The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  Brennan remained puzzled. “What does Dr. Fisher want with me?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Legrande.

  They had entered a smaller, more rustic room. In a corner someone was picking a guitar, and three others were humming softly to it. Here and there the sophisticated young and middle-aged were gathered, exchanging attitudes or philosophies. On a sofa upholstered in pale green velour, a short darkish gentleman who appeared to be in his middle fifties was holding Legrande’s Angora cat in his lap, as he expounded on some point to a fascinated French couple beside him.

  Releasing their arms, Legrande broke forward to interrupt the short darkish gentleman. As Legrande pointed behind him at Brennan and Lisa, the gentleman let go of the cat and struggled to his feet.

  “Dr. Karle Fisher of Switzerland,” chirped Legrande, “it is an honor to introduce you to Miss Lisa Collins and Mr. Matthew Brennan of America.”

  Gravely Dr. Fisher took Lisa’s hand, performed the formality of kissing it, quickly straightened and shook Brennan’s hand.

  “A real pleasure, this opportunity,” said Dr. Fisher in his low resonant bass. A pulpit voice, Brennan thought immediately.

  Legrande, impishly eager to see the introduction consummated, prepared to play catalyst by dipping into his grab bag of small shocks. “You recognized Mr. Brennan,” cried Legrande to the psychoanalyst, “but he did not recognize you, my dear guru. You see, Doctor, it is as I always told . you, you must not hide your light beneath a bushel of drugs. You must appear in the world of men and announce your Second Coming.”

  Dr. Fisher’s blue hyperthyroid eyes, veiled by steel-rimmed, amber-tinted spectacles, continued to be fixed on Brennan, as he said to Legrande, “I have no need for self-praise so long as I have you for my propagandist, Monsieur Legrande.”

  Embarrassed, Brennan said, “Despite our host’s little joke, Dr. Fisher, I did recognize your name, although I’m afraid I didn’t know too much about your work or you.”

  Dr. Fisher’s platy mouth offered a pinch of a smile. “I have the advantage over you then, Mr. Brennan. You see, I happen to know a good deal about you.” He waved to the pair of velour armchairs across from him. “Please do sit down.”

  Brennan exchanged a glance with Lisa. She shrugged.

  “Well, only for a minute, Dr. Fisher. We were on our way back to the city.”

  As Brennan drew a chair closer for Lisa, and then sat down himself, he heard Dr. Fisher say, “I appreciate this, Mr. Brennan.”

  Observing the Swiss psychoanalyst again settling on the sofa beside the French couple, Brennan was suddenly curious about the other’s unexpected knowledge of him. “You mentioned that you happen to know a good deal about me, Dr. Fisher. How so?”

  “My interest? Purely professional.” Dr. Fisher cleared his throat before proceeding. “Lately, I have been researching and preparing a paper to be read before various learned psychoanalytical societies. My study I have entitled The Judas Instinct: An Examination of the Necessity for Treason.’ To put it quite simply, the paper amounts to a review and analysis of case histories of Western-educated men and women of our time who were self-confessed or publicly accused traitors, renegades, betrayers. A fascinating project, I have found.”

  “Fascinating,” echoed Legrande enthusiastically, as he hovered near Brennan’s chair.

  Brennan found himself less fascinated. The analyst’s explanation possessed the same potential threat that Brennan had often felt in Venice when, sitting in Quadri’s, he had seen an American tourist looking back at him a second time, or when he had opened the latest issue of a newsmagazine to find a heading that indicated that another article was about to survey the contemporary history of nuclear security. There was always, in those times, the constricting fear that his name would be linked with the names of known traitors. More often than not his fear was justified. Dr. Fisher’s prologue promised the same danger. Yet, Brennan could not conceive that the Swiss specialist, in this background of revelry and shallow pleasure, would go into a subject so serious and personal. Warily, he waited.

  Dr. Fisher was continuing. “For my paper, I have investigated, through the reading of official reports, letters, journals, confessions, and through numerous interviews, a wide range of personalities. I have made studies of William Joyce, Dr. Alan Nunn May, Alger Hiss, Harry Gold, Dr. Klaus Fuchs, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Bruno Pontecorvo, Colonel Abel, William Vassall, and numerous others who committed treason or were accused of lesser indiscretions against their countries.”

  Dr. Fisher paused, inclined his head as if to catch a word from Jehovah seated beside him, and then he resumed speaking in his measured magisterial bass. “My purpose in this study has been to find the unconscious motivations that compel an individual to betray his closest lifelong ties, to reject one authority, be it parent, employer, church or state, and transfer his allegiance and trust to another, bartering a gift of secrets to acquire the love of the new and alien authority. I cannot believe that Judas deceived Our Lord, and delivered Him into the hands of an enemy, for thirty pieces of silver alone. No, there were deeper unconscious needs that were temporarily satisfied by this treacherous act, for had it been avarice alone, Judas would not have hung himself, as legend has it, in that place aptly called the Field of Blood. And so, Mr. Brennan, I have gathered my case histories and probed them to learn if the need for treason, sublimated and repressed in the psyche of most men, but acted upon by a handful of men charged as traitors, has any common denominator, any single root.”

  “Magnificent!” exclaimed Legrande, quickly beckoning for others in the room to join in the sport.

  Brennan, ignoring Legrande, sat grimly staring at the Swiss psychoanalyst and waiting for the swordsman’s coup de fond.

  Dr. Fisher also ignored his host, as he went on pedantically. “It is not surprising, therefore, in a research so far-flung yet so detailed that I came upon your name repeatedly, Mr. Brennan. At no time did I equate your case with the major case histories of proven disloyalty, yet I found your circumstance had a pertinence to my study and contributed to an understanding of my analysis. Naturally, since I had met you only among the papers littering my office desk in Berne, it was a pleasure to find myself at the same social affair with you and to have an opportunity to meet you and inform you of my project. I honestly believe that you will find my paper not only interesting but also sympathetic in its approach. I have no pretensions to being a judge of men’s deeds, Mr. Brennan, but am merely a humble student of their motivations. I should be most delighted to mail you a copy of an early draft for your comments, which might add to the authenticity and worth of my work. But in any event, I repeat, you may find it interesting and even useful.”

  The coup de fond, at last. The thrust had been a long time in coming. Now it had been struck, and Brennan bled inside.

  He sat quietly, determined to maintain reserve and dignity before the eyes of this insensitive and heartless and quite foolish surgeon of men’s psyches. For the first time, he examined the all-knowing one across from him with care. Dr. Karle Fisher, of Berne, was possessed of a bulging forehead and bulging eyes and a weak chin. His little body was swollen with self-importance, superiority, and self-indulgence. His smug aspect was that of one used to being listened to and obeyed, of one who expected gratefulness when he parceled out capsules of wisdom. In all, a formidable picador.

  For a moment, Brennan wondered whether he should bother. From the corner of his eye he was conscious of Lisa, watching him with anxiety. She would probably prefer that they rise and leave. Had this happened in Venice, when he had been utterly lost and defeated, he would have done so. But in the past weeks he had rediscovered his ego, its value, and in the past week he had revived his old feelings about justice and injustice, and suddenly this seemed an evening when survival was an issue worth bothering about.

  Emerging from introspection, Brennan could see that Dr. Fisher waited expectantly for a response. This, too, ir
ked Brennan, supporting a feeling within him that the psychoanalyst’s discussion of his report had not been merely to deliver facts but calculated to goad one possessed of the Judas instinct into angry self-revelation. Brennan was tempted to debate in his own defense, but this would only provide more gray matter for Dr. Fisher’s dissecting table. Brennan determined to be as secretive about himself as humanly possible while still attempting to contend with his opponent.

  “You think I will find your paper interesting and even useful,” said Brennan at last. “Tell me, Dr. Fisher, why do you feel it would be of either interest or use to me?”

  “Well, only because of your—”

  “Dr. Fisher, do you believe that I committed treason four years ago?”

  The psychoanalyst’s tongue circled and wetted the rim of his round mouth. “No, not exactly, Mr. Brennan. Certainly, not in the political sense that Dr. Fuchs and Dr. May committed treason. But I would suggest that your case history offers some indication that in a purely psychoanalytical sense you were unconsciously involved in a fantasy of treason that you were unable to act out. I have gone by the record alone. According to the record, your guilt was not proved, but your innocence was not proved either. You were suspect, and you were cast aside as untrustworthy. But the very fact that you were given a top security assignment, the safeguarding of Professor Varney, and that you failed in your assignment, might indicate certain unconscious problems that would be pertinent to any study on the need of certain men to—shall we say, flirt?—to flirt with treason, premeditated or accidental, although very little of any human being’s behavior is ever accidental. At any rate, your act of omission—I only cite the official record—contributed to giving the Chinese Communists your Professor Varney and the neutron bomb, and disturbed the balance of power and coexistence in the world.”

  Remembering the certainty with which Isenberg had cleared him of this responsibility, Brennan said, “Dr. Fisher, did you find anything in the official record that named me, specifically, or Professor Varney, specifically, or any other Westerner, specifically, as being responsible for China’s neutron bomb?”

  Dr. Fisher was thoughtful. “Well, it was discussed, and generally believed—”

  “Was it known, proved? Were we so accused by our governments?”

  Dr. Fisher squirmed, reached for his highball glass, and saw that it was empty. “You are quibbling, Mr. Brennan. In your Government’s brief against you, as I have noted, your guilt was only implied, as were the results of Professor Varney’s defection. Often, in the matter of the consequence of treason, deduction suffices. I can refer you to an official report made by the United States Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy in 1951. I can recite it to you. With your forebearance, I shall, to wit: ‘The conclusion seems reasonable that the combined activities of Fuchs, Pontecorvo, Greenglass, and May had advanced the Soviet atomic energy program by 18 months as a minimum. In other words, if war should come, Russia’s ability to mount an atomic offensive against the West will be greatly increased by reason of these four men.’ That seems fair enough to me. It also seems fair enough, reasonable enough, to assume that Varney’s defection advanced China’s nuclear strength by a half-dozen years or more.”

  “And you imply that I must share the guilt for that, assuming it were true,” said Brennan.

  “I imply nothing more than the possibility that you may have been coerced into aiding an act of treason, performed by another, because of your unconscious personal needs to be cast in that role.”

  Brennan tried to remain calm, but it was becoming difficult. “All of this, Dr. Fisher, when you have already admitted there is not one shred of proof, in the official record, that I was a traitor?”

  “Mr. Brennan,” said the psychoanalyst with a shade of impatience, “I am not interested in political games. I am not interested in legal definitions of proof. I am only interested in why men behave as they do, and how they become involved in impossible situations because they are victimized by their own neurotic conflicts and needs. Mr. Brennan, I remind you again, I am not a judge, I am a psychoanalyst.”

  “Hear, hear, well spoken, Doctor,” called out Legrande with a clap of his hands. Other guests smiled their approval at Dr. Fisher, as did the French couple on the sofa beside him. Dr. Fisher glanced about, accepting the mass approval with feigned modesty.

  Brennan, who had been watching the others, looked at Lisa. She was flushed with anger, and she made a quick movement of her head to indicate that they should get up and leave. Brennan held up a finger to her, and turned back to his tormentor.

  “Dr. Fisher, if I may contradict you—and it is apparent to me that you are not used to being contradicted—I should like to suggest that you are behaving less like a psychoanalyst than as the Christ. I look at you, hoping to see the physician-scientist, the cool objective healer, and what I see instead is a vainglorious and self-satisfied little man, with the weaknesses of all mere mortals, playing to the gallery for attention and congratulations.”

  Dr. Fisher smiled, but the smile was wicked. “Really, Mr. Brennan, I would have expected more from you than mere insolence—”

  “And I would have expected more from a man of medicine than cheap sleight-of-hand. When it suits your purposes, you climb atop your medical degrees, and from that exalted and unassailable position you analyze and then expound your dogmas. You are above prejudices, above inferences and gossip, above politics, above passing unsupported judgments. Yet, from your invulnerable citadel the wise edicts you hand down are counterfeit, composed of prejudices, inferences, politics, highly personal judgments, none of them based on facts. Your performance may amuse the others, Doctor, but I find it disappointing.”

  Dr. Fisher was no longer smiling. “One moment, sir… Setting aside, if you can, your understandable displeasure, do you still insist that my analysis—or unsupported judgment, as you prefer to consider it—is not based on facts? Mr. Brennan, tell me, was it a fact that you were charged by your Government with looking after Professor Varney four years ago? Yes or no?”

  “Against my wishes—”

  “I am not interested in your wishes, Mr. Brennan, only in your Government’s wishes. Were you so charged? I repeat, yes or no?”

  “Have your fun… Yes.”

  “Did Varney defect to the Reds from under your nose in Zurich?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And you were investigated by your Government for complicity? Is that a fact?”

  “Right or wrong, yes.”

  “And your security clearance was revoked, and you were forced to resign from your post?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Fisher smiled, and opened his palms to his audience. “Facts.”

  Brennan came forward in his chair. “You were clever enough to omit one question, Dr. Fisher, because it might play havoc with your learned paper and your childish parlor game. You failed to ask me if I was innocent.”

  The psychoanalyst dismissed this with a disdainful gesture. “There was no need to ask. I have done my homework. You are innocent, all of you are innocent, now and forever, because you must maintain this delusion to assuage your guilts. Are you satisfied, Mr. Brennan?”

  Brennan nodded slowly. “I am satisfied, Dr. Fisher, that if Sigmund Freud had heard your performance he would have sentenced you to the couch for life.”

  There was a burst of laughter, applause, and even a giggling Legrande clapped Brennan on the back as Brennan stood up to join Lisa.

  About to depart, Brennan found that Dr. Karle Fisher was also on his feet. The short analyst came strutting toward Brennan, his countenance a study in controlled fury.

  Dr. Fisher planted himself in front of Brennan. His voice shook. “Since you have chosen to exceed the boundaries of fair play and decency, Mr. Brennan, going out of your way not once but twice to launch a personal attack against me, to disparage me professionally in the company of my friends, I do believe I deserve one last word.”

  Lisa tugged at Bre
nnan’s arm. “Come on, Matt.”

  “You have accused me of unprofessional behavior and you have announced that I am seriously disturbed,” continued Dr. Fisher. “You made one mistake. You tried to analyze me without any knowledge of me. I, on the other hand, attempted to analyze you in my paper only after I had considerable knowledge of you. Your regrettable tirade just now has convinced me that you need individual help, as well as the benefit of my written findings on you and my other case histories. Since you have chosen to be personal, I should like equal time to reply. The difference between us will be that out of your own hurt you sought to hurt me, whereas my own motives are more charitable. I hate to see an obviously disturbed man leave my presence without his accepting some modicum of the help I can offer him.”

  “I appreciate your solicitude, Doctor,” said Brennan. “I’m always interested in pain-killers. But I always remember that Dr. Guillotine prescribed a pain-killer, too.”

  “Matt,” Lisa urged, “don’t listen to him. Let’s go.”

  Brennan resisted her, not because he had been dared by Dr. Fisher but because he was always curious to learn about himself.

  “All right, Dr. Guillotine,” said Brennan, “give me a sixty-second diagnosis of the anatomy of a traitor.”

  Holding one silver-rimmed lens of his spectacles, Dr. Fisher spoke in a low churlish tone, rapping out his words of reason viciously at Brennan.

  “Your dictionaries will tell you that a traitor is one who betrays a confidence or trust, one who performs perfidiously or treacherously, one who even violates his allegiance and betrays his country,” said Dr. Fisher. “As a definition of what we discuss, that is correct; yet for our purposes, it is inadequate. It was Shakespeare who came closer. ‘Though those that are betray’d do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe.’ It is this woe that interests the analyst.”