The authorities of one of the Yakut camps of the Stalinist Gulag send a group of prisoners to survey the Ilim, a tributary of a large gold-bearing river. The messengers return with the message that there is no gold on Ilim. But soon the members of the dispatched brigade, one after another, mysteriously die, taking with them some kind of secret. Two remain alive: the seasoned authority Zakhar and a young convict named Malek. The secret of Ilim is revealed only in our days, when fate brings these two together again...