Unable to sleep despite having taken two sleeping pills, Raymond slipped out of bed so as not to disturb Darlene. Not that he was terribly worried. Darlene was such a sound sleeper that the ceiling could fall in without her so much as moving.

Raymond padded into the kitchen and turned on the light. He wasn’t hungry but he thought that perhaps a little warm milk might help to settle his roiling stomach. Ever since the shock of having been forced to view the terrible sight in the trunk of the Ford, he’d been suffering with heartburn. He’d tried Maalox, Pepcid AC, and finally Pepto-Bismol. Nothing had helped.

Raymond was not handy in the kitchen, mainly because he didn’t know where anything was located. Consequently, it took him some time to heat the milk and find an appropriate glass. When it was ready, he carried it into his study and sat at his desk.

After taking a few sips, he noticed that it was three-fifteen in the morning. Despite the fuzziness in his brain from the sleeping pills, he was able to figure out that at the Zone it was after nine, a good time to call Siegfried Spallek.

The connection was almost instantaneous. At that hour, phone traffic with North America was at a minimum. Aurielo answered promptly and put Raymond through to the director.

“You are up early,” Siegfried commented. “I was going to call you in four or five hours.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Raymond said. “What’s going on over there? What’s the problem with Kevin Marshall?”

“I believe the problem is over,” Siegfried said. Siegfried summarized what had happened and gave credit to Bertram Edwards for alerting him about Kevin so that he could be followed. He said that Kevin and his friends had been given such a scare that they wouldn’t dare go near the island again.

“What do you mean ‘friends’?” Raymond asked. “Kevin has always been such a loner.”

“He was with the reproductive technologist and one of the surgical nurses,” Siegfried said. “Frankly, even that surprised us since he’s always been such a schlemiel, or what do you Americans call such a socially inept person?”

“A nerd,” Raymond said.

“That’s it,” Siegfried said.

“And presumably the stimulus for this attempted visit to the island was the smoke that’s been bothering him?”

“That’s what Bertram Edwards says,” Siegfried said. “And Bertram had a good idea. We’re going to tell Kevin that we’ve had a work crew out there building a bridge over the stream that divides the island in two.”

“But you haven’t,” Raymond said.

“Of course not,” Siegfried said. “The last work crew we had out there was when we built the landing for the extension bridge to the mainland. Of course, Bertram had some people there when he moved those hundred cages out there.”

“I don’t know anything about cages on the island,” Raymond said. “What are you talking about?”

“Bertram has been lobbying lately to give up on the island isolation idea,” Siegfried said. “He thinks that the bonobos should be brought to the animal center and somehow hidden.”