Pack law. Basic. Anyone who went undercover knew this. Yes, of course, Thomas Rodney Mallen did know this, but it was a while before he had to apply such obvious, tidy undercover wisdom to how he actually behaved. You didn’t just stroll into the realm of secret duty and its special, non-stop moral puzzles. And into its special strains and perils – also non-stop. They’d come up with a new name for him, Thomas Derek Parry, and it would take a while to acclimatize. Undercover people often kept their first name, but only their first name; and only their first name if it was reasonably common: not Peregrine or Putsy-Pie or Sacheverell. For years – decades – as children and young adults at home and in school, present-day undercover officers had responded automatically to that first name. So, to stick with it now in these hairy conditions reduced by a fraction the amount of play-acting needed, and therefore a fraction of the stress. Also, the name helped an undercover snoop hang on to a portion of his or her true identity, and in a protracted operation that could be useful: selfhood sometimes turned shaky then, like: who the fuck am I?
