Strangers

and a once-famous European stage performer, Pablo Jackson was a star in Boston social circles. Furthermore, during World War II, he had been a liaison between British Intelligence and the French Resistance forces, and his recent work as a hypnotist with police agencies had only added to his mystique. He never lacked invitations.
        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 oakpaneled 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