The ambulance doctor František moves away from his wife Bohuna to his new love Helena. She has been married for several years to the successful writer Karl. However, thanks to her husband's philandering, she was by no means happy in it. It seems that František and Helena are finally waiting for peaceful days and now, on the threshold of fifty, they will finally be able to experience their satisfied love. However, their enthusiasm is not shared by their past partners.

In 1951, the well-known Czech actress Jiřina Štěpničková receives a letter from Austria from director František Čáp, who has recently emigrated. He invites her to the West and promises her roles in theater and film. She decides to seize the opportunity and flee. Together with a small group of people and her young son Jirka, she entrusts herself to a smuggler and embarks on a risky journey across the border. But something goes wrong. They are caught. Everything had been planned in advance. The smuggler himself is a member of the StB. But that's only the beginning.

Who is this confident man who, with unusual elegance and surprising professionalism, began working at the reception desks of the highest government and party leaders one day? Where did he come from, what are his tasks, and who entrusted him with them? These questions will be pondered in the film by members of the secret services, important and insignificant minions of the powerful, who are convinced that they know every link in the ingeniously opaque chain of relationships and competences of a centrally controlled state. Before the surprising revelation of the mysterious master of ceremonies living a double life, he manages to pull off one last stunt: a monstrous hoax whose consequences can only be tragic.