"See here," the wiry South African said plaintively, "when El Hassan
started off there were only a half dozen or so who had the dream, as
you call it. O.K. You could trust any one of them. Bey, Kenny, Elmer,
Cliff, this Jake Armstrong that you've sent to New York, Rex
Donaldson, then Jimmy and Jack Peters and myself. We all came in when
the going was rough, if not impossible. But now things are different.
_It looks as though El Hassan might actually win._"
"So?" Homer didn't get it.
"So from now on, you're going to have an infiltration of cloak and
dagger lads from every outfit with an interest in North Africa.
Potential traitors, potential assassins, subversives and what not."
Homer was scowling at him. "Confound it, what do you suggest? That
these Johnny-Come-Latelies be second-class citizens?"
"Not exactly that, but this isn't funny. We've got to screen them. The
trouble with this movement is that it's a one-man deal, and has to be.
The average African is either a barbarian or an actual savage, one
ethnic degree lower. He wants a hero-symbol to follow. O.K., you're
it. But remember both Moctezuma and Atahualpa. Their socio-economic
systems pyramided up to them. The Spanish conquistadores, being old
hands at sophisticated European-type intrigue, quickly sized up the
situation. They kidnaped the hero-symbol, the big cheese, and later
killed him. And the Inca and the Aztec cultures collapsed."
Homer was scowling at him unhappily.
Dave summed it up. "All we need is one fuzzy minded commie from the
Soviet Complex, or one super-dooper democrat who thinks that El Hassan
stands in the way of _freedom_, whatever that is, and bingo a couple
of bullets in your tummy and the El Hassan movement folds its tents
like the Arabs and takes a powder, as the old expression goes."
"You have your point," Homer Crawford admitted. "Follow through, Dave.
Figure out some screening program."
* * * * *