An unfinished chess game on a painting by a Flemish artist and a mysterious inscription found on it beneath a layer of paint become the key to investigating brutal murders that are happening in our day. Each of the novel’s heroes turns into a chess piece that takes part in the devilish game unfolding around them. And the silent drama reflected in the painting receives a strange continuation after several centuries. In the novel, painting and mathematics, logic and history are put at the service of a precise, perfectly thought-out plot drawn from the world of collectors and antiquarians. The action leads the heroes into the past and makes them discover that time has no power over human passions. And unlike chess, in reality “nothing is only black or only white”: good easily turns into evil, and the victim becomes the executioner.