A strange theft happens in a mansion in Tsar's mud Flow under Saint Petersburg - the unknown takes away only 20 tiles of flemish work, incorporated by one theme, : by playing children. Paterfamilias, solvent businessman, is downright intrigued and asks a police operative from Петровки Maria round Loaf of bead, brilliantly showing oneself in the businesses related to history and art, to take up "privately" this business. At this time in Moscow almost at the same time fires flash: one - in the chic hotel of "Метрополь", other - in an office on Patriarch. Two men in any way unconnected inter se perish afire, is the Dutch tourist and capital antiquarian. And while senior authorized Andrey Iakovlev follows up the conflagrant scent leading away in Ural prison, where already many years the term of пироман and mass killer, Maria departs round Loaf of bead sets forth for Bruges and Antwerp, investigating circumstances of life of enigmatic family living in the XVI century. None of them, however, does not occur to, that a secret of fourage-old remoteness and modern deaths afire can be the links of one chain.