While doing a follow-up of my revolution coverage, my boss after too many lunch martinis in Toronto phoned me in Havana and asked if I had made contact with the dissidents. Trouble was, I had made contact under unanticipated circumstances. They had taken me to a roadside for execution because they felt I was providing Castro international publicity. Cooler heads prevailed.
I sluffed off the contact question because I knew my phone was tapped. A government soldier stuck a sub-machine gun in my ear when he pulled me over while I was driving a car a few days later and took me off to a jail for subversives in suburban Havana where prisoners included a couple Americans. The drunk tank at No. 11 in Toronto was worse than my cell.
I was able to be useful because the lengthy disappearance of an US operative had raised serious apprehensions about his fate. I knew the guy---the CIA is always where reporters gather---and I was able to get his message to his employers that he was alive. He was released.
