Dr. Christopher 'Fluke' Kelso, a British professor of Soviet history, attends a conference in Moscow where his lecture is interrupted by protestors from 'Aurora', a faction of Communist hardliners. He is approached by elderly Papu Rapava, who explains that as a young soldier in 1953, he escorted Lavrentiy Beria to Joseph Stalin's deathbed at his Kuntsevo Dacha. Rapava witnessed Beria steal a key from the dying Stalin, using it to retrieve a notebook from Stalin's private safe. Burying the notebook inside a toolbox in Beria's yard, Rapava was sworn to secrecy.
Kelso is determined to find the notebook, and a librarian directs him to Beria's old address. He questions powerful politician Vladimir Mamantov, Aurora's leader and a former KGB agent; this brings Kelso to the attention of FSB Major Suvorin, who has him followed. Sneaking into Beria's derelict mansion, Kelso discovers that the toolbox has already been dug up. Aware he is being tailed, Kelso slips away from Suvorin's plainclothes officer at the Hotel Ukraina, and finds Rapava's estranged daughter Zinaida at the club where she works. She reluctantly drives him to her father's apartment, where he finds Rapava murdered in the bathtub.
While calling the police, Kelso is mugged and then detained at the police station, but Suvorin has him released. Already investigating Mamantov for corruption, Suvorin suggests that Kelso's interest in the notebook led Mamantov to have Rapava killed. As Kelso prepares to be deported, American TV reporter A.J. O'Brian takes an interest in his search for the notebook. Zinaida finds Kelso, having received a note from her father. Informing Zinaida of her father's death, Kelso takes her to identify the body and explains that Mamantov may be responsible.
