Annoyed, Yet interested

To begin, I am skeptical of my enjoying allegorical novels lacking a defined setting and explicitly identified characters. The vague “Empire” and the unknown location of the frontier country in which the story takes place perturbs me as I cannot seem to dismiss the details as being trivial relative to the message, no doubt, being conveyed.
Nevertheless, I digress in addressing the nature of the characters so far presented. Although he is clearly not the central character of the story—I think I reasonably interpreted the magistrate as being that—I find myself the most fascinated by Colonel Joll. First intrigued by his condescension towards the apparent provincial mannerisms of the Magistrate, my curiosity peaked over the Colonel’s apparent mission in the Magistrate’s jurisdiction. I wonder whether or not he is a truly manipulative agent of the “Third Bureau” who in Machiavellian fashion tortures a Barbarian boy until he confesses an attack is being planned, just as Joll desires. Joll’s reprehensibility I am quite confident in, but his cleverness I am not so sure of. Whether he is a cunning agent of the Empire’s secret police, “the most important division of the Civil Guard,” who recognizes the need for a justification even if its deeply hollow, or a man who blindly serves his Empire and is absolutely sure the boy is lying when he does initially “spill the beans” on the pending attack.
To broach a broader subject than Colonel Joll, I found myself a bit annoyed by what I interpreted as being anachronistic elements in the text. While Coetzee establishes no clear context, as mentioned above, that does not necessarily give him the authorial freedom to warp time, especially when it is strongly insinuated that the novel takes place in some era of imperialism. The notion of a “Third Bureau” is reminiscent of Soviet bureaucracy, something that only existed in the era in which Coetzee wrote the book. Furthermore, the notion of some special branch, specializing in interrogation and torture, seems chronologically foreign to a time period where lances are still of use.
Yet, my concern over these details is probably unwarranted as I initially stated as it does not really distort anything thing Coetzee may wish to convey. I am anxious to see how Coetzee further develops Joll’s character and how the nascent conflict between the Magistrate’s and Joll’s characters play out.