even the confession is in cipher

The tell of a lifelong operative: he cannot confess in clear. Even as Marathe drops his cover to Kate, the whole account stays encrypted — Québec becomes "Switzerland," the Concavity's toxic births become "the first Swiss children of southwestern Switzerland to become born without a skull," Mont Papineau and "the mines of Switzerland" stand in for the real geography of his life. He tells the truth in a substitution-code a civilian can't crack, so that the most candid thing he does all book is still a disguise. The deepest cover is the one he keeps running even while confessing. (The Concavity politics and the Gertraude material are nationalism-onan's / character; taken here only for the confession-in-cipher.)