Danger, Intrigue, Romance & Music in Castro's Cuba

Fidel will die, Cuba will change. But the rumors of his pending death have been exaggerated.
Despite attempts to remove him ranging from exploding cigars to all out invasions, the last of the cold war warriors remains in place and is consolidating his authority.  He is removing potential inheritors to this throne and making friends with powerful forces in China, the Middle East and Russia.
Mike McCaul is a cynical Canadian tough guy and is called back to Toronto after completing a deadly mission in Mexico. He’s recruited by the CIA to get inside of Cuba and find out how much of a threat Fidel is to American security. He’s accompanied on his mission by Lucien Larue, a deadly commando who seems to have ulterior motives. In Cuba McCaul connects with his CIA contact, Henry Goode.
While exploring Havana McCaul and Larue run into Mike’s old flame, Kate Mckee, now working for CNN and nosing around the island looking for a Pulitzer. Mike and Kate attend the national opera and over dinner Kate reveals an explosive secret; the Castros are plotting with terrorists against the USA.
Mike meets a collection of fascinating Cubans: a band leader, a bolero maestro, a heroic helicopter pilot, a modern-day Mafioso, a street kid anxious to provide for his family and an enormous boxing champion.
Kate discovers a terrorist camp near Guantanamo aimed at causing havoc in Florida while Mike hooks up with a potential Cuban messiah plotting a new revolution in the northern mountains of Pinar del Rio.  He learns that Larue did have his own agenda; he is one of the leaders of this.
McCaul gives up his CIA mandate to join Larue on his adventure. The two Canadians take an assault team into the southern mountains and wipe out the terrorist camp to capture a huge cache of weapons to supply the new revolution.
The revolution planning is completed, Mike and Kate spend a last intimate evening together and the event happens. McCaul is to capture Fidel and Raul, while Larue is to assault the main army barracks. While the revolution is being launched a tropical storm hits the island. In the wind and rain McCaul and his crew take down Fidel’s compound sentries and he enters the mansion.
Inside it’s quiet and the only sign of any occupancy is the smell of a cigar. McCaul follows his nose and finds his brother in arms, Larue, in a library sitting in an armchair enjoying a glass of wine. He explains that the rebellion has been crushed and that he will succeed Fidel when the time comes. He promises McCaul safe passage but no one else; all the co-conspirators and potential liberators will be executed. McCaul just leaves and rescues his young cohorts and their families from an unhappy ending. He waits out the storm and returns to Toronto.
When home McCaul finds out that things went exactly as planned; the CIA had wanted the revolution to fail to enable their guy, Larue, to become Castro’s ultimate successor. Mike is dismayed but not surprised at how badly he had been used. One thing he had learned about Cuba was that things are never as they seem; not as good, nor as bad. It is a place with a unique reality.
He goes for a beer at his neighbourhood pub and watches Kate’s report about the transition planned for Cuba. He shakes his head in disbelief.  At the end of “Mojito” McCaul dons his old Mounted Police uniform and is awarded the Order of Canada by the Governor General in the company of his friends, Cuban and Canadian.
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Original illustration by Tatjana Hutinec

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