MARITA B

The daughter of the German captain of a luxury cruise liner and an American actress, Marita Lorenz became Fidel Castro's mistress in 1959 when she was 18.

She bore Castro's son and was recruited by the CIA to assassinate the Cuban dictator, a task from which she drew back at the very last moment.

By then firmly enmeshed in the American intelligence network, she worked for the CIA, often reluctantly, for the next 25 years; among her bosses were E.

Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis. With Sturgis in Dallas on the evening before Jack Kennedy was murdered, she met Jack Ruby and a man she later realized was Lee Harvey Oswald.Now aged 53, Marita tells her story, portraying with passion and candour her relationship with the Venezuelan dictator, Marcos Peres Jiminez, her testimony at the Watergate hearings and her return to Cuba, Castro and her son.