Marathe & Steeply, betrayal

Under the "careless intimacy" the counter-surveillance never blinks. Steeply keeps his back half-turned at most; Marathe sits with his wheel-clamps "locked down tight and a firm grip on the machine pistol's pebbled grip," the grip hot from his palm under the blanket. Two men in the posture of old friends, each continuously casing the other's body — the intimacy is itself the disguise, worn over a readiness to kill. The tradecraft is in the standing angles.