'Santiago's a real melting-pot,' she continued. 'Jamaicans, Haitians, Dominicans, Bahamians – it's Cuba's most Caribbean city. And its most rebellious, of course. All of our revolutions start in Santiago. I think it's because all of the people who live there are related to each other, in one way or another.'

She twisted a cigarette into a little amber holder and lit it with a handsome silver Tallboy.

'For example, did you know that Omara is related to the man who looks after your boat in Santiago?'

I was beginning to see that there was some purpose behind Dona Marina's conversation, because it was not just Mister Greene who was going to Haiti, it was me, too, only my trip was supposed to be a secret.

'No, I didn't.' I glanced at my watch, but before I could make my excuses and leave Dona Marina had ushered me into her private drawing room and was offering me a drink. And thinking that perhaps it was best that I listen to what she had to say, in view of her mentioning my boat, I replied that I'd take an aniejo.

She fetched a bottle-aged rum and poured me a large one.

'Mister Greene is also very fond of our Havana rum,' she said.

'I think you'd better come to the point now,' I said. 'Don't you?'

And so she did.

Which is how it was that I came to have a girl in the passenger seat of my Chevy as, about a week later, I drove south-west along Cuba's central highway to Santiago, at the opposite end of the island. The irony of this experience did not escape me; in seeking to escape from being blackmailed by a secret policeman I had managed to put myself in a position where a brothel madam who was much too clever to threaten me openly, felt able to ask a favour that I hardly wanted to grant: to take a chica from another Havana casa with me on my 'fishing trip' to Haiti.