A major official, Yuri Maslov, was killed in his own country house. And although at first glance none of his relatives and colleagues had a motive for the murder, investigator Igor Rusakov is sure that the death was carefully planned. And perhaps the traces of this crime stretch back to the distant past - to 1918, when the sister of the last empress, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, was brutally murdered, whose relic - the miraculous cross - is lost in the events of the history of the Maslov family...