Tactical Deception Communications Section

The Tactical Deception Communications Section is the Checquy’s public-facing deception and communications unit, tasked with shaping explanations when supernatural events risk exposure. Nicknamed the Liars, it turns concealment into organized work: developing a story the public can accept, coordinating its release, and helping avert a wider breach of secrecy.

Role and Public Cover

When an Argentine woman’s ectoplasm produces animals that chase people, Myfanwy Thomas tells Caspar Dragoslevic that the incident falls squarely within the Checquy’s responsibility to keep the public from learning about the supernatural. She refers to the Section as the Liars, but Dragoslevic objects to the nickname and gives its formal name, the Tactical Deception Communications Section. Their exchange establishes both the unit’s function and the tension between its practical work and the blunt label attached to it: the Section is not simply spreading falsehoods, but supplying explanations meant to prevent dangerous knowledge from becoming public.

The need for such explanations is especially clear in the financial district, where protesters gather outside the Hammerstrom Building. Their signs claim that the government is concealing the truth, including alleged evidence of alien landings, and the protesters demand to know what secret operations are being conducted around the country. Yet the crowd attracts little attention from passersby. Security Chief Clovis argues that people will ignore protesters even when their claims are plausible; in his view, the demonstrators’ appearance and subject matter make them easy to dismiss. The scene shows how public disbelief can itself help protect the Checquy’s secrecy, even as the protesters come close to identifying the truth.

Crisis Communications in Practice

During the ectoplasm incident, Myfanwy asks Dragoslevic what the Section can do about the footage that news outlets may have recorded. He explains that the Checquy has someone inside a station who can report what footage exists, after which the organization may be able to interfere with it. The exchange reveals that the unit’s work is not limited to inventing a cover story: it also tracks the media material that could undermine one.

Dragoslevic draws on twenty-three years of experience in television to judge what explanation the public will accept. Because the event takes place in the business district at six in the evening on a weekday, there have been witnesses, but he expects them to accept the news coverage’s account, particularly if a few animals are released and caught on television. Myfanwy warns him not to let this response cause further deaths among the public. The plan thus exposes the risks built into crisis management: an effort to make an extraordinary incident look ordinary can itself create danger if it is handled without restraint.

By eleven that night, the Section’s explanation has been broadcast. Myfanwy reports that a difficult cleanup and further questions remain, but that a disaster has largely been averted. The episode makes the unit’s success provisional rather than absolute: its work can contain an immediate revelation, but it does not erase the consequences or eliminate the need for continued preparation.

Secrecy, Networks, and Betrayal

The Section operates within a much larger organization, one composed of powered specialists and highly capable non-powered staff. Its communication work therefore depends on the Checquy’s institutional network, whose members and secrets are vulnerable to infiltration. When evidence of deliberate bodily modifications leads Myfanwy and Shantay Petoskey to conclude that the Grafters have infiltrated the Checquy, the threat reaches beyond individual security. Ingrid Woodhouse points out that a trusted aide, Richard Whitlam, had been loved and regarded as devoted to the organization before he attempted to attack a Court member at the reception. If such a trusted insider could be a Grafter, the infiltrators might already know the Checquy’s secrets.

That danger is sharpened by the discovery that the Rook’s office and assistant’s office have been bugged. Conrad Grantchester tells Myfanwy that he installed listening devices when the office was his and resumed monitoring it after recent events. The devices let him hear her say she knew the identity of another double agent, prompting him to contact an operative in the Rookery and arrange an attack on her assistant and a young Pawn. The episode shows how communication infrastructure can serve both the Checquy’s protective work and the aims of a traitor: an office intended to coordinate the organization becomes a channel for surveillance and violence.

A further account of Grafter communication reveals a system designed to be difficult to trace. Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen’s Belgian associate explains that augmented members of his support staff can connect mentally to telephone networks, transmit speech in real time, and repeat the voice of the person on the other end of a call. Pawn Alan’s associates could not track the calls. This method belongs to the Grafter network, not to the Tactical Deception Communications Section, but it underscores the stakes surrounding communications in the story: the capacity to control what is heard, known, or traced can protect an institution, conceal an enemy, or expose those who believe themselves secure.

Institutional Significance

The Tactical Deception Communications Section embodies the Checquy’s effort to preserve the boundary between ordinary public life and supernatural danger. Its work ranges from monitoring broadcast footage to issuing an explanation that can contain an unfolding incident. The protesters outside the Hammerstrom Building show that secrecy may also be sustained by public indifference; the evening broadcast shows that the organization actively manages that indifference when events threaten to break through it.

At the same time, the crises surrounding the Section make clear that communications cannot guarantee control. Media footage may be difficult to suppress, witnesses may still ask questions, and compromised offices can turn internal information into a weapon. The unit’s role is therefore both practical and precarious: it helps the Checquy conceal threats from the public, but it works within networks that can be watched, infiltrated, and manipulated.