Alternate Generals II

He calls the front desk and has a ru

Everybody does it, he tells himself.

All's fair, he tells himself.

Wallace and King are both bushwacking killers, he tells himself.

It's for the greater good, he tells himself.

It will unite the factions, he tells himself.

Finally, he can stand the sound of his own voice no longer. And besides, the bottle is empty. So he walks with careful, deliberate steps down to the lobby, where he enters the barroom and orders another bourbon.

"You look like you've had enough," the bartender reproves him. He has jowls like a basset hound, darkened now by five o'clock shadow. His dark eyes flash under lowered brows.

Stevenson surveys an empty room. The bar has not so much business that the man can afford to turn customers away. Stevenson says so, and loudly; so the bartender shrugs and pours the drink. Stevenson suspects it is watered.

His hand shaking, Stevenson lifts the glass to his lips; but the sudden roar of trucks past the window causes him to jerk and the glass drops and rolls across the bar top, leaving a glistening pool of liquor in its wake. Stevenson turns in time to see a troop truck turn the corner in the direction of the barbershop. Elite storm troopers in Prussian blue face each other ramrod straight on two benches in the back. They look neither left nor right and might have been cast from steel.

When Stevenson turns his back to the sight, the bartender has replaced the spilled drink. "I'd hold on to this one tight, if I were you," he advises.

Stevenson's mind is a haze. "Why?"

The bartender nods in the direction the troop truck has gone. "Shooting should start… about now."

As if awaiting that very cue, the distant pop of rifles comes faintly through the window. Stevenson squints at the bartender. A thought lurks in the back of his mind, but it will not come clear. Shortly, the messenger boy dashes into the barroom, grabbing the doorjamb to stop himself. He pants for breath a moment before blurting out, "They's holed up in the high school. Ol' Wallace, he's barricaded hisself in the schoolhouse door. The Hun's got 'im treed."

The bartender shakes his head. "He's facing a platoon of the Regiment Groszherzogthum Baden. That's the gang that hit the beaches on Honshu. I doubt the high school is as impregnable as Tojo's fortress. What do you say, Stevenson? About fifteen minutes and it's over?"

Stevenson raises a shaky finger. "You. You're Tricky Dick."

The man smiles a devil's smile, but does not deny it.

"What are you doing here?"

"Everyone has to be somewhere." The guerilla leader is relaxed and confident, yet his gaze shifts constantly and he never looks Stevenson directly in the eye. Stevenson sets his glass softly on the bar top. What better place to sift for information than in a bar. A man will tell his bartender things he conceals from his wife.

"You've been behind all of this."

"Me?" The affect of great surprise. "Behind all of what?"

"Everything! The bombing… Rommel coming to town…"

Tricky Dick laughs. "You think I order provost-generals around?"

"You didn't order him. You lured him."

Dick's grin broadens into a smile. "I thought Wallace's attack on the guard shack brought Rommel here."

"And why did Wallace attack the guard shack? He's hot-tempered, but he's not stupid."

"Jury's still out on that. But if I have to guess, I would say the rumors about the guard threatening the baby and assaulting the wife must have outraged him beyond reason."

If he has to guess… Tricky Dick is as convoluted as a snake. A master manipulator. "And who spread the rumors?"

Tricky Dick pulls out a bar rag and begins wiping the counter top. "It's fu

Stevenson has actually begun to admire Tricky Dick's lies. There is an artistry to them that excites respect. He is a master of prevarication. Never so uncouth as a straightforward, bald-faced fabrication, his lies are fashioned by intaglio, the lie lying in what is not said, questions answered by the ma

"I know it was you who told King to steal the contraband weapons."

A shrug of dismissal. "That's always been his strategy. All I passed on was when and where an opportunity lay. Like I said, if you tell people what they want to hear, they're more likely to act on it."

"They say you have the greatest tactical mind since General Miles or General Crook."

Tricky Dick dips his head modestly. "Well, I am not a Miles."

Maybe not, Stevenson muses. More like Machiavelli than a military man. Tricky Dick's genius lay in scheme, not rifles in the field. His band of operatives-known as "The Plumbers," because they worked to "plunge the crap out"-was probably a small, tight-knit band. Had to be, for the man to be seen so little when sought so much. "How'd you get Wallace to barricade himself in the schoolhouse?"

Dick has been polishing the bar top. He looks up, sees Stevenson's knowing, just-us-chickens smile. He folds the rag and tucks it in his apron cord. "Ol' George, he's a Romantic. What he sees in his mind are the heroic poses, the grand speeches; not the bayonet sliding into the gut, not the slugs ripping and tearing the flesh and splintering the bones. So, a bunch of them were in here yesterday, griping like they always do; and Wallace compares the way he's standing up to the Hun to the way Washington and them stood up to the Brits. So, I told him about the heroic stand the Irish made in Dublin back about the end of the Great War. It really inspired him."

"The Brits stomped the Irish good," Stevenson points out. "Those that weren't killed were executed."

The Dick wags a finger. "Ah, but it led to the revolution and the Republic. The inspirational value of martyrs," he adds with a wink. "Ol' George really thinks his heroic stand will inspire others to follow him."

"Like Custer."

Tricky Dick shrugs. "It really is inspiring, you know. If Wallace and his cause weren't a bucket of expletives deleted, it might be even viewed as a noble sacrifice. A man capable of such an act is capable of redemption-if the world allows his heart the time to change."

Stevenson has been memorizing Tricky Dick's face so he can describe it to Daley's police artists. The Dick's greatest asset until now has been his invisibility. A man can be hard to find when no one knows what he looks like. Even Dick's last name or his native state are unknown. It is part of his mystique. Revealing himself to Stevenson is a major misstep; but if every man has a weakness, Dick's lies in his own cleverness. It is not always what a man believes of others that makes him vulnerable, but often what he believes of himself. Pleased with his own cleverness, the guerilla leader has succumbed to the desire to preen before a mind capable of appreciating that cleverness.

"What I don't understand…" Stevenson leans over the bar and taps it with a stiff forefinger. "… is what you hope to accomplish. As far as I can tell, you're just making things worse by stirring the pot." By pushing the pride button, Stevenson hopes to elicit some careless revelations.