Erik lives by night. He works in a nightclub and occasionally dresses up as a woman to rob rich clients. One day Erik's father arrives uninvited. It's a surprise visit that brings out memories of complicated childhood.

According to the story of the same name by Vladimir Makanin. Mitya Rodiontsev, a young employee of the research institute, for some time now became one of those who were in the close circle of the secretary of the director Aglaya Andreyevna and felt well protected from the vicissitudes of fate. Having become a “retinue”, Mitya was no longer engaged in science, but was busy for those who needed him, openly respected him and saw him as a future leader. But once Rodiontsev was not invited to the director’s office for a weekly tea party...

At the beginning of the summer of 1905, representatives of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party Krasilnikov and Elkonen turned to Captain Zhanis Trautman, a Latvian political emigrant living on the outskirts of London, with a proposal to lead a steamer with a cargo of weapons to the shores of Russia. Having recruited a team of old and tried comrades, Trautman changes the crew of an English cargo ship bought by the front men. In the course of the squabble that arose on this occasion, a sailor of the old crew, David Blake, was stabbed. The wounded Blake and the veterinarian Gruber, who accompanied the cargo of anthrax drugs, are forced to leave on board. On the high seas, weapons and explosives were loaded on board. The steamer headed for the Oresund Strait, where a messenger was to meet him.