"Brown, Dale - Patrick 2 - Day of the Cheetah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Dale)

. . A perfect target.
service
And they found a boy in the Soviet Union equal to the chal-
lenge 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 head-
master, 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





12 DALE BROWN
gave me a Hawaiian vacation as a graduation present. I grad-
uated last week, remember?"
"How were your grades?"
"Straight A's, but it was an easy semester. I planned it that i
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. "Soc-
cer 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--gyrn" 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 mysticar
out-of-body experience.