Police Colonel Kostenko is investigating a brutal murder case and is on the trail of a dangerous criminal - a former soldier who defected to the enemy and then assumed someone else's identity.

Colonel Kostenko and his new assistant, young Lieutenant Tadava, are sent to Magadan to investigate an extraordinary murder. The criminal's handwriting leads them to a similar incident at the end of the war. To identify a dangerous repeat offender, investigators have no choice but to look for connections between events and traces of his crimes - in the past and present.