Orin's technical interview

Even the interrogation is staged, and one professional in the room knows it's overacted. The mise-en-scène is pure theater — a special-made giant green tumbler lit like "extreme ocean depths," a "stilted amplified voice" demanding "Where Is The Master Buried," sewer roaches released on a timed cue — and Luria P———, "who disdained the subtler aspects of technical interviews and had lobbied simply to be given a pair of rubber gloves and two or three minutes alone with the Subject's testicles," rolls her eyes at the A.F.R. leader's ham production values. The espionage plot's climax is a piece of stagecraft, reviewed from inside by its own bored operative — tradecraft as theater, and even the theater found second-rate.