While Alexey Khovansky, already familiar to the reader from the novel “In the Thistle,” is fighting together with his Yugoslav friends against the fascist occupiers, his best friend and former colleague Oleg Chegodov, carrying out an assignment from the Center, ends up under the guise of an agent of the Romanian Siguranza in the secret intelligence school of the Abwehr in occupied Vitebsk. According to available data, it is in this school that specialist saboteurs from members of the People's Labor Union are trained to be deployed deep into the rear of the Red Army...