Strangers (34 page)

On the evening of Christmas Day, Pablo attended a black-tie dinner
party for twenty-two at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ira Hergensheimer in Brookline. The house was a splendid brick Georgian Colonial, as elegant and warmly welcoming as the Hergensheimers themselves, who had made their money in real estate during the 1950s. A bartender was on duty in the library, and white-jacketed waiters circulated through the enormous drawing room with champagne and canapés, and in the foyer a string quartet played just loudly enough to provide pleasant background music.

Among that engaging company, the man of most interest to Pablo was Alexander Christophson, former Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, one-term United States Senator from Massachusetts, later Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, now retired almost a decade, whom Pablo had known half a century. Now seventy-six, Christophson was the second eldest guest, but old age had been nearly as kind to him as to Pablo. He was tall, distinguished, with remarkably few lines in his classic Bostonian face. His mind was as sharp as ever. The true length of his journey on the earth was betrayed only by a mild trace of Parkinson’s disease which, in spite of medication, left him with a tremor in his right hand.

Half an hour before dinner, Pablo eased Alex away from the other guests and led him to Ira Hergensheimer’s oak-paneled study, adjacent to the library, for a private conversation. The old magician closed the door behind them, and they carried their glasses of champagne to a pair of leather wingback chairs by the window. “Alex, I need your advice.”

“Well, as you know,” Alex said, “men our age find it especially satisfying to give advice. It compensates for no longer being able to set a bad example ourselves. But I can’t imagine what advice I could give on any problem that you wouldn’t already have thought of yourself.”

“Yesterday,” Pablo said, “a young woman came to see me. She’s an exceedingly lovely, charming, and intelligent woman who’s accustomed to solving her own problems, but now she’s bumped up against something very strange. She desperately needs help.”

Alex raised his eyebrows. “Beautiful young women still come to you for help at eighty-one? I am impressed, humbled, and envious, Pablo.”

“This is not a
coup de foudre,
you filthy-minded old lizard. Passion isn’t involved.” Without mentioning Ginger Weiss’s name or occupation, Pablo discussed her problem—the bizarre and inexplicable fugues—and recounted the session of hypnotic regression that had ended with her frightening withdrawal. “She actually seemed about to retreat into a deep self-induced coma, perhaps even into death, to avoid my questions. Naturally, I refused to put her in a trance again and risk another withdrawal of that severity. But I promised to do some research to see if any similar case
was on record. I found myself poring through books most of last evening and this morning, searching for references to memory blocks with self-destruction built into them. At last I found it…in one of your books. Of course, you were writing about an
imposed
psychological condition as a result of brainwashing, and this woman’s block is of her own creation; but the similarity is there.”

Drawing on his experiences in the intelligence services during World War II and the subsequent cold war, Alex Christophson had written several books, including two that dealt with brainwashing. In one, Alex had described a technique he called the Azrael Block (naming it for one of the angels of death) that seemed uncannily like the barrier that surrounded Ginger Weiss’s memory of some traumatic event in her past.

As distant string music came to them muffled by the closed study door, Alex put down his champagne glass because his hands trembled too violently. He said, “I don’t suppose you’d drop this matter and forget all about it? Because I’m telling you that’s the wisest course.”

“Well,” Pablo said, a bit surprised by the ominous tone of his friend’s voice, “I’ve promised her I’ll try to help.”

“I’ve been retired eight years, and my instincts aren’t what they once were. But I have a very bad feeling about this. Drop it, Pablo. Don’t see her again. Don’t try to help her anymore.”

“But, Alex, I’ve promised her.”

“I was afraid that’d be your position.” Alex folded his tremulous hands. “Okay. The Azrael Block…It’s not something that Western intelligence services use often, but the Soviets find it invaluable. For example, let’s imagine a topnotch Russian agent named Ivan, an operative with thirty years’ service in the KGB. In Ivan’s memory there’ll be an incredible amount of highly sensitive information that, were it to fall into Western hands, would devastate Russian espionage networks. Ivan’s superiors constantly worry that, on some foreign assignment, he’ll be identified and interrogated.”

“As I understand it, with current drugs and hypnotic techniques, no one can withhold information from a determined interrogator.”

“Exactly. No matter how tough he is, Ivan will spill all he knows without being tortured. For that reason, his superiors would prefer to send younger agents who, if caught, would have less valuable information to reveal. But many situations require a seasoned man like Ivan, so the possibility of all his knowledge falling into enemy hands is a nightmare with which his superiors must live, whether they like it or not.”

“The risk of doing business.”

“Exactly. However, let’s imagine that, among all the sensitive knowledge in his head, Ivan knows two or three things that’re
especially
sensitive,
so explosive that their revelation could destroy his country. These particular memories, less than one percent of his knowledge about KGB operations, could be suppressed without affecting his performance in the field. We’re talking here about the suppression of a very tiny portion of his memories. Then, if he fell into enemy hands, he’d still give up a great deal of valuable stuff during interrogation—but at least he would not be able to reveal those few most crucial memories.”

“And this is where the Azrael Block comes in,” Pablo said. “Ivan’s own people use drugs and hypnosis to seal off certain parts of his past before sending him overseas on his next assignment.”

Alex nodded. “For example…say that years ago Ivan was one of the agents involved in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. With a memory block in place, his awareness of that involvement could be locked in his subconscious, beyond the reach of potential interrogators, without affecting his work on new assignments. But not just any block will do. If Ivan’s interrogators discover a standard memory block, they’ll work diligently to unlock it, because they’ll know that what lies behind it is of enormous importance. So the barrier must be one that cannot be tampered with. The Azrael Block is perfect. When the subject is questioned about the forbidden topic, he’s programmed to retreat into a deep coma where he cannot hear the inquisitioner’s voice—and even into death. In fact, it should more accurately be called the Azrael Trigger, because if the interrogator probes into the blocked memories, he pulls that trigger, shooting Ivan into a coma, and if he continues to pull the trigger he may eventually kill the subject.”

Fascinated, Pablo said, “But isn’t the survival instinct strong enough to overcome the block? When it comes to the point that Ivan must either remember and reveal what he has forgotten or die…well, surely the repressed memory would surface.”

“No.” Even in the warm amber light of the floorlamp beside his chair, Alex’s face appeared to have gone gray. “Not with the drugs and hypnotic techniques we have these days. Mind control is a frighteningly advanced science. The survival instinct is the strongest we’ve got, but even that can be overridden. Ivan can be programmed to self-destruct.”

Pablo found his champagne glass empty. “My young lady-friend seems to have invented a sort of Azrael Block of her own to hide from herself some extraordinarily distressing event in her past.”

“No,” Alex said, “she didn’t form the block herself.”

“She must have. She’s in a bad state, Alex. She just…slips away when I try to question her. So, as you know this field, I thought you might have a few ideas about how I can deal with it.”

“You still don’t understand why I warned you to drop this whole
thing,” Alex said. He pushed up from his chair, moved to the nearby window, shoved his trembling hands in his pockets, and stared out at the snow-covered lawn. “A self-imposed, naturally generated Azrael Block? Such a thing isn’t possible. The human mind will not, of its own volition, put itself at risk of death merely to conceal something from itself. An Azrael Block is
always
an externally applied control. If you’ve encountered such a barrier, then someone planted it in her mind.”

“You’re saying she’s been brainwashed? Ridiculous. She’s no spy.”

“I’m sure she’s not.”

“She’s no Russian. So why would she’ve been brainwashed? Ordinary citizens don’t become targets for that sort of thing.”

Alex turned from the window and faced Pablo. “This is just an educated guess…but perhaps she accidentally saw something she was not supposed to see. Something extremely important, secret. Subsequently, she was subjected to a sophisticated process of memory repression, to make sure she never told anyone about it.”

Pablo stared at him, astonished. “But what could she possibly have seen to’ve made such extreme measures necessary?”

Alex shrugged.

“And who could’ve tampered with her mind?”

Alex said, “The Russians, the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, Britain’s MI6—any organization with the knowledge of how such things are done.”

“I don’t think she’s traveled outside the U.S., which leaves the CIA.”

“Not necessarily. All the others operate in this country for their own purposes. Besides, intelligence organizations are not the only groups who’re familiar with mind-control techniques. So are some crackpot religious cults, fanatical political fringe groups…others. Knowledge spreads fast, and evil knowledge spreads faster. If people like that want her to forget something, you sure don’t want to help her remember. It wouldn’t be healthy for either you or her, Pablo.”

“I can’t believe—”

“Believe,” Alex said somberly.

“But these fugues, these sudden fears of black gloves and helmets…these would seem to indicate that her memory block is cracking. Yet the people you’ve mentioned wouldn’t have done a half-baked job, would they? If they’d implanted a block, it would be perfect.”

Alex returned to his chair, sat, leaned forward, fixing Pablo with an intense gaze, obviously striving to impress him with the gravity of the situation. “That’s what worries me most, old friend. Ordinarily, such a firmly implanted mental barrier would never weaken on its own. The people capable of doing this to your lady-friend are absolutely expert
at it. They wouldn’t screw up. So her recent problems, her deteriorating psychological condition, can mean only one thing.”

“Yes?”

“The forbidden memories, the secrets buried behind this Azrael Block, are apparently so explosive, so frightening, so traumatic, that not even an expertly engineered barrier can contain them. Buried in this woman is a shocking memory of immense power, and it’s straining to break out of its prison in her subconscious, into her conscious mind. These objects that trigger her blackouts—the gloves, the sink drain—are very likely elements of those repressed memories. When she fixates on one of these things, she’s close to a breakthrough, trembling on the edge of remembrance. Then her program kicks in, and she blacks out.”

Pablo’s heart quickened with excitement. “Then, after all, it might be possible to use hypnotic regression to probe at this Azrael Block, widen the cracks already in it, without driving her into a coma. One would have to be extremely cautious, of course, but with—”

“You’re not listening to me!” Alex said, bolting up again. He stood between their chairs, looming over Pablo, pointing one trembling finger at him. “This is incredibly dangerous. You’ve stumbled into something much too big for you to handle. If you help her to remember, you’re going to make powerful enemies somewhere.”

“She’s a sweet girl, and her life is in ruins because of this.”

“You can’t help her. You’re too old, and you’re just one man.”

“Listen, maybe you don’t understand enough of the situation. I haven’t told you her name or profession, but I’ll tell you now that—”

“I don’t want to know who she is!” Alex said, his eyes widening.

“She’s a physician,” Pablo persisted. “Or almost. She’s spent the past fourteen years training herself for medical practice, and now she’s losing everything. It’s tragic.”

“Think about this, damn it: she’s almost certain to discover that knowing the truth is even worse than not knowing. If the repressed memories are breaking through like this, then they must be so traumatic that they could destroy her psychologically.”

“Maybe,” Pablo acknowledged. “But shouldn’t
she
be the one to decide whether or not to keep digging for the truth?”

Alex was adamant. “If the memory itself doesn’t destroy her, then she’ll probably be killed by whoever implanted the block. I’m surprised they didn’t kill her straightaway. If it
is
an intelligence agency behind this, ours or theirs, then you’ve got to remember that to them civilians are entirely expendable. She got a rare and amazing reprieve when they used brainwashing instead of a bullet. A bullet’s quicker and cheaper. They
won’t give her a second reprieve. If they discover that the Azrael Block has crumbled, if they learn that she’s uncovered the secret they’ve hidden from her, they’ll blow her brains out.”

“You can’t be sure,” Pablo said. “Besides, she’s a real go-getter, Alex, an achiever, a mover and shaker. So from her point of view, her current situation is almost as bad as having her brains blown out.”

Making no effort to conceal his frustration with the old magician, Alex said, “You help her, and they’ll blow your brains out as well. Doesn’t that give you pause?”

“At eighty-one,” Pablo said, “not much of interest happens. You can’t afford to turn your back on that rare bit of excitement when it comes along.
Vogue la galère
—I must chance it.”