The A.F.R. search of the shop (pp. 723–724)
M. Fortier was required to absent himself for a period, in the search’s middle, to help facilitate Southwest ops, the infiltration of that relative of the auteur felt most strongly (according to Marathe) to have knowledge or possession of a duplicable copy.
Context
The row's second phrase: the filmography's kinship network as operational map — "that relative of the auteur," an athlete in the Southwest (Orin, unnamed here), targeted for "knowledge or possession of a duplicable copy." As in 143, family relation to the auteur is the A.F.R.'s unit of targeting; the provenance question the scene raises (whether DuPlessis's original copies came from this relative) is plot territory and left to that thread.