Legends

1994: BERNICE TREFFLER LOSES A PATIENT

DR. TREFFLER TURNED AROUND THE STATUE OF NATHAN HALE outside the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters at Langley, Virginia, studying the expression on the face of the young colonial spy from various angles, trying to imagine what might have been going through his mind as he was being led to execution. It occurred to her that nothing had been going through his mind; perhaps he had been too distracted by the lump in his throat, which is called fear, to think clearly. She couldn’t remember if Nathan had seen the elephant (though the term probably didn’t come into use until the Civil War) before he set off on his mission behind British lines in Manhattan Island. She wondered if the British executioners wore striped shirts; wondered, too, if they had wedged a cigarette between his lips before they hanged him on the Post Road, what today is Third Avenue in Manhattan. It is a matter of tradition, Lincoln Dittmann had remembered the executioner saying. A man condemned to death is entitled to a last cigarette.

A whey-faced young man with a laminated card pinned to the breast pocket of his three-piece suit approached. “He was the first in a long line of Americans who died spying for our country,” he noted, looking up at Nathan’s wrists bound behind his back. “You must be Bernice Treffler.” When she said In the flesh he asked to see her hospital identity card and driver’s license and carefully matched the photos against her face. She peeled off her sunglasses to make it easier for him. Apparently satisfied, he returned the cards. “I’m Karl Tripp, Mrs. Quest’s executive assistant, which is a fancy name for her cat’s-paw. I’m sorry if we’ve kept you waiting. If you’ll come with me …”

“No problem,” said Dr. Treffler, falling in alongside her escort. She was mesmerized by the laminated card on the suit jacket with his photo and name and ID number on it. If lightning struck him right now, right here, would she have the good sense to tear it off and send it to his next of kin?

“First visit to Langley?” he asked as he showed his ID to the uniformed guard at the turnstile, along with the signed authorization to bring in a woman named Bernice Treffler.

“I’m afraid it is,” she said.

The guard issued a visitor’s pass that expired in one hour, and noted Dr. Treffler’s name and the number of the pass in a log book. Karl Tripp pinned the pass to the lapel of her jacket and the two of them pushed through the turnstile and made their way down a long corridor to a bank of elevators. She started to walk into the first one that turned up but Tripp tugged on her sleeve, holding her back. “We’re taking the express to the seventh floor,” he whispered.

Several young men relegated to the plebeian elevators eyed the well dressed woman waiting for the patrician elevator, wondering who she might be, for the seventh floor was, in naval terminology, admiral’s country and outsiders went there (the elevator didn’t stop at other floors) by invitation only. When the door finally opened on the seventh floor, Tripp had to walk Dr. Treffler through another security check. He led her down a battleship-gray corridor to a door marked “Authorized DDO staff only,” unlocked it with a key at the end of a chain attached to his belt and motioned her to a seat at a crescent-shaped desk. “Coffee? Tea? Diet coke?”

“I’m fine. Thanks.”

Tripp disappeared, closing the door behind him. Treffler looked around, wondering if this tiny windowless cubbyhole could really be the office of someone as important as Crystal Quest, whom she had spoken to several times on the phone since she first began treating Martin Odum. A moment later a narrow door hidden in the paneling behind the desk opened and Mrs. Quest appeared from a larger, airier office. She was obviously a good deal older than she sounded on the phone, and wearing a pantsuit with wide lapels that did nothing to emphasize her femininity. Her hair, cropped short, looked like rusting gunmetal. “I’m Crystal Quest,” she announced matter of factly, leaning over the desk to swipe at Dr. Treffler’s palm with her own, then sinking back into the wicker swivel chair. She reached into the bottom drawer of the desk and pulled out a thermos. “Frozen daiquiris,” she explained, producing two ordinary kitchen tumblers but filling only one of them when her visitor waved her off. “So you’re Bernice Treffler,” she said. “You sound older on the phone.”

“And you sound younger—Sorry, I didn’t mean …” She laughed nervously. “Heck of a way to start a conversation.”

“No offense taken.”

“None intended, obviously.”

“Which brings us to Martin Odum.”

“I sent you an interim report—”

“Prefer to hear it from the horse’s mouth.” Quest flashed a twisted smile. “No offense intended.”

“Martin Odum is suffering from what we call Multiple Personality Disorder.” Dr. Treffler could hear Crystal Quest grinding slivers of ice between her molars. “At the origin of this condition is a trauma,” the psychiatrist continued, “more often than not a childhood trauma involving sexual abuse. The trauma short-circuits the patient’s narrative memory and leads to the development of multiple personalities, each with its own memories and skills and emotions and even language abilities. Often a patient suffering from MPD switches from one personality to another when he or she comes under stress.”

Crystal Quest fingered a chunk of ice out of the kitchen tumbler and popped it into her mouth. “Has he been able to identify the trauma?”

Dr. Treffler cleared her throat. “The original trauma, the root cause of these multiple personalities, remains shrouded in mystery, I’m sorry to report.” She could have sworn Crystal Quest looked relieved. “Which is not to say that with more treatment it won’t surface. I would very much like to get to the trauma, not only for the sake of the patient’s mental health but because of the medical paper I plan to write—”

“There won’t be any medical paper, Dr. Treffler. Not now, not ever. Nor will there be additional treatment. How many of these multiple personalities have you detected?”

Dr. Treffler made no effort to hide her disappointment. “In Martin Odum’s case,” she replied stiffly, “I’ve been able to identify three distinct alter personalities, which the patient refers to as legends, a term you will surely be familiar with. There’s Martin Odum, for starters. Then there is an Irishman named Dante Pippen. And finally there’s a Civil War historian who goes by the name of Lincoln Dittmann.”

“Any hint of a fourth legend?”

“No. Is there a fourth legend, Mrs. Quest?”

Quest ignored the question. “How many of these legends have you personally encountered?”

“There is Martin Odum, of course. And at the most recent session, which took place last week, I came face to face with Lincoln Dittmann.”

“How could you be sure it was Lincoln?”

“The person who came into my office was quite different from the Martin Odum I know. When I realized I was confronting Lincoln Dittmann and said so, he came clean.”

“Cut to the chase. Is Martin Odum off his rocker? Should we commit him to an institution?”

“You can have it either way, Mrs. Quest. Lincoln Dittmann is certainly off his rocker, as you put it. He’s convinced he was present at the battle of Fredericksburg during the Civil War. Say the word and I can get a dozen doctors to certify he’s clinically insane. If you wanted to, you could have Lincoln Dittmann—or his alter ego, the Irishman Dante Pippen—committed indefinitely.”

“What about Martin Odum?”

“Martin is distressed by his inability to figure out which of the three working identities is the real him. But he functions reasonably well, he is quite capable of making a living, of fending for himself, perhaps even of having a relationship with a woman as long as she is able to live with the ambiguity at the heart of his persona.”

“In short, nobody who meets Martin in a bar or at a dinner party would think he was mentally deranged?”

Dr. Treffler nodded carefully. “As long as he is unable to dredge up the details of the original childhood trauma, he will remain in this state of suspended animation—functional enough to muddle through, vaguely anguished.”

“Okay. I want you to drop this case. I’ll send my man Tripp around to your clinic to collect any and all notes you might have made during the sessions. I don’t need to remind you that the whole affair is classified top secret and not to be discussed with a living soul.”

Dr. Treffler remembered something she’d told Martin at one of their early sessions. “Even if I change the names to protect the guilty?”

“This is not a laughing matter, Dr. Treffler.” Crystal Quest stabbed at a button on the console. “Tripp will see you to the lobby. Appreciate your coming by.”

“That’s it?”

Mrs. Quest heaved herself out of the wicker chair. “That’s definitely it,” she agreed.

Dr. Treffler rose to her feet and stood facing her, her eyes bright with discovery. “You never wanted me to identify the trauma. You don’t want Martin to get well.”

Quest sniffed at the scent of perfume in the windowless cubby-hole; it startled her to realize that Bernice Treffler’s professional psyche reeked of femaleness, which was more than she could say for herself. “You’re in over your head,” the Deputy Director of Operations testily informed her visitor. “In Martin’s case, getting well could turn out to be fatal.”