444 DALE BROWN

Maraklov took a step forward. The gun did not waver. "Musi, I still don't understand. What does this have to do with what's going on here? Yes, the real Kenneth James killed his brother-he admitted that. He was seconds away from death when he said he killed his girlfriend. He was delirious-"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. My friend Katrina Litkovka used to tell me about you, about the stories you supposedly made up, about how realistic they were. She told me about how you told her about how James killed his girlfriend before he went to Hawaii. Katrina said you were close to killing her then. Strange, isn't it-the real Kenneth James confessed to the very crime that you described to Katrina."

That made Maraklov stop in hopeless confusion. The parallels between the real Ken James and what he thought was James' life were indeed startling, but he had never thought of it as his thoughts versus James' real life. At the very instant that he realized he had been left alone in that hotel room in Honolulu, he became the ultimate extreme of his training . . . he became Kenneth Francis James. He evaded the security checks, the encounters with James' friends and lovers, even related intimate details about James' childhood because he had ceased to be Andrei Ivanschichin Maraklov and had become Ken James. Which was more than they wanted at the Academy.

Zaykov let the report fall to the floor and took out still another piece of paper from her jacket. "I am detaining you so we can speak with General Tret'yak, but I am also reopening the investigation of Katrina Litkovka's murder.

"Motive: She told me you threatened to kill her if she exposed your behavior to Headmaster Roberts. That would have destroyed your chances to go to America, something you had spent half your life and every part of your peculiar mind training for. I recall the talk that your mission was to be canceled because you were unprepared emotionally for the role. Opportunity: The whiskey you bought two days before the accident. The security guards testified that Litkovka was not drunk before leaving the Academy. You arranged the accident, made it look like Katrina had been drinking, then killed her, Kenneth James . . . "

I II am not Kenneth James," Maraklov said. "I am Colonel Andrei Maraklov, an officer in the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, a trained deep-cover agent just like yourself. And I am not a murderer .

JL

DAY OF THE CHEETAH 445

Zaykov held up the last piece of paper in her hand. It was a photograph. She tossed it across to him. Maraklov stepped forward to pick it up, she moved backward to stay out of his reach Look at it.

Sweat popped off his forehead as he studied the picture. It was an old photocopy of a picture of Kenneth James, the real Kenneth James, taken in Hawaii, obviously by a KGB hidden camera. It appeared to have been taken not long before he had arrived in Hawaii to make the switch-possibly it was the photo used by the plastic surgeons to give him his new face before replacing James.

Even though the photo was much enlarged and grainy, Maraklov could still make out the drawn features, the thinning hair, the sickly appearance. The guy had been tearing himself apart from the inside out for ten years over the murder of his infant brother. He had destroyed not only his own life but the life of his natural father as well. No wonder he had expressed such relief when he realized he was dying and had confessed the truth to Maraklov that evening.

"What about this, Musi? We're wasting time .

She motioned to a mirror on the living room wall. "Take a look. "

Maraklov dropped the photograph and moved over to the mirror. He stared at the face in the mirror. It was Kenneth Francis James-at least the face of James in the photograph. The plastic surgery Maraklov had undergone before coming to America kept most of his face looking like it was still seventeen years old, but it couldn't hide the thinning hair, the hollow cheeks, the sunken eyes, the thin neck and protruding Adam's apple . . . in his case, the strain of the ANTARES interface and the other attritions in the theft of DreamStar had chewed away at Maraklov's body, much as the murders of his brother and girlfriend had eaten away at James.

"I'm arresting you for the murder of Katrina Litkovka, " Musi Zaykov said. "You come with-"

Ignoring the weapon pointed at his chest, he reared back and hurled the Scotch bottle at the mirror. The bottle hit the glass and exploded. Instinctively Zaykov turned at the sound, the gun still pointed at Maraklov, but her head turned toward the shattered mirror. It was the opening Maraklov needed. Forgetting the pistol she still held, he covered the few steps between him 446 DALE BROWN

and Zaykov, and with the skill and precision developed from years of training, turned the pistol away from his left hand and delivered a solid roundhouse kick with his right foot. Zaykov collapsed to the floor, but Maraklov could not take control of the gun. As she doubled over and fell, she swung the gun back up and squeezed the trigger.

The gun exploded, he felt his left shoulder yanked backward, there was a loud buzzing in his ears and the blood drained from his head. His knees buckled and he dropped backward, clutching his shoulder. There was no pain-yet-only a steady rivulet of blood leaking from between his fingers, and the disorienting feeling of confusion mixed with fear. The room began to spin.

He felt lighthearted, almost intoxicated.

Gasping, Musi crawled up to her hands and knees, reaching for the pistol. Maraklov caught it first. Musi dug her nails into the back of his left hand, raked the nails of her right hand across his face. He let go of the gun. She tried to grab the gun but the hot silencer-barrel burned her fingers, and before she could grab the stock he had tumbled on top of her. He rolled her over onto her back and sat on top of her, trying to pin her arms down.

"Musi ' don't . . . "

Blood ran down from his shoulder over her T-shirt, covering her chest, her face and hands. He put one hand over her mouth, ignoring the pain as she bit into it. With his other hand he pulled the hunting knife out of his boot. "Musi, all I want is the flight suit . . . "

Zaykov freed her right arm, punched Maraklov in the left shoulder, then on the jaw. He toppled off her and she rolled to her right away from him, reached out and grabbed the pistol.

She swung it up and fired.

The bullet just missed Maraklov's left ear. Before she could get off another shot he had knocked the pistol aside, swung around and, before he realized what he was doing, plunged the hunting knife into her abdomen. The blade pierced her dia-phragm and punctured the right lung. She took one more breath, exhaled, blood coming from her open mouth in spasmodic coughs. She shuddered slightly, stared at him with a look of surprise, and then lay motionless underneath him.

He rolled off her, staring back at her lifeless eyes, then away.

Janet Larson, James' girlfriend . . . all over again . . .

He shook himself back to the present . . . pulled the pistol DAY OF THE CHEETAH 447

from her fingers and crawled to the window, checking outside.

Nothing. He checked the side windows, the bedroom, the back door. Nothing. The gunshots that had shocked him had not carried beyond her secluded quarters.

He went back to the living room. Forcing himself back to her, forcing himself to touch her, he grabbed her hands and dragged her to the bedroom, then into her closet. There was little blood-her heart had stopped beating almost instantly. He rested her as best he could in the closet and closed the door. She would not likely be discovered until morning.

His shoulder wound hurt badly now, but the bullet had only taken a shallow, ragged gouge out of his left shoulder muscle.

Maraklov found bandages, disinfectant ointment and tape and wrapped the wound tightly as he could. The pain began to build, but he decided against any of the pain-killers he found in Zaykov's medicine cabinet-the drive would be long enough, and any drugs might later interfere with the ANTARES interface.

The pain also acted like a stimulant, helping to clear his mind.

Fortunately, he thought wryly, he could fly DrearnStar without a fully functioning left arm.

He found the two aluminum cases in a living-room closet and made a fast check of the flight suit and superconducting helmet-both were as he had packed them the day before. He pocketed the pistol, picked up the two aluminum cases and headed for the back door. After checking outside for several minutes he brought the cases out to the car, got behind the wheel, and drove off.

He followed the access road out from the southeast runway hammerhead toward the destroyed anti-aircraft gun emplacement, then turned onto a dirt road that led toward the perimeter.

No patrols were in sight. He followed the road right to the base perimeter fence and found a long-unused gate secured by a chain and a rusty lock that gave way when he rammed it open with the sedan. Ten minutes later he was on the Isabella Highway heading east toward Puerto Cabezas.