The eyes of Guevara burned with all the self-consuming passion of a zealot. He was a martyr, thrice over. He was a cynic who'd lost his center. He believed in nothing; he was exhausted, disgusted by himself and what he d wrought.
She understood why: on the Undertaker's table, and in Reassignments, he'd betrayed everything-himself, his cause, his loyalists. They always did. And so it made sense that he'd clutch at her, grab for the last shred of self-definition.
What he wanted to know was who'd betrayed him, in life: what she'd done, how she'd done it, and who for-CIA or KGB. As if it mattered to anyone but him.
But if he could exonerate her as a player, he could pretend that there'd been love there. Or remember that there had.
She wasn't sure there hadn't been, but love wasn't an excuse for anything. It solved nothing. It answered nothing. It was only a torment
The man who should be interrogating her with hot pokers and sensory-deprivation hoods was trying to do so with memories, with guilt she didn't possess.
But he had enough for both of them. And he had enough lust. . . perhaps obsession . . . where she was concerned that he could even ignore what was obviously gunfire in tile camp.
Instead of reacting to it, he moved close, very slowly, and his face broke out in a sweat as his hand raised toward her naked breast He was going to fondle her into submission. He was going to bring her to her knees-and his cause-with the power of his personality.
It might have worked, in life, if she'd been desperate or stupid or not... what she'd been. It couldn't work here, because he wasn't what he'd been.
Suddenly Guevara reminded her of an aging sex queen, a twohundred pound geriatric tart who'd never realized that flirtation served only to point up what had been lost.
Che was ludicrous, a parody of himself. His liquid eyes, eyes that had inspired so many to give their lives for an unformed cause, inspired only a shadowy remembrance of himself.
As his fingers closed on her nipple, his lips said, "Tanya, you love me. Say this. Say it's so, blanca, and we will make a new world here together-"
Blam! Blat-blat-blat! Thud. And yelling, outside the tent, which shivered as struggling men fell against it.
"Che," she said, "for your own sake, run." She said it flatly. She didn't know where it had come from. She couldn't afford to feel what she was feeling for this addled Quixotic soul. "Go on, go!"
"Not until you say you did. Do. Or no. St. Nada. Say . . . something."
Something for him to remember. Something to make it all right that she'd been killed while he watched, the last time through here. Something to make it easier for him to look at all the souls his teachings had brought here, every dim-witted rebel who used Che's words as an excuse for his basest crimes, and not shrivel with guilt.
If she'd loved him, if she'd been forced or compromised to betray him, then it wouldn't be empty. It wouldn't all have been a mistake. He'd have something to live for, here.
She stared him in the eye and his hand ran down her belly, onto her naked thighs. His breath came fast.
Hers did too, but because she could see the tent behind him, where firelight beyond it threw shadowplay on the canvas, so that she could make out strugglers in silhouette.
"Che, you're a fool. A dangerous one. You always were. No matter what I felt for you, I always knew I could never trust you. Your dick got you killed-that's not my fault"
"No! No!" he said and closed his fist on the soft flesh of her inner thigh.
She closed her eyes, wishing the men outside would hurry.
And thus she missed the nearly silent storming of the tent, the slitting of its sides with knives, the sneaking of the men through the slits.
Until two men spoke and her eyes snapped open.
"Hold it, asshole. Freeze!" said Nichols, not even breathing hard, his Thompson easy on his hip.
And Achilles, brushing by him, pushing Che roughly from his feet yelling
"Brisels! Brisels, my love," as he came toward Tanya.
Great! That was all she needed, was one of the Old Dead hallucinating that she was some long-lost love.
More men were crowding in now, and Achilles was cutting her bonds. Someone handed her a robe and she flung it over her shoulders, rubbing her wrists, watching Guevara, still on the ground where Achilles had thrust him.
Watching Guevara, the great revolutionary, who had buried his head in his arms and was sobbing like a baby.
The coup was relatively peaceful, as coups went. Welch, once he'd been freed by Nichols, asked for a body count that Nichols gave proudly as, "Zero, sir.
That's the way I thought you'd want it. Though we can always remedy that now."
"Nice going, soldier," said Welch and slapped his adc familiarly on the arm.
"Let's check the wounded and sort the players out."
The players, in this case, were those who secretly harbored real sympathy for Guevara. Three hours of interviewing Dissidents didn't turn up a single one who'd admit it, and Welch sent Nichols and Maccabee to "see how Achilles is doing and bring me Tanya."
The first personal question he'd asked had been how Tanya was, the first observation Nichols had volunteered was that Achilles, though "mussed up some" from his interrogation at Torquemada's hands, was "fit to fly, sir."
So it was going to be all right. As right as anything got, here. Or he thought it was until, instead of Tanya, the frigging angel poked his head into the tent Welch had commandeered-the one that had been Guevara's.
Welch had just been congratulating himself on breaking die back of the Dissident movement It might even make up for having to shoot Enkidu. Express Trips were always a last resort. In more controlled circumstances, he'd have been able to call in an alert, so that somebody'd be ready for Enkidu when he arrived.
Welch was about to do that-send somebody to the chopper for a field phone, or have Achilles call in on the bird's radio, when the angel said, "I hope I'm not disturbing you, Welch."
"Not unduly. I heard you were a real help in all this. Want to tell me why that was? How could you throw in with Authority and against the Dissidents?"
The angel walked as if his feet hardly touched the ground. When he was an arm's length away from Welch, who was sitting on a feather pallet in scrounged fatigues, Altos said in his velvet voice, "You proceed under a mistaken assumption."
Oh-oh. "Well, then, why don't you sit down and clarify tile situation?" Welch kicked himself for letting wishful thinking seduce him. You didn't get this lucky. Not in Hell, you didn't.
The angel sat and a sweet smell like spring in a field of wildflowers wafted from his garments.
Coup or not, hand to hand combat or not, the angel didn't have a golden hair out of place. He played with the ragged hem of a short, once-white robe as he said, "The Dissidents will be led from now on by
Alexander of Macedon." And his stare was fierce and full of God.
"Crap," said Welch, and rubbed the back of his neck. "I can't have anything to do with - "
"You did not, if I may interrupt.. You were a prisoner, a helpless victim, until moments ago. Now you are free to go."
Fuck you, buddy, and the wings you rode in on. But there was no mistaking the angel's certainty.
"Alexander's a friend of mine. You can't compel him to do anything against his will."
"That is so. But he has agreed. And it is done, in the sight of - "
"Don't say that, not Down Here." Welch got to his feet and nervously began to pace, his head bent toward the angel. "Look, I don't want to have this conversation with you. Why don't you just disappear? Go somewhere you're needed."