Although this is a work of fiction, it is based on fact and was written by a first-hand observer. Henry James wrote in The Liar, ""he has an inner vision of what might have been, of what ought to be, and he helps on the good cause by the simple substitution of a nuance." Indeed, in exercising my poetic license, I made one significant substitution and allowed Octavio Fernandez to seek partial redemption. Although there never was a real Octavio Fernandez, there was a man very much like him and he was arguably known as the western hemisphere's most notorious and unrepentant terrorist. This is the story of the part he played in the Cold War in the Americas. What follows is the story of his life from his days as a prominent attorney in Havana, Cuba until his death forty years later in Little Havana, Miami, Florida, and describes many of the seventy-eight acts of terrorism in which he participated. During those forty years, he was arrested, tried, convicted, pardoned, and ultimately released by the U.S. President due to the intervention of a prominent U.S. Congresswoman, and the President's son.The story has been pieced together from the personal experiences of the author, from the man who was Octavio Fernandez, from conversations with those who knew him, and from official but unclassified reports from federal and local law enforcement and public safety agencies, and from federal and local court records.The story of Octavio Fernandez is written in two parts.This is Part I: Final Quarters.Paradoxically, Part I begins with a flash-forward to the end of his story. His closest friends and family members ponder over the problem of what to do with the remains of a man who is without a country, a man who had been a hero, a patriot, an extortionist, a terrorist, and a murderer. Thereafter, the story unrolls in chronological order. It describes Octavio's role during the Cuban Revolution, followed by his conversion and commitment to the Counter-Revolution. In his subsequent search for sanctuary for himself and his family, he is recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency where he is trained and acquires the skills of infiltration and exfiltration, survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. He participates in the Bay of Pigs invasion, attends the U.S. Army's Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning, Georgia, followed by specialized training in demolitions and sabotage at Governor's Island and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He eventually realizes that there will never be another invasion and evaluates alternative strategies of recovering his homeland. He resigns his Army commission and is employed by the Central Intelligence Agency on an open-ended contractual basis. In his new assignment, based at the CIA's Miami headquarters, Octavio is trained in non-lethal methods of sabotage. He is soon put to work and utilizes the skills he recently acquired. As an agent of state-sponsored terrorism, he becomes frustrated with the pace of the Central Intelligence Agency's progress. He adapts and shifts to his own style of terrorism which is in conflict with U.S. laws. He is arrested.