"How could we forget?" Rex Donaldson said wryly.
"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."
Cliff was staring at him. "Hey," he said. "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."