Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (4 page)

 
          
No
reply.

 
          
“Do
you think you are ready for graduation?”

 
          
“I
do.”

 
          
“Mr.
James, whose side are you on? Sometimes it appears only your own.”

 
          
“Isn’t
that the American way? Knowledge is power, in baseball or business. I want all
the knowledge I can accumulate. I’ve worked hard to accumulate it, even the
things others think inconsequential. It would be a waste not to use it—”

 
          
“Do
not pretend you know everything about America or how to live in it. You have
lived a sheltered life here in the Academy. The world is just waiting to
swallow overconfident young people like you.” James made no reply but sat
easily in the hard-backed upright wood chair. Roberts paused for a moment, then
asked. “Tell me about your father, Kenneth.” “Not
again,
sir. All right, my father was a drunk, sir, a drunk and a
scum who murdered my younger brother but was found incompetent to stand trial
and was committed to a mental institution. They said he was suffering from
delayed shock syndrome from his three tours as a Green Beret company commander
in Vietnam. When he was released several years later he abandoned his family
and went off to who knows where. Prison or another mental institution. His name
was Kenneth also, but I refuse to use ‘Junior’ in my surname and I’ve even
thought of changing my whole name.”

 
          
Roberts
looked surprised, which amused James. “Don’t worry, sir. I won’t. It’s not as
glamorous a story as Scorcelli’s rich jet-setting parents, or Bell’s midwestern
aunties. But it’s
my
story. I’ve
learned, sir, to downplay it, push it out of my consciousness. I allow it to
surface as a reminder of what I
could
become if I don’t work and study very hard.”

 
          
“I
am not particularly interested in your opinion of your father,” Roberts said,
“and you would be well advised to keep such opinions to yourself.”

 
          
James’
response was to smile back at him with that maddening half-grin. James, it
seemed, had no intention of taking such advice.

 
          
A
problem. The Connecticut Academy, in operation for only thirty years, had
acquired a reputation for excellence in its graduates. Only the best left the
Academy, and they left only for the best colleges and universities. The rest
were sent back to wherever they came from, without any ties or records of their
time at the Academy. The Academy had a reputation to uphold. How would this
Kenneth Francis James fit in?

 
          
His
grades were never in question—he had scored in the upper one percent of his
Scholastic Aptitude Tests and had passed advanced placement exams in
mathematics and biology, allowing him to take nine credits of college-level
courses even before stepping onto a college campus. He had even taken several
Law School Admissions Tests for practice and had scored high on all of them. He
had requested only the best—Columbia, Harvard, Georgetown, Oxford. It was his
intention to study under such as Kissinger, Kirkpatrick, Breze- zinski—and
pursue a career in the Foreign Service or in politics.

 
          
Mostly
autonomy was what James craved, autonomy and control, but his extremism could
destroy him and hurt the Academy. In the Foreign Service, in government, one
had to be a team player. Which left out Kenneth James.

 
          
But
the Academy tried not to discard its students who did not fit. Especially the
highly intelligent ones. The problem now was to find James a niche for his
particular talents and personality and at the same time channel usefully his
considerable energy and intelligence.

 
          
Roberts
began to stack the folders on his desk and buzzed his secretary. “You are
dismissed, Mr. James.”

 
          
The
sudden announcement took James by surprise, but he tried not to show it. He
stood and headed for the door.

 
          
“Das svedanya, tovarishchniy Maraklov,”
Roberts called out, glancing up at the retreating figure, waiting to catch his
reaction.

 
          
There
was none. James turned, hand casually on the doorknob. “I beg your pardon,
sir?”

 
          
Roberts
remained stone-faced but inwardly was pleased. Good, Mr. James, he said to
himself. No sign of recognition— and more importantly, no sign of trying to
hide any recognition. You have learned your lessons well. I think you may be
ready for graduation . . .

 
          
“Dismissed,
Mr. James.”

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
“My
name is Janet.”

 
          
Ken
James moved closer to the woman and stared into her bright green eyes. Janet
Larson was thirty years old, five feet tall, with long, bouncy brown hair. She
was wearing stone- washed jeans and a red flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up
and the top three buttons unbuttoned against the warming late spring weather. Sitting
in her apartment, Ken let his eyes travel from her shining eyes to her white
throat and down her open neckline to the deepening crest between her breasts.
When his eyes moved back to her face he found her looking directly at him.

 
          
“Eye
contact,” he said, moving closer. “When strangers meet, eye contact is
frequently broken. We’ve been taught here to look everyone in the eye, that eye
contact is important. Actually a woman’s direct look makes many men uneasy.”

 
          
She
nodded, then slowly stepped even closer until her breasts pushed against his
cotton Rugby shirt. He let the Academy’s administrative secretary linger there
for a moment, then reached out, grasped her shoulders and pushed her away a few
inches.

 
          
“Remember
the social bubble, too,” he said with a smile. “Americans need their space.
Encroachment on a person’s bubble, even by a beautiful woman, turns even the
most desirable woman into an intruder.”

 
          
“Do
you find me desirable, Kenneth?”

 
          
He
pretended to be exasperated. “Try it again,” he prompted.

 
          
She
nodded, looked up, smiled and said, “Hi, my name is Janet.”

 
          
“Pretty
good. But try contracting ‘name’ and ‘is.’ Americans love contractions. They
slur everything together. ‘Hi, my name’s Janet.’ ”

 
          
She
nodded, took a deep breath. “Hi, my name’s Janet,” and punctuated it by
invading his bubble again.

 
          
“Perfect,”
he said, and let his eyes deliberately roam her body once again. She raised her
lips, and their little lesson was abruptly postponed.

 
          
She
was very well trained. She started slowly, agonizingly so. Undressing was part
of the foreplay. She was controlling him, moving slowly when she felt him
hurry, speeding up when she felt him grow impatient. She knew when and where to
touch him, what to say or do to build their sexual energy in perfect synchronization.

 
          
Soon
it became too much to control and they released their pent-up energy. She
climaxed first, the way she had been taught, giving him one last volt to
heighten his own climax. She used her muscles to draw every drop from him, then
released him moments later—she had been taught that most American men would not
remain inside a woman after sex, sometimes refusing even to lie beside them.
But this student, however well trained, was not
that
American . . . He stayed inside her for several minutes, then
let her lie on top of him so he could nuzzle her neck and breasts and feel her
warmth all around him. She gently rolled beside him, propped up her head so she
could look into his eyes as he traced his fingers around her body.

 
          
She
too had once been a student at the Connecticut Academy, but her training was in
a far different field than his. She had readily accepted her courtesan training
and had been selected for “graduation,” but instead opted to stay at the
Academy as an administrator. Seducing the young students was her chief source
of excitement now, her satisfaction coming less from the erotic than from
pleasure in displaying her exceptional skills.

 
          
She
especially enjoyed displaying her skills with this young student—control name
“Ken James,” born Andrei Ivanschi- chin Maraklov of Leningrad, the son of a
Party bureaucrat and a hospital administrator, the top student at the
top-secret Connecticut Academy in the mountainside city of Novorossijsk on the
Black Sea, where young Soviet men and women were trained to be KGB deep-cover
agents.

 
          
The
Connecticut Academy was a most unusual high school, and it attracted the USSR’s
most unusual men and women. Most of the students were trained at a very early
age for the intelligence field, learning foreign languages and customs of
dozens of nations. Both male and female students, like “Janet Larson,” were
trained as courtesans and used for sexual espionage activities. Others were
trained in demolition or assassination or other forms of terrorism. And still
others, like “Kenneth James,” born Maraklov, were part of a whole new area of
espionage.

 
          
Selected
individuals in various countries were targeted by the KGB because of their
socio-economic status and opportunity for growth and importance. These
individuals—sons and daughters of politicians, businessmen, corporate
presidents— would be carefully studied at an early age, once identified as
being groomed for a particular position or put into the pipeline for a given
career or special responsibility. Their habits, social life and personality
were examined. Were they responsible, stable individuals, or did they squander
time and money on, say, drugs and partying? If they were especially promising
individuals, apparently destined for greatness, phase two of the project was
invoked.

 
          
A
young Russian closely matching the target’s general physical and mental
attributes would be trained in the same fields as the subject individual. Along
with being taught the target’s native language, the student would also learn
everything possible to help him
blend
himself into the social fabric as well as the personality of the target. After
years of study and training, the student would be a virtual clone of the
target.

 
          
Next,
at an opportune time, the clone would be inserted to replace the target. He
would assume all of the target’s activities, history, future. Of course it was
not possible precisely to duplicate the subject’s every mood or segment of his
personality, so the clones were trained to fit in, to adapt, to take control of
their situations. If they did not perfectly match, they were to change the
environment around themselves. The clone would, it was hoped, create the
new
norm and thereby achieve a more
viable match-up.

 
          
After
a suitable waiting period to allow the new mole to acclimate himself with his
new surroundings, he would be directed by Moscow headquarters to begin
collecting information, to maneuver closer to the seat of power in government
or industry, to influence events in favor of the Soviet Union or its allies. In
an emergency the mole could be used to assist other agents, collect or borrow
funds, even carry out search- and-destroy missions or assassinations. Unlike
informers, traitors, bribery victims or embassy employees, these “native
citizens” were always to be immune to suspicion. They could pass the most
exhaustive background investigation—fingerprints, if necessary, even surgically
matched.

 
          
Perhaps
only a handful of these super-moles could be turned loose in a year. The
training was exhaustive and exhausting; many Soviet students, even though they
learned English well and knew a good deal of “American,” could not sufficiently
adapt themselves to the very strange American culture and be a reliable
espionage agent as well. And even with the apparently perfect student, there
was no way of knowing what would happen to the intended target. Targets were
selected for their accessibility as well as their potential value, but over the
years there was no way to guarantee a useful match. Goals changed, opportunities
came and went, minds changed, paths crossed. An individual who was perceived as
the next President of the United States could turn out to be a corrupt
congressman; a candidate-target discarded from consideration could turn out to
be a future Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.