Storm Clouds Over Havana - Mike Marino (read full novel TXT) 📗

phantom rebel queen Victoria or is she being manufactured in Detroit as we speak. Next year’s spy model with power steering?”

Buster pointed to a female form walking towards us from the bar. She had raven black long hair and a determined walk. Strut actually. Her stride was confident. “Here she is now. Meet Victoria.”

At that point, my mouth dropped. Pilar and Victoria hugged each other in a fashion reserved for old sorority sisters sis boom bah. Apparently they l knew each other too. So much for deception on my part. I felt I was the odd man out. How the hell did this happen….and right under my nose. I looked up at the ornate ceiling fully expecting Lansky to descend from on high with a host of mob angels with dirty faces. Hell, this is Cuba, 1957. Anything  is possible. Even betrayal and death. Let’s face it...you only live once anyway… may as well go out with a bang!








Chapter 17 - Storm Clouds Over Havana

 

Storm Clouds Over Havana Dateline: Havana April 11,  1958 By Mickey Russo Special Correspondent 8:54 A.M

Strikes organized by the 26th of July Movement did not have the momentum Fidel Castro had hoped for.   A general strike was attempted  two days ago, but did not receive nation-wide popular support and the fire of revolt was quickly extinguished by strong government counter actions by the police and military. Following the aborted strike attempt, the rebels appear to be losing  strength and prestige, while a number of government sources report schisms within the movement.

 

Other sources from the rebel camps report that at the present time the 26th of July Movement is stronger than it has ever been, and its chances for success in overthrowing the Batista regime have increased.

 

The Castroites appear to have  taken a more anti-American Yankee Go Home line based on  charges that the United States is supplying the Batista forces with arms and other war materiel to combat the insurgency. (As of March 13, we  obtained verification from Washington D.C. from a source in the Department of Defense that arms were being supplied to the Batista regime for a time, but as of this date, all shipments have been suspended.)

 

The Cuban Government has consistently charged that 26th of July Movement is penetrated and influenced by communism, however have offered little in the way of evidence  to prove these allegations, although there are continuing reports that some communists have entered the lower ranks of the rebel forces, again, according to government sources without supporting evidence.

The Batista government continues to hold all the cards at this point to abort the revolution’s success based on the government's ability to maintain the support of the armed forces and organized labor. The majority of the Cuban citizenry when interviewed by this reporter, do oppose  Batista in principle, but out of fear of reprisal are not willing to take up arms against him and merely desire a return to stable political conditions.

….End Transmission …….

Memo To: Blake O’Hara April 11, 1958 9:43 A.M. (Please encode for transmission)

Final preparations to leave for Santiago de Cuba are being made. We have been hampered by weather since January but it appears we’ll be ready to depart Havana at the dawn’s early light, without  the rocket’s red glare aimed at sinking our trusty fishing boat!

 

Have had great times getting to know Ernest H. A real man’s man and apparently a ladies man as well as he has proven  at Lansky’s clubs where I’ve spent many hours with him.

 

Proof that a man of letters is truly a man of action with booze and women. He must have one hell of a large Pulitzer! Our rebel contact, Victoria will meet us in Santiago de Cuba to take Pilar, Hem and me to Castro’s camp in the mountains where I’ll begin the series of interviews and dig around to find out more on Francisco’s killers. Hopefully I  won’t blow it and meet the same fate!

….End Transmission …

 

Pilar fell asleep exhausted that night cradled in my arms, while I just lay there staring at the ceiling. Thinking, over thinking. Planning, over planning. Revolution. It happens in the best of families, but do they all work as the warranty suggests, or is the reality that they are a worse curse than what they've replaced?
As a political and social scientist.  So I didn’t anticipate any epiphanies or revelations regarding the revolutionary orbit in  rebellious solar systems of social issues and rights of the people. Besides, writers words aren't gospel, although some writers will claim they are the second coming of Jesus H. (Hemingway) Christ, truth is...forget the words, and realize it is between the lines, between the sweaty sheets of literature, that you'll find the message, as well as the white space between the words...or what a writer doesn’t write but actually omits, that tells the story and pieces the puzzle together. The old one hand clapping Zen hipster zinger.

 

Revolution is an internal family affair...like incest its best kept hidden away in the closet of the trailer. It's a social fabric that has torn, and in time inbred, ready to come apart at the familial seams it seems. It's a case of weird Uncle Hector fucking his 13 year old first cousin dressed in a sheer see-through frock behind the barn, why? Because he can, and the resultant child is a mutant, born with three heads similar to a freak farm animal on display at some roadside rattlesnake farm in the Southwest.

Revolution takes a number, and gets in line. In the Russian Revolution I picture a peasant woman with a babushkag, you know, a rag scarf over her head, she has bad teeth and she needs a shave let alone a bikini wax, as she stands stoically in a Ukrainian bakery on a Saturday morning in random order of rebellion.The Russian Revolution is regarded as the undisputed World Series of revolutionary events

 

Cuba! Now this different. This one is the sexy tits and ass floor show of revolutions. There is no business like revolution business...Cuba...a most sexy and sensuous paradise of rife and strife. A Caribbean island paradise of carnal pleasures, where pussy and politics go hand in hand along with the rum soaked bacchanals. She is an outlandishly flamboyant island nation of sexy, curvaceous and long legged females, dressed as plumed dancers on brightly lit casino stages, in decadent old Havana with a stable full of sex floor shows involving everything imaginable and unimaginable back in Podunk, USA.

 

This is the  private American play land of brothels, good times, and bad gangsters, like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, and Third World American hand picked hand puppet leaders, like Juan Bautista, The mob made Cuba an offer it couldn't refuse. The rich got richer, and the poor once again, got poorer. The country was as ripe as a field of sugar cane for revolution, when cabana's would give way to Castroites,  and beach bums would make way for beach bombs.

Well,  enough overthinking. I had a busy day ahead. We all did. So now I had to sleep. Rejuvenate. Energize. Besides as the lady said “Tomorrow is another day!” I agree, it is another day, and to be honest quite frankly I don’t give a damn.

Chapter 18 -Hemingway's Boat & A Bottle of Run

 

 

Early dawn yawned over the smooth waters of Cojimar Bay just east on the compass from Havana. In its awakening spotlight bath of golden rays It gave life and dimension to our trusty sea worthy transportation. Hemingway’s boat, “The Pilar.” She was a beauty.

 

A jewel in the rough, Hem’s boat was the greatest source of his pride. Even more so than his Pulitzer I believe. The “Pilar”  was a sleek sexy svelt 38 foot customized outfitted   version of the Wheeler Shipyard’s hand-crafted Playmate series of wooden boats produced, or rather given birth lovingly at their shipyard at Coney Island in New York City. The “Pilar” was the Lauren Bacall of the sport fishing world, and Hem fussed over her as if he were Bogart himself. Actually two of his guests on two of his rum and fish run voyages were Bogart and Bacall!

 

We began loading the supplies we would need once we arrived at X Marks the spot in Santiago de Cuba. Oh hell, we were going to meet Castro so I guess it would be more appropriate to say X Marx the spot as we prepared to heave ho  making the sea going journey south  for our clandestine rendezvous with the rebellion.

 

A few changes of clothes along with the tools of the journalist’s trade. Notebooks and pens. Buster Scalisi was on hand doing his last minute cheerleader chants and helping load the more technical items aboard such as my prized field ready portable Smith Corona Skywriter I’ve had for years. The same one I banged out the Jackie Robinson series of stories on that helped launch my career into the teeming jungle of newspaper reporting. (Buster would drive ahead to our mission point along with an electronics expert from Langley to outfit the apartment/office we’d be using. He was also on hand to set up the pirate radio station on the Lansky freighter to get the coded messages to Miami and then to Langley at CIA Headquarters for analysis before forwarding to Batista.) Tricky business this spy business.

 

Once our gear was stowed away below, Hem stood proudly on deck beaming like a cat who had just eaten the proverbial canary. “Well, Mickey. How’s she looking?” I hadn’t had the opportunity to view this wonder of the Hemingway world before. “She’s a beaut Hem!” I admitted honestly. “A damned fine looking craft.”

 

He beamed with so much pride and excitement I felt this boat could give him a faster and more gratifying blow job than Mama Do-Right the fellatio queen of Havana could and did to many a serviceman on leave who wandered into her back alley off of the Prada in the Barrio Colon.

 

“We’ll get some marlin fishing in on the way down, to make it look good and legitimate,” he explained, speaking more as a junkie explaining how he only needs one more fix then will quit.  “Got a customized live fish well for the trophies.” I nodded to Pilar and she was game for fishing. Hell, she was always ready for anything. Live life to maximum speed was the motto that explained her uncanny amount of  drive and energy to experience life.

 

“Will we have to refuel along the way or can