the notebook disguised as data

Disguise-craft turned on the self. Tine charts the compulsion in "a special pocket-Franklin-Planner-sized chart," and its cover is that the log of his most private shame "could look like almost anything statistical at all" — a spycraft habit (make the incriminating document indistinguishable from routine paperwork) applied by the spy to his own secret. The same mind that would encrypt an agency ledger encrypts its keeper's compulsion into innocuous columns. Concealment as reflex, running even on the things no operation requires him to hide.