Marathe & Steeply, Rivers of Reward
if he could get past the blind desire for harm against the U.S., your M. Fortier might be induced to see just what it is he’s proposing to let out of the cage.
Context
The anecdote's true addressee, revealed at its close: the entire Rivers-of-Reward story has been an operation aimed not at Marathe but through him at Fortier. Steeply spends the pre-dawn "making a way toward your point so slowly" because the point is a persuasion payload — get Fortier to see the samizdat as a cage he'd be opening — meant to travel home in Marathe's report. The meeting is not a conversation but a relay: Steeply runs a psy-op on a man not present, using his supposed liaison as the delivery channel, exactly the structure the honeytrap uses on the Incandenzas through Orin (041).