Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (5 page)

 
          
The
target Ken James—the
American
Ken
James—would never have been considered only a few short years earlier: He was
the son of a psychotic Vietnam veteran; he grew up in a fragmented childhood
punctuated by a devastating family disaster; the family was split apart. The
boy himself was a loner, unpopular and remote, anti-social.

 
          
But
things changed. The loner turned out to be a boy genius. The father disappeared
from sight and was presumed dead. The mother married a wealthy multinational
corporate president, and both the stepfather and mother were candidates for
political office by election or appointment. The obscure boy was suddenly a
prime candidate for “cloning.” Still a loner, virtually ignored by his
jet-setting parents, he was nonetheless being educated and groomed for a public
life in government- service. A perfect target.

 
          
And
they found a boy in the Soviet Union equal to the challenge of a match-up . . .
and ultimate substitution. Andrei Ivanschichin Maraklov had a unique
combination of writer’s imagination and a savant’s intelligence—the stuff to
qualify him as Ken James’ intellectual and emotional twin . . .

 
          
Janet
Larson smiled as she noted the faraway expression in his eyes and propped
herself up again on one elbow so she could watch him. “Where are you now,
Kenneth?”

 
          
He
smiled at the question. It was a game they played when they were together. As
an administrative assistant to the headmaster, Janet Larson knew all about Ken
James—why he was there, what was expected of him after “graduation.” But some
students, the special ones like Maraklov/James, gave the nuts and bolts of
their alter egos a considerable amount of spice and feeling. It was forbidden
for the students to talk of their “lives” with any other student, but not so
with her, and especially not so with her and student Kenneth James . . .

 
          
“I’m
on my way to Hawaii,” he said. “One last fling before college. My mom and
stepdad are in Europe on business. They gave me a Hawaiian vacation as a
graduation present. I graduated last week, remember?”

 
          
“How
were your grades?”

 
          
“Straight
A’s, but it was an easy semester. I planned it that way. I could have graduated
and gone on to college after my junior year—doubled up on a few classes in the
summer—but I was told by my stepdad that a guy shouldn’t miss out on his senior
year in high school, that it has too many memories. That’s a crock. Anyway, I
cruised through the year.”

 
          
“And
what about your senior-year memories? Were they worth delaying college?”

 
          
“I
guess so,” he said as he ran his hand up and down her back and she saw that
smile slowly spread across his face. It was as if he was actually reliving
those experiences . . .

 
          
“I
was quite an athlete the whole year,” he went on. “Soccer in the fall, basketball,
baseball in the spring—I already had all my credits for graduation and I had
two gym periods every day so I could devote full time to all of them. It was
fantastic.” Janet had trouble following—“gym” and “soccer” were foreign words
to her. Not, of course, baseball. The way he told his story was eerie, as if he
was relating some sort of mystical out-of-body experience.

           
“That was all you did? Sports?”

 
          
“No,
I had lots of dates. I went out every Friday and Saturday night. My mom and
Frank—that’s my stepdad—were home only one week out of five, so I had the run
of the place. Except for the maid, of course.”

 
          
“Tell
me about your dates, Kenneth.”

 
          
Again,
that smile. “I saw Cathy Sawyer the most. We’ve been going out almost all year.
Nothing special ... a movie, dinner once in a while. I helped her with her
homework, she can’t seem to pick up calculus no matter how hard I try to
explain it to her.”

 
          
Listening
to him, watching him, it was like hearing someone not just talk about but
actually
live
another life in front
of you. They had done a complete job, it seemed, on Andrei Maraklov. Now he
was
Kenneth James. “Were you ever
passionate with her, Kenneth?”

 
          
Suddenly
his eyes grew dark. “Ken?”

 
          
“She
doesn’t want me that way.” His voice had been deep, harsh. She touched his
shoulder—his body seemed to have turned to ice.

 
          
.
. She doesn’t want me,” he repeated in a dead-sounding voice. “No one does. My
dad’s an alcoholic schizoid. People think some genetic germ is going to rub off
from me onto them if I get too close. Everyone thinks I’ll whack out on them
just like my dad whacked out on his family.”

 
          
Whack
out? More mumbo-jumbo. “Ken . . .”

 
          
“All
they want is my brains and my money.” His body was now as hard, as tense as his
voice, his eyes were hot. “ ‘Help me with my homework, Ken’... ‘Help us with
the fund-raiser, James’. . . ‘Come out for the team, Ken’ . . . Ask, ask, ask.
But when
I
want something, they all
run away.”

 
          
“It’s
only because you are better than they are, Kenneth—”

           
“Who cares about
that?”
It was like a cry. She gasped at
the anger in his face. “When am I going to get what
I
want? When am I ever going to feel accepted by them . . . ?” He
took hold of her right hand and squeezed hard. “Huh?
When?”

           
He tossed her hand aside and rolled
up out of bed. She gathered a sheet around her and slid out on the other side.

 
          
“.
. . I was glad when they asked me to be valedictorian because then I could turn
them down. What’s the difference? My mom was going to be in New Zealand or some
other place, something too important to cancel even for her only surviving
son’s high school graduation—and my dad’s dead or in a gutter somewhere . . .
Nobody that I cared about was going to hear my speech, so I arranged to have my
Regents diploma mailed to me. When I told my mom, instead of being angry, she
sent me first-class plane tickets to Oahu and five thousand bucks. I got the
hell out of that school as fast as I could.”

 
          
Janet
sat on the edge of the bed, carefully watching this Ken James as he told his story.
There was something frightening in him. It was so weird listening to him tell
that story, not his and yet entirely his, and the way he slid into the
first-person
present
tense ... All of
the students at the Connecticut Academy studied their alter egos, but in her
memory Andrei was the only one in the Academy who actually seemed to live his
alter ego, experiencing everything he did, every hurt, every triumph, every
sadness. And Maraklov’s eyes, they were scary but held Janet—born Katrina
Litkovka, the daughter of a Red Army colonel—so that she didn’t want him to
stop.

           
“What about college?” she asked.

 
          
“I’ve
been accepted at a dozen schools,” he replied in perfect mid-Atlantic American
English. “I haven’t made up my mind. I was even considering skipping a
semester, getting away from it all. I’ve even thought about enlisting in the
Marine Corps. I told that to my stepdad once. He said it might look good on a
resume if I want to run for a congressional seat someday. I’ve never forgotten
that.”

 
          
Janet
still had a bit of trouble keeping up with his fluent English—years earlier she
had been schooled in English as much as he but had lost much of her skill out
of disuse. Still, she understood enough to be amazed—the clarity, the realism,
the precise detail of his story . . . The Academy rarely if ever managed to
teach their students to his degree of authenticity.

 
          
He
stood, his back toward her. She eyed his tall, youthful, athletic frame—broad
shoulders, thin waist, tight buttocks.

 
          
It
seemed Andrei Maraklov had so totally immersed himself in the life of Kenneth
Francis James that he had assumed his
emotional
identity as well as his documented public one. How else could Andrei reel off
intimate, secretive aspects of his— James’—life so
naturally?
Of one thing she had no doubt: this man could easily
beat the best interrogators, polygraphs, hypnosis or even drugs.

 
          
Andrei
Maraklov
is
Kenneth James . . .

 
          
“But
now I’m on my way to Hawaii,” James/Maraklov continued. “I’m going to take it
easy, maybe raise some hell, maybe do some painting, I don’t know . . .”

 
          
He
turned toward the bed once again, but she was too caught up in his eerie
transformation to think about having sex with him again. Actually, he
frightened her ... he was a stranger. Uncharacteristically, she clutched the
sheet tight to her breasts.

 
          
“Cathy
Sawyer gets wet every time she sees me,” he said, a slight smile on his lips.
“I know it. But when we’re alone she won’t touch me.” He moved toward her, and
she flinched.

 
          
The
smile disappeared, his eyes narrowed. “All right, damn you, you’re like
everyone else.”

 
          
She
had pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around herself. He seemed to be
frozen in place, his powerful chest rising and falling. As she tried to step
around him, he quickly reached out and grabbed her arm.

 
          
“Kenneth—”

 
          
“No,
I’m not leaving and neither are you. Not yet.” He grasped her forearms with two
powerful hands. The sheet fell away from her breasts. He pulled her forearms up
and toward him, drawing her toward him so that she was barely touching the
floor. “I’m going to show you what I did to that bitch Cathy Sawyer the night
before I left. She never showed up for graduation, did I tell you that? They
thought we ran off together, but we didn’t. Poor Cathy ... I wonder what happened
to her . . .”

 
          
He
is going to kill me, Janet thought. He’s crazy, he’s going to . . .

 
          
Abruptly
the terrifying grin was replaced by a broad, pleasant smile. His body relaxed
and he let her drop back onto her feet, then planted a playful kiss on her
nose.

 
          
“Gotcha.”

 
          
“What?”
Her voice high, edged with fear. “What do you think you are doing?” She said it
in Russian.

 
          
“Uh
oh, remember, lover, English only is spoken at this academy ...”

 
          
“I
thought ... I thought you ...”

 
          
“.
. . were crazy,” he said. His smile was making her even angrier. “I know what
you’re thinking. Every time we’re together you want to hear my little stories
about the American. So I tell you what I think he’s like, what he’s going
through, what kind of life he lives.”

 
          
“You
scared me to
death.
Why?”

 
          
“Because
you wanted it. I was only doing what you—”

 
          
“You
are crazy,” she said, grabbed up her clothes and put on her blouse and pants.
“Get out of here.”

 
          
“Janet,
wait . . .”

 
          
“I
don’t want to see you again.” She yanked open the front door to her bedroom.
“Now get dressed and get out.”

 
          
The
smile stayed, but he obediently put on his jeans and sweatshirt, gathering his
underwear and shoes in his arms. But just before he left her apartment he
turned to her.

 
          
“You’ll
miss me,” he said. “The sex you can get from any of the others. But you
need
the excitement of living with a
real American. It’s your high. It’s the worst transgression for a female KGB
operative. You love it.”