Russia at the turn of the centuries. Revolutionaries of all kinds and criminal elements, Siberian merchants and police officers, governors and gendarmes. And also British agents, Polish smugglers, prostitutes…
In this bubbling cauldron, already threatening to spill into revolution, there is still a place for people of honor—people desperately trying to preserve Russia, to prevent an explosion. Men like the young lieutenant of the gendarmerie, Alexei Bestuzhev…