In the territorial waters of the USSR, the team of a border ship recorded a deviation from the agreed course of a foreign vessel. During the inspection of the incident, it turns out that the offending vessel threw an object overboard. The border guards, with the help of a journalist assigned to them, establish that this is a radio beacon belonging to one of the Western intelligence services. The commander of the border ship Chaika, realistically assessing the threat that such a transmitting device poses to the country's defense, decides to prevent its removal, for which he simulates a breakdown of the ship...

Boris Zhadanovsky, a hereditary nobleman and officer who was predicted to have a brilliant military career, sides with the rebellious people. In 1905, Zhadanovsky is sentenced to death for his revolutionary activities. However, a powerful strike movement organized in response to the court's decision forces the tsarist government to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. After the revolution, Zhadanovsky joins the Red Army and dies fighting the White Army.

Ukraine, 1919. Bolshevik counter-intelligence agents work to stop an uprising by White Russian nationalist-monarchist counterrevolutionaries. A young countess finds herself caught between her family and class allegiance and burgeoning Communist sympathies inflamed by a chance meeting with a handsome young Ukrainian chekist.