Chapter Five Summary

Ilya Goldman is at the Utiny Gold Fields in Siberia, in December of 1944. Once a rising star in the Soviet Secret Service, Goldman has fallen from favor. He took pity on the people he was ordered to extract goods from in his home country of Romania, and was caught by his supervisors. Now it is his job to go from gulag to gulag and interview the lifeless shells of men who were sent there as political prisoners for thirty year terms. Goldman is finally beginning to question the purpose of his life with the Soviets, and the cruelty of his keepers. The experience in Romania showed him the Soviets are no better than the rulers before them, and that communism is not equal to all, but a system of keeping an elite few wealthy.

On this day, the last prisoner he...