Escapes, he tries to tell Rex, are stories from movies, from some older, more courteous war. Besides, their ordeal is bound to end soon, isn’t it? But seemingly every day, Rex spins up more and more detailed plans, stretching to make his joints more flexible, analyzing guard shift patterns, polishing a tin to make what he calls a “signaling mirror,” speculating about how they might sew bits of food into the linings of their hats, where they might hide during the nightly count, how they might urinate while inside the drum without soaking themselves, whether they should approach Bristol and Fortier now or just hours before they do it. They’ll use code names from Aristophanes’s The Birds; Rex will be Peisetairos, which means Trustyfriend; Zeno will be Euelpides, Goodhope; they’ll shout, Herakles! when the coast is clear. As though it will all be an amusing escapade, a first-class caper.

At night he can feel the activity of Rex’s mind next to him like the glare of a spotlight—he worries the whole camp will see it. And each time Zeno contemplates wedging himself into an oil drum and being loaded onto a truck to be driven to Pyongyang, cords of panic draw tighter around his throat.

Three Fridays pass, white cranes migrating north over the camp in flocks, then yellow buntings, and Rex only whispers plans, and Zeno exhales. So long as it stays a rehearsal, so long as the rehearsal never turns into performance.

But one Thursday in May, the prisoners’ kitchen full of low, silver light, Rex drifts past Zeno on his way to a re-education session and says, “We’re going. Tonight.”

Zeno scoops some soybeans into his bowl and sits. The thought of eating makes him queasy; he worries the others will hear his pulse thudding in his temples; he feels as if he should not move, as if, by speaking those three words, Rex has turned everything to glass.

Outside, seeds blow everywhere. Within the hour, the big Soviet flatbed truck, its hood pocked with bullet holes, its bed full of fuel drums, rumbles into camp.

By evening it’s raining. Zeno gathers a last load of wood and manages to carry it to the kitchen. On his straw mat he curls up in his wet clothes as the light bleeds out of the day.

Men trickle in; rain rattles on the roof. Rex’s mat stays empty. Could he really be out behind the kitchen sheds? Pale, determined, freckled Rex, folding his emaciated body into a rusted oil drum?