A fifteen-year epic about the formation of Russian business from the gangster-criminal lower classes to the current industrial elite. Moscow raiders take hostage the wife of the owner of an automobile holding, Mikhail Sterkhov, and he signs documents to transfer one of his enterprises into the wrong hands. A cornered entrepreneur turns to those with whom he began his journey into big business—bandits-accident workers—he himself was once a foreman in one of the organized crime groups. Old friends begin an investigation, and it turns out that the traces of current failures lead to the distant past...