Feckless men playing games with their own lives and others, putting pride and a refusal to acknowledge passage of time above humanity.

Two true things: 1) "He realised with what he took to be utter detachment that, whilst his own mission had unfolded as comedy, Leiser was to play the same part as tragedy; that he was witnessing an insane relay race in which each contestant ran faster and longer than the last, arriving nowhere but at his own destruction."

2) Although at the outset I recognised we were in for a careless wasting of life I still supposed there might be something like 'success' at the surface mission, or at least something resembling a valiant attempt at same. But, the only 'success' we see is by other movers to other ends. One might consider the vanity of the Department vindicated, but only to its surrender.

I thought at first of Leiser at the border "Oh no, you have made an operational error". In the end I came to understand it as a sort of additional tragedy. Of course he wasn't properly equipped or trained for the mission. Of course he was abandoned at his most vulnerable by those to whom he had literally entrusted his life. But he had also in a sense by taking the life of the border guard ("the boy") forfeited his own life—murder as unpardonable misdeed, unable to be repaid short of everything.