Caspar Dragoslevic

Caspar Dragoslevic is the head of the Checquy Group’s Media Cover department, responsible for helping prevent supernatural events from becoming public knowledge. A former television professional recruited by Rook Thomas, he brings an insider’s understanding of broadcast news to the organization’s attempts to control what people see and believe. In the Liverpool crisis, his work turns a threat of exposure into a carefully managed public explanation, though not without the possibility of further harm.

Role and Professional Background

Dragoslevic leads Media Cover, a department whose responsibilities become urgent when a television crew is reported in downtown Liverpool during a supernatural emergency. Rook Thomas asks why the crew is there and what footage it might obtain; Dragoslevic answers with dry pragmatism that the station has a facility in the city, a placement he cannot influence. His authority has limits: Media Cover can respond to coverage, but it cannot control where media organizations operate.

Dragoslevic has worked in television for twenty-three years before Rook Thomas recruits him. That experience informs his assessment of both the crews’ access and the public’s likely response. He knows that footage may be difficult to suppress if journalists consider it important, and he judges that a plausible explanation will be more effective than an implausibly comprehensive denial. His expertise is practical rather than supernatural: he understands the routines and incentives of broadcasting, and applies that knowledge to the Checquy’s secrecy needs.

The Liverpool Crisis

The problem Dragoslevic addresses is not an abstract breach. An Argentine woman’s ectoplasm has formed into animals that chase people, while the emergency has also caused a power outage and disrupted movement through the city. Rook Thomas emphasizes that the organization must keep the public from learning about such events. Dragoslevic has someone inside the television station who can report what the crew has captured, and says the department may be able to do something with the footage once it knows what it contains.

He objects when Rook Thomas refers to his staff as “Liars,” identifying their formal name as the Tactical Deception Communications Section. The exchange underscores the tension between institutional language and the work itself: the department’s official title presents communication as a technical function, while its purpose in this instance is to shape a misleading public account. Dragoslevic’s response is controlled, but his role does not make him indifferent to the means involved; he corrects the label even as he proceeds with the deception.

Cover Story and Its Risks

Dragoslevic later brings Rook Thomas good news. Because electricity is out and people are trying to leave the city, television crews have not reached the event’s center. They have remained on the outskirts, and, crucially, the ectoplasmic constructs do not register on film or digital recording. The supernatural activity has therefore escaped the cameras not through a successful confiscation of evidence but because the phenomenon itself cannot be recorded in those formats.

For the public account, Dragoslevic proposes a deliberately nonspecific story involving animals escaped from a cargo ship, the power failure, and the looting that followed. He expects that people will accept the explanation, in part because the incident occurs in a business district at six in the evening during the middle of the week, when fewer witnesses are likely to be present than at busier times. To reinforce the account, he plans to release a few animals where they can be caught on television, supplying images that support the cover story.

Rook Thomas warns him not to go too far: releasing water buffalo among the public could kill people and would reflect badly on the Checquy’s leadership. The exchange makes the cost of Dragoslevich’s solution plain. The cover story is designed to contain one danger, public discovery, but its staged evidence may create another, physical danger to bystanders. Rook Thomas ends the call before learning which animals Dragoslevich intends to use or where he will obtain them.

Secrecy, Credibility, and Public Suspicion

The Liverpool operation shows Dragoslevich working within a system that depends not simply on hiding evidence but on giving visible events an ordinary explanation. The department uses the limitations of recording technology, the disruption caused by the blackout, and the established expectations of television news to make a false account credible. Its success is provisional: the explanation has been broadcast and disaster is largely averted, but questions and a difficult cleanup remain.

Elsewhere, the book places this kind of secrecy beside public conspiracy claims. Protesters outside the Checquy’s headquarters declare that the truth is hidden inside and allege, among other things, concealed evidence of alien landings and secret operations. Security Chief Clovis argues that passersby will dismiss them as conspiracy enthusiasts, even though their accusations concern genuine concealment. The contrast illuminates the environment in which Dragoslevich works: public suspicion can be dismissed because it looks implausible, while a convincing official story can conceal real supernatural activity. His work is therefore not just damage control after an incident; it is part of the Checquy’s ongoing effort to decide which accounts the public will treat as credible.