The Venetian Light

By Vincent Cannistraro

The Venetian Light is a novel about espionage, terrorism and redemptive love. Set in Venice, Washington and the Middle East, its story mirrors events in Reagan Administration and deals with tragedy and survival in the world of spies and politicians. A covert CIA officer provides information that leads to the indictment of a rogue operative who provided explosives to Libyan terrorists. The operative, who has fled justice, plots his revenge and tragedy ensues. But the terrorists have an even bigger target- an American airliner and CIA races to prevent the operation before it happens. Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi, CIA Director William Casey, and a host of terrorists drawn from todays news make an appearance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 15, 2003
• ISBN: 9781477164471

Vincent Cannistraro

Vincent M. Cannistraro has been a consultant on intelligence and terrorism matters for ABC World News With Peter Jennings. He also consults with Cannistraro was a clandestine CIA officer and served as Chief of Operations and Analysis at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Cannistraro served in the Middle East, Africa and Europe with the CIA and is a recognized expert on political violence and national security issues and serves as a consultant to the Vatican on security threats. He helped arrange ABC’s interview with Usama bin Laden in 1998.

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PROLOGUE

Venice, Italy

It was deep in the blackness of the early morning when he dreamed; an image with pastel details ensnared him between sleep and consciousness. The girl was poised over the broken stones that were piled at odd intervals along the uneven sea wall. They were all that remained from the ancient barrier that surrounded the small island of San Pietro; it was there on the ground she had placed her easel and spread the crushed tubes of paint. It was an early summer day, and the afternoon sun’s rays were uninterrupted by the shade of trees, leaving the warmth to bake her canvas and allowing moisture to bead on her forehead. She pulled a red bandanna from her knapsack, and tied it around her head. Out in the lagoon the green water lapped at the island as a motor boat, mahogany gleaming with the sun’s reflection, plowed the water. The driver of the boat glanced with disinterest at the girl with the Raphaelesque face as she held her brush above the stretched and empty canvas. After a moment of pure stillness, she attacked the canvas with sudden strokes of moist color.

A rosary of perspiration formed on her neck as she worked under the slanting sun, yellow and bronze by turns as the occasional clouds cruised past. The blue and white cotton-striped blouse was loose and the puffs of wind caught inside the sleeves and caused the bodice to bloom.

Across the salt shallows was San Nicolo di Lido, its tumuli visible behind the stone wall and its grave stones marking the Jewish cemetery lying in disrepair.

In the long distance, beyond the lagoon, the bells of the Campanile in San Marco tolled the new hour. Called by the bells, he watched as she folded her easel and collected the paint tubes. There were circles within circles in the commonplace of the lagoon, the sun and the tolling bells. And the clouds were thin ribbons against the horizon, swirling like a nautilus shell.

With the collective knowledge assimilated through birth and childhood in the islands of Venice, she seemed to understand in her deepest currents that there was something significant about to happen, something that was resonating with the bells. Nothing, nothing would end, and the bells will keep ringing. The dead, the living, and what is about to happen … but the dream shut off as a belt of fire broke through the bedroom window and he awoke in a coruscating sweat. He tried to recall the details of the seas’s dancing beams but they would not appear. The Venetian girl was turning the boat away from shore and that was all he could remember.

CHAPTER ONE

Jebel Nafusa, Libya

In this desert, as on the wide sea, the voyager is frequently impeded by storms; a furious wind lifts whirling sand over a plain lacking vegetation, filling the mouth and eyes of the voyager; in this event, it is necessary to halt the journey

Sallus. (79 BC.)

Fingers moist with the coastal humidity, he awkwardly switched on the lights of the sand-colored Land Rover, driving it towards the bidonvilles outside Tripoli. A clandestine officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, Marco Daniels was traveling under cover in a different name and he had been handed this assignment on short notice; that had annoyed him. The original mission to Italy had been delayed by the cryptic and brief Headquarters cable diverting him to Libya. Without the benefit of a full briefing about the purposes of this operation, his mind had wandered with speculation and possibilities. What was the hidden logic behind Langley’s decision to order travel to a country that no longer had diplomatic relations with the US? The American Embassy had recently been burned down by a Libyan mob assembled and directed by the Libyan government. One of his colleagues had barely escaped incineration. The Libyan dictator Mu’ammar Qadhafi was a pariah and few American interests were left in the country. Even the Texas oil barons, the last to leave troubled regions if there were still oil to be drilled, had left. It was not difficult to speculate that the director of Central Intelligence, a man of Byzantine habits, was concealing an agenda not only from him, but from his senior Lieutenants, the men to whom he reported and from whom he received his instructions. Marco had seen this designing hand operating behind the mask before.

After first erupting into the color of Homer’s red, the Libyan sky had slowly softened into a violet wash that made the goats gather close to one another and bleat. The storm was mounting in the south and he could see the date palms leaning away from the wind as the first sand swirls ghosted past, driving from the pre-desert one hundred miles outside of Tripoli straight toward the coastal green belt of Libya. Later, in the bidonvilles, the tin sides and corrugated plastic of the roofs would be retrieved from the disarray the Ghibli would bring, and sand would pile high like waves frozen at their crests. The air was dry and pungent with the smell of a fire, probably Tuaregs brewing tea over a fire carefully protected from the storm.

A shrieking wind was driving the vehicle hard over as he strained to keep its balance on the road, and thoughts sailed far above the storm. Past crises, events from his childhood, friends lost in action, all tumbled past as another part of his mind focused only on the road as it led into night. There were some things he regretted, more acts of omission, but there was one particular act of commission he could not regret. It was something that became a fault line between his small circle of close CIA colleaghes, and those who were offended by his actions. At the time it had not seemed to take on the dimensions of a moral question, and he hadn’t really thought of it that way. Without thinking it through, and instinctively, he had decided to report to the Inspector General a comrade and a friend. Not that he ever had regrets. It was not a choice, really, but something done by necessity only. Of course he had been aware that some fellow officers would be offended because he had turned in a colleague. And there was the inevitable public scandal when a CIA officer fell afoul of the law. But he knew there was no virtue attached to the action of reporting a colleague gone bad. It just had to be done.

Still he wondered, recalling the events then, how it would feel if he flipped the Land Rover and were pinned, fatally, beneath that lumbering body. How many of his erstwhile colleagues would truly regret such an event? For an instant, it was an act of will to maintain that perilous balance between the forward velocity of the Land Rover and the abrupt edge of the tarmac with its steep dropoff.

Marco was having difficulty fighting off the maudlin thoughts flooding up suddenly and he wondered if the Agency psychiatrist was right in suggesting that he might have a problem with depression. He had recommended an Agency-cleared outside doctor for followup but Marco had filed the recommendation away. He knew that part of his character was the result of having no permanent sense of place, no single town which he could equate with a coming of age, a place that was home. There were reference points ofcourse; the Sisters of Mercy at Saint Joseph’s—he winced at the memory of the wooden clapper being struck on the knuckles of his outstretched hand. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the answer to the Sister’s question. He had been daydreaming, mind skiing over possibilities outside the classroom. And then there was Father Henry, the one who pressed his clammy body hard against him while clasping his waist with bony arms, as the boy that was him had looked away, shaking and afraid to stare the priest in his eyes. The sense of defilement was so great he could not admit the reality for months thereafter. Or even these years later when public exposure of the problem made it almost acceptable to talk about it.

He had been an altar boy, for a short while, until Father Henry’s exertions drove him from the Church; a church to which he had returned only fitfully, and for short periods, over the many years to come. He hated the man, never succeeded in burying what the priest had done, but also never spoken about it, even when interrogated by the CIA’s polygraph examiner. When he took the Agency’s entrance tests, the examiner had strapped him to the Lie Detector with a bale of wires and pressed him to reveal every sexual encounter of his young life, probing encounters with both sexes. He was possessed of so much self-inflicted guilt that confession to things he had never done or even imagined came easily during this medieval interrogation.

But on the subject of Father Henry, he had been silent. And though the polygraph examiner returned to the question incessantly, to the point where he believed the man was excited by prurient motives, he never spoke the evil the priest deserved. The recollection continued to lay just beneath the surface, never fully repressed, and never far from rising unbidden.

Marco had no experience in a traditional family after early childhood, but he was bound together with those in the same station, awaiting foster parents who had despaired of the long wait to adopt babies, putting aside at long last their reluctance to adopt older children. There was always the same quick hurt, he remembered, when friends hard won were finally plucked from his circle to disappear, sometimes without another word of their ultimate fate, out in the detached world they had entered. Oh, there were the obligatory references at assemblies: Jonathan is doing well, loves his new parents, and sends his best to all. But it was impersonal, and Jonathan, or Louis, or Myron could have been a character in one of those teenage novels he had devoured as a young boy. Perhaps that’s what happened to them; you left the real world of the institution where the universe was predictable, and you became a fictional character in a story, never to break outside the limits of the dialogue already written for you. You persisted only in the mind, yours, or in theirs.

Even now as a grown man, because he would seldom allow himself to approach another person in the unguarded way he had been told was necessary to nurture relationships, he had really few friendships. Sally, a colleague at the Agency, or the company as they all referred to it, was one of the exceptions. Sally perceived how Marco had reached a separate peace with the world, one that allowed courtesy and grace to harden into the carapace presented publicly, and she was determined it would not be a fence between them. In return, he responded as he could and called it friendship.

Waves of brittle light from the horizon made his eyes wince and a throbbing pain rolled down his sides; it made him cramp the left leg to bear it, holding the right foot steady on the accelerator. A whisper of foreboding, and then a wry fantasy. The secret agent, saving America! Averting by guile the disaster that would lead to the removal of intelligent life on earth. Gradually he allowed himself to smile, deliberately, until it finally overcame his resistance and the smile became suppressed laughter. Beam me up, Captain. There’s nothing worthwhile here on earth. What does this profession of espionage really matter? As some of his colleagues had done, he had questioned whether the insular world of intelligence they experienced in every day of their lives whether working or on vacation, really had any lasting value. If the whole Agency disappeared tomorrow, would ordinary Americans feel any effect? The thought advanced through his mind while his eyes fixed on the black strip of asphalt, shades of pale color still cascading through the rolled up windows of the Land Rover and he finally put on his sunglasses.

Do you know the way to Zuara, he shouted through the window of the front passenger seat. The Libyan Berber was cradling the oval shaped watermelon in the crook of his left arm, the folds of a wool Barracan robe he wore draping over it. The Berber had turned from his place by the vegetable stand.

How should I not know the road. I am from Zuara and my family lives there still.

Clicking the recessed handle of the Land Rover, Abbas pulled himself up on the jump step and with one smooth movement seated himself, still clasping the watermelon. It lay in his lap surrounded by long, tapered fingers, the elegant nails encrusted with the Libyan beige-colored soil.

Drive quickly, Sir, he urged in a guttural voice, we have many hours to go yet and there is little time before the brothers meet.

The Ghibli was blowing sand dervishes across the road as the short breath four cylinders of the Land Rover groaned under the increased demands of the accelerator. It was another kilometer post yet before the Land Rover reached its top speed of 65 miles per hour on the level road, and by then the bidonvilles were left in a dusty illusion far behind.

Abbas’ barracan was swept around his body as if it were a Roman toga, and the white, cotton fez on his head heightened the effect of the irregular cheek bones and thin mouth. He hunched down as if to drive off a cold wind even as the hot stagnant air loitered in the pre-desert they were driving through.

It was Abbas’task to fill him in on the background of this operation. Marco had already left Washington when the decision was made to send him to Tripoli, and Headquarters hadn’t bothered to give him the details. A graduate of the University of Colorado, Abbas had returned to Libya where he now worked as a journalist. As one of the small group of Arab nationalists in the Kingdom, who had opposed the monarchy of King Idris, and had followed with devotion the fiery broadcasts of Gamal Abdul Nasser from Cairo, Abbas had made common cause with the Libyan secret opposition, most of them Nasserites. But then, without their aid, Mu’ammar Qadhafi led a revolution that deposed the old King. And Abbas’ friends found themselves in a second echelon, working for the ruling military regime; they were the technocrats who thought they knew how the real world outside the military worked. Abbas’ nationalist reputation was well known to the colonels who led the coup with Qadafi, and when they had need of his English language skills he was a convenient non-official emissary. We need to made a secret approach to the U.S. government, he was told by the aide to

Qadhafi, but we have to avoid the American Ambassdor and the local Embassy. You still have contacts in America?

Abbas passed a message to the National Security Council in Washington through a former classmate from Colorado, who was now working at the NSC in the Reagon Administration. It was not that unusual. The NSC received these kinds of feelers every day. Gorbachev had recently sent a secret letter that promised Reagon he would soon be dumping his hardline Minister of Foreign Affairs Gromyko and ordering the military to withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as Gorbachev had solidified backing at the Politburo. Once the hardliner Gromyko was gone, Gorby had written, he would secure the military’s backing for the withdrawal. Reagon had chosen not be believe the message from Moscow, but it turned out to be a true indication of future events.

And of course there were also the usual secret demarches from Iranian mullahs or their representatives saying that if Reagon would only ship spare parts for the Iranian air force’s U.S. made fighter planes, the Iranians would see to the release of American hostages in Beirut. The march of Ayatollahs with the same self serving message was getting to be an inside the beltway joke. This particular approach from the Libyans seemed better authenticated than most. Abbas was advertised as a serious person, reported so by his former classmate, and his Arab nationalist credentials were long-standing. CIA had a file on him as a fire-breathing opponent during the days of King Idris. if Qadhafi trusted anyone outside his closed military circle, it would be him.

The Libyans wanted to negotiate a deal with the Americans, Abbas’ said. Chairman Qadhafi, aware of his own growing isolation in the Arab world and his country’s need for American technical expertise to exploit its oil, wanted to do everything possible to repair relations. Without compromising his principles, of course. But the discussions had to be conducted in secret, he claimed. Peace and accommodation with the Americans had many enemies in Libya, although the Colonel himself was not one of them. The message passed from Washington to Abbas was to meet with a CIA representative who would fly into Tripoli from

Tunis. Marco Daniels would be authorized to listen to the Libyan proposal and discuss the Libyan terms but would serve essentially as a messenger. Any response would have to come after serious discussion at the NSC among the key players. Abbas knew more about Marco’s mission than Marco himself.

As the darkness of the evening flooded the pre-desert, burying all the faint details by which observant voyagers might mark their progress, the Land Rover homed in on its own lights splayed across the road. They were not going to Zuara—that was for the ‘ears’ that listened everywhere and which Abbas called ‘antennas.’

Why are you so worried about ‘ears,’ Abbas. I thought this meeting was something arranged by Qadhafi? Isn’t he the maximum leader?

The Chairman has those within his government who would not be favorable to this discussion with you Imperialists. There are some who would use this information to oppose the Chairman he added cryptically.

You mean his number two, Jalud? Some people say he would like to take over as Number one. Why does Qadhafi keep him around? He looked at Abbas before adding: Or is he grown too powerful? Jalud, the radical deputy and second in command in the government, was known as a dissolute, anti-American firebrand who had argued in favor of organizing terrorist cells to attack the Americans and to assist the Lebanese Shia fundamentalists in expelling American influence from the Middle East. Jalud was believed to have orchestrated a visit by a prominent Lebanese Shaykh, and then, when the Shaykh had arrived secretly in Tripoli, had him assassinated after the Shaykh refused Jalud’s request to work against the Americans in Beirut.

The Berber did not look at Marco, keeping his eyes directly on the road ahead. Perhaps there are some reasons, he replied nervously. Yet there are many who hate the Americans, Sir. Fortunately I was educated in America and I do not share this hatred.

When they arrived at a crossroads on the level, acacia dotted plain, Abbas pointed his finger and Marco bore the Land Rover off to the left after making sure there were no other cars crossing. But in that vast emptiness, there were none. The Land Rover began the steady climb to Jado, the Berber village on the Jebel Nafusa, and the four cylinder vehicle lost speed and seemed to pant with the effort.

Some watermelon, Mr. Daniels? said Abbas, deftly slicing the round melon with the carbide blade of the knife he had pulled from a leather sheath fastened to his waist, underneath the barracan robe that encircled his body. Marco was annoyed that Abbas knew his real name but reached and took a fully ripe rind and the watermelon tasted sweet, despite the sand grit which stuck to his gums after each bite. The Ghibli was subsiding now, and the Saharan sky burst clear with thousands of stars, drawing nearer to them with every kilometer they traveled. He felt as if an oppression had been lifted from the world, and the blanket of stars was God’s reward for perseverance. If there were Bedouin seeking shelter beneath the acacia, they would leave now.

Abbas, despite his western educated voice, wore his native clothes as if they conferred a superior moral status. His manner irritated Marco, and he allowed himself to express it. I hope your friends aren’t jerking us around, my friend. You know the conditions for better relations? It’s a waste of my time and yours if your people aren’t serious.

You Americans! It is one thing I have learned studying in your country—you have no patience, you never want to compromise, just to win. You will see. The Chairman wants an agreement with your government, and he will make commitments in return. Serious commitments. Jado was Abbas’ home village and his father was the Mudir, the mayor. The message that had been passed back to Abbas after Washington’s confirmation was short: Ringo’s man will meet with your friend. But not in Tripoli. There were too many observers there. It must be Jado. From Tripoli, Abbas had sent word back to his father by a truck driver who was returning to the village after delivering a load of aspartus grass, the same grass the British originally used to process the paper currency they supplied to half the world’s treasuries. They would come alone, the next night. Marco recognized the significance of the word ‘Ringo.’ It was what Qadhafi’s inner circle called him, after the Beetles’ drummer. They both favored western boots.

They know this is important, Abbas continued. You little understand what risks there are in making this contact. It would be a serious for us if some ofour Revolutionary Council members were to know. Yes, including your enemy Jalud. And there is also the question of our Syrian friends. If they knew that Ringo was thinking of making a deal with the Americans, then … Ibrahim, however, has persuaded him to trust you. You have to trust him also, Mr. Daniels. Your chief has enough confidence to send you all this distance secretly. So you too should be optimistic. And now you will have the chance to listen to Ibrahim and believe his words.

On the carpeted floor of the room on the Jebel Nafusa, the Arab group sat in a semicircle cross-legged, surrounding the low table where the Libyan version of cous-cous was piled high in ceramic bowls. He emulated them. On the walls were tacked engraved brass plates and the Libyan flag. A black and white photograph of Qadhafi curled itself on the back of a door, adjacent to one of a young Gamal Nasser. A dull brass bowl filled with water was thrust before him, and he followed the native costumed companions in ritually washing hands. An impassive Fezzanese servant poured the water carefully from the bowl over the fingers. Outside the house that was built of unpainted gray concrete blocks, there was a water well called a ‘shaduf’. A mule, hitched to a pulley, was drawing water. Abbas presented Marco formally to Ibrahim.

Ibrahim Khallud was a Palestinian who had acquired Libyan citizenship, a rare occurrence in Arab countries that routinely refused to absorb the Palestinian Diaspora for fear this would undercut the claim to a Palestinian homeland. Ibrahim’s family had left Ramalah in 1946 and settled in Tripoli during the British occupation of Libya. He was a member of the Arab Nationalist Movement, and he joined with a young Libyan nationalist outraged by the Arabs’ defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, blaming it on the corruption of the old Arab leadership elite. By 1969, with a band of junior Libyan military officers, they formed a secret group and planned the overthrow of the Libyan monarchy.

After the successful revolution, carried out while the feeble and very old King Idris was on a foreign visit, the Libyan military officer, who was named Mu’ammar Qadhafi, sent Ibrahim to fight with the Fedayeen against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. He took the name Abu Mustafa. By 1972, following an unsuccessful round against the Jordanian Legion, Ibrahim was imprisoned in Amman for six months before being released. He returned to Tripoli where Qadhafi employed his guerrilla talents in special operations run by Libyan intelligence, although at this meeting, Abbas carefully omitted this information in his recital.

Abbas continued his description of Ibrahim to Marco as the group sat and ate, some more interested in the food than the conversation. The women could be heard murmuring behind drawn curtains in Berber dialect, and one of them giggled in a shrill voice. Abbas’ father shouted something in dialect to the women and the giggling and murmuring from the woman’s quarters ceased.

This man, Abbas boasted, pointing at Ibrahim who was dolefully staring at his bowl, is the fiercest of Fedayeen; a man who could kill with his hands only. Marco observed the hands in question, and decided that indeed they were strong, but they were soft and uncalloused. He obviously was the type who had never killed with anything but a Khalashnikov, preferring a healthy distance between himself and his victim.

He has sacrificed for his people and the Prophet, may peace be upon him, has received his brothers in heaven, presenting them to Allah. The sacrifice of the brothers shall not be in vain, Insh’allah!

Abbas, as the interpreter, presented the short, rapid English phrases that were meant to represent the long, rhythmical and almost breathless Arabic as Ibrahim turned and began speaking his Arabic directly to Marco. At first he shouted the ritual recital of the wrongs of American policy in the Middle East along with the litany of injustices suffered by the Palestinians at the hands of a Zionist enemy bulwarked by the United States. It was a florid presentation, even in Abbas’s truncated translation, and lasted half an hour through the meal. Having heard the like many times from Arab nationalists, Marco let him talk. But when he showed no sign of ending, and growing bored with the familiar chorus, Marco interrupted.

But Abbas, tell Mr. Khallud that what he says is well known to all of us and we will have to agree to disagree. I am not here to conduct a debate on behalf of the American government. American policy agrees that the West Bank is Palestinian and Occupied Territory. Its status must be resolved, but peacefully among the opposing parties. What is past is an argument that is stale and no good can come from picking at the scabs of old wounds. The future is all we can do anything about. Our interest is to stop terrorism, and save the lives of innocents. Your government’s sponsorship of terrorist organizations results in the deaths of bystanders, of people innocent of any wrong and not involved in your political struggles. That is an injustice we can do something about immediately. And without a suspension of terrorism, your country will not be welcomed back into the community of civilized nations. You have been told many times that this is the price of restoring relations with America—stop supporting the terrorists.

Ibrahim, to Abbas’ evident surprise, responded directly to Marco in the fluent English he had mastered during his studies at Cambridge in the United Kingdom, where his family had sent him after their resettlement in Tripoli.

"You are, of course, Mr. Daniels, correct when you say that the past has evaporated and the future awaits its determination. The past, however, molds the possibilities of the future. The

Israelis cannot burn ideas like they burn the villages in occupied Palestine. The Zionist end will come in blood, yes, but it will come, and not all the secret papers in the Pentagon or the CIA can prevent it." Ibrahim’s voice rose to underscore his words.

But you are Libyan now, Mr. Khallud, and Palestine is very far away. And we are not meeting tonight to discuss your dreams. We are here, as you know, to discuss this country and its actions. You have summoned me for this, haven’t you?

You are correct, Mr. Daniels. We will discuss an agreement between the Chairman and your organization, the ‘company’ as you call it. This CIA that has done much wrong to our people. But we know of those with good will in your Agency as well, and we hear there are those who are favorable to Palestine. We require some assurances. Are you prepared to make them?

First, before we can get to that, I have to tell you that that we know from reliable sources you have a number of terrorist groups present on Libyan soil, Ibrahim. And this is something that does not give us confidence about your intentions.

What you call terrorists, we call patriots who are at war against the Zionist entity to regain their homeland which was stolen from them. They are, as you say in America, freedom fighters.

"Some of your so-called freedom fighters blow up innocents far from the Occupied Territories, Ibrahim. Any promises my government can make are strictly conditioned on a verifiable guarantee from your government that it will stop any support to international terrorism and will promise to expel from its territory any groups that sponsor terrorism against the