The hero of the novel, journalist Evgeny Shatov, who has just finished an article about major fraud at a yeast factory, suddenly receives a telephone warning about an impending contract murder, where the victim is himself, and the customer is the director of the factory. The caller offers protection from hired killers, putting forward one condition in return - to conduct a journalistic investigation of a whole series of mysterious murders, the unifying characteristic detail of which was the paper silhouette of a dragon. The text of the book is presented in the author's edition.