Marshall Redgrave

Stanley Marshall Redgrave goes by Marshall. He’s a Cancer (Virgo rising).

Marshall was raised in a bucolic East Bay suburb. His parents – Raymond and Clara (née Duval) Redgrave – were not wealthy, but they were, let’s say, well off. Raymond taught Classic Literature at Berkeley and Clara worked for the government in a vague capacity. They had some family money.

Marshall’s upbringing was progressive and cosmopolitan. His parents were a lively, educated, liberal couple. Marshall recalls a childhood spent attending the ballet and the symphony, poetry readings by prominent female writers, formal dinner performances by famous Black musicians, even a gallery opening in the city hosted by a homosexual couple.

Marshall enrolled at Stanford Medicine in 1954. There he focused on pharmacology and psychiatry. He was a star student, possessing a deeply intuitive understanding of human behavior and psychology. His aptitude brought him to the attention of a former Navy man who tapped him for the fledgling CIA.

At CIA, Marshall learned the truth about his family: his dad, a longtime headhunter for the War Department, his mother, a human calculator and code breaker for the SIS. They were proud of their son, now following in their footsteps. But this revelation made Marshall wary and instilled in him a quiet, constant distrust.

Marshall spent practically all of the ‘60s in Vietnam working in various ill-defined roles. Those were wild, dark times – the money was inexhaustible, and there was practically no oversight. Marshall studied the vacant-eyed men retrieved out of the jungle, sent assets on suicide missions, and broke down POWs. The work took a toll on him, but the drugs helped with that. The drugs also fueled his descent into fringe studies and esoteric practices.

SANDMAN came calling in ‘65 after he submitted a requisition request for personnel to travel deep into Cambodia. After completing his training and programming, the Project sent him on that long-desired mission into the dark heart of the jungle, there to find an ancient Khmer city said to house a forgotten order of Mahayana monks. The mission was a success, and also a nightmare.

SANDMAN pulled Marshall out of Vietnam toward the end of ‘69. At the time his handlers said it was just part of Nixon’s overall draw-down of personnel. In truth, they needed to get him out of there. After nearly a decade in the shit, Marshall had grown more than a little unhinged. They brought him back to California and cleaned him up as best they could. Not too much, though: they needed him for a new operation, codename URIEL.