In the 1970s, in a country he knows only from textbooks, a former “major” and now a district police investigator, Albert Chapyra, grows to understand more and more clearly that this life isn’t for him. He can’t fit into Soviet society with its alien system of values, and he dreams of returning to the familiar capitalist world. But the road to the West is blocked by an iron curtain. Still, the hero doesn’t give up and begins to carry out his escape plan. And the service he doesn’t like will help him with it.