Three in the Back, Two in the Head

By Jason Sherman

The issue of loyalty and betrayal is dramatized through dialogue in the Governor-General's-Award-winning Three in the Back, Two in the Head, which appears to have been based on the assassination of Gerald Bull, the brilliant Canadian scientist who designed the first Star Wars system twenty years before Reagan announced his version. Bull ran afoul of the Pentagon and the CIA by his dealings with China, Chile, Yugoslavia, and Iraq. But Sherman's play is not a docudrama in any sense, for it merely uses some of the circumstances of the murdered scientist's career in order to concentrate on questions of personal and state morality as these circumscribe issues of loyalty and betrayal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 1997
• ISBN: 9781770912304

Jason Sherman

Jason Sherman has written extensively for the stage, radio, and television. His plays include Remnants (A Fable); It’s All True; Patience; Reading Hebron; The Retreat; The League of Nathans; An Acre of Time, and Three in the Back, Two in the Head, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. He served as executive story editor and writer on the TV series ReGenesis, earning Gemini and Canadian Screenwriting Award nominations. For CBC Radio he wrote “National Affairs,” “Irving Invectus,” and “Graf,” for which he received the Canadian Screenwriting Award for radio drama. He is currently working on several television, radio and film projects. He lives in Toronto.

Book preview

dead.

SCENE 1

Office of John DOYLE, CIA officer, Langley, Virginia: DOYLE and PAUL Jackson.

PAUL:

I mean what did he do that—

DOYLE:

What did he do, he—

PAUL:

What was so wrong with what he did, with—

DOYLE:

What he did was, as far as I can tell, just, from reading the papers, from, you know, the Times the, what, the Post, what he did was, he made guns, he sold guns and missiles and he, okay?, made missiles and—he lived by the gun and, callous though—

PAUL:

No.

DOYLE:

—callous though it may sound, he died by the—

PAUL:

No, that’s, sold guns and miss— I can’t—

DOYLE:

Do you—

PAUL:

That’s—

DOYLE:

Do you deny—

PAUL:

He was a scien—

DOYLE:

He lived in that world, he died in that world—

PAUL:

He was a scientist, and you can’t tell me he—

DOYLE:

Yes.

PAUL:

—was murdered because of his work to promote peace, to—

DOYLE:

That’s exactly what I—promote pea—? —no—look, back up, because, in the first— to say scientist is, all right, misleading, because, look, look, he, look, he didn’t wear a white coat, he was mixed up in a dangerous—

PAUL:

He was a—

DOYLE:

—a da—according to the New York Times, dangerous world, that is the reality, that is the truth and, Paul, you can’t come in here, with your, you know, pie in the—to promote peace, which I don’t under—you cannot come in here and say these last five weeks, I’ve done so much.

PAUL:

But I—

DOYLE:

You cannot say, I need to know.

PAUL:

That’s—

DOYLE:

You cannot say, I’ve tried every angle.

PAUL:

I have tri—

DOYLE:

You cannot say, I’ve spoken to—

PAUL:

I’ve seen—

DOYLE:

To so many people, police, uhh, police—

PAUL:

Ambassa—

DOYLE:

Ambassadors, generals, without acknowledging that your father lived in a dangerous and and and volatile environment which, which, no listen, this is germane, because to assume that his death has something to do with or can be addressed somehow by the with the help of the CIA, with me, with—

PAUL:

But let me—

DOYLE:

No, because—

PAUL:

Let me—let me—because when I called you, when I called you, you said you would, you said, I will help you.

DOYLE:

I said I would see you.

PAUL:

You said—

DOYLE:

Listen: I said I would, okay?, see you, not—

PAUL:

You said—

DOYLE:

Those are the, that is the word I used.

PAUL:

I will help…

DOYLE:

But look. I would not have made such a—it simply is not within my purview. I am in Operations, I, that is my job. I am a GS12, which is practically nothing. I sit here and from this little office I send and receive messages, cables, regarding the—

PAUL:

Cables.

DOYLE:

—activities of, yes, agents in the field—

PAUL:

You send cables.

DOYLE:

That is what I do, I deal with, with, with travel arrangements, financial transactions, the details of of the movements and activities of agents in the— You simply would not believe the mundanity of my position.

PAUL:

You said you would help me—

DOYLE:

Look. Is it not possible that, that you heard what you wanted to hear, that, tell me if this doesn’t—because, and I understand this, you are on a mission—

PAUL:

—You said—

DOYLE:

—and it is noble of you—he was, yes, murdered, and I understand how you feel, I understand that he was, to you, a kind man, a gentle man, a good man, a pass the peas kind of man who never spoke of his work—look, let me make this point—and that work, the nature, Paul, of that work, was such that he could not even hint to his own family—

PAUL:

That doesn’t mean—

DOYLE:

—and he is murdered, he is shot to death in a church, for no apparent reason, and yet because of certain factors, the fact that he was a military scientist, the—

PAUL:

He was not—

DOYLE:

—the, listen, the fact that there were no witnesses to his death, facts such as these