The subtitle of this book is How the Mob Owned Cuba ... and Then Lost It to the Revolution. It's by T.J. English.
Part One: Mobster Mambo
Chapter 1: Feeling Lucky
When Charles Luciano of Naples, Italy, boarded a huge freighter in the autumn of 1946 and headed out to sea, he had many things on his mind but only one thing that mattered: Cuba. The Pearl of the Antilles was to be his salvation, the place where he would ascend once again to the top of the most powerful crime organization in the free world. After a long decade of prison and exile, he deserved nothing less.
Having been deported from the United States just seven months earlier, Luciano did not want to tempt the fates: his journey from Italy to Cuba was to be a secret known only to his closest criminal associates. Using an Italian passport and traveling under his birth name—Salvatore Lucania—he set out on a journey that would take nearly two weeks. The freighter that left Naples in mid-October reached port first in Caracas, Venezuela. Luciano remained there for a few days and then flew to Rio de Janeiro, where he stayed for a few more days. After he was certain that he was not under any kind of surveillance, Luciano flew on to Mexico City and then back to Caracas, where he chartered a private plane for the last leg of his trip—to Cuba.
He landed at the airport in Camagüey, in the interior of the island, on the morning of October 29. Arrangements had been made for the famous mobster to deplane on the far side of the airport. When he stepped out of the plane, Luciano encountered a Cuban government official. The first words out of his mouth to the official were "Where's Meyer?"
Luciano didn't have to wait long for see the familiar, taciturn grin of his childhood friend and longtime criminal associate. A car arrived from across the tarmac and stopped near Luciano's private plane. Out stepped Meyer Lansky.
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