Psychological detective story about the fate of an experienced intelligence officer Tulyev, the son of a Russian emigre. The action takes place in the first half of the 1960s. Tulyev arrived in the USSR according to an old legend, harvested by Hitler's intelligence, to firmly settle on the spot, step up old agents and recruit new ones. Thanks to a strange anonymous letter from abroad, the counterintelligence service of the KGB of the USSR goes on the trail of a resident under the pseudonym "Hope".