Our daysMajor of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and part-time friend of senior investigator Volin, Yuri Varlamov, his father disappears. To find him, friends will have to look into the past, in particular, get acquainted with the fate of Varlamov Sr.’s teacher Andrei Ivanovich Mazur. May 1910 Nestor Vasilyevich Zagorsky’s patron, Privy Councilor S. prepares the latest edition of the Russian-Japanese treaty. This agreement contains a secret section that cannot be published under any circumstances. Otherwise, it could become a pretext for the start of a major European war. The Privy Councilor, having caught a cold, takes the secret part of the agreement from the ministry to his home to work on it at home, because there is very little time left before signing. However, suddenly the folder with the secret section, certified by the seals of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, disappears, along with it the thirty-year-old son of the Privy Councilor, Platon Nikolaevich, disappears. The matter is extremely delicate and S. turns to Zagorsky for help.