Gately, the wraith, and the figurants — "he bets Gately’s struggling to hide…"
he bets Gately’s struggling to hide his curiosity about whether the wraith succeeded in coming up with a figurantless entertainment so thoroughly engaging it’d make even an in-bent figurant of a boy laugh and cry out for more.
Context
The two halves of the wraith's film theory fuse in one phrase: the terminal project was a "figurantless entertainment" — the aural-realism ethics and the reach-the-mute-son mission were the same project all along. The promised "cry out for more" is the tell the reader can check against every account of the samizdat's victims (the attaché, the Leavenworth volunteer): the film demonstrably produces the wanting-more; whether it ever reached the boy it was for, the wraith doesn't say.