Millions of people have never seen a real, living spy. Just as, they’ll never meet a living antiquarian. Yet what the spy and the antiquarian have in common is that both strive for maximum secrecy, carefully pretending that they don’t exist at all… The specific little world of antiques trade is not interested in publicity and fame—quite the opposite.
Imagine a man just over fifty who has served two sentences; has a tattoo on his forearm in the form of a bear sitting on an ice floe. One on the ice floe. A man who is himself, one hundred percent: not “for these” and not “for those.” This man fences with a French dueling rapier, can stand up to a gang of punks, and is very attractive to girls. Meet Vasily Yakovlevich Smolin—an antiquarian. And a classic dilemma from an old adventure novel happens to Smolin: with a mysterious message on a deathbed, a hidden in the wilderness treasure, and other nonsense…
Though very quickly the treasure takes on very definite features of an armored vehicle packed with gold…