A fighter who believed in angels. It was a bit disturbing. But someone had brought Alexander back from the Trip's door, in the swamp. Some one or some dung. Judah was not omnipotent.
He might have been fooled. This Just Al could be an agent of evil.
But whatever he was, he glowed softly in the firelight when he entered. And Alexander found the strength to sit up completely, and the need to be erect in this one's presence.
Judah left them atone, although Alexander protested it was not necessary. And Just Al said, "A man named Welch to whom you owe a debt, and one named Nichols, and one named Achilles, petition you for aid and comfort. Guevara will not release them as long as he leads these Dissidents, because of a woman they brought with them."
"A woman?" said Alexander Cautiously.
"A Tamara Burke."
Alexander nodded as if he were not surprised. "I see. What would you have me do? Between those two, man and woman, much blood has been spilled. Bad blood."
"Che has lost faith, and hope. He merely goes through the motions. He has let himself be compromised by factions in the Pentagram. The entire Dissident movement is imperiled because of him."
"I didn't think your sort mixed in infernal polities." Alexander wanted to see if tins curious being would proclaim himself as a divine agent, face to face.
But Just Al did not. He shrugged. "Surety you have come among us for some great purpose, Alexander of Macedon. Surely there is good reason you are called Alexander the Great."
"But you are alluding to ... suggesting that..." Alexander shook his head and it hurt. "I'm in no shape to wrest control of these Dissidents from the man they've followed so tong."
"But declare your willingness, and Providence shall aid you. Your loyal servants shall smooth the way for you. Only accept the honor."
"Hold. I know only what Maccabee has told me, and Maccabee thinks God is everywhere, under every bush, in every storm and rock, in every comer even of Hell." Alexander leaned forward, into the fire's warmth, even though it hurt his neck. "Do you too dunk that this is so?"
"God is."
"I need more."
"Then you must provide what you need yourself."
"If I allow you and your ... compatriots ... to remake these Dissidents in my name, when it is done, they are mine. Command is mine. Control is mine: I owe you nothing."
"This is acceptable," said the one called Just Al whose eyes were as blue as the sky over Parthia.
Alexander wanted, then, to make a farther bargain-to say that, if he did this thing, became embroiled in the affairs of the Dissidents, freed Welch et al, then in exchange. Altos must reunite him with Bucephalus. But he couldn't. He was too proud to ask a favor, too much a king to admit a weakness, and too much in love with Bucephalus to chance that the steed would be brought here, into so squalid a hell as this.
So he did not, just waved his hand. "I am tired. I must rest. Do what you must to free the captives in my name."
Just Al inclined his head and arose, then slipped from the tent. Outside, Alexander soon heard the whoop of joy he knew to be Maccabee's, whenever action was in the offing.
Weeping quietly, Homer was sitting cross-legged before the interrogation tent in which Torquemada was questioning Achilles when Judah Maccabee and a dozen others materialized out of the rufous mist that cloaked the camp.
"What's this?" said Maccabee, reaching down gently to lift the old bard from the dirt and sand.
"Tears for your noble savage, Achilles? Don't waste them. We're here to loose the ungovernable anger on which the whole Iliad turned."
Maccabee grinned.
Nichols, letting the bolt of his old Thompson slap home, pushed his way forward. "That's right, old man. Don't sweat the small stuff . . . meaning that fool in there." Nichols' stubbly chin jutted toward the closed tent, out of which only an occasional grunt wafted to join the smell of seared human flesh. "We've got a saying where I come from: 'Everybody goes home.' One way or the other. You read me?"
"Read? Of course I can read," protested Homer, unsteady on his spindly legs.
The bard pulled at his long, crooked nose and his sunken eyes searched the crowd.
Nichols didn't miss the confusion there, or the dawning suspicion that followed, or the certainty that made the sharp-featured antique square rounded shoulders. "I see. What can I do to help? I am with you, to the death!"
"Probably won't take that," Nichols replied before Maccabee could. (Best to make it clear who was running this show.) "Just stay in the back, with Fat Boy there, and write the action report after."
From the rear of the volunteers, Confucius called softly, "Yes, honorable Homer, come fight by me. The king uses him to sortie forth and chastise. The superior man must kill the leaders and capture the followers. There is no blame in this.' " The oriental beamed beatifically and held out a pudgy hand.
Nichols watched Homer stumble by him and signalled Maccabee. "Now, before we go in there, I gotta make this clear: them's we kill, we can't control. So we ain't killin' anyone if we can help it. Till we get to Welch and find out what he wants to do, anyways. Clear? In the ranks, and all?"
Nichols turned on his heel then and faced the volunteers Maccabee had collected-Meds and Third World mercs, Hittites and Kurds, and a couple of Brits with shoulder-boards. 'Take prisoners, got that? We c'n always km 'em later, after Welch sorts em out."
A rumble went through the men, and Nichols had to take it as assent. There wasn't time to do anything else. Like the outmoded submachine gun he carried, produced before its maker changed to open bolt, there was no refinement here, just over-complication.
But brute force was something Nichols understood better than many of these banana politicos.
He rotated the cocking handle back, taking the weapon off safe, and raised his left hand in the air.
When he lowered it, these dogs of counter-revolutioh would be loosed. For just an instant be hesitated, won dering whether Welch would have approved this action, if Nichols could have asked him. But he couldn't Welch's tent was too well guarded. Only a crisis like the one Nichols was about to foment would draw those guards away so that Nichols could get to his commander. Which he had to do, before Torquemada got to one of the Devil's Children.
Thinking to himself that putting the revolution in Alexander s hands was one way to stop Che, and that, if Welch had any objections, he wouldn't have said what he had to Altos, Nichols took a deep breath, clenched his sweating fist, and brought it down.
As the group of fighters lunged forward, Nichols had only a second to wish that fate hadn't decreed that he must save Achilles too. But Achilles was necessary to rally the Old Dead, to make the whole thing work.
Then Nichols dived for the tent-flap, calling out hoarsely, "Okay, girls, let's rock 'n' roll" as his finger squeezed the trigger and his M-10 began to bop.
Both Che and Tanya heard the semi-suppressed chatter of auto fire from some distant part of the camp.
The woman tied to Che's tent-pole looked toward the sound. The man, nearly as naked as she, stepped forward and took her chin between his fingers, forcing her to look again at him.
"Tell me," said Che Guevara raggedy, "why you did it. The first time. For whom, and why?"
"Got you killed?" said the woman he'd known as Tanya. It was my assignment.
"You were. And the second time, it was you who - "
"Don't lie to me!" Guevara said loudly, just short of a shout. "Tell me, was it real? Was everything a sham? Did you not - "
Low me, she realized he was going to say, and cut him off before he could. "It doesn't matter, not now. It can't matter. Look at you-there's nothing left.
You're a shell, a simulacrum. The Devil's got you on the run." She spoke as quickly as she could, because she knew what she was hearing, and she could guess what it meant. Welch. You couldn't hold Welch. You could murder him, to slow him down. But you couldn't hold him. Not unless you were smarter than he was. And what was left of Guevara, this lovesick wetback, this husk all eaten up inside with twisted ideals, couldn't hold his own against a stiff breeze.