I’ll never forget the first time I saw that penetrating stare, that beautiful face, that wicked and seductive smile. He introduced himself in English: I am Dr Castro, Fidel. I am Cuba.’

on the day she arrived. Marita discovhat a bazooka rocket launcher was under their bed. But she said: “At that nt I felt like a queen.” was besotted. Castro was a living after he and fellow revolutionary Che ra overthrew the dictatorship of Cuba’s ent Fulgencio Batista. revolution had ended a month before a sailed into Havana harbour. ro became president, a position he ntil 2008. And it was not long before a realised he was totally ruthless. said: “In May 1959, I discovered I was ant. When I told Fidel he opened his s wide and went very quiet.” Then one day in the autumn of 1959, while heavily pregnant, she drank a glass of milk she later realised was spiked.

Marita said: “I felt groggy and lost consciousness. I heard voices. I have vague memories of lying on a stretcher with a drip – and I remember that I heard a cry.

“According to some versions of what happened, I was subjected to an abortion.

“Others said the birth was induced and the baby was stolen from me. I have never known exactly what happened. Who ordered this savage attack? Was it Fidel’s men?”

Marita suspected that whatever happened to her baby had been ordered by Castro. The US secret services were quick to exploit her grief and she was approached at a hotel by Frank Fiorini, a CIA operative in Cuba.

He told her: “I know you’re Fidel’s girlfriend. If you need help, I can give it. I can take you away from here. I’m American.”

Marita recalled: “The CIA and the FBI wanted information. I began to take documents Fidel threw away.

“Fiorini also wanted me to tell him about my lover’s movements.”

She went to the US for urgent medical treatment and believes agents got to work on her there. She claims they gave her pills which were “brainwashing me and taking advantage of my emotional fragility”. Castro gave her no help and would not reveal what he knew about her lost baby. That became a gift for the US secret services and anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

Hurt and angry, in 1960 she joined a USsponsored plot to topple her lover, launched amid concern about a communist state only 110 miles off the American coast.

As tensions grew, the US discovered in 1962 that the USSR was setting up missile bases in Cuba. It led to a naval blockade of the Caribbean island that nearly led to war.

Poison