Yuri Bragin, after a year-long business trip, where he, as part of an investigation team, was investigating a high-profile case, returns to St. Petersburg. When he returns, he learns that the current head of the First Investigation Department of the First Directorate of the State Investigation Department, Vadim Maltsev, is retiring. With a high degree of probability, it is Bragin who will be offered his place. But Yuri is not a careerist and the position of the boss is not the goal of his life. A talented investigator likes to do "live work" more. And now he is again sent on a business trip. This time in one of the cities of the Leningrad region, where two girls were killed with a difference of a week. Here, in a small town, everyone knows each other, and this complicates the search for the criminal.
After the unsuccessful attempt on the life of Baron Wrangel and the death of an intelligence agent, a new cunning plan is being developed to implement the "Crimean Mission". The best agent, Elena Golubovskaya, is appointed to this case. In Crimea, Golubovskaya appears already as El Ferrari - a gifted Italian poet. Her task is to eliminate Wrangel in order to demoralize the white movement, as well as control the operation to steal gold. Her plans are thwarted by Maximilian Ermler, a local newspaper journalist who turns out to be a British intelligence agent.
A talented doctor, a rich slacker, a good mother and other people whose life looks perfect only from the outside are in an eternal search for an answer to the question of what happiness is.