“The first thing people ask me - other than what really happened in that warehouse after the briefcase blew up - is what it was a man like me saw in a woman like Magdalena Fuentes.
I guess most people thought she was just another girl - I know she did. But you know, there were beautiful girls everywhere, especially in a place like Havana, and they weren’t such hard work. I sometimes think it would have been easier to seduce Che Guevara.
Other people think it was the challenge and I suppose there’s something in that. That first time she looked at me, at her boyfriend’s engagement party, like she wanted to bust my lip and bite me on the neck, maybe both at the same time, well if you’ve never had a woman look at you that way, you haven’t lived, all I can say.
And being the daughter of a man who hated me, the fact that she was in love with someone else, the fact that after our first conversation she told me she wouldn’t go out with me if I was the last man on earth - I guess the challenge was there.
But that wasn’t what made me go for the burn with her.
You may have heard it said: If one woman is not enough, a hundred is not too many. Well they’re right, a hundred, or however many it was - it is just too damned many. I was looking to reform, I just didn’t want to advertise it and ruin my reputation.
But I knew myself well enough to know that it would take a special kind of woman to keep me from getting restless.
I was looking for two things. The first thing was loyalty, and if you saw her with her father, you’d know this was a girl who would kill for someone she loves. The trick was getting her to love you.
And the second thing was spirit and that was something Magdalena Fuentes had in spades. I remember how she shut her boyfriend’s hand in the car door and then had her chauffeur drive off. Well, I never laughed so much in years. And besides, he was asking for it.
Even that time she got arrested by Masferer’s goons in Knife Street, she was more worried about her father finding out she’d stayed out late.
I knew I’d never get restless with Magdalena Fuentes. I’d never know what she was going to do next.
So we were the perfect match. Except of course, that we were so perfect we scared the hell out of each other. It was the one thing I didn’t see coming; that as soon as I got everything I wanted I’d run as fast as I could. And so would she.
I’d smuggle guns for Che. I’d sort out the Bay of Pigs for Kennedy. I’d even train montagnards to fight the Viet Cong.
But love? I don’t know.
Love is dangerous.”
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