Marathe & Steeply, the outcropping (pp. 420–421)

031's suspicion, now fully anatomized: Steeply doesn't merely tolerate the sadistic persona-assignments, he needs them — "the more grotesque or unconvincing he seemed likely to be as a disguised persona the more nourished and actualized his deep parts felt," welcoming "the subsumption of his dignity and self in the very rôle that offended his dignity of self." And this is precisely why he is one of the Office's finest: the credential offered is a year in magenta robes with a shaved head and pulled teeth, tambourine in airports, to infiltrate a Seattle import ring. The best operative is the one whose psyche is fed by the disgrace the disguise imposes — concealment-craft fused to a masochism the Bureau has learned to deploy.