An interesting episode from Pynchon's ATD. Cyprian, the wandering flaneur turned old Balkan hand is solemnly informed by the fellow whom he has been dispatched to protect that he, Cyprian, was by this and through this being proffered to the other side, in exchange for which his masters expected that the others in their family of operatives in the field would be left alone, and perhaps even assisted. Perhaps a mind game on him, but subsequent plot turns would seem to bear the conjecture out. The (successfully completed) assignment involving extraordinary danger and difficulty was not so much heroic as pyrrhic.
