On Wednesday morning, three days before the fair, the narrator emails the Moulinards to say she is sick, then drives to a hardware outlet in Boulière to buy axes, shovels, a chainsaw, wheelbarrows, and ropes. Passing the lake, she watches for the man who might be Bruno but sees no one. She parks at the bus shelter on the D79 and walks to the encampment of Denis and Françoise, the elderly Maoist couple she has nicknamed the old draft horses.

Sitting with them at their fire, she listens as Françoise reports having seen the man in the topless Chrysler Sebring pass three times—a paranoia she herself had seeded. Denis mentions that Nadia (the woman from Brittany) warned them the action would be a trap leading to mass arrests. The narrator concedes Pascal may intend that, but claims a separate faction—Aurélie, Burdmoore, and others—plans to escape via the cleared fishermen's route across the lake. She asks Denis and Françoise to help clear the blocked road, framing it as honoring their elder status, and gives them an envelope with one thousand euros to help them relocate to Grenoble. Françoise accepts.

The three spend the day in hard physical labor clearing the fire lane. The narrator finds the work meditative and satisfying. Back at the house, she drinks a large beer, eats a salami sandwich, and lies down in the baby chamber. Lucien texts that Robert the Comatose has died and that filming will wrap early, possibly within a week; she worries he may sense her detachment but is only concerned he not return before Saturday's fair.

She confirms that subminister Platon will travel with Georges, the Serb, and the novelist Michel Thomas, who is researching an "agronomy novel." Bruno and the Moulinards have exchanged no emails. A Google Alert for Nancy reveals that the government has released 2,500 documents in Nancy and the boy's cases, including evidence of illegal surveillance by an undercover agent aliased "Amy"—an alias the narrator long ago discarded. She fears the FBI might scapegoat her as they did a recent rogue agent convicted of perjury, but reassures herself the five-year statute of limitations has expired, even as paranoia—an occupational hazard of the "Baby Spy"—lingers.