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Bjorn looked again over at the table where they were selling drugs. From where he was sitting it all looked quite innocent, and to risk his life in order to stop it seemed right out absurd. However, it would not surprise him if an order to arrest David and Jan, and the two peddlers too, would come from Oslo one day, and was he then really going to risk his life in order to act on such an order? He doubted it. And thinking about it some more, Bjorn thought it an impossible idea. If Oslo ever was to issue an arrest order on those guys, they would have to send a proper SWAT team to do the job. Bjorn and his colleagues were border guards, neither motivated nor trained to deal with dope dealing gangsters.

Bjorn decided to go over to the men's room, both due to a sudden urge to go there, and out of curiosity for the drug dealing. But even as he passed the drug dealers' table, he got no sense that anything very sinister was going on. And on returning to his colleagues' table, he completely forgot about the drug dealers, suddenly being preoccupied by the whereabouts of Frank instead. He hadn't seen Frank in a while, and it struck him as odd that his boss should have completely disappeared, just like that.

"Where is Frank?" Bjorn asked as he sat down with his colleagues again.
"I don't know," Ante answered. "I last saw him in the room with the roulette table. Why don't you go and check, if you're curious?"

Bjorn did not feel like getting up right away, so he remained seated, listening in on his colleagues making plans for next Friday instead, which was what the conversation had moved onto while Bjorn had been away. Both Espen and Thomas were insisting on including bowling as a part of their program, recounting a favourable review by Ola and Per who had started their evening at the newly opened alley.

"We can go bowling before dinner, just like Ola and Per did," Espen suggested. "But where should we go for dinner?"
"I don't know," Ante commented thoughtfully. "There's only Nora's place and Peppe's Pizza. I don't think there's any other place to go... Unless they serve food at the bowling alley. Maybe we could eat there?"
"We could go to Nora's place again," Thomas suggested. "I wouldn't mind a repeat of what we had today."

And from here the discussion went on without much direction or purpose. And Bjorn quickly became restless, and even tired where he was sitting. He felt like going back to the barracks, and he realized once again that he was a good deal older than his colleagues. They were not likely to return to the checkpoint in a long while yet, and yet Bjorn was already starting to long for bed.

Still feeling a little dizzy and nauseous, Bjorn did not feel like drinking more, and with the conversation around the table not interesting him much either, Bjorn excused himself once again, this time to go and look for Frank. And thinking he might as well get some fresh air while he was up, he found his jacket in the pile under Thomas' balloon, and put it on before leaving his colleagues.

However, Frank was nowhere to be found. He was neither in the roulette room nor outside with the smokers. And looking over at the market, still open and busy over in the village square, Bjorn could not see any sign of Frank there either. But the market looked so attractive with its multitude of paraffin lamps and busy stalls that he crossed the road and entered it anyway.