The cell penetrated from within: Marathe's quadruple-agent structure

pivotal · arrangement runs into YDAU

• When: the arrangement is in force through the YDAU present; Marathe's wife's coma is "fourteen months" as of the 30 Apr–1 May desert night (088) and "almost one year" as of 14 Nov (156)
• What: The A.F.R.'s single greatest exposure is its own best agent. Fortier and the A.F.R. believe Marathe is a triple/double agent pretending to betray Québec to B.S.S. — feeding controlled information under Fortier's direction in exchange for U.S. cardiac care for his hideously ill wife. In fact Marathe "is now only pretending to pretend to betray": he really is selling the cell out (probably for the medical tech), and Steeply/B.S.S. know it while Fortier does not know they know — the "even-numbered total of his final loyalties," whose discovery would mean Marathe's death (the smallest of his problems). Because of Marathe, the A.F.R.'s pure-malice agenda is already known to O.N.A.N.'s Office of Unspecified Services (n302) — though Fortier may have deliberately let it through, and Fortier separately plans to force Marathe to view the Entertainment before dissemination, nursing a suspicion (from the jeux he oversaw at which Marathe's brothers died) that Marathe "nurses dreams of redress." Marathe's true final loyalty is the thread's open crux, recorded here as open. See Marathe's timeline (event 6).