In 1948, Aleksandr, a major in the MGB - forerunner of the KGB - is sent to a psychiatric clinic in the Ural mountains to investigate a patient, Second World War veteran Anatoly Yudin - a man long presumed dead... It's 1972, the year of Nixon's visit to Moscow; the Munich Olympics and their hostage crisis - the Cold War is entering detente, and the values that shaped Aleksandr's life become uncertain. Haunted by the past, his Stalinist faith again under threat, he interrogates his memories of the Yudin case, and tries to trace its effects on himself, and on those he loved most.