A high-stakes story by E. Khrutskiy about the struggle of Soviet counterintelligence agents against CIA operatives. The search for the killer leads to unexpected results—the roots of the crime lie in the military past. The action takes place across two time periods: the late 1980s and the Great Patriotic War. A bullet sent from the past kills a writer collecting material for a book about the destruction in 1943 of one of the groups of underground fighters. Criminal investigation workers who begin searching for the culprit transfer the case to the KGB.