Sergei Avdeev, a former intelligence officer, feels out of place in an established peaceful life. An unexpected offer from an oligarch close to power to find a missing child promises him a dangerous adventure with an unpredictable ending. All the details of the story raise many questions: the boy disappeared of his own free will, but then sent an alarm asking for help. No ransom demands, typical of such cases, were made. The place where the teenager made himself known is in the south of Russia, far from large cities, roads and airports. Avdeev suspects that he is being used in the dark, but it is not his habit to refuse difficult cases. He always emerged victorious in games with death...