The Case of the God Plutos

These days. A gang of underage raiders steals a Parisian friend of Orest Volin, a captain of the French police—right on the street. However, Irène manages to detain the youngest of them, twelve-year-old Vincent Rétel. He takes her to his mother, who sells old and simply worn-out items of different values at a flea market. Irène discovers that at Madame Rétel’s stall there’s a photo album containing part of the stolen photo archive of Naser ad-Din Shah of Iran—whom Nestor Zagorsky once saved. May 1910. Nestor Vasilevich Zagorsky’s patron, the privy adviser S., is preparing the final revision of the Russo-Japanese treaty. The treaty has a secret section that cannot be published under any circumstances. Otherwise, it could become a reason for the start of a major European war. After catching a cold, the privy adviser takes the secret part of the treaty out of the ministry to work on it at home, because time before signing is running out. But suddenly the folder containing the secret section—sealed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia—disappears, and with it, the privy adviser’s thirty-year-old son, Platon Nikolaevich, disappears as well. The case is extremely delicate, and S. turns to Zagorsky for help.