The Fifth Profession

“Yes,” Hailey said. “Exactly. So the military experimented on removing traumatic memories. It turned out to be easier than they expected. The techniques existed. Neurosurgeons, treating epileptics, sometimes insert electrodes into the brain, stimulate this and that section, and manage to find the neurons that cause the epilepsy. The surgeons then cauterize the neurons, and the epileptics are cured. But they have memory loss. A trade-off for the patient's benefit. What the military decided was to experiment with the same technique to remove the memories of combat that gave soldiers posttrauma stress disorder. A brilliant concept.”

“Sure,” Savage said, tempted to plunge the knife into Hailey's heart.

“But somebody realized that the soldiers had a gap in their minds, a vacuum in their memories. They'd always be confused by the sense that something important had happened to them that they couldn't remember. That confusion would impair their ability to fight again. So why not… as long as the surgeons are in there… find a way to insert a memory, a false one, something peaceful, calming. Drugs combined with films and electrode stimulation did the trick.”

“Yeah,” Savage said. “What a trick.”

“Then somebody else thought, what if the memory we insert isn't just peaceful but motivates the patient to do what we want, to program him into doing…?”

“I get the idea,” Savage said, stroking the knife against Hailey's arm. “Now talk about me. Where do I come in?”

“ Japan.” Hailey fidgeted, staring at the knife. “They screwed us at Pearl Harbor. But we beat them. We stomped them. We nuked them. Twice. And then we spent seven years teaching them not to screw with us again. But they are! Not militarily. Financially! They're buying our country. They dump their merchandise onto our markets. They own our Treasury bills. They control our trade deficit. They're responsible for our national debt.”

Taro's wizened face turned red with fury. He glared, unforgivably insulted.

“Just get to the point,” Savage said.

“A group of us in the agency, not the agency itself,” Hailey said. “It's too damned cautious. But a group of us decided to correct the situation. We knew about Shirai. For quite a while, he's been trying to undermine the status quo in Japan. Last year's influence-buying scandal, the Recruit corporation giving top politicians bribes in the form of undervalued stocks that would soon be worth a fortune… Shirai was behind that. Through intermediaries, he controlled Recruit. And through the newspapers he owned, he leaked the information. Politicians fell. Party leaders. Former party leaders. One prime minister and then another. The system verged on collapse. And Shirai intended to step in, to use his wealth and power to take control. But he needed an incident, a symbolic, catalyzing sensation, so outrageous that it would attract sufficient followers to unite the nation and achieve his goals. Inward, though, not outward. A rejection of the world. Japan for itself. And my group within the agency loved it.”

“So you decided”-Savage clutched the knife-”that you'd help him.”

“Why not? Shirai's goals coincided with ours. If Japan turned inward, if the country established a cultural quarantine and refused to deal with outsiders, America wouldn't be smothered with Japanese merchandise. We'd have a chance to correct our trade deficit. We'd reduce, hell, maybe eliminate, our national debt. We'd balance our budget. Jesus, man, the possibilities!”

“You were prepared to help a…? Surely you realized that Shirai was crazy.”

Hailey shrugged. “Everything's relative. We preferred to think of him as idealistic.”

Savage cursed.

“The agency's been watching Shirai for quite a while,” Hailey said. “One of his lieutenants was on our payroll. He kept us up-to-date on what Shirai was doing, and we sent information through the lieutenant-scandals involving bureaucrats and politicians-that helped Shirai continue disrupting the Japanese establishment. Shirai knew nothing about our help, of course. And then we waited to see if our investment would pay off.”

“That still has nothing to do with me.”

“Well, yes,” Hailey said and wiped sweat off his cheek, “I'm afraid it does. I didn't find out till recently, but some of the men in our group formed their own group. We're conservatives, proud of it. But these other guys…” He swallowed nervously. “They're the kind that thinks Oliver North's the best thing since microwave popcorn, and they had what North would have called a ‘neat’ idea. They figured, why not go all the way? Why not give Shirai a chance to stage an incident that would be so sensational he'd gain all the support he needed? What if it seemed that America felt so threatened by Shirai's anti-American attitude that we sent an assassin to shut him up? A CIA operative. The attempt would fail. The operative would be killed. Shirai would reveal the assassin's link with the agency, and Japan would be incensed. If tens of thousands of Japanese demonstrated because we lost a nuclear weapon eighty miles off their coast, how many hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, would demonstrate against an assassination attempt engineered by America?”

“But that's… Those guys are as nuts as Shirai was. What in hell made them think it would help America if Japan turned against us?”

“Don't you see? If Japan rejected us, if relations between our countries were severed, Japanese imports would stop. We'd have won the economic war,” Hailey said.

“Yeah, and suppose Japan then sided with the Chinese or the Soviets.”

“No. It wouldn't happen that way. Because Japan doesn't get along with the Chinese and the Soviets. The Japanese-Chinese feud goes back hundreds of years. And the Japanese are angry that the Soviets won't give up a string of northern islands that used to belong to Japan until after the Second World War. Shirai would turn anti-American sentiment into universal anti-foreign sentiment, and we'd be back in business.”

Savage shook his head. “Absolute madness.”

“The splinter group in the agency arranged for Shirai's lieutenant to promote the idea, and Shirai loved it. Mind you, Shirai still didn't know that Americans were suggesting it or that the nutso group in the agency believed that America would gain a lot more than Shirai would. Now,” Hailey said, “this is where you come in. Illegal or not, it's one thing to tell an operative to assassinate someone. It's quite another to order him to go on a suicide mission. No one would do it. What the splinter group needed was an operative who wouldn't know what he faced and, better yet, wouldn't even know he worked for the agency so he wouldn't have second thoughts, contact his control, and back out.”

“And you were-are-my control.”

Hailey sweated more profusely. “We recruited you when you were in the SEALs. In nineteen eighty-three, you pretended to be outraged by America 's invasion of Grenada. Politically motivated, pointless and needless, you said. Fellow SEALs died so a movie-star president could bolster his image, you said. You got drunk. You made speeches in bars. You fought with your best friend.”

“Mac.”

“Yes,” Hailey said. “He was part of the plan. Sworn to secrecy. The two of you trashed a bar. Mac swore in public if he ever saw you again he'd kill you. You left the SEALs and became an executive protector.”

“Trained by Graham.”

“He was also part of the plan. With your cover established, an American who hated his government's policies, no one would suspect that you actually worked for the agency and that every powerful client you protected was actually a target, a means of obtaining information. A protector, pledged to be loyal, has access to a lot of dirty secrets. The information you gave us helped us put pressure on a lot of important people.”