1905. The Russo-Japanese War is in full swing. Between St. Petersburg and Moscow, the Tezoimenity Bridge is blown up. Erast Petrovich Fandorin, attached to the railway gendarmerie-police administration—which deals with creating security systems on the railways—immediately assumes a terrorist act.
But who could be responsible for this explosion? And what would happen if such a sabotage were carried out on the Trans-Siberian Railway? Fandorin and his people are in complete combat readiness; they even created a clever plan to prevent it. But the invisible enemy is very smart and extremely cautious, and the investigation gets even more tangled when information appears that Erast Petrovich’s service in Japan in 1878 as a vice-consul is somehow connected to this tragic incident…