[spoilers] Lucas and his tattoos

[binkie]

I really am genuinely making an effort to be brief. Apologies in advance of that’s not how this works out. I know I have a tendency to over-answer. Apparently, I can’t help it...

(12-12-2010 01:00 PM)Silktie Wrote:  There's something I don't understand: In episode 7.2 Lucas says that for eight years, Katchimov was his only company apart from FSB interrogators. That implies that he was never kept in a normal Russian prison together with other inmates. Why, then, would he have needed to get the tattoos to fit into the prison culture, as he told Harry in episode 7.1?

I think there are several things at issue here, some of which are character-related, some of which are textual or structural factors in the script, and some of which are probably best described as tokens of assumed knowledge on the part of the writers.

We need to consider the nature and purpose of events as we see them in 7.2 from Lucas’ perspective of intent. There are four, incredibly tightly woven concerns for Lucas in this episode: How does he find a place for himself in a world that has carried on without him, and which was almost entirely oblivious to his absence from it?; How does he convince this changed world that there is a place for him in it?; What can he do to find the blind spot in the controlling and panoptical gaze of the Russian prison system and the FSB asset management programme?; What can he do to stop himself from falling into the moral and emotional void between the condition of dependency he inhabited in prison and the condition of independence he knows he must inhabit if he is to be successful in winning back his place in the world?

When Lucas walks into the de-brief session with Harry and Ros, he knows he is going into that room as an intelligence asset, not as an MI5 officer (or even, really, a former MI5 officer). He is in that room purely for reasons of what he knows, or might know – just as it was in every interrogation session in prison. However else this might look, it is just another interrogation session: he will be rewarded (by being believed) for giving the right answers and punished (by being dismissed) for giving the wrong ones. Truth, in this situation, is exemplified less by objective quality than it is by operative value. Truth – or the right answer - is worth only as much as might be got as a consequence of it. So Lucas tells the truth he needs to tell. He tells the appropriate truth. He tells the relevant truth. He tells the truth Harry needs to hear.

Kachimov is patient, Lucas says. This is information it will be important for Harry to know in dealing with an FSB presence in London in which Kachimov plays a key role. Lucas gives Harry sufficient information to enable him to conclude – correctly – that Kachimov is “a chess player”. This too is important for Harry to know, as it will enable him to entertain the appropriate strategy in engaging Kachimov’s interest, and to manipulate a long game in which a vital element will be that Kachimov must always believe he has the upper hand. Lucas facilitates a situational exchange in which Harry draws conclusions regarding Kachimov’s strategic preferences. He does not tell Harry that Kachimov is a chess player. He gives Harry just enough background information on Kachimov’s behaviour and tactics to let him connect the dots, and feel that he is getting “the smell of” this man he so wants to dominate. Lucas has been gone a long time, and he is very aware that he has been summoned to Harry’s place of power. If Lucas has learned anything from the last eight years, it is the importance of subtle and necessary politics. Harry needs to be in control of the room, and he needs to feel that he can take control of Kachimov. In order for this to happen, Harry must come to know Kachimov through appreciating the texture and value of the information he is given. If Lucas arrives and lays everything on the table, Harry loses control of a situation he must command. It is important to remember that Lucas wants what Harry wants: he wants Kachimov. In order for Kachimov to lose this game, Harry must win it. So Lucas wants that too, however it needs to happen.

We must consider also the significance of what Lucas says about his time in prison in relation to the significance of what he was in prison: an intelligence capture. Whatever value Lucas had in prison was bound up utterly with (the perception or assumption of) whatever he knew. Kachimov is a patient and clever man. He is also well practiced in the game he plays. He has to know the limitations of torture in obtaining information from any secret service operative. He has to know also the dulling effect of routine on a sharp and active mind. He will also know how unbalancing it is for someone in a state of compromised autonomy to have his routine interrupted, or to be unable to identify any sort of routine in his treatment. Moving Lucas from solitary confinement to the general population and back again with unpredictable irregularity would have been part of Kachimov’s strategy for eroding Lucas’ self-confidence and self-worth. It would also have been part of the strategy for getting Lucas to talk. If Lucas would not talk under torture, perhaps he would talk to people who were clearly part of the same system of oppressive control to which he had fallen prey. Idle, sympathetic, unguarded conversation might be as revealing as anything submitted to anyone occupying an interrogation role.

We must assume, I think, a sophisticated, well-maintained, system of reward and punishment in the general population of whatever prison(s) Lucas was in. Promises of cigarettes, a family visit, a better room can persuade a person with limited scope for material or emotional gratification to act in a prescribed manner in return for fulfilment of those promises. Everyone in prison is potentially a spy. Lucas was clearly very aware of this. We can see the residue of that awareness in the ritualised coping strategy of his body language. What does Lucas do when he is in extreme emotional distress? He puts a hand over his mouth. In effect, he denies himself the opportunity to talk. Talking is associated, in Lucas’ survival mechanism, with failure and with compromise. He cannot now, in this room with Harry and Ros, afford to have them think the same thing, or to think he was ever in a situation in which he might be assumed to have talked. The omission of any statement regarding his accommodation in the general prison population is part of the operative truth for Lucas at this point.



Edited for clarity.