"Post-Yeltsin Russia is a place where law governs neither nature nor man ... a place where a brief, sudden storm can blow an iron bench down a city street ... and where a trio of investigations toying with all the known conventions of science and and awaits persistent and almost always fearless Porfiry Rostnikov, chief inspector in the office of Special Investigations of the Moscow Police. ". "Cosmonaut Tsimion Vladovka's last recorded words aboard the Mir space station were instructions to contact Rostnikov if something went wrong with the mission. Now Vladovka is missing. He may have defected. He may have been kidnapped. He may have committed suicide or simply gone mad and run away. What is certain is that he possesses secrets that are not safe to keep. ". "Movie director Yuri Kriskov has completed production on the greatest epic ever in Russian cinema, a grand work on the life of Tolstoy. Then a demented chess fanatic steals the negatives and demands two million dollars in hard American cash, threatening to destroy the film stock and kill Kriskov. And managing to always stay one gambit ahead of both filmmaker and police. "--BOOK JACKET.