MARITA

Move over, Mata Hari: Here are the wild—if nearly incredible- -adventures of a new Jane Bond, told with the help of Schwarz (Walking with the Damned, 1991, etc.). ``He held my face in his hands and kissed me—my first kiss....`Be with me,' he whispered.'' The amorous ``he'' is none other than Fidel Castro, flush from conquering Cuba seven weeks earlier but not too busy to notice the pretty 19-year-old visiting Havana with her father. Days later, Lorenz beds the Cuban leader (``We were in bliss for five hours''), beginning the affair that was to alter her life—a life, she tells us, that began badly in Germany as her American-born mom was arrested for spying and sent to Belsen; after V-E Day, Lorenz herself, ten, was raped by an American soldier. Fourteen years later, she's betrayed by Castro as her unborn son is ripped from her womb; moving to the States, she's contacted by sinister intelligence agents, including future Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, and is trained as an assassin. Target: Castro. Lorenz's escapades come fast and furious here: stealing boats; robbing armories; returning to Cuba to kill Castro but ending up ``naked and making love'' with him; driving on November 20, 1963, with Sturgis and a cache of guns to Dallas, where she meets Oswald and E. Howard Hunt; taking up with a former Venezuelan strongman; being exiled to the Amazon, where she's adopted by Yanomano Indians; returning to New York and joining the NYPD; flying one last time, in 1981, to Cuba, where Fidel's charisma again stays her assassin's hand and where she gives him a Polaroid camera. Cynics may snicker as Lorenz cavorts on the jungle floor with her ``pure man'' of a Yanomano, ``blow gun, spear, and poison arrows'' at his side—but, as the saying goes, life can be as thrilling as (and even stranger than) fiction...and sometimes, maybe, even the same thing. (Photographs—not seen) (Film rights sold to Oliver Stone)