the disguise pointed at his own side

The deepest concealment in the scene is aimed not at the Americans but at Marathe's own comrades. Fortier and Broullîme, who "stood together tensed at the crossings of many trains," do not sense that he has "lost the belly for this type of work" — that he pushed a sharpened broomstick "through the Antitoi's insides during the technical interview of the Antitoi, and later had vomited out into the alley under secrecy." The euphemism "technical interview" (the A.F.R.'s word for torture) sits beside its cost, hidden even from the killers he serves with. A spy's hardest disguise is the one worn backward, toward the people who think they know him.