As the weather warms, Rex takes to gazing at the hills around Camp Five and chewing his lower lip as though contemplating some vision in the distance that Zeno cannot see. And one afternoon Rex waves him closer and, though there is not a soul for fifty feet in any direction, whispers, “What have you noticed, on Fridays, about the petrol drums?”

“They drive the empty ones to Pyongyang.”

“And who loads them?”

“Bristol and Fortier.”

Rex looks at him a moment longer, as though waiting to see how much can be transmitted between them without language.

“Have you ever noticed the two drums behind the kitchen sheds?”

After roll call Zeno examines them as he walks past, dread percolating through his gut. These drums, at one point used to store cooking oil, look identical to the gasoline drums, except that their lids can be removed. Each appears large enough for a man to crawl inside. But even if he and Rex managed to fold their bodies into them, as Rex seems to be suggesting, even if they convinced Bristol and Fortier to seal them inside, hoist them onto the fuel truck, and tuck them among the empty fuel barrels, they’d need to stay inside for who-knows-how-long while the truck drove the notoriously dangerous road to Pyongyang, without headlights, dodging overhead patrols of American bombers. Then—somehow—the two of them, night blind from vitamin deficiency, would need to climb out of the drums undetected and cross miles of mountains and villages in their disgusting clothes and ruined boots with their unshaven faces and nothing to eat.

Later, after dark, a new anxiety comes sliding into place: What if by some miracle they actually succeeded? What if they weren’t killed by guards or villagers or a friendly B-26? If they made it all the way to the American lines? Then Rex would go back to London, to his students and friends, perhaps to another man, someone who has been waiting for him all these months, someone Rex has been too kind to mention, someone infinitely more sophisticated than Zeno, and more deserving of Rex’s affection. Νόστος, nostos: the journey home, the safe return; the song sung around the feast table for the shipwrecked steersman who finally found his way back.

And where would Zeno go? Lakeport. Back to Mrs. Boydstun.