One evening in 2015, the journalist Pavel Vladimirovich and his wife Tatyana are at home when the news breaks that there has been a terrorist attack. Over a hundred people have been taken hostage in the Church of the Epiphany in the village of Nikolskoye near Moscow. As they watch, on the TV screen appears the face of one of the terrorists: Vadim Petrovich Seryegin, an old friend of Pavel's. The friendship between the two men evolved through periods...