Ogden nodded slowly.
  "Can you do it?" Dawson asked.
  "Probably."
  "That's all you can say?"
  "There's a better than even chance it can be done."
  "That's not sufficient, Ernst."
  "All right," Klinger said, slightly exasperated. "I can do it. I can find a way."
  Smiling, Dawson said, "I knew you could."
  "But if I did find a way and was caught either during or after the operation-I'd be 
dumped into Leavenworth and left to rot. Earlier, when I used the word 'treason,' I 
wasn't tossing it around lightly."
  "I didn't suppose you were," Dawson said. "But you wouldn't be required ever to see 
these mag tapes, let alone touch them. That would be a risk that only Ogden would have to 
take. They could convict you of nothing more serious than negligence for permitting or 
overlooking the gap in security."
  "Even so, I'd be forced into early retirement or drummed out of the service with only a 
partial pension."
  Amazed, Dawson shook his head and said, "I'm offering him one-third of a partnership 
that will earn millions, and Ernst is worrying about a government pension."
  Salsbury was perspiring heavily. The back of his shirt was soaked and felt like a cold 
compress against his skin. To Klinger
  he said, "You've told us that you can do it. But the big question is whether you will 
do it."
  Klinger stared into his brandy glass for a while, then finally looked up at Salsbury 
and said, "Once you've perfected the drug-what's our first step?"
  Getting to his feet, Dawson said, "We'll establish a front corporation in 
Liechtenstein."
  "Why there?"
  Liechtenstein did not require that a corporation list its true owners. Dawson could 
hire lawyers in Vaduz and appoint them as corporate officers-and they could not be forced 
by law to reveal the identities of their clients.
  "Furthermore," Dawson said, "I will acquire for each of us a set of forged papers, 
complete with passports, so that we can travel and do business under assumed names. If 
the lawyers in Vadnz are forced by extralegal means to reveal the names of their clients, 
they still won't endanger us because they won't know our real names."
  Dawson's caution was not excessive. The corporation would quite rapidly become an 
incredibly successful venture, so successful that a great many powerful people in both 
business and government would eventually be prying at it quietly, trying to find out who 
lay behind the phony officers in Vaduz. With Salsbury's drug and extensive programs of 
carefully structured subliminals, the three of them could establish a hundred different 
businesses and literally demand that customers, associates, and even rivals produce a 
substantial profit for them. Every dollar they earned would seem to be spotlessly clean, 
produced by a legitimate form of commerce. But, of course, a great many people would feel 
that it was not at all legitimate to manipulate the competition and the buying public by 
means of a powerful new drug. In the event that the corporation got caught using the 
drug-stolen, as it was, from a U.S. weapons research project-what had once appeared to be 
excessive caution might well prove no more than adequate.
  "And once we've got the corporation?" Klinger asked.
  Money and business arrangements were Dawson's vocation
  and his avocation. He began to declaim almost in the manner of a Baptist preacher, full 
of vigor and fierce intent, thoroughly enjoying himself. "The corporation will purchase a 
walled estate somewhere in Germany or France. At least one hundred acres. On the surface 
it will appear to be an executive retreat. But in reality it will be used for the 
indoctrination of mercenary soldiers."
  "Mercenaries?" Klinger's hard, broad face expressed the institutional soldier's disdain 
for the free-lancer.
  The corporation, Dawson explained, would hire perhaps a dozen of the very best 
mercenaries available, men who had fought in Asia and Africa. They would be brought to 
the company estate, ostensibly to be briefed on their assignments and to meet their 
superiors. The water supply and all bottled beverages on the estate would be used as 
media for the drug. Twenty-four hours after the mercenaries had taken their first few 
drinks, when they were primed for total subliminal brainwashing, they would be shown four 
hours of films on each of three successive days-travelogues, industrial studies, and 
technical documentaries detailing the use of a variety of weapons and electronic 
devices-which would be presented as essential background material for their assignments. 
Unknowingly, of course, they would be watching twelve hours of sophisticated subliminals 
telling them to obey without question any order prefaced by a certain code phrase; and 
when those three days had passed, all twelve men would cease to be merely hired hands and 
would become something quite like programmed robots.
  Outwardly, they would not appear to have changed. They would look and behave as they 
always had done. Nevertheless, they would obey any order to lie, steal, or kill anyone, 
obey without hesitation, so long as that order was preceded by the proper code phrase.
  "As mercenary soldiers, they would be professional killers to begin with," Klinger said.
  "That's true," Dawson said. "But the glory lies in their unconditional, unquestioning 
obedience. As hired mercenaries, they would be able to reject any order or assignment 
that they
  didn't like. But as our programmed staff, they will do precisely what they are told to 
do."
  "There are other advantages, too," Salsbury said, not unaware that Dawson, now that he 
was in a proselytizing mood, resented being nudged from the pulpit. "For one thing, you 
can order a man to kill and then to erase all memory of the murder from both his 
conscious and subconscious mind. He would never be able to testify against the 
corporation or against us; and he would pass any polygraph examination."
  Klinger's Neanderthal face brightened a bit. He appreciated the importance of what 
Salsbury had said. "Even if they used pentothal or hypnotic regression-he still couldn't 
remember?"
  "Sodium pentothal is much overrated as a truth serum," Salsbury said. "As for the 
other. . - Well, they could put him in a trance and regress him to the time of the 
murder. But he would only draw a blank. Once he has been told to erase the event from his 
mind, it is beyond his recall just as surely as obsolete data is beyond the recall of a 
computer that has had its memory banks wiped clean."
  Having finished his second brandy, Klinger returned to the bar cart. This time he 
filled a twelve-ounce tumbler with ice and Seven-Up.
  Salsbury thought, He's right about that: any man who doesn't keep a clear head here, 
tonight, is plainly suicidal.
  To Dawson, Klinger said, "Once we've got these twelve 'robots' what do we do with them?"
  Because he had spent the last three months thinking about that while he and Saisbury 
worked out the details of their approach to the general, Dawson had a quick answer. "We 
can do anything we want with them. Anything at all. But as a first step-I thought we 
might use them to introduce the drug into the water supplies of every major city in