A simple and quiet young man, Ruben faces the ups and downs of his life. But now, in the family, the “lame duck” is his brother. He allowed himself to be drawn by a gang of thugs into a high-risk enterprise. After being badly beaten in a beating, he finds himself between life and death. Fatally invested with a brotherly duty, Ruben goes to find the thugs to try to remove them from his "brother" and put an end to this story. But what was supposed to be an end turns out to be a nightmarish departure.

June 1946: Stalin invites Russian emigres to return to the motherland. It's a trap: when a ship-load from France arrives in Odessa, only a physician and his family are spared execution or prison. He and his French wife (her passport ripped up) are sent to Kiev. She wants to return to France immediately; he knows that they are captives and must watch every step.