CHAPTER 1

THE AMERICAN JOURNALIST NICK GAMBLE experienced his first Arab homicidalattack on December 31, 1973, while he was standing just outside thedeparture lounge of Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport. Not far fromNick was Robert Suit, sixty years old, travel editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat,waiting with friends to board a plane for New York. There was anoisy, chaotic disturbance farther down the concourse. Some nuns hurriedpast, and as Suit was later quoted in Time, some girls ran by shouting,"There's a bomb! Get out!"

Nick, who had moved to Italy from Los Angeles three years earlier, gotcaught in the middle of the terror sweeping the country. As an Americanexpatriate and a freelance journalist, he worked throughout free Europe.When anyone asked, he usually replied that there was nothing left forhim in the States, and Italy called like a siren's sound, similar to thatwhich distracted Ulysses and many sailors on their voyages. There was alsothe divorce after sixteen years of marriage that led to his alienation. Hehad departed Los Angeles on Alitalia for the land of the famous Italiansenumerated in Luigi Barzini's The Italians: Saint Francis of Assisi, SaintThomas of Aquino, Titian, Vivaldi, Puccini; the sinful Borgias, Casanova;the Medici family, Machiavelli; Galileo, Marconi, da Vinci, and so manymore.

As a man of letters (of sorts), it was Nick's milieu. He was lucky—asa roving reporter around Europe—to find markets for his writing. Hesometimes served as a paid stringer for wire services, and at one time, hewas hired by the CIA to do odd "reporting" jobs for the "company." Andhe fitfully worked on a novel.

The first gunfire in the Rome airport sounded to Nick like firecrackerspopping. Not far away, the window of the banco di cambio slammed shut.It was just the start of an attack that eventually resulted in bloody carnage:the murder of thirty-one victims in Rome. Arab skyjacking had startedfive years earlier.

Nick reported, "The attackers were Palestinians. They first struck at theairport's security checkpoint during the early afternoon rush hour. A Britishstewardess reported that a well-dressed man took a pistol from his pocketas he approached the guards, and immediately his many companionsremoved submachine guns from the bags they held and began scatteringbullets into the crowd."

The gunmen then ran out to the Pan American Flight 110 plane, whichwas preparing to depart for Beirut and Teheran with fifty-nine passengersand ten crew members on board.

Nick wrote in a dispatch, "A clean-shaven, young man in a whitesweater threw a smoke grenade into the plane before the crew could closethe door. Instantly, there were more flashes when phosphorus grenadeswent off inside the forward section. Two other grenades were thrown intothe rear section, and black smoke quickly filled the plane. One of the pilotsestimated the entire scenario took less than two minutes."

From the Pan Am plane, the terrorists ran down the tarmac to a WestGerman Lufthansa 737 jet that had already been commandeered by thesecond group of guerrillas. On board, besides the pilot and three otherLufthansa crew members were ten hostages who had been rounded upin the terminal and outside on the tarmac. An Italian customs guard hadresisted the terrorists and was shot dead outside the Lufthansa jet.

Nick's account concluded with, "At 1:32 p.m., only forty-one minutesafter the first shot had been fired, the plane took off with the crew, hostages,and five guerrillas aboard."

Less than four hours later, the ordeal ended in Kuwait, where thehijackers reappeared and claimed they were not criminals but Palestinians.They demanded the release of two Palestinians who were in a Greek prisonawaiting trial for an attack at the Athens airport in which four people hadbeen killed.

Kuwait officials reluctant to punish Palestinian guerrillas turned themurderers over to the Palestine Liberation Organization for "trial" in orderto avoid dealing with the problem. After negotiations between the terroristsand Kuwaiti officials, the twelve hostages and crewmen were released.

The targets of Islamic murderers were in one way or another associatedwith Judaism and Israel; it's what the perpetrators admitted when theyclaimed responsibility. They said they were justified by sharia, law of theQuran, the Islam divine book of doctrine written by the founder of Islam,the Prophet Muhammad.

Twelve years later, Nick's close friend, Dr. Henri Todaro, wasmysteriously murdered in his Italian home by Arab terrorists, who likethe Rome killers had been trained in radical tactics by East German policein a camp outside Potsdam.

It was now during the 1980s, when Italy was under attack by both MiddleEastern terrorists and other political groups, including the Bader Meinhofand Red Brigade. The Arab members killed innocent civilians in Romesynagogues and airports, they hijacked jetliners and cruise ships, includingthe Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean Sea, and they blew up US Marinebarracks in Lebanon, killing hundreds.

Nick was sucked into this whirlpool of murder and criminal conspiracythat personally affected him.

The frequent killings and the reasons the terrorists gave for theiractions would prompt Nick Gamble to recall two things his father usedto exclaim: "It all depends on whose bull is being gored," and "Life is acrucible, a constant series of adjustments."

It was into this crucible that Nick fell by twists of fate and the actionsof many men seeking different goals but using the same methods ofcorruption and murder.

CHAPTER 2

DR. HENRI TODARO STOOD JUST five feet six inches. He had curly, black hairwith traces of white, and his large, brown, kind eyes had crows'feet on their lateral edges. He gave medical advice and administeredtreatments with a friendly, assuring attitude. He had been born in Palestinebefore the creation of the State of Israel and later was displaced by anArab-Jewish war that claimed his parents. Afterward, he immigrated toItaly, where he graduated from Pisa Medical School and married a localJewish woman.

During his daily morning routine, he treated patients assigned to himby the state medical system in his ambulatorio on Via della Spina in theItalian city Livorno, location of the country's second-largest MediterraneanSea port. It was located halfway between Rome and the French Rivieraon the Aurelia, the roadway used centuries ago by the Roman legionsmarching with Julius Caesar into ancient Gaul, which is now France. Ina more recent time, it had been the battlefield for some of the roughestfighting in the last days of World War II when the Allied forces struggledto conquer the fleeing but highly resistant Nazi Army rushing home toprotect the fatherland.

On this particular day, Dr. Todaro wore the traditional full-length,white starched lab coat of the medical community, a chrome-platedstethoscope in his right pocket. He placed a small bandage over the redpoint left from his injection needle and said in Italian to the patient,"Come back next week, signora." She smiled and left his office holding hermedical records, as is the custom in Italy.

His assistant, Rita, asked, "Ready?"

"Yes," he answered. Rita ushered in the next patient. It would continuelike this until one in the afternoon, when Todaro usually took a two-hourpranzo at home, but this day his wife and son were out of town, so he had alight meal of a tuna fish...