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

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 Acad-
emy 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-bom Katrina Litkovka, the daughter of a Red
Army colonel-so that she didn't want him to stop.




14 DALE BROWN
"What about college?" she asked.
"I've been accepted at a dozen schools," he replied in per-
fect 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 r6sumd 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 hi S-
James'-life so naturally? Of one thing she had no doubt: this
man could easily beat the best interrogators, polygraphs, hyp-
nosis or even drugs.
Andrei Maraklov is Kenneth James . . .
"But now I'm on my way to Hawaii," James/Maraklov con-
tinued. "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
hirn 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