human
El Hassan is going to have to remain on the move. Always. There can be no capital city, no definite base, and it's going to be a poor idea to sleep twice in the same place. He shook his head emphatically as though to deny rebuttal, which they hadn't actually made.
gpt
El Hassan's enemies mustn't know his location within twenty miles.
human
Twenty miles!
gpt
Yes. At least half a dozen of our opponents possess nuclear weapons.
human
A nuclear weapon hasn't been exploded for donkey's years and--
gpt
Of course not, Homer snapped.
human
Nor would anyone dare, anywhere else except in the wastes of the Sahara. A nuclear explosion in the Ahaggar would not go undetected and a controversy might go up in the Reunited Nations. But who could prove who had done it? And who, actually, would care if in the explosion a common foe of all was eliminated? But let the Arab Union, or possibly the Soviet Complex, or even others, learn definitely where El Hassan is and a bomb could well devastate twenty square miles seeking him out. Crawford shook his head.
gpt
No, we've simply got to keep on the move.
human
And what other problems were you talking about?
gpt
Oh? Homer said.
human
Well, keeping on the move will serve to add mystery to the El Hassan legend. It isn't good for this Tuareg encampment, for instance, to see too much of El Hassan. A leader claiming domination of half a continent looks small potatoes in a desert camp of a few score tents. On the move, showing up here, there, the other place, for only a day or two at a time, is another proposition.
gpt
Remember DeGaulle?
human
How could we forget?
gpt
He had one angle that couldn't be more correct. He said a leader had to keep remote, ever mysterious. He can't afford to have real intimates. Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin. None of them had a real friend to their name. The nearest to friends that Adolph the Aryan ever had, his old comrades of the beerhall days, such as Rhoem, he butchered in the blood purge. And Stalin? He managed to do away with every Old Bolshevik he knew in the days before the Party came to power.
human
Hey, he said.
gpt
The one other thing one of these mystical leader types needs is a belief in his own destiny. To the point of clobbering all his intimates if he thinks they stand in his way.
human
Any qualms, Cliff?
gpt
I don't know. This dream of yours is growing. Where it might end--I don't know.
human
Heavens to Betsy, Isobel said.
gpt
Another contingent of camelmen?