Havana is a novel by the author Stephen Hunter. The third novel in the Earl Swagger series, it was released by Simon & Schuster in 2003. The story is set in Cuba during the emergence of Fidel Castro. Earl Swagger is recruited as a personal bodyguard for an Arkansas politician who is visiting Havana, Cuba. Swagger is met by Frenchy Short who is now a CIA intelligence officer in Cuba and is coerced into a black bag operation to assassinate Castro. Along comes an unnamed former inmate from the Gulag (who is possibly the sniper T. Solaratov in the novel Time to Hunt) to help the young Castro with wisdom and encouragement for the Communist interests.