Every man is a secret agent in Cuba.

You have to be, because you are being watched by the spies.

If you are Cuban you are being watched; if you are a Yankee you are being watched. If you are rich and famous your moves are recorded; if you are nobody, the same --sometimes.

If you are a friend of Fidel you are being watched;and, if you think he is a Latin fuhrer, there are eyes...and ears -- and they know you.

So you are a secret agent. You must keep things to yourself, or there will be problems.

I visited Cuba. Legally. I went with a group that brought humanitarian items stuffed in luggage and packed into extra suitcases, all meant for the ordinary citizens of Havana and Trindad, Cuba. These were things I bought the week prior to leaving at the Dollar Store, at Wal-Mart and CVS Drugs. Easy stuff to get, if you're American, or Canadian, or French, or Mexican. I loaded my shopping cart with small soaps, moisturizing lotions, aspirin and Tylenol. I scooped up some pencils, colored markers and notebooks, too. I paid, and I left, and I packed.

The airport was spruced up a bit since my last visit to Cuba some five years ago. It was like landing in any other Caribbean port. Immigration officers look up, take your visa, then look down again. They stamp and stamp -- but in this case not your US Passport. We met our contact, collected or luggage, and stepped out of the air conditioned airport into the humid night. Still, it was like any other Caribbean Island. There was a buzz of activity, even though it was late, with relatives meeting relatives and friends meeting friends and with official tourist employees meeting tourists.

We weren't tourists, but we did have a person from a tour company meeting and helping us. We were some 30 in the group.

Havana presented itself to me early the next morning. The ride in had been in the dark, with a minimum of street lights, so the buildings that we passed, though colored bright in the light of day, were just one hue of dark and then another darker. Throwing back the drapes in the hotel room some eight stories up revealed the city of Havana and Havana Bay as it would look later when we would see the famous scale models of the city.

Not long after I let the sunlight in, the phone rang. It was the boss. We talked about a few things, and then mentioned S, who had been assigned as our guide. The Boss asked what I thought of him, and I said that I didn't so much like him. Later that morning, when I met S at the motor coach, he averted his glance and was not very friendly. I then remembered the caution about the phones.

We were warned that the hotel rooms were most likely bugged and searched, as we may represent a threat to the revolution and the Castro Brothers grip on power. S's attitude was certainly less friendly, so I reminded myself to watch what I say further -- on the phone and in my room.

The buzz was about cell phones and CD players and DVD players. They were allowed in the new Raul Castro- Cuba. Wonderful news! Well, yes... but the average Cuban stretches to afford a cell phone, CD player or DVD player. And with the cell phone: who is listening?

Cuba has been talked about endlessly by so many. Sometimes a reporter from a newspaper will get down there and walk about and do interviews with government officials and maybe even the Caribbean Fuhrer himself. Most always the glam is on how the people are happy, how they view Fidel as an aging grandpa figure and how they look forward to normal relations with the United States.

Hollywood stars seem to love the cigar smoking, former lawyer and baseball player, Fidel, and usually become tongue tied and effusive when heaping the praise. Jack Nicholson thought Fidel was a "genius" and a "humanist". So did his other Hollywood high school dropouts, such as Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Kostner, Steven Spielberg, Woody Harrelson, Kate Moss, Naomi Campell, Leo Di Caprio, Chevy Chase and Sundance Kid, Robert Redford. Michael Moore, who so believes in Cuban health care system, that he has been rewarded with his image on the wall of the Hotel Nacional. When I see Michael Moore in Michigan, I'll ask him about the man who beseeched our group for some fungal cream for his child, who was waiting and waiting to get into a clinic. Two in our group had some anti-fungal cream, and gave it to the man later; however, their images will not be in the lobby of the Hotel Nacional.

According to Capitalism Magazine, all those admiring stars were spied on in their hotel rooms and video taped and bugged as they slept, ate, and renezvoued with fellow celebrities of the opposite sex, and others out to supplement their meager Cuban income. The cameras followed them they roamed the busy and colorful streets of Havana. This related by high ranking intelligence defector, Delfin Fernandez.

So even Jack Nicholson was a secret agent in Cuba. He didn't know it, and the question of who he would be keeping secret for is in question, but he played the role --unwittingly.

Another secret agent, one you will never meet, told me his story at two in the morning. His name is George Louis. We talked where we met that early morning, because nobody else was around -- at least physically.

George Louis is not his real name. I'm not going to reveal his real name, or the real location of events, or the exact nature of the conversation. It's part of being a secret agent in Cuba. For the same reason a Cuban restaurant owner in a major city in the US told me he won't comment to the media in a negative way about the brothers Castro(because he is just a "restaurant owner" and wants to keep the place open), I will tell you George Louis' story and leave out details that could get him, well, detained.

We didn't say much to each other immediately, but, because we were the only ones around that early morning, a few pleasantries were exchange, and then George Louis decided that I was an American, from the United States.

I told him I was, and he told me his life. George Louis is a young man, about twenty-five. His parents live abroad, his father in the United States and his mother in another country. He has a sister still in Cuba. He is alone. He hasn't seen his father in twelve years. He can only sporadically communicate with him with email. There was no blatant sadness in George Louis' face; he related it all matter of fact. It was just the way it is.

George Louis learned English by reading a few of the English language books he could find and listening to a number of audio tapes. His English was good. Though trained as para legal, he was now working where he would be in contact with foreigners -- that is, in the tourist trade. He could also collect tips, something he couldn't do in his former occupation, and could earn more than the typical 7 to 10 US dollars per day.

In a short while, George Louis had realized he lingered long enough. We said good-bye and walked away. Just before that, George Louis caught my arm and said that the conversation here could never mention him by name. There was an urgency in his voice. I said I never would.

The next morning the streets of Havana were bright and busy, and people bustled along their way, or stopped and talked along the Malacone near the water of Havana Bay. Old Havana, a UNESCO World Heritage site, churned with tourists and visitors who admired the intricate Spanish architecture and paused now and then for pictures. I took pictures myself. Of the colorful buildings, the throw up bands playing in the squares, the old 1940 and 1950's American cars, of people in markets. While I snapped my pictures I wondered if I was the subject of any photographs. I couldn't possibly be a threat to the Cuban Revolution, could I?

When I got home I didn't see any strange looking characters hiding behind a potted fern in any of my pictures, but I wondered about my intercepted phone call. Another man on the trip had his laptop tampered with when he left it behind in his hotel room one day. We had "minders", extra official people assigned to us for no real reason, who journeyed with us most of the trip.

George Louis is a man in Havana. I'm not the first person he told his story to. But most of the time his real thoughts have to be guarded and kept to himself. That's part of his life of being a secret agent in Cuba.