In 1964, at age seven, Jorge Masetti was informed by a Cuban colonel
that his father had died gloriously leading a guerrilla band in
Argentina. By the age of sixteen, Masetti had left Havana to follow in
his father's footsteps, fighting as an urban revolutionary in Buenos
Aires. Two years later, he was back in Cuba for a course in
conspiratorial methods. Then he joined the notorious Americas
Department, entering what he calls the pirate's den as a secret agent
for Fidel Castro. In this riveting book, Masetti takes the reader inside
the war room of the Cuban revolution. His life involved international
revolutionary intrigue: smuggling diamonds and ivory; counterfeiting
U.S. dollars; trafficking in narcotics. He served in Angola and other
war zones in the 1980s. He was an adviser with groups such as the M-19
guerrillas in Columbia and the Sandinistas. Masetti's first hand account
at times seems to have come from a Le Carre novel. But his story is
true. In addition to shedding light on the machinations of the Castro
government, it is also a compelling story of a crisis in a revolutionary
faith. In The Pirate's Den is the result of that painful introspection,
a page turning chronicle of a remarkable journey into and out of the
Cuban revolution.