THE DANTES CODE

Cuba, 1954. A dying tobacco baron hands a stranger an ancient notebook, written in code, hidden inside seven pieces of a puzzle scattered across the island. What it hides is not a fortune. It is proof.Dantes, a habano taster with a Stoic's calm and a wanderer's soul, accepts an impossible commission. Walk the island, province by province, and decode a secret buried beneath a century of smoke. But he is not alone on the road. A man in white linen who never sweats, who leaves an ironed handkerchief as a calling card before he kills, is walking the same path, one step behind.From the sacred caves of Baracoa to the iron plains of Camagüey, through a Santa Clara burning with revolution, into the drum circles of Matanzas and the rolling galleries of La Habana, Dantes crosses paths with Camilo Cienfuegos, Benny Moré, and a young comandante who will one day hold the fate of the world in his hands during the darkest days of October 1962.Each province offers a piece of the truth. Each piece brings him closer to a secret so dangerous that empires have killed to bury it, and closer to a killer who wants nothing more than to erase it forever.The Dantes Code is a novel about tobacco, blood, and the fragile thread that binds a broken people into one. Sensory, historical, and unforgettable, it asks a question every reader will carry long after the last page. What does it take to become, truly, a single nation.