When wealthy octogenarian Geza Marton hires art expert Helena Marsh to buy back his family's Titian painting, Helena flies to Budapest to close what she expects will be a reasonably simple sale. But Helena discovers that there are multiple bidders for the painting, including some dangerous Slavs. Soon there are also dead bodies, and a complicated history that leads her to men Marton knew in Vorkuta, one of Stalin's notorious gulags.