Kharkov, fateful 1940. The world is already choking with war, funerals have already arrived from the Finnish war, and rumors are sounding more and more convincingly that the sentence of “10 years of forced labor camps without the right of correspondence and transfers” means execution. But the City has no right to fall into “stupid despondency.” “They cut down the forest and the chips fly,” the victims who were released after the Yezhovshchina were exposed justify the country. "This is mistake! Don’t hand over your tickets to the circus, I’ll be back in the evening!” – the newly detained people say goodbye to their relatives. Cinemas are crowded, clubs present touring artists, snatches of poetry and jazz melodies are heard from open windows, newspapers praise grandiose social records and the anniversary of the non-aggression pact with Germany... Only a few realize that all this is a feast during the plague. Among them, Vladimir Morskoy, who has become a hardened newspaperman, unwittingly turns out to be forced to participate in the investigation of a brutal double murder.