The Absolution (35 page)

Authors: Jonathan Holt

BOOK: The Absolution

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HISTORICAL NOTE

The Absolution
, like the rest of the Carnivia trilogy, is fiction. But it draws on a number of historical events.

Many of the facts about Operation Gladio, for example, are now well established. Prime minister Giulio Andreotti did indeed reveal to the Italian parliament in 1990 that NATO, for the previous forty years, had been training, resourcing and running a secret paramilitary network of civilians, drawn from the far right of the political spectrum, which was intended to form an armed resistance in case of a communist invasion. It wasn't long before evidence began to surface that some gladiators had, in addition, used their training and their NATO-supplied explosives to commit atrocities and assassinations, part of a coordinated “strategy of tension” that, they believed, would make the public demand tougher security measures from the government. A small number of gladiators were subsequently convicted of these crimes by the Italian courts.

Many commentators believed that these attacks had been carried out with the tacit approval of, if not at the actual behest of, the CIA. To take just one example: General Gianadelio Maletti, former head of Italian Military Counter-Intelligence, testified under oath that “the Americans had gone beyond the infiltration and monitoring of extremist groups to instigating acts of violence” â a claim that was dismissed by the CIA as “ludicrous”.

It is also well established that NATO, and in particular the British and American security services, did all they could to prevent Christian Democrat party leader Aldo Moro from brokering a “historic compromise” with the Communist Party, even going so far as to contemplate orchestrating a “bloodless coup” should the coalition take place. Moro himself, his widow recalls, was warned by Henry Kissinger when on a visit to Washington that there would be dire consequences for him personally if he did not abandon the plan.

The deal with the communists was eventually scuppered when the ultra-left wing Red Brigades first kidnapped Moro, then murdered him. When a subsequent Italian parliamentary enquiry asked the US about possible CIA infiltration of the Red Brigades, the request came back with the comment that the CIA could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of documentation relating to your enquiry”. Readers wishing to learn more about the murky politics of the time should see
NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe
by Daniele Ganser.

More recently, the story of the CIA operation to kidnap a Muslim cleric, Abu Omar, from the streets of Milan, and the efforts of a determined Italian prosecutor to bring the agents responsible to justice, has been told in
A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial
by Steve Hendricks.

Propaganda Due, as Kat Tapo mentions in
The Absolution
, was a “black” or unaffiliated Masonic lodge that existed in Rome from about 1950 to 1980. It has been called “the government within the government” of Italy. The Grand Master, Licio Gelli, fled abroad to escape arrest and was later convicted
in absentia
of conspiracy against the state. Another member was Roberto Calvi, known as “God's Banker”, who was found hanged underneath Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982.
Since then there have been several other instances of Masonic lodges in Italy being used as cover for criminal and political conspiracies.

References to US government cyber-surveillance programs such as BULLRUN, PRISM, MUSCULAR, TURBINE and so on are as accurate as I can make them. However, VIGILANCE is fictional â my attempt to bundle all these separate capabilities into one package. My accounts of the vulnerabilities inherent in the Internet of Things are also, I believe, correct at the time of writing, although I have no evidence that such vulnerabilities could extend to the systems on cruise ships.

Ian Gilroy is a composite figure, inspired by â amongst others â Hung Fendwich, ostensibly an engineer at the Selenia Aerospace and Defence Company during the seventies and eighties, but actually one of America's most senior Italian analysts; and Captain David Carrett of the US Navy, subsequently indicted by a Milan court on terrorism charges.

The independence movement in the Veneto has the support of the majority of the local population: in a 2014 poll in which two million people voted, almost ninety per cent were in favour of breaking away from the rest of Italy. The Regional Council of the Veneto has since voted to instigate a binding referendum. There has been no official response from the national government in Rome.

There have been many proposals to ban large cruise ships from Venice, some of which have been voted into law only to be overturned on appeal. At the time of writing, the issue remains unsettled, and the biggest cruise ships continue to pass within a few hundred feet of Piazza San Marco.

For links to further reading, and information about the other books in the Carnivia trilogy, go to www.carnivia.com.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Philip Baillieu for explaining the intricacies of credit default swaps, and to Anna Coscia for correcting my Italian. Any errors that remain are of course my own.

My thanks too to Laura Palmer, my editor and publisher, for maintaining her enthusiasm from the very first page of book one to the very last page of book three, and to Lucy Ridout for a mammoth feat of fact-checking and copy-editing.

I'm especially grateful to all those in Venice, Vicenza and Verona, from a full colonel of the Carabinieri to numerous peace campaigners, who made me welcome and helped with my research, and whose generosity of spirit right across the political spectrum reminded me why I love Italy so much.

And finally to my family, who for the last four years have lived with all these crazy conspiracy theories.

ALSO BY JONATHAN HOLT

The Abduction

The Abomination

CREDITS

Cover design by KidâEthic

Cover photographs Â© photononstop / Superstock (statue); Â© Corbis / Image Source (Venice)

COPYRIGHT

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE ABSOLUTION
. Copyright Â© 2015 by Jonathan Holt. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Originally published as The Traitor in Great Britain in 2015 by Head of Zeus.

FIRST U.S. EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Holt, Jonathan, 1962-

Â The absolution / Jonathan Holt. -- First edition.

Â Â pages ; cm. -- (Carnivia trilogy ; 3)

Â Originally published as The Traitor in Great Britain in 2015 by Head of Zeus.

Â ISBN 978-0-06-226707-8 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-0-06-226708-5 (trade pb) -- ISBN 978-0-06-226709-2 (e-book)

I. Title.

PR6058.O4735A27 2015

823'.914--dc23

2015011756