At 4:00 am, three armed MGB officers wake Leo and Raisa and give them one hour to pack. During their three weeks of house arrest, Stalin died, causing a political crisis that delayed decisions on their case. Now, they are taken to the train station, where Vasili explains the situation: Leo has been reassigned to the militia as an entry-level officer. Recognizing this as a light punishment, Leo speculates that Major Kuzmin wanted to avoid the embarrassment of prosecuting his protégé. Vasili also goads Raisa about Leo having her followed twice.

On the train, Leo apologizes. Raisa responds coldly, recalling her friend Zoya’s arrest and connecting it to men like Leo. She reveals that she overheard the conversation at his parents’ apartment about denouncing her and made up the pregnancy in response: “Three lives weighed against one? It’s hard to argue with those numbers. But what about three lives against two?” (161). Leo asks if she has ever loved him. She kneels and ties her shoelace without answering.

Varlam Babinich, 17, sits in a crowded dormitory at a state facility for children with developmental, cognitive, or mental disabilities, guarding his collection of yellow objects—including a baby he stole because it was wrapped in a yellow blanket, the result of a childhood obsession with catching the sun.

General Nesterov of the Voualsk militia and six armed members arrive at the filthy, overcrowded facility. Finding Varlam clutching the baby, Nesterov offers a deal: the baby for the blanket. Varlam agrees, and the child is taken to the hospital. As Varlam rearranges his collection, Nesterov picks up a yellow military manual and shakes it. A lock of blonde hair falls out.

On the train, Raisa and Leo brood separately. Raisa is incredulous that Leo is suddenly concerned with her feelings for him. She married Leo only for survival and resents him all the more after weeks of worrying about whether he would denounce her: “She was sick of the powerlessness, the dependency upon his goodwill. Yet now he seemed to be under the impression that she was in his debt. He’d stated the obvious: she wasn’t an international spy, she was a secondary school teacher” (171). Leo, meanwhile, is shaken by Raisa’s obvious contempt.

Approaching Voualsk, Leo reflects that Vasili likely chose the posting for its irony, as Leo once vetted workers for transfer there. General Nesterov meets them at the station and drives them to Basarov’s restaurant, where they are shown to a filthy room with nailed-shut windows. Leo senses that Nesterov suspects him of being an undercover MGB agent. Later, at the telephone exchange, Vasili informs Leo that his parents have been moved to a crowded apartment and his father forced back to work. When Leo objects, Vasili demands that he beg. Leo complies desperately, but Vasili hangs up.

Leo spends the night wandering and then sits and cries on a park bench, realizing that Vasili will torment his parents to break him. Raisa has waited up, understanding that Leo regrets having saved her. When he enters the restaurant drunk and disheveled, he grabs her neck and begins choking her. She smashes a glass against his face and runs upstairs. Almost immediately, Leo is overwhelmed by shame over his actions.

Later, at militia headquarters, Nesterov gives Leo a file containing photographs of a murdered girl—her body naked and savaged, her mouth stuffed with soil. The details shock Leo: They are identical to the description of Fyodor’s son Arkady’s death, which he had dismissed.

Leo grapples with his role in covering up Arkady’s murder. Nesterov explains that the body of the girl, 14-year-old Larisa Petrova, was found four days ago and that her parents agreed to keep the murder secret, ashamed that their daughter had been sleeping with men. Nesterov also tells Leo that they have identified a suspect: Varlam Babinich. When Leo interviews Varlam, Varlam confesses that he wanted Larisa’s blonde hair but grows confused when asked about the soil in her mouth. Outside the cell, Nesterov attributes the crime to Varlam’s disability, which Leo recognizes as a deflection—a way of explaining the murder in a way that does not reflect on the Soviet state. He also recognizes that the investigation is closed.

At the apartment, Leo finds Raisa and her case gone. After bribing Basarov for information, he runs to the station and spots her on the platform as the train approaches. He confesses that he saved her because “[his] family is the only part of [his] life that [he is] not ashamed of” (195). Raisa moves toward the train but halts at his plea. She says that she married him out of fear, but that when he choked her, she ceased to see staying with him as the safer option. She lays down new terms: truth and equality. He promises never to frighten her again.

Raisa returns to the apartment, but Leo lingers at the station to think. Recognizing a nearby hut as the scene of the murder, he begins to look around. Aleksandr, the ticket officer, notices this and reveals that a sex worker named Ilinaya found the body; at the time, she was with (and had been beaten by) a party official whose name Aleksandr is afraid to reveal. Leo examines the crime scene, puzzled by the frozen ground.

Leo reviews the autopsy notes on Larisa; these claim that she was raped and speculate that the soil served as a gag. Given the frozen ground, however, Leo realizes that the murderer must have brought the soil with him, which seems a “cumbersome means to silence someone” (200). He decides to visit Hospital 379, where the body is being stored. There, a doctor named Tyapkin agrees to help on condition of anonymity. In the morgue, Tyapkin reveals that Larisa’s stomach was cut out and is missing—absent from the official report. Moreover, there is no evidence of rape; Larisa’s injuries are confined to the digestive organs. The cuts are confident and targeted, though they lack surgical experience. Leo also notices string tied around her ankle, which shows evidence of rope burn.

Nesterov appears and accuses Leo of being MGB. In an effort to justify himself, he says that Mikoyan, a party official, was released without charge; Leo insists that he has no idea who Mikoyan is, though he guesses it must be the man who beat Ilinaya. Nesterov reiterates that Varlam killed the girl, but Leo states that he did not. Nesterov threatens to kill Leo if he undermines his authority.

Raisa discovers that the nails have been pried from their window and realizes that Leo has snuck out, furious at the risks he is taking. She reflects on a memory from the war: When she was 17, she watched from a tree as the Russian army shelled her own village into oblivion as a precautionary measure, stripping her of home, family, and attachments and honing her survival instinct.

Convinced that they are under surveillance and that Leo’s actions violate their pact of equality, Raisa climbs out the window to follow him.