The Fourth K Read Online Free

game was an outlet for the resentment of authority, a form of protest by those who had not yet achieved anything against those who had already become successful. It was a symbolic protest, and certainly preferable to political demonstrations, random violence and sit-ins. The hunting game was a safety valve for rioting hormones.
    The two hunters David Jatney and Cryder Cole strolled the campus arm in arm. Jatney was the planner and Cole the actor, so it was Cole who did the talking and Jatney nodded as they made their way toward the fraternity brothers guarding the effigy of the President. The cardboard figure of Francis Kennedy was a recognizable likeness but was extravagantly colored to show him wearing a blue suit, a green tie, red socks and no shoes. Where the shoes should have been was the Roman numeral IV.
    The law-and-order gang threatened Jatney and Cole with their toy pistols and the two hunters veered off. Cole shouted a cheerful insult, but Jatney was grim-faced. He took his mission very seriously. Jatney was reviewing his master plan and already feeling a savage satisfaction over its certain success. This walk in view of the enemy was to establish that they were wearing ski gear, to establish a visual identity and so prepare for a later surprise. Also to plant the idea that they were leaving the campus for the weekend.
    Part of the hunting game required that the itinerary of the presidential effigy be published. The effigy would be at the victory banquet that was scheduled for that evening before midnight. Jatney and Cole planned to make their strike before the midnight deadline.
    Everything worked out as planned. Jatney and Cole reunited at 6:00 P.M . in the designated restaurant. The proprietor had no knowledge of their plans. They were just two young students who had been working for him for the past two weeks. They were very good waiters, especially Cole, and the proprietor was delighted with them.
    At nine that evening when the law-and-order guards, a hundred strong, entered with their presidential effigy, guards were posted at all the entries to the restaurant. The effigy was placed in the center of the circle of tables. The proprietor was rubbing his hands at this influx of business, and it was only when he went into the kitchen and saw his two young waiters hiding their toy pistols in the soup tureens that he caught on. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “That means you two guys are quitting tonight.” Cole grinned at him, but David Jatney gave him a menacing scowl as they marched into the dining room, soup tureens lifted high to shield their faces.
    The guards were already drinking victory toasts when Jatney and Cole placed the tureens on the center table, whipped off the covers and took out the toy pistols. They held their weapons against the garishly colored effigy and fired the little pops of the mechanism. Cole fired one shot and burst out laughing. Jatney fired three shots very deliberately, then threw his pistol on the floor. He did not move, he did not smile until the guards mobbed him with congratulatory curses and all of them sat down to dinner. Jatney gave the effigy a kick so that it slid down to the floor where it could not be seen.
    This had been one of the more simple hunts. In other colleges across the country the game was more serious. Elaborate security structures were set up, effigies squirted synthetic blood.
    In Washington, D.C., the Attorney General of the United States, Christian Klee, had his own file on all these playful assassins. And it was the photographs and memos on Jatney and Cole that caught his interest. He made a note to assign a case team to the lives of David Jatney and Cryder Cole.
    On the Friday before Easter, two serious-minded young men drove from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to New York, and deposited a small suitcase in a baggage locker of the Port Authority Building. They picked their way fastidiously through the cluster of drunken homeless