On this page Jen and Eric discuss Straka’s identity. Eric entertains the possibility that Straka was Ekstrom and Summersby together, while Jen thinks that is unlikely because Summersby confessed it was him and not both of them. Eric believes that the confession may be partially true, but Jen writes:

I just don’t know why he’d partially lie. He knew he was going to die + Ekstrom was long-dead, so why bother?

In a later round of note Jen comes back to this and refutes the possibility of either candidate:

And if you’re doubling Summ. on the style issue anyway then we should rule out both of them. Which means Moody’s going to embarrass himself w/ his book.

At this point Jen and Eric have dug in deeper into the Straka mystery and are apparently ahead of Moody and Ilsa, which were at one point their biggest “rivals” and to Eric’s contempt, almost always ahead and closely controlling who had access to information about Straka.

Also on this page, Eric underlines the sentence: “Pfeifer had one awkward moment when his wounded ear began again to bleed freely” and notes in pencil:

physical alignment = moral alignment

This is perhaps related to Pfeifer’s actions later on in the novel. When Jen says she “hadn’t thought about that”, Eric alludes to Alfred Hitchcock, which adds to whole theme of reality vs fiction.

Also in pencil, Eric references Straka’s book The Cordillera. For more information on this refer to The Cordillera.