It is 1937, and Captain Alexei Korolev finds himself on an airplane bound for Odessa after the suspicious suicide of a loyal young party member who supposedly had an illicit relationship with the party director. His instructions are to determine if her suicide was actually a cover-up for murder, and if so, to find her killer. Korolev finds help from several quarters, but none of them can make up for the one important fact of his case which he cannot...

Captain Alexei Korolev endures threats against his family when a high-level murder is tied to corruption in State Security and the NKVD.