Ben is the novel’s narrator and main character. He is a 12-year-old boy who has been selected as a patsy for the CIA’s operation not because they feel he is qualified for the academy, but because he is someone who could plausibly be qualified. Alexander Hale seems enthusiastic about Ben from the beginning, which suggests that he sees some potential in Ben. Though Ben lacks the physical strength and coordination of the other students, along with not yet having the benefit of their months or years of education, he is a clever, adaptable, and determined student who makes up for his deficits with his intellectual strengths.

As the “normal” person entering the extraordinary environment of the academy, Ben is the reader’s surrogate throughout the novel. What Ben does, the reader may also imagine themselves doing—his accomplishments take few special skills other than paying close attention to what is going on around him. As the novel’s arc progresses, Ben grows in confidence; everything he needed to be successful, he already had within himself. Though Ben figures out who the mole is, disarms the bomb, and anticipates and neutralizes Murray, he does not use any of his few weeks of spy school education to do so.