This starts out in a military psychiatric unit, sort of like a little known gem of a movie called \"The ninth configuration\". (A William Peter Blatty novel, the same guy who brought us the aforementioned \"Exorcist\"....except HIS setting was an old castle.)

Like that film, however, this involves a patient who wasn\'t just another enlisted man (he was described as an \"agent\") who apparently became a psychopathic killer. Kent Hatcher was tortured behind enemy lines and brainwashed - programmed to kill at the drop of a hat. He\'ll say \"Six..five..three...listen to me...listen to me\" before he goes off. A colonel warns a doctor at the unit that Kent is a living \"time bomb\".

He appears to be doing well, but snaps and kills a doctor\'s assistant, then escapes and kills a clothing store clerk. (The colonel had warned the doctor that this might have been part of the programming of Hatcher\'s mind.) In the meantime, his picture is being broadcast all across America. Sadly, Kent has no family...his wife remarried after she thought he was dead, and their daughter died of pneumonia.

The episode takes a fascinating turn when Hatcher seeks shelter in the flophouse of a woman who makes her living as a fake medium. She stages phony seances with the help of an assistant who specializes in audio visual tricks. In Kent, she sees someone who is susceptible to the powers of hypnosis (which is how the enemy \"programmed\" him in the first place after brainwashing him) and whose mind she can control to help bilk a certain rich client out of a lot of money...