General Ivanikhin, hero of the Great Patriotic War, returned home with rich trophies. The nineteenth-century paintings he brought out of Germany are still hanging in his relatives’ homes. But two of them disappear from a secured apartment that has alarms. Journalist Yulia Smirnova finds out that the paintings were of interest to a German, Walter Künzel, and to an American citizen, Alex Zimmermann. Yet she is also curious about another—“artistic”—mystery. Around the city, buyers of paintings by a little-known painter Morozov somehow spoil their purchases and wash the paint off the canvases for no obvious reason…