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cont...
Herb asked. The man from the Foreign Ministry appeared at 8.30. The lift went down to the basement and we walked through the kitchens to the underground car park, where the same minivan was, the rice cracker crumbs all about the seats, the curtains now closed. Whether this was to stop people looking in or to prevent us from looking out, who knows. It was so dark in Havana in 1997, it was the darkest city at night I’d been to; there were few street lights and cars only had one headlamp. We couldn’t have seen anything if we’d wanted to.
‘He was a little taller,’ John said evasively in reply to Castro’s question, ‘a little thinner.’ John was about to turn three when his father was killed. This was at the drinks stage of the evening. The other people there were Ricardo Alarcón, then head of the National Assembly; José Ramón Fernández, the man who’d repelled the invasion at the Bay of Pigs; Juanita Vera, Castro’s translator; the foreign secretary and Castro’s ADC. A tray of 1950s cocktails went about the room; I remember the glistening condensation on the glasses more than the contents. None of the Cubans apart from Castro and Vera said a word. He talked about what he was reading: Churchill, Zweig. ‘What did you think of Nixon?’ he asked John. Nixon had invited the young Kennedys to the White House in 1969; Tricky Dicky had been gracious and kind.
Those were just the opening moments; what followed was a five-hour, five-course dinner at a broad table covered with an embroided cloth. John sat opposite Castro; I was on the president’s right.

Only at the end of the evening did Castro return to John’s father. As we were leaving the dining-room, Castro stopped and said: ‘You know Lee Harvey Oswald was trying to get to Cuba.’ Oswald had been refused a visa at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City a few weeks before the assassination. John nodded, and Castro walked on before stopping again. ‘You know it was hard to allow Americans into Cuba at that time,’ he said. John nodded again. I think this was Castro’s way of saying that he hadn’t had anything to with the assassination, but that if he had allowed Americans into Cuba in November 1963 then Oswald wouldn’t have been in Dallas on the 22nd. Mind you, and who’s to say, maybe there would have been another gunman at Dealey Plaza.We said goodbye and went back to the hotel.

The next day we flew back to New York via Cancun. We’d been given a box of cigars each, both wrapped in bright pink wrapping paper. If the idea was that the paper would disguise the contents of the boxes then it failed completely: the words ‘Cuban Cigars’ might as well have been stamped on them. It wouldn’t look marvellous if John was stopped at an American airport with Cuban cigars so I agreed to put them in my bag.
‘Hey, John,’ said an officer from the Immigration and Naturalisation Service who’d never met him before. He swung open a gate and let us through, no need for passports. ‘See you again,’ the agent said. I handed John his pink-wrapped box: who was going to stop that Kennedy? As I said, he had a way of making it difficult for anyone to say no.

[comment]
David5555 says:
Mr. Thomas,
In your article you incorrectly state the people in attendance on this trip were photographer Herb Ritts and his assistant Matthew. The assistant's name was not Matthew it was David. I know because it was me.
That trip was surreal on so many levels. The swim in the Bay of Pigs, the meeting with El Griego explaining his activities on the march toward the bay, and the cast on John's leg that was getting a little ripe in that van we traveled around in. John also forgot his passport in NY and it was a little dicey changing airports in Cancun as I recall. LOL. I snuck out with the driver to take some pictures of Havana and was chased by a bunch of Paparazzi thinking I was John. It was an awesome trip. John left his notes in the van as we were leaving Jose Marti and I sent them to him at the office in NY. Never heard from him if he received. Miss both him and Herb.