Marathe & Steeply, the undercover protocols — "decided the exact moment of this…"

The conversation is an intelligence operation on Marathe's side too, run in real time: he is mentally drafting the Fortier report — "every word and gesture" — about the very man he is actually selling Fortier out to. The report is the true content of the meeting, and its premise is already corrupt: Fortier and the A.F.R. believe Marathe "eidetic, near-perfect in recall," which Marathe "knew this was not true." The surveillance product the whole apparatus rests on is built on an overestimate its own source won't correct — the running joke (159, n234) that intelligence work reliably delivers confident, voluminous, unreliable data.