June 1914. On the eve of World War I, Klim Panteleyevich Ardashev must again leave his quiet family life in Stavropol and—who could have thought it?—go to Persia! A terrible crime has been committed: the second secretary of the Russian embassy has been murdered. There are suspicions that it was done by Islamic fanatics. Ardashev must not only find the real killer, but also figure out where half a million rubles—allocated for the construction of an Orthodox church in Tehran—have gone.