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-anddestroy 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.
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 fundraiser, 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.”