Free The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America by Michael Kurland, S. W. Barton

would have spent the evening watching an empty apartment, waiting for him to come out.” Pulling his small canvas bag full of walkie-talkies out of the rear seat of Kit’s car, he led the way into the apartment across the street from Schuster’s. “You ready, Red Bear?” he called into one of the three walkie-talkies that he pulled from the bag.
    “Right,” came Peterson’s voice.
    “The den is empty. You may commence hibernation.”
    “Right.”
    St. Yves went to the window and turned the Venetian blind slats so that he could look through them. “Here they come,” he said.
    Kit sat down on the ancient red couch that lined one wall of the furnished apartment. His job didn’t seem exactly essential to the success of the operation, but he thought he had figured out what he was doing there—why he had been called. Having Kit share in the extralegal operation served several purposes from St. Yves’ point of view. It “blooded” Kit, and made him one of the brotherhood by participation. It helped ensure his loyalty. It tested his ability to perform under stress, since even the relatively safe job of standing lookout in an illegal operation can be trying to the fainthearted.
    “How’d you know he was going out tonight?” Kit asked.
    “That’s the preparation that goes into a well-planned job, my boy,” St. Yves said, beaming with self-satisfaction. “I’ve been scouting this job for several days. Got this apartment, set it up. Ran a check on Schuster’s hours. Then, day before yesterday, I happened to be standing there when the mailman came by. A blue envelope with the crest of the French Embassy was dropped into Schuster’s box.”
    “So?”
    “So”—St. Yves fished into his coat pocket and pulled out a blue card—“it was a reasonable assumption that one of these was inside.”
    Kit examined the invitation. “Clever,” he said. “But why didn’t you go? You could have kept a close eye on Schuster.”
    St. Yves turned his head enough to stare coldly at Kit. “I’m not in the slightest interested in Mr. Schuster,” he said. “I’m interested only in the name of his confidential White House source. And when I find out, there’s going to be one less White House employee. He’ll be lucky if the Chief doesn’t file charges.”
    Kit shrugged. “Come on, official sources are leaking information all the time, from all branches of government; it’s the great Washington game.”
    “When you work for someone,” St. Yves said, “you owe that person a certain amount of loyalty. And when the person you work for is the President of the United States, why then, by the nature of the job you owe him your complete loyalty. You don’t have to agree with him, you don’t even have to like him, but you have to be loyal. It’s one of the things he gets in return for the burden he assumes when he takes office.” Kit had never heard St. Yves speak so intently nor so seriously. He was stating his credo, and a man’s religion is not to be argued with lightly.
    “Blue Bear.” Peterson’s voice sounded.
    St. Yves grabbed the nearest walkie-talkie. “Right.”
    “In.”
    “Right.” St. Yves turned to Kit. “Come over here and keep an eye on the door,” he said. “I’m going to set up the scope.”
    “Right,” Kit said. It seemed to be contagious. He got off the couch and pulled a straight-back metal-and-plastic chair over to the window. He stared through the blinds at the deserted street while St. Yves retrieved a small battered suitcase from the far end of the couch. The suitcase was lined with thick foam plastic that acted as a shock packing for its contents. Resting on the foam was a complex-looking set of tubes and lenses which St. Yves began to expertly screw together. When he was finished with the optical erector set, he had produced a small tripod-mounted telescope with a 35-millimeter camera mounted at the eyepiece end. The camera was a single-lens reflex with a ground-glass top, so by