The Last President. Michael Kurland

loyalty to himself. Not to the country, or the job, but to himself personally. Some of the people in the Bureau who’ve crossed him in the last four years are getting the word now. It’s either early retirement or field work out in the boonies.”

      “Crossed him how?” Faulkes asked.

      Masters shook his head. “Sorry,” he said.

      “It is rumored,” Adams told Faulkes, “that the President asked his investigative and intelligence agencies to provide him with information regarding his domestic political enemies—among others. For the most part, that information was provided. Some, however, resisted this politicizing of the process of government. Those people are gradually being surgically excised.”

      “Is that right?” Faulkes asked Masters. “Have you any comment? Did anything like that happen at the Bureau? Has anything changed since Hoover died?”

      “No comment,” Masters said, “but I’ll tell you this: A lot of people have been throwing shit at J. Edgar Hoover for the past thirty years for the way he ran the Bureau, but if the facts ever come out, they’re going to eat their words. That man bowed to no political pressure. Everything he did was for what he considered the good of the country. And nobody, in any office, ever used him or the Bureau. And nobody tried more than once.”

      “Are you saying the FBI is being subverted?” Faulkes asked.

      “I’m not saying anything,” Masters said.

      “Could we shut up and play cards?” Obie Porfritt demanded.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      Kit parked his car in the alley behind the building, but the back door was locked, so he had to walk around to the front. The plaque on the door, a two-foot brass square that jutted out about six inches, said:

      INSTITUTE FOR AN INFORMED AMERICA

      Founded 1973

      Kit rang the bell and after a while a woman came to answer it and let him in. It was Dianna Holroyd, whom he had first met in room sixteen. “Welcome,” she said. “Mr. St. Yves said you’d be coming over. We close at six, but I waited to let you in.”

      Kit checked his watch. It was ten after six. “Sorry I’m late,” he said.

      “No problem,” she said. “Actually, I have to stay until you people leave, and close up after you. Woman’s work is never done. They’re upstairs, first door on your right.”

      Kit climbed the stairs and found St. Yves waiting for him on the landing. “Glad you’re here,” St. Yves greeted him.

      “Sorry to pull you into this at the last moment, but Mercer got an attack of—would you believe?—appendicitis, and is now lying in a bed in Doctor’s Hospital while they decide whether or not to cut him open. Come in and meet the crew.”

      The room was small and furnished with no more than a few folding chairs and a bridge table. Kit shook hands with the four men as St. Yves introduced them: Curtis, short and competent-looking; Peterson, blond and tall, with the fingers of a craftsman; Lowesson, who had the distinctive look of an ex-cop; and Berkey, small and skinny, with the equally distinctive look of an ex-con.

      Since his lunch meeting with St. Yves six months before, Kit had been blessed with an assistant and a larger office at the EOB. His title was the same, but most of the job was now done by the assistant, except for the morning ritual of carrying the bound Daily Intelligence Summary over to the White House and putting it on the President’s desk in the Oval Office. His primary job now was liaison between the traditional intelligence services and the “Plumbers,” as St. Yves called the covert group which was responsible, as Vandermeer put it, for “plugging the leaks.” The SIU had just moved this section into the Institute for an Informed America, which St. Yves was still gloating over as being the perfect cover. St. Yves and the planning staff stayed on at room sixteen, to keep immediate access to the President and Billy Vandermeer.

      “Okay, everybody,” St. Yves said, “just sit down and relax. Here’s the drill: it’s a surreptitious entry for the purpose of information-gathering in an apartment over on Twelfth and T.”

      “Great neighborhood,” Berkey commented.

      “Yours not to reason why,” St. Yves told him, “yours merely to drive the getaway car. Now, here’s the way I’ve worked out the division of labor. We’ve set up an OP in an apartment across the street on the second floor. Young and I will work out of there and establish surveillance. The subject should be going out shortly after we get there. When he does, I’ll give Curtis the word on the walkie-talkie, and Curtis will stay on his tail. If for any reason he heads back early—”

      ”You know where he’s going?” Peterson interrupted.

      “Fellow’s going to a party,” St. Yves said. “If he heads back early, Curtis jumps to the nearest pay phone and gives the word, giving you, Peterson, and you, Lowesson, plenty of time to get out. Make sure you keep everything neat and don’t leave a mess. And you, Curtis, make sure you’ve got a dime. You’re the lock-and-key man, Peterson, in case you hadn’t guessed. Lowesson will help you search the place, and Berkey, you drive. Clear?”

      “What are we looking for?” Peterson asked.

      “Ah, that’s the question!” St. Yves said. “The subject seems to have an informant inside the White House, and the Chief wants to find out who the tattletale is. Anything that relates to the White House, or the government, we want copies of. Anything you don’t understand, we want copies of. Also, we want a phone bug and a couple of wall mikes planted. I already have the listening apparatus installed in the OP.”

      St. Yves distributed the small walkie-talkies to his crew, sticking three in a canvas bowling bag for himself. Then they all went through the routine of emptying their pockets and piling all identifying wallets and papers onto the bridge table.

      “If you want to keep the stakeout happy,” Peterson said, “you’ll put in a refrigerator and a hot plate.”

      They went downstairs and left by the back door. “Three cars,” St. Yves said. “I’ll go with Young. Twelve forty-seven T Street, top floor. Name on the mailbox is Ralph Schuster.”

      * * * *

      Ralph Schuster tried for the third time to get the knot to his tie adjusted. For the third time he ripped it out again and started over. He tried a fourth and fifth time, before giving up and leaving it as it was. After all, he was a reporter for the Washington Post, not a fashion plate. He pulled on the jacket of his blue suit and then remembered that one of the buttons was off the left sleeve.

      But at least Suzanne couldn’t complain about the overcoat, since she had helped him pick it out. It was camel’s hair, which was quite nice, shorter than he would have liked, and a hundred dollars more than he wanted to spend. And he really didn’t understand what was wrong with his old trench coat with the zip-in lining. But whatever Suzanne wanted, Ralph was eager to supply. Not that Suzanne wanted much. For the first few months he had seen her, he hadn’t been aware that she wanted anything. It was only gradually that Ralph learned to interpret her look of amused tolerance and ask her what was wrong.

      “Oh, it’s not wrong,” she would say. “I wouldn’t change you for the world.”

      “But if I wanted to change it myself,” he would insist, “what should I change?”

      And she would shrug her amused shrug and smile her tolerant smile and mention the ratty raincoat, or the skinny black tie. When she saw that he didn’t mind, she even started bringing him things, like the wide blue tie with the narrow red and white stripes that he had just given up knotting.

      He shrugged into the camel’s-hair overcoat, picked up the blue card inviting him to the French Embassy reception, and left his apartment, carefully locking the door behind him. He would be early, he noted, looking at his watch. It was just after nine. The reception started at nine, and no guests would really be expected until around ten. But everyone expected reporters to be gauche. And he wanted