Doctors Have Been Known to Lose Patients
In spycraft, there is no better recruit than a doctor. Since he has plenty of money and no time, the only way to secure a doc is through extortion. A doctor's discretion belies quite a lot of indiscretion. Even when there's so much to lose. Reputations are very fragile. Just blame hubris and a god complex. Why do doctors make such brilliant spies? Doctors can compartmentalize their lives better than anyone. What a doctor does in a fit of passion away from his family has nothing at all to do with his wife (although it is more commonly a fit of boredom, opportunity, desperation, or frustration). A total disconnect. Along with this impenetrable bifurcation, you have a spy who can make himself scarce at a whim and then blame the hospital. Good for both illicit affairs and covert ops. It would never be suspicious to anyone -- friends, family, even neighbors -- for a doctor to noisily open his garage at one AM and drive off, gone until morning. I met an old married couple. Ira, the husband, was a retired surgeon. After chatting for a while, Ruth, his wife, looked seriously at me and said, "if you ever consider marrying a doctor, remember this: you will never know whether that phone call is the hospital or a mistress." The usefulness of docs never ceases to amaze me. They never sleep, they're self-disciplined, self-motivated, they are discrete, and their entire community trusts -- and confides -- in them. Whats more, docs are generally disgruntled and bored even with their spicy other woman. Many doctors are exceptionally flattered when you offer intrigue into their sad, boring, bourgeois princehoods. If you land one, he will never get caught. He will never be made. He will be forever loyal (he won't know how not to). It won't occur to him to blab his mouth. All the different lives lack any semblence of integration. Even today, the general population trusts their doctor as god. Actually, the best thing about recruiting doctors is that they can make mortal errors. If a doctor loses a patient... well, its been known to happen.