point on about January 10th or so. And so I finished a new ending to the novel and got it done, but the first half of the book didn't quite match up. It's in the wrong time. Everything was out of sequence. The beginning of the book was set after the pandemic and after the Trump administration. I had to back the whole thing up.
Daniel Silva: (14:37)
Long story short, I worked for about 14-15 hours a day for weeks and weeks and weeks, getting the book so that everything was synced up properly. It was a painful process. I was heartbroken by what I saw that day. I think that as bad as January 6 was, for me, the Inauguration Day was in many respects worse. If you weren't here in Washington during that period to experience the miles and miles of fences, the 40,000 troops on the streets, the military checkpoints that Jamie had to pass to to get to the office every day, the television cameras did not capture what it was really like here.
Daniel Silva: (15:33)
And I can't imagine what President Trump was thinking when he took that final lap over the city in his helicopter and he looked down on this empty, empty locked down city. And why was it locked down? It was locked down because we were afraid that thousands of armed Trump supporters, Republican voters were going to come storming across the bridges. How did we get to this point?
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:01)
Listen, I'm obviously saddened by all of that. January 6th is actually my 57th birthday.
Daniel Silva: (16:08)
Oh, my goodness.
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:08)
I was sitting there in my home, looking at it and didn't think it was ever going to come to that, but it obviously did.
Daniel Silva: (16:15)
Well, what were your thoughts? How did you think we got there?
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:18)
Well, I was saddened by it. I didn't see it as ... It wasn't surprising to me, Danny.
Daniel Silva: (16:28)
Right.
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:29)
It was definitely not surprising to me, but-
Daniel Silva: (16:31)
Well, I'll tell you a little ... I'm going to interrupt you on one thing, so this is how well known it was in Washington that this was coming, okay? On about January 2nd or 3rd, I was talking to a Republican member of Congress. I said, "When's the Reichstag fire?" reference to the fire that burned down the German parliament and led to the Enabling Act in 1933, "When's the Reichstag fire?" And the Republican congressman said, "The Reichstag fire is Wednesday." And so everyone knew that this was coming, but go ahead-
Anthony Scaramucci: (17:02)
Well, just the fact that he would equate it to the Reichstag fire explains to you how much danger we're in and not to go overboard on European history or German history, is it 1924? Is it 1933? Where are we right now? We do know that a good 20% of the people have decided that they are willing to disavow capitalism for whatever they fear in their lives. I'm sorry, democracy, I should say. There's elements of fear in capitalism as well, but well, there's 20% of the people that want to put aside our capitalist system, that has made this creation when Lincoln called the last best hope for mankind, has made this one of the more beautiful stories.
Anthony Scaramucci: (17:46)
It's a story marred with tragedy. It's a story marred with biases and racism, of course, but it is a beautiful story of many, many different people coming together off of an idea. And what we know about our great country is that it's a work in progress. And to Gabriel Allon's point, it needs to be improved. I guess there's something I wanted to ask you. It's personal actually because every time I read your books, I close the book and say, "Okay, what did I learn from Daniel Silva?" First of all, it's an amazing summer read. It's a page turner. It's super exciting. I want to yell at you at times because I want to read this on the beach in front of the surf, but I'm not able to do that because I find myself reading at 3:00 AM in the bathroom, where my wife is like, "Turn the light out." I was like, "Yeah, I got to get to chapter 17. I can't turn the light out."
Anthony Scaramucci: (18:39)
But when I close the book, what I learned here, and I want your reaction to it, is that there is a group of forces. It's almost like a sibling rivalry, Cain versus Abel. There's a group of forces that are just frankly jealous of the United States. At the end of the day, they couldn't put it together. They couldn't put it together or they feared it. We know that we have great benefits from our decentralization, our checks and balances. There are countries that are autocracies that would actually never release that kind of power, even though what we know about power, the axiomatic fact about power is when we give it away, we become more powerful. That's the axiomatic irony of it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (19:24)
And I guess what I learned from your book is that we seem to have lost our edge. It's either our complacency. We've had hundreds of years now a vaccine, so people now believe that there's no need for them anymore, but we've gotten to this point of health as a result of these vaccines. The same thing with the democracy, we got here as a result of all these virtues. And I guess what I'm wondering when I close this book, how do you restore it? How do you become the Gabriel Allon of the American democracy and the movement of the West as it relates to individual freedom?
Daniel Silva: (20:07)
It's just in our country. France, for example, its democracy is under great stress right now. We had the yellow vest movement. We have the remote possibility, but maybe not so remote possibility that they could elect Marine Le Pen to be their president. Their parties are in complete disarray. British democracy is struggling. Look, in the United States, but coming back to us, we just got walloped by a succession of big, big unexpected events. 9/11, kaboom. Iraq war did not go as planned. A crippling financial crisis that we eventually recovered from but the recovery was uneven and I would say that it exacerbated some trends that are out there in the workforce. Globalization. And frankly the changing demographics of our country. These are huge, huge developments.
Daniel Silva: (21:26)
And we have a significant portion of the population that is not succeeding in this new economy, this new reality. I guess I have come back to that the demographic changes are ... They seem to come upon us more quickly. When you look back at the Hispanic share of the electorate in 1996, for example, it was minuscule and it happened so quickly. We became much more multiculturally. Diverse more quickly I think than people imagine that would happen. And these are enormous pressures and these are big, big things that we've got to deal with, but I am most concerned in this in the short run about the number of people who identify as Republican or Republican-leaning who no longer believe in democracy and who are willing to or at least they say they're willing to use violence to achieve their political ends.
Daniel Silva: (22:47)
This is what I find alarming in the short term. I find the prospect of even a Trump candidacy in 2024 to be almost too frightening to contemplate because I think it will ultimately lead to pre-election violence, post-election violence and a contested election. We got the ship to shore in 2021, but it was a close call. As Gabriel said, "The power was transferred, but it was not peaceful. It was not peaceful for the first time ever." So I don't want to sound like Chicken Little or Debbie Downer here, but I'm a little nervous. I'm a little nervous.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:36)
Listen, I respect that, but I would add to that, it's not just him. He's got acolytes that want to be him. They view themselves as smarter versions of him and that he has given them a playbook. And of course, through voter suppression and through different types of laws and just the gerrymandering process, remember, these Republicans are now controlling a large swath of the state legislatures. They're very confident they can take back the Senate, I'm sorry, take back the house, even though they may not have the popularity to do so. They know that they may be able to segment the districts in a way that will allow them to do that.
Daniel Silva: (24:26)
They have the ability of Trump to mobilize the darker elements of our society. That's one thing that he did that was just ... It really bottom fed for votes. It became a joke in Washington that white supremists were actually a core part of his constituency, but it's true. It was true. And white nationalists and Christian nationalists, that was the core of Trump's appeal. Look, I hope that they don't go down this road. I'm trying to choose my words carefully, of trying to get into a situation where they use maximalist power at the state level in the Congress to try to force a candidate through and pick and overrule the will of the voters and make them what make a republican president because it will destroy the country. There will be violence in the streets.
Daniel Silva: (25:35)
Imagine what would have happened if Trump had actually won a narrow electoral victory in the last election, losing the popular vote by 7 million votes. Would the country have been governable under those circumstances? Yes, constitutionally. So we have really some dangerous tricky months and years here coming up, whether we make it, whether our democracy survives. And by the way, our divisions are real obviously. I don't need to explain that to you. Our divisions are real. The flames have been fanned at every step of the way for years and years and years now by Russian information operations and Russian propaganda.
Daniel Silva: (26:25)
I invite you to read the Russia report that the British government released last summer, that the extent to which Russian money had rotted their political institutions and financial institutions and it was all planned. It wasn't by accident.
Anthony Scaramucci: (26:42)
And I think that's a point that you make in the book and that's one that I have, the great sadness. And so the Russians weren't able to build a great fluid system. They weren't be able to build a multitribal democracy. So a result of which, they set upon destroying the United Kingdom, France and the United States. And so these active measures were perpetrated against people that weren't necessarily their adversaries, but they figured, "Okay, it's a race to the bottom. If we're hitting bottom, we would like to drag down these other"-
Daniel Silva: (27:18)
I was having dinner with an ambassador from a country that I can't identify the other night. And this is an authoritarian country that is under pressure to democratize. And the ambassador was telling me, "What a gift January 6th was to this," just to be able to hold this stuff to their people and say, "This is what democracy looks like. Do you really want this?" January six, Vladimir Putin must have just loved it. All the authoritarians in the world loved it. Because it showed our system to be in disarray, at least on that day. We pulled through, but we did enormous damage to our democracy and enormous damage to our reputation around the world.
Daniel Silva: (28:14)
And I will tell you, here in Washington talking to diplomats from various countries, they're not optimistic about our future. The Europeans are glad to have us back, but they're very wary that the whole thing could swing back again or that we might actually slide off a cliff and not be a democratic country anymore. I would say that even our closest allies are not betting on us right now.
Anthony Scaramucci: (28:41)
Listen, I agree with that, obviously spending more time in the business realm than politics at this moment, but I look at somebody like Liz Cheney, I look at somebody like Adam Kinzinger or Kinzinger, however you pronounce his name, and I see, "Okay, well, at least they have levels of principle." I think if somebody like Lindsey Graham who I did have a relationship with, who I'm not sure what happened to him, maybe a new book and it could be a nonfiction book, Where is Lindsey Graham? because I don't know where he is. It's like Where's Waldo?. It's just a representation of what he once was.
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:17)
And what I would say to you, that has me alarmed is Lindsey Graham said, "Trump plus," he wants Trump plus. That means he wants to dig into more of that fearmongering and he wants to dig into more of that hatred and more of that division to hold power as opposed to freshen up the party, break down and rebuild that party and go after a more beautiful mosaic of people with better ideas. And I'm at a loss to understand that, but I want-
Daniel Silva: (29:47)
I can explain it. Their base will not let them tack to the center in order to build that beautiful mosaic. Just ask Speaker Eric Cantor about that. He wanted to do an immigration deal and he's in leadership and he got primary gone. They're just not interested in it. Any party that has not been able to carry a popular vote at one time since 1988, one time, that party should tack to the center where all the votes are, but they're actually going farther and farther and farther and farther. And getting back to your previous point, the only way that out here with this shrinking base and out here to the edge, the only way they're going to get back into power is with voter suppression and maximalist constitutional means to try to get back in. That's what worries me, but I interrupted, I'm sorry.
Anthony Scaramucci: (30:53)
No, not at all. I have to turn it over here to my Millennial, John Darsie, so that we get our fantastic ratings, Daniel, but before I do that, let's play Desert Island discs for a second. You've got music abounds in this book and so what are your favorites? Let's go to classical, jazz and rock and roll. Tell us what your favorites are. And also what is your all-time favorite? What was the first song you remember?
Daniel Silva: (31:20)
First song I remember?
Anthony Scaramucci: (31:26)
[crosstalk 00:31:26].
Daniel Silva: (31:27)
I spent the first years of my childhood in Michigan. Wikipedia says that I was born in Detroit. That's not the case. I was actually born in Kalamazoo. So I love, love, love Motown music. I love, love Motown music. Those are the first songs that I really remember. So we do some classical, this is impossible assignment to pick, one thing to listen to on a desert island, but people ask me like, "I don't know anything about classical music. What should I start with? What should I listen to?" If I were to be trapped forever with only one thing to listen to, let's take the Five Piano Concertos of Beethoven. I have piles and piles and piles of different versions. These are some classics, but Beethoven's Piano Concertos is where I would, if I had to pick one.
Anthony Scaramucci: (32:28)
And what about jazz?
Daniel Silva: (32:31)
Well, I'm a bit of a jazz fiend and everyone faces this dilemma, "What's your favorite? What's your favorite?" and I think that most of us come back to Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. It's regarded as the greatest jazz album ever recorded and I agree with that. I'm going to put a second one. I'm going to cheat a little bit. I was just listening to it the other night and I'm so saddened by Keith Jarrett's health problems. I love, love, love My Song by Keith Jarrett. I just think it's just one of my favorite records. I'm going to transition to rock and roll by going to a jazz rock album, totally essential, but Steely Dan's Aja.
Anthony Scaramucci: (33:15)
I love that, that Deacon Blues.
Daniel Silva: (33:17)
Really great, great, great, great-
Anthony Scaramucci: (33:19)
We're dating ourselves, Silva. We're dating ourselves.
Daniel Silva: (33:23)
I know, and then if I had to pick one, this is what-
Anthony Scaramucci: (33:25)
I love the song Peg. I love Deacon blues. Oh, there you go, The Boss.
Daniel Silva: (33:29)
And then my favorite rock and roll album of all time is Darkness on the Edge of Town [inaudible 00:33:35].
Anthony Scaramucci: (33:36)
It's a gritty, gritty album. I love that album as well. Of course, Darsie has no idea what we're talking about. That's fine, John. Let us live in the moment of our past glory or as Bruce Springsteen would say, "Glory days." Before I turn it over to Darsie, what about Sinatra though?
Daniel Silva: (33:54)
What about Sinatra?
Anthony Scaramucci: (33:55)
Sinatra.
Daniel Silva: (33:56)
I love Sinatra. Live at the Sands, I listen to that record all the time. There's Count Bassie.
Anthony Scaramucci: (34:03)
Particularly his breakout into conversations. Sure.
Daniel Silva: (34:06)
Those are exactly the stories [crosstalk 00:34:10]. Some of the stuff that's on that album wouldn't pass muster today, but I love Frank Sinatra.
Anthony Scaramucci: (34:20)
So John, what would you like to ask the award-winning bestselling novelist? By the way, before I get there, I have to thank you for the acknowledgement. Of course, I've got Boris and all the other undercover mobsters following me around, but it was a brilliant acknowledgement, so I'm sending you a hug over the phone lines here.
Daniel Silva: (34:45)
Well, I meant it though because I was working through, "What is the goal of this operation? How am I going to take this person down? Am I going to do it criminally or am I just going to do it as an effect?" What I did there is the name and shame type operation. You and I pulled it apart and-
Anthony Scaramucci: (35:05)
The only way you can do it, Daniel. That was my point in terms of our conversations.
Daniel Silva: (35:11)
Otherwise you have to throw the bankers in jail, right? That conversation with you, I meant it, it was pivotal in helping me decide what the operation was going to be, what the goal of the operation was going to be, what the mechanics of the operation were going to be.
Anthony Scaramucci: (35:33)
Mr. Darsie.
John Darsie: (35:35)
Well, I'll have to confess, we did some investigative journalism or spy work in the spirit of Gabriel Allon and have some other questions for you, one, about your music. So we investigate and found that you used to go to punk concerts back in the day. What type of attire did you wear to those punk concerts?
Daniel Silva: (35:56)
My punk attire was more of the suit jacket over a t-shirt with jeans. I was that kind of punk. No crazy makeup. No piercings. None of that stuff. I was kind of a dressed-up punk. Actually, little bragging, I saw the first American performance of The Clash actually. I was living in the Bay Area. We had a vital New Wave music scene and I got to see a lot of great aspects.
John Darsie: (36:38)
So going back to the book, you talked about RhineBank is the bank that you mentioned in The Cellist. Did you draw any real-life inspiration from maybe was Germany a random selection in terms of the home of the bank that you mentioned? How much is dirty foreign money which is a big theme in the book? How much is it flowing into the United States and poisoning our democracy? How influential is this campaign by forces, especially emanating from Russia from a monetary perspective?
Daniel Silva: (37:13)
Well, the first part of the question first, as I point out, in the author's note, I did draw from the sins of a certain Frankfurt-based bank and applied them to my fictitious RhineBank. And I was talking to someone, a very important figure in the financial world, who helped me with the book and he described that bank as a rogue bank and that when he called that bank a rogue bank, it stuck in my mind and I ended up calling my bank RhineBank. Deutsche Banks, many, many sins are legendary at this point and its past behavior and conduct certainly helped me create my bank.
Daniel Silva: (38:16)
The truth is, I don't think we really have a grasp on how much money has made its way into the United States. I assume that Vladimir Putin owns property and shares of companies in the United States through intermediaries and cutouts. I'm not sure if Anthony would agree with me, but I think he probably does. People who launder money like the United States in Great Britain, because we have this enormous financial depth, there's just a lot of stuff out there to hide your money in, particularly in real estate. We allow anonymous purchases. We have people in the financial industry who are willing to soil their hands with these kinds of money. Miami and much of Florida are ground zero for this kind of activity.
Daniel Silva: (39:12)
A lot of it is criminal and more and more and more of it are kleptocrats. We have kleptocratic regimes around the world that are stealing money that they should be spending it on their people. And that money almost in most cases and nearly all cases has to be removed from the country that they are ruling and stashed someplace. And ultimately, I think much of it finds its way here. When the British released their report, a lot of the commentary at that time was that the British did a better job at dissecting the impact of money on their democracy and on their financial system, dirty Russian money that we haven't really quite gotten there yet. We haven't gotten our act together on figuring out exactly how much damage has been done by money on our political system.
Daniel Silva: (40:18)
I think if you look at the Trump campaign in a microcosm in 2016, you can see that money and the promise of money and the promise of Russian riches was how they wormed their way into that campaign. Paul Manafort was completely compromised by Russian money. He was in debt to Russians, millions from Russians and was in debt to Russians. It's a recipe for disaster.
John Darsie: (40:44)
And it's a pure coincidence that Trump, no other banking institution would lend to him except for Deutsche Bank. You talked about Florida being ground zero. There were some, let's call them sketchy real estate transactions involving Russian oligarchs and Donald Trump. And also we've discovered that Russian interests were laundering money through the NRA. So all things very relevant that you cover parallel tracks in your book. But moving away from the Russian angle a little bit, again part of our spy journey, talking about your writing process, you write a book every year. So it really means you have about six months to write. That's not a lot of time and you pack amazing stories, amazing amounts of research into that time. What's it like in your house when you're on deadline and what's your process? Do you sit down at your laptop and just type out ideas or what does that process look like?
Daniel Silva: (41:40)
The process is, and I just went through it a couple of weeks ago and the process is I want to be able to see about 100 pages of a novel in my head. When I can see 100 pages or so, I start working on it. I don't necessarily have any clue as to how it's going to end, but just if I have a clear enough vision to get going on something ... I'm not like Raymond Chandler, starting with a sentence or something like that, but I don't outline in detail. And I will tell you that that I'm going through it right now that already that the 100 pages that I started with in my head, two or three weeks ago, it doesn't really look much like that.
Daniel Silva: (42:32)
So I really work on my books, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, scene to scene. And I get to work nice and slowly for a while in the summertime in September and October, but boy, about Thanksgiving, I'm starting to get a little anxious because I've got a deadline coming up. After New Year, it's full on sprinting for the deadline. And so I decided to give myself another thing this year by throwing out my book. I threw out my ending and wrote a whole new ending. The last months of it are pretty awful, to be honest with you.
John Darsie: (43:18)
Your wife tells us that she sometimes hears laughter coming from your writing room. Is that something where you get into the characters? Do you feel that they're real and you're experiencing that story with them?
Daniel Silva: (43:30)
Yeah, when it's really, really working, when the magic is really, really happening, I'm just writing down what these characters are saying to one another. When I'm really in the moment, when I've really created a scene and put two familiar characters talking to one another, I'm just eavesdropping on them. And I know that sounds crazy. And Anthony right now is calling a medical professional. I can see him in the other shot. But when it's really working, I feel like I'm just eavesdropping on a scene that's going on inside my head. Sometimes, they will say things-
Anthony Scaramucci: (44:08)
I'm actually deflating for the rest of the summer because I can only read this once without knowing everything. You've left me in pain for another 364 days.
Daniel Silva: (44:21)
But the humor does find its way into the novel, I think the novels I should say, of its own accord. I don't necessarily try to make things funny, but one of the things that I discovered and hanging around with Israeli intelligence officers is they're funny guys. They are very, very smart, very worldly, incredibly dark, wonderful senses of humor. And Gabriel has that side to his character. He's quietly darkly funny.
John Darsie: (45:04)
Right. And last question I have before we let you go. There's a theme throughout all your books. It's a Hebrew phrase called Tikkun Olam. It means repair of the world. Talk about what Anthony mentioned earlier. Why is this idea of repairing the world so important to you and so important to Gabriel Allon?
Daniel Silva: (45:24)
Well, gosh, try to imagine the world that turned ... Gabriel should have been born in Berlin. His name should have been Frankel. He should have been living in Berlin, becoming a famous German artist, Gabriel Frankel. And things didn't work out that way because in 1933, Germany's democracy fell to pieces. They elected a madman. The world blew up into war. 6 million Jews at least were murdered. He ends up being born in Israel with a new name into a totally different circumstances and the circumstances that he should have been born into. And so why wouldn't you want to repair the world? Why wouldn't you want to make the world a better place?
Daniel Silva: (46:23)
And we can all do that in our daily lives. Just the smallest gestures, we can make the world a better place. And unfortunately, right now, there's a nihilism that's loose in the world. I would say what is Russia's foreign policy is nihilism. They don't believe in anything except raw power, the exercise of raw power. And we have enormous challenges facing us right now. And I think getting back to the broader point of this discussion, if democracy is going to succeed and Joe Biden has said this many, many times, it's got to prove itself that it can work. And by that it can, it can help people make their daily lives a little better. If we can help that woman who's working two jobs, if we can help her care for her children, that's a little bit of Tikkun Olam.
Daniel Silva: (47:25)
We can help people make their lives a little better, so that they might have a little bit of extra time and a little bit of extra money to be the best that they can be. That is what I think we should be striving for right now. And I think it will take the steam out of this ugly awful, I hate the word populism because I don't think it accurately describes what's going on right now.
John Darsie: (47:50)
Right.
Daniel Silva: (47:50)
If you take the steam out of this thing that's out there loose in our country right now.
John Darsie: (48:00)
Right. Well, Daniel, it's always a pleasure to have you on. Your books are fantastic. Anthony, hold it up one more time before we go.
Anthony Scaramucci: (48:06)
I'm holding at the front and the back. Also for all of you people there that just want to be green with envy, I have a signed one. Just get to that page before we allow the author to leave. So I was super excited about that. And so I want to appreciate you in a way that-
Daniel Silva: (48:26)
Let's see the sign one though. I saw it on social media.
Anthony Scaramucci: (48:29)
I put it up. There it is. I just wanted to thank you for that.
Daniel Silva: (48:33)
469, 469.
Anthony Scaramucci: (48:35)
You're a you're a sensational writer, Daniel, but in addition to that, you're telling us through stories what is really going on and what we all need to contemplate and think about. And so for those reasons, it's an entertaining book. It's a page turner. It's suspenseful, but it's also a brilliant exposition of our current zeitgeist. So thank you for writing it. And I'm looking forward to the next one. And you're going to break the record here, Silva. You're going to be on SALT almost as many times as me. John Darsie is going to let you come back.
Daniel Silva: (49:10)
I hope so. It's my favorite. I just love doing this with you guys. I really appreciate the fact that you had me back because it's just ...
Anthony Scaramucci: (49:19)
The pleasure is ours.
Daniel Silva: (49:19)
... a wonderful conversation and I love you guys and I really appreciate it.
John Darsie: (49:24)
Thank you, Daniel.
Anthony Scaramucci: (49:25)
The feeling is mutual.
John Darsie: (49:27)
And thank you everybody for tuning into today's SALT Talk with Daniel Silva, the fantastic author. We highly recommend, if you haven't read all of the Gabriel Allon series as well as his other three books that you go out and read them. Great summer reads as Anthony mentioned. You'll pour through them. But just a reminder, if you miss any part of this talk or any of our previous SALT Talks, you can access them on our website@salt.org/talks or on our YouTube channel which is called SALTTube. We're also on social media. Twitter is where we're most active @SALTConference. We're also on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook and please spread the word about the SALT Talks again.
John Darsie: (50:01)
If somebody's looking for a great summer read, they've come to the right place. Pick up one of Daniel's books. So in behalf of Anthony and the entire SALT team. This is John Darsie signing off from SALT Talks for today. We hope to see you back here again soon.