The Orin operation — Steeply's soft-profile cover mines the Incandenza family

pivotal · November YDAU

• When: November YDAU (the Phoenix interview series); Steeply is driven down to Sky Harbor by Orin 7 Nov YDAU
• What: Because the samizdat's dead auteur is James Incandenza, U.S.O.U.S. targets his estranged eldest son. Steeply — back in the field after "the personal Marital Leave over his recent divorce" (077) — attaches to Phoenix Cardinals punter Orin as "Helen Steeply" under a Moment soft-profile cover, running an interview series (n234) and correspondence (with Orin's old friend Marlon Bain, n269) that pursue "lines of family-linen inquiry": Orin's own catalogue of her question-list runs "the Moms and Québec and Royal Victoria, the Moms and immigration, Himself and annulation [...] Himself killing himself, you and Joelle, Himself and Joelle [...] nonexistent films, et cetera" (064). Orin, who takes her for a besotted admirer, keeps redirecting her away from the family; she keeps steering back. The operation's true object is intelligence on the samizdat and its Master. (The "putatively Swiss" hand-model seducing Orin in the same weeks is the other side working the same target — her handler-affiliation is never stated on-page; the A.F.R./Luria reading is the scene-record's and the A.F.R. page's, kept flagged as inference here — See the AFR thread (event 13).) See the Orin timeline; the Steeply timeline.