“If surviving assassinations were an Olympic
event, I would win a gold medal.”
—Fidel Castro, 1967
Eclectic, Frank Anthony Sturgis (CIA Codename: George) decided was the term to best describe the cityscape of Habana. At mid-morning, Sturgis had stepped out onto the sharp, jutting formation of craggy rocks by the harbor which tourists so loved to mount. Standing alone there, as if he were the most ordinary guy in the world, Sturgis had for the better part of an hour gazed out at the sharp, clean lines of El Morro lighthouse while the tide whipped white-tipped waves against its timeworn stucco surface, up onto the natural formation on which George stood. Droplets of salt water ricocheted onto his face. Later, after checking his watch to make certain he would be on time for his appointment, Sturgis strolled along the crowded Malecon, taking in the local color. This included diverse little shops where bright Cuban clothing and such enticing foodstuffs as cold pork sandwiches with thin-sliced-red-onion on a foot-long roll were hawked, in tandem with the charming array of happy, noisy people.
At noon Sturgis continued on to Habana Vieja, the historic old city. There, ghosts of conquistadores were rumored to peek out from every alley. Sturgis paused long enough to marvel at the diversity of architectural styles, each unique building reflecting some successive era from this city’s 400-year history. Yes, he decided. The correct term is eclectic.
For now, during this sunny siesta hour, Sturgis (or more correctly the man who had gone by that name for the past eight years) had plenty of time to closely study the appealing if incongruous arrangement of structures. He sat uncomfortably in a wobbly metal-frame chair, hunched over a small matching table ever since arriving at Banana Royale, a humble café kitty-corner to the stately Plaza de la Caterdral. Impatiently, Frank Sturgis waited for his assigned rendezvous, commencing with the arrival of his contact. Little more than a hundred feet away, the vast baroque building that lent this plaza its identity stretched high into an unblemished turquoise sky, its solid frame flanked by crumbling palaces that had somehow survived the end of the Colonial period intact. Each offered its own striking contrast to the area’s dominant centerpiece, the Caterdral itself, which in its grandeur commanded any visitor’s attention: the history of Cuba, crystallized in the building’s crumbling stones.
When will she show up ... ? The bitch, the bitch ...
Sturgis glanced at his watch: 2:35 P.M. already. Joe the Courier, his sea-green eyes glowing, had stopped by on time, handing George the anticipated packet at precisely 1:45. ‘The Kraut,’ as Sturgis mentally referred to the awaited young woman, apparently had decided to pull her 'how-late-can-I-make-my-grand-entrance-without-causing-you-to-throw-a-tantrum' routine. That was to be expected. Sturgis had never known a beautiful female who didn’t believe her breathtaking appearance granted her special privilege to keep the whole world waiting. Desperate to contain his mounting frustration (how dare she be late on this all-important occasion?), George forced himself to focus his mind on the remarkable buildings and architectural melange.
The styles on view ranged from ancient Moors, Renaissance Spanish and Italian, to the art-nouveau style so trendy back in the U.S. during the 1920s. George appreciated each. Few people would have expected that from one in his profession. Thanks to a course he’d opted for at Virginia Poly-tech Institute while studying there on the G.I. Bill following his discharge from the Marines during WWII, he—Frank Angelo Fiorini then—grasped the background of each element in the wide spectrum as more casual tourists could not. Frank/George knew beauty when he saw it.
He had always respected and admired beauty, in art as in women ... this short, dark man whose complicated and varied life (Virginia policeman, nightclub owner, gunrunner, agent) had led him here as a courier between the CIA and the Mafia, that powerful institution of organized crime with which his agency, known as The Company to members, had recently aligned.
If that freakin’ bitch doesn’t show, what will I ...
Then, all at once, there she was. A vision of loveliness as always, The Kraut floated toward George from around a corner, smiling brightly as if that solved everything. A triumph of her will would cause any man to forget all about being angry, even what he’d been upset about. She proceeded, in what appeared a ballet-like manner of moving, down an angular boulevard, not so much stepping across pavement like a normal human being, rather by some magic seeming to glide along on air itself. Approaching, she nodded and winked, basking in the confidence of beauty.
How did a corny song from some old Hollywood film put it? You stepped out of a dream ... Few women George had known and bedded were capable of the heat he’d experienced with The Kraut, that cool-as-an-iceberg surface (half-German, half English) dissolving the moment this beautiful little brat hit the sheets.
Not today, though. Not for me, at least. The Beard? Likely he’ll have her. Then, of course, she’ll ‘have’ him.
As George reached into a jacket pocket for the cellophane wrapped package of blue pills that Joe the Courier, aka Santo Trafficante, Jr., had instructed him to pass to her, the agent considered the sleek killing-machine he had, in only a year, created out of a pretty, giddy, oblivious teenager. Now, today, the still child-like beauty, assigned the Code Name 'Lolita,' looked like something out of an Ian Fleming novel: a deliciously duplicitous dame, elegant but deadly. A fictional female agent who enjoyed sex most when knowing the man in her arms was doomed to die there. First, le petite morte. Then, the Big Chill.
What pleasure such a woman took in slowly playing with her prey ... like a black widow spider, or some human tarantula.
God, if only there were time to fuck her again. I’d die for ... hey, that’s funny. I didn’t mean to make a joke but I did.
Yes, the CIA operative thought as he rose and seemingly shook hands with a friend who just happened to stroll by, one secret agent passing a packet to another, Lorita Morenz rated as a real-life Bond woman, if with a touch of an underage beach-bunny Swingin’ Sixties dream-girl thrown in for good measure.
Truly, all men would agree, a woman to die for!
*
“Who is here?”
The moment that Fidel Castro stepped into his suite at the Havana Hilton on November 30, 1960, the communist dictator sensed someone had entered earlier, awaiting him in the dark. Instinctually, Castro’s hand reached for the wall-switch so as to flip on the lights. Swift thinking prevented Castro from doing so. This hulking man grasped that so long as he and his unknown 'companion' remained in darkness, the intruder could not perceive him any more clearly than he could that hidden figure.
Castro maintained self-control, refusing to give in to a panic that urged him to turn and dart out through the still-partially open door, back toward the elevator. When silhouetted against the hallway light, he would offer an easy target.
Regaining his nerve with the speed of a man who has spent the past several years on the run, Castro kicked the door closed behind him. This decisive action plunged the living-room area of his suite into a pitch black, the window shades having earlier been drawn down. Who waited in the void? How anyone could slip past security struck Castro as beyond belief. Might one of his hand-selected bodyguards have proven susceptible to bribery?
“Calm down, Fidel. It’s merely me.”
Light footsteps in the dark, swiftly moving forward, all at once distinguishable. Every person has his or her own gait, this as much a signature as a fingerprint. Simultaneously, Castro experienced déjà vu owing to the familiar pungent scent of deep, spicv mango, revealing the presence of a perfume he knew well. Then Castro felt the slender arms embrace him as had happened numerous times before, followed by a furtive kiss in the night.
“Lorita?”
“Yes, Fidel. Your own personal little ‘Lolita’.”
*
The female who occupied the room with Castro now glided to the wall switch, flipping on the lights. He marveled at the 19-year-old’s body, displayed for his consideration in a skin-tight white sheath adorned with silver rhinestones. So she had come crawling back after all: the Bremen-born beauty who had made her way to Cuba, sought Castro out up in the hills during his exile, haughtily announcing to the stunned bearded-giant that she fully intended to become the divorced Castro’s lover and confidant.
And, furthermore—just look at me, Fidel—there was not a damn thing he could do but succumb.
“I must share this great moment in world history which is about to occur. Be at the great man's side, when the hour of triumph arrives,” Lorita had explained. He viewed her warily. Lorita might be an agent from right-wing dictator Fulgencia Batista. Or from the American Mob. Perhaps even the CIA.
A lethal Lolita, perhaps? I should send her away at once. Just in case. But of course she is far too lovely for that.
So Castro had taken Lorita for his mistress. Together, they would enter Havana atop a tank, several days following the New Year’s Eve Revolution of December 31, 1958.
*
“How did you get in?”
“With this.”
Lorita held high the key he had presented to her that first night together here, before the once-spectacular relationship soured. Castro recalled the incident that had precipitated her bitterness. Lorita yelped like a slapped puppy when he informed her that, having now been recognized as Cuba's supreme leader, perhaps it was time to reconcile with his estranged wife Mirta.
“What? You bearded bastard! After all I’ve—”
Whether a marital reconciliation could be managed, Castro explained, he absolutely must bring his son, young Fidel, here to live with him.
Listen to reason, will you? The legendary American newsman Edward R. Murrow had contacted him, requesting a “Person to Person” interview for CBS later that year. Imagine that!
“I want to sit beside you at that moment,” Lorita said.
“Lorita, stop screaming. Be reasonable.”
“Reasonable? If you truly loved me, you’d want the entire world to know of our great love.”
“Even a communist must deal with appearances—”
“You’re a phony. Everything I believed that you stood for was but a show. You’re no better than the man you ousted.”
At that moment, Castro’s ego deflated. His mind knew that Lorita had spoken a truth he lived in daily denial of. The giant then lost control and slapped Lorita hard across her cheek. He knew this to be a great mistake even before the contact could be completed yet had not been able to halt the movement of his arm in mid-air. As his club-like hand whacked against the tiny female’s face, Lorita emitted a shriek which resounded throughout the room, likely the entire hotel. Castro knew that momentarily guards would rush in to check on his well-being.
Before that could occur, Lorita leaped up off the couch and vaulted out the door. She tore past captain of guards Puto Valle and several others who, stunned by the sight, threw themselves up against the corridor walls, allowing this raging banshee to pass. However lacking in education, all knew one line of poetry by male instinct: Hell have no fury like a woman scorned!
*
“Why did you come back?” Castro asked as Lorita confidently marched to the living room’s far end. From there, she jauntily proceeded to enter the adjoining bedroom the two had shared for a glorious period, their intense bouts of sex deeply missed by this prominent world leader. Castro had but two weaknesses: fine Cuban cigars and lovely women from anywhere. Young women in particular; Lorita had been seventeen when first they met.
Why do we men so desire the Lolitas of this world?
Castro could not phrase the answer to his unspoken question. He understood that, like all men, most of them less ambitious and accomplished than himself, her youthfulness appealed to him as much as her slender shape and Baby Doll face. Like every student able to get his hands on a copy of Vladimir Nabokov's forbidden tome, young Castro had read the era's most talked about novel while pursuing law at university ... dreaming about the forbidden pleasures described therein.
Might a touch of Humbert Humbert exist in every man?
“Guess,” Lorita responded.
That is so like her. Flirtatious, enticing, always eager to play out her little-girl games.
Once, a year earlier, she’d insisted he dress up as a 1930s Chicago gangster while she costumed herself as his flapper girl in a short skirt of the type worn by women in Hollywood movies depicting that era. Had they reflected the truth about the jazz age? Who knows, who cares! The idealized world up there on the silver screen was so preferable to its real-life predecessor. On yet another occasion, Lorita had arrived with a box containing a pirate outfit for him, harem girl costume for herself. Their Arabian night had followed, lasting until dawn crept in through a thin crack between the drawn shade and the window's bottom.
That night, their bedroom transformed into a rediscovered Bagdhad. Not as that city had ever been but as recreated by Hollywood as a garish fantasy for mass consumption. The suite could be any alternative-world they chose to imagine. During technicolor nights, reality virtually disappeared, replaced by Tinseltown fantasies Lorita conjured up and Castro shared.
Often, Lorita had insisted that her Brute Man, as she half-jokingly referred to Fidel, play out with her some elaborate scenes from specific films she had watched as a child. Lorita, having long since memorized the dialogue, now committed it to paper, insisting that Fidel learn his lines and not deviate from them. Magic reigned supreme, at least until the morning when he would put on his fatigues and return to the office.
“What do you most want from life, Lorita?”
“You’d laugh if I told you.”
“No, no. I promise not to."
“Alright, then. Everything I’ve ever seen in the movies. American movies, that is. Not those horrid 'realistic' ones the European filmmakers now choose to produce.”
That was then. This, now. Things change. Loyalties are tested. Love dies. Or does it? She did come back—
“Again, Lorita. Why are you here? To forgive my rash act, which I’ve already apologized for, and return to me, or—”
“‘Or’ what, my ‘brute’?”
Moving without realizing he was doing so, mesmerized by her presence in a manner he remained unaware of, Castro followed Lorita into the bedroom. If he had carefully thought through what could follow, Castro might have held back in doubt. His mind, though, was not at this moment the organ that controlled Castro. Dutifully, he trudged along as Lorita danced off ahead of him, a wood-sprite from some fairytale. Castro felt drawn as if by a magnet, his cumbersome feet helpless pieces of metal, pulled by some invisible force he could not control...
“So, Lorita. Now: Do you kiss me or kill me?”
Already, Lorita had slipped out of her silk sheath, this crumpled in a shimmering heap on the floor. She wore only her Midnight Black lingerie, presenting herself to Castro as he had most loved to gaze on her. By the time he finally stepped into the room, Lorita was curled up on the huge bed like some smug, self-serving Persian cat. She even purred with superiority.
“Tell me, Fidel: which do I appear about to do?”
“Perhaps first one, then—”
“Come,” Lorita whispered, stretching her slender arms out invitingly. “Either way, accept your fate.”
“Dust be my destiny, then?”
“You, and every man who ever lived.”
*
“So,” Lorita asked after they were, at least temporarily, finished, “are you alive or dead?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Castro responded with a half-hearted laugh, “dead to the world.”
“But your great worry has not materialized. There may not be much of you—or any man—left after I ravish my lover. Still, Fidel, your heart beats. You breathe.”
Even in the darkness of the bedroom, just enough light from outside trickled in a window where the shade had been less than fully drawn that Lorita could make out his frown of concern.
“The night is still young. My guess is that your little drama is but partially played out.”
“You know me too well,” Lorita laughed. This was not one of her agreeable child-woman giggles. Lorita’s tone struck Castro as provocative. “Yet you allowed me to join you here. Why—”
“I could not send you away.” He ran his hands over her tight frame, enjoying each contour, every curve to her hard boned structure and the soft white flesh covering it. “You knew I would not be able to so.”
“Yes,” Lorita coldly answered. “I did know that.”
“Yet it was important to you that I say so?”
“Of course. You men experience the world primarily through your eyes. Women? Our ears. Things must be articulated for us. We need to hear such words spoken, even if we already know.”
“I don’t—”
“Understand? Of course not. But how could you? No man ever understands how a woman thinks. Or feels.”
She rose up in bed and, with a sudden and swift movement, swiveled about like some sleek jungle cat moving on all four paws, then perched herself above him, staring down arrogantly. Castro, his thick body weighing him on the bed like an anchor, gazed up at the elegant creature. Seemingly so vulnerable, all the same the true conqueror, at least for the moment, of a man who had conquered this sector of the globe.
Lorita considered Castro with eyes no longer sweet, as they had appeared minutes ago; now, suddenly hard, cruel, rapturous in the power she wielded over him. The Beard! Feared by many, adored by just as many others. Yet a slight female, little more than a hundred pounds in weight, reigned over one of the world’s most important and powerful men.
Always, from the beginning of time, it had been this way.
Though Castro might have crushed her with his large hands, he could never do such a thing. His fate rested in her small hands and, he knew, equally small mind.
Men are such fools. Thank God for that! Or what would we women do? Even now I can feel his naive male anticipation. He waits to learn whether he will live or die. Well, you wait. Don't worry; it won't be long before Fidel learns his destiny.
“So,“ he sighed as she leaned down, certain in her movement to lightly brush her warm, light-brown hair across his face, “you would kill me after what we’ve just experienced?”
“Well, Fidel, I certainly wouldn’t have killed you before.” With that, Lorita lowered herself further, kissing him.
A split second before she pulled her mouth up and away, Lorita bit Castro’s lower lip. When he yelped like a puppy dog surprised by a sudden whelp, her lithe body experienced orgasm.
“That hurt,” Castro whined.
“It was supposed to,” she answered before, while tossing him a tantalizing glance, she slipped off. Standing upright now, Lorita seized her black-bikini-bottom and drew it up and over her legs with a finesse suggesting worldliness far beyond her years. It occurred to Castro that Lorita purposefully only half-dressed when she did not also restore her bra to the rich rack of flesh the shimmering velvet device earlier held firmly in place. This allowed Lorita’s sweet breasts to swing provocatively as she moved. Castro watched spellbound, amazed at the infinite ways in which such a women could, with the simplest gesture, reduce a man, even a great man, to rubble.
“I’ll be back,” she cooed. Lorita reached for her purse and tip-toed toward the adjoining bathroom, where she had so often cleaned herself after the fact, to coin a phrase.
“To ... finish the job?”
"Oh, Fidel,” she sighed, “stop, already. It was fun playing out our little scenario. That’s over now. Both of us know that was nothing more than one more movie-game of choice.”
“Was it?” he called after as Lorita closed the door. “Then why return to me? You still haven‘t explained—”
*
The bathroom light switched on, the door now locked behind her, Lorita reached into her purse and drew out an ovular-shaped bottle of cold cream. Here Lorita had hidden the botulin pills passed on to her by her CIA contact Frank Sturgis, he having received them from the Miami-based mobster Santo Trifficante; to 'George' from 'Joe the Courier,' according to their codenames.
The time had come. Lorita would in a moment employ the capsules to kill Castro. She knew the man referred to by his enemies as The Beard (a codename too) well enough to guess that on some level, however deep within his dark psyche, Castro longed for it. During their time together, he—supremely confident in khakis in public, what he brazenly referred to as 'the world of men’—had revealed his many insecurities and private fantasies to the woman beside him late at night, when sleep, desperately longed for, refused to descend and offer its healing powers.
No man, Lorita understood, ever sensed his mortality more than Castro. Intriguingly, he did not, like most people, fear death itself. For Castro, horror existed in the thought of a bullet or knife wielded by some male assassin. On the other hand, an obsession from youth haunted Castro’s imagination: to ’pass’ in the arms of some dark angel, a belle dame sans merci, as some poet put it. As a child, he had seen a vampire movie. In it, a beautiful woman wearing a black velvet cape approached a male victim, biting him on the neck with her fangs. The young Fidel wondered, in the clammy darkness of that theatre, whether others in the audience, like himself, did not so much fear this mysterious figure but longed to be her next victim.
To die for love ... Every man has his secrets. This, Lorita knew, was Castro's private fantasy. No one knew but she. Perhaps he had whispered this to her in some perverse hope that Lorita would make his dream come true.
Well, now: your fantasy is about to become real ...
Lorita opened the jar, sticking her right hand inside to remove the pills from their creamy ivory-white base. Such a wonderful inspiration this had been, hiding them here. Even the oh, so careful Valle, the most loyal of bodyguards, had not thought to search in this unlikely spot while inspecting Lorita some hours earlier. Never trusting of her, Valle had appeared eager to find some sort of weapon on Lorita's person. There had been none. So Valle allowed her to pass, gloating at the thought of white-hot passion which his beloved leader would soon enjoy.
In a moment Lorita would, pills in hand, exit the bathroom, rejoin her Fidel, slip the botulin into the glass of water her lover, always consumed by thirst, invariably kept handy on a stand beside his bed. She would hand him the glass, excitedly watching as he accepted the drink. Of course, he would again consider her closely, wondering if this were indeed his moment of truth. But he would drink. Of that, she had no doubt.
For Castro had to learn if Lorita’s surrender had been only an elaborate ruse. There was but one way to discover that for certain. So Castro would drink. How had an ancient philosopher that her Brute Man once quoted, many months earlier, put it? The end of man is to know. Despite his undeniable greatness, Fidel Castro was in the end nothing but a man. So he would follow the way of all flesh ... and at the end ... ‘know.’
“Oh!” Lorita gasped, realizing something had gone terribly wrong. The botulin pills, which she believed would remain solid in the cold-cream base, had decomposed. Mistakenly she’d assumed their coating was hard enough to maintain itself here. George had informed her that any extreme heat might render the pills unusable. He hadn’t said a word about cold! Teary-eyed, Lorita stared down in disappointment. The odd blue color had leaked through the ivory cream, making it appear like semi-liquid marble. Castro could hardly be expected to swallow that.
Only a moment before, she had embodied the perfect female assassin: sleek, cool, determined. Like something out of one of the James Bond novels George, during her period of training, had given to her read. Now, Lorita felt like a loser: naïve, inept.
What to do? The answer to that would have been predictable to anyone who knew her. Lorita stomped her feet, furiously shook her head, then sat down on the toilet and wept like a baby.
*
Do I hear Lorita sobbing? Yes, I’m sure that‘s what the sound is. What’s wrong now?
For a moment Castro considered hurrying across the room and joining her to comfort his Lolita. Lorita always succumbed to some sort of sentimentality women revel in and men cannot grasp.
Perhaps, his ego wondered, she cries because she really did love me. And, having rediscovered the joys of sex with her Brute Man, understood that she would never be able to leave again.
Castro’s spirits rose as he considered the possibility that, from this day forward, she would agree to exist as his secret lover, even as he’d suggested a year ago. Finally, his infantile male fantasy would at last become a wonderful reality.
Then Castro’s ever-dormant paranoia sprang to the surface. This might be something more cryptic, closer to the nightmarish fantasies that had consumed him while they sighed with joy in each other‘s arms. Fidel remained still for the better part of an hour while Lorita wept behind the closed and locked door.
Sooner or later, she must emerge. Then, I will know at once from her eyes what this latest temper-tantrum is all about.
*
“Oh, God,” Lorita whined, all the faux style and performed-sophistication gone from her movements and manner. The skinny girl with the big boobs finally opened the bathroom door. She staggered across the floor to the bed, dropping down like a wet rag. Lorita cried uncontrollably, waving her thin arms in utter frustration like an eight-year-old who did not receive her gift of choice on Christmas morn, wallowing in self-pity.
“I could fuck up anything,” she at last hissed.
“Except a fuck.”
“Right! The one thing I’m always good at.”
Castro roared. “What is it?” he asked, stroking her sugar-scented hair. Lorita managed to raise her now puffy face up to confront Castro, her bloodshot eyes locking with his.
“You tell me.”
For a moment, Castro froze. “Hmmm?” Then he understood. “It’s as I guessed. You came here tonight to kill me.” She nodded. “For yourself, your false belief I betrayed you? Or as an agent for some outside—”
“Does it matter?”
“To me? Considerably.”
“Well, that’s one of those things you may never know, not for sure. I won’t tell you, even if you said that you would spare my life in exchange.” Lorita sobbed again. She was, he realized, fearful as to what she believed he would next do.
“Just one moment, my dear, darling girl.”
Castro reached down and across to the bedside cabinet, yanking open a drawer. Wiping a wet residue of tears and make-up from her cheeks, Lorita arched herself around so as to see what he had drawn from it. Her eyebrows rose at the sight of an automatic pistol.
“I knew it,” she wailed. “You would—”
“Don’t be silly,” Castro reassured her. He repositioned Lorita up into a sitting position so that she again straddled his immense male girth. Now, though, as her breasts swung back and forth, like a pair of feminine pendulums, she struck him not as provocative, only pathetic.
Lorita's Brute Man handed her the gun. Her eyes revealed confusion. He smiled manically.
“Go ahead. Your assignment was to kill me? Do it.”
Castro glided the gun toward his face, opened his mouth, lowering his lips around the cigar-shaped barrel. If Lorita did as instructed, the last thing on earth Castro would see before his brains exploded out the back of his head, onto the pillow, would be her breasts swinging like two exotic dancers at a Havana casino, performing in perfect tandem ...
Lorita shifted positions, squinting, trying to find a solid position, tightening her grip on the trigger.
“Wow,” she exclaimed. “Just like in the movies!”
Spy thrillers, she meant. With the advent of the 1960s, such Kiss! Kiss! Bang! Bang! projects had been shot in Asia and Europe, becoming popular on the international market. In a radio report Lorita heard, owing to the new tolerance that overtook America following the election of young JFK as president, a James Bond book was being filmed by a Hollywood company, the American mainstream apparently ready for such kinky stuff.
She had read Dr. No, Casino Royale and all the others, at the suggestion of Frank. He had explained that Lorita must, in real life, emulate Fleming’s lethal literary ladies. Become in actuality what they embodied in his fictions. Perhaps not so imaginary, though. George explained that Fleming, whom he knew, based those ‘Bond girls’ on daring women he, as an English operative during and after World War II, once worked with.
Perhaps there was no true, certain dividing line between fantasy and reality. Maybe each impacted on the other. At any rate, those novels provided her education. Lorita's job now was to live out what others read about, saw at the cinema, only dreamed of doing. For her, this constituted her ordinary life.
Well, perhaps not ordinary ... everyday yes, but—
“Oh,” Lorita squealed as he entered her again, fighting his way past the weak barrier of her panties. "Just imagine: In only a moment you’ll be coming and going at the same time!"
*
Castro had remained supremely calm through all this. That unnerved Lorita, though she readied herself to complete the assassination. Yet a minute went by, then another, she unable to consummate what she had arrived for. Those pills would have allowed Lorita to remain remote from the administration of death. To pull the trigger, witness her lover’s head explode like a dropped melon, brains splattering everywhere?
Ugh!
It was, simply, too much. Hard as she tried Lorita found herself gradually relaxing her finger from the trigger. “I can’t,” she wailed, removing the barrel from Fidel’s mouth.
“Of course you can’t.” With a firm movement he took the pistol from her hand, returning it to the open drawer.
“Now what?”
“Leave.”
“Just like that?” She snapped her fingers. Castro nodded.
Wanefully, Lorita pulled herself up off the horizontal slab of male flesh and stood upright, a sad rather than glamorous figure in the now ripped strip of material partially covering her nakedness. Lorita glared back at the rough beast sprawled naked on the bed. Then, as if nothing untoward had occurred, she regained her composure, sniffed, and set about dressing, holding back tears. Once the silver sheaf again adorned her frame Lorita gathered up her purse and made ready to leave.
“Goodbye, brute man.”
Cautiously, she stepped past Castro and out the door, back into the main room without a parting glance. Once there, Lorita stopped, pulling a small object out of her purse.
“Here,” Lorita called, turning to toss the key back onto the bedroom floor.
“You won’t be coming back, then?”
“Never.”
“Will there be others?”
“That’s not for me to say.” She made ready to exit but halted again, glancing back over her shoulder. “When you said to me, ’no one can,’ what did you mean?”
Castro gloatingly smiled from ear to ear. “I am Fidel. My destiny is to guide Cuba into its future. That was written in the stars a million years ago. No one can interfere with fate. Not even a woman as willful and wicked as you.”
"Me, wicked? You're the one!"
"Have it your way, Lorita. You always do."
Lorita did not know how to respond to that, so she exited the room, the suite, the hotel, and the life of Fidel Castro.
It’s the Mob, Castro thought, remaining stock-still in the darkness. The Mafia has declared open war! Or, no. Maybe the CIA. Which one most wants me dead ...?
My worst nightmare would be both ... working together.
*
Why is it that we always think of the perfect thing to say once it is too late? For years following her hurried departure, Lorita rolled over in her mind what she might have told Fidel. Never had she revealed to him that, when she left Germany at age fifteen—truly a Lolita then—Lorita had not gone directly to Cuba to seek him out. That had been her great lie during their first meeting up in the hills. Lorita journeyed to Venezuela. There she schemed to meet and seduce Pres. Marcos Perez Jimenez, the right-wing Junta dictator. Though married, Jimenez set her up in a suite at majestic Humboldt Hotel, overlooking Caracas.
The two spent many a pleasurable hour in the king-size bed until in 1958 the communists staged a coup. Then Jimenez hurried off to America. In the land of freedom and democracy this brutal former dictator received the Legion of Merit for distinguished resistance to The Red Menace.
Sadly, he took along his wife and family but not Lorita.
Guessing that the next great Third World leader would be a communist, this the coming thing in under-developed countries, Lorita determined to become mistress to such a man. Those in the know she spoke with insisted that Fidel Castro would likely emerge as that personage. So off little Lorita trekked to Cuba, proving once and for all that the power of female beauty over the male cuts across all existing political lines.
Damn! If only I’d have thought to mention to Fidel that he’d accepted the castoff mistress of a diehard fascist as the great love of his life, such a revelation might have killed him faster than botulism or a bullet.
Why didn't I think of it then?
*
For once, and to Frank Sturgis' amazement, The Kraut showed up not only on time but early! This would be the final meeting. Their designated place, once again, was Banana Royale, 24 hours after the previous encounter. The man called George had been listening to Radio Cuba all morning. Nothing. Concerned, he next poured through the papers. No major revelations. Life appeared to be normal in Cuba today. That could only mean one thing: The assassination attempt had failed. This was confirmed by Lorita's rare on-time appearance, in and of itself spelling disaster.
Approaching, she employed the last refuge of a female scoundrel. Weeping openly, Lorita collapsed into George’s masculine arms, spitting out a semi-coherent rant.
The Bond Girl? Gone. In her place? This sad little loser.
In a cold Cream jar? You must be kidding ... !
As he sent her packing, George wondered whether she ought to be eliminated as a security risk. If so, he would do to her what she failed to achieve with Fidel. Enjoy Lorita's fine body a final time, then ...
No. Why kill such a total klutz? Let her talk to anyone she chooses. Nobody in his right mind would believe anything such a train wreck says. Go on your merry way. And good riddance!
Now, though, he would have to meet with Joe the Courier. Inform the man born Santos Trafficante, Jr. as to what had gone down ... or rather failed to go down. Discuss what they ought to do next.
No question Castro must die. Enough with pretty women. Deadlier than the male? That adage suddenly seemed a bad joke.
George already had something else in mind. Pick a man to do the job. Some obscure fellow, secretly dreaming of glory, greatness, immortality even, while plodding unnoticed through the world. No more take-your-breath-away bitches! Some face in the crowd, an invisible man. He had several candidates in mind.
George and Joe were due back in Florida tonight. The next week they were expected to arrive in New Orleans for a top-level meeting with mob boss Meyer Lansky, where this current problem would be discussed. The Big Easy! Sturgis’ favorite city, other than what he had discovered in Havana, for daylight decisions and late-night debauchery. How he loved Bourbon Street.
In truth, the top candidate on George’s list had often walked that street in his youth. Feeling worthless, powerless. Dreaming of greatness, with not a clue how it might be achieved. Eager to be found, fearful that he would forever remain obscure.