Shaw's KGB handler is his domineering mother, Eleanor. Seeing the queen of diamonds playing card transforms him into an assassin who will kill anyone at whom he is directed. In Shaw's case, the suggestion that he play solitaire is the trigger. It is revealed that the Communists have been using Shaw as a sleeper agent who, activated by a post-hypnotic trigger, immediately forgets the assignments he carries out and therefore can never betray the operation either purposely or inadvertently. Senator Jordan and Shaw's mother do not like each other, but Raymond continues to see Jocelyn. Both find love interests: for Marco, it is Rose Cheyney, whom he meets on a train and for Raymond, it is Jocelyn Jordan, the daughter of Senator Thomas Jordan, a neighbor of Shaw's. Marco is arrested, and when Shaw sees that it is his old major they rekindle their old friendship.

Marco and the manservant start fighting in Shaw's house and both are bloodied significantly. Major Marco looks up Sergeant Raymond Shaw and discovers that Shaw's new manservant is someone he recognizes from Korea. When Marco learns that another of the platoon's soldiers has been suffering the exact same nightmare, he starts looking into why this is happening. The backdrop with the old ladies changes back and forth between them and Chinese/Soviet intelligence officials. One of the ladies tells Sergeant Shaw to murder two of his platoon comrades. Years after the war, Marco, now back in the United States working as an intelligence officer, begins suffering a recurring nightmare in which the seated platoon members are surrounded by a group of sweet little old ladies who had been a part of their brainwashing. They are taken to Manchuria, and brainwashed into believing Shaw saved their lives in combat – for which Shaw is subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor. Major Bennett Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, and the rest of their infantry platoon are captured by an elite Soviet commando unit during the Korean War in 1952.

The manchurian candidate 1962 cast