Thief in law Yuri Mikheev, nicknamed Baron, together with his partner, robs the apartment of Mikhail Monakhov, a banker and deputy assistant close to the gangster structures, filled with antiques. Together with the jewels, they bring out Rembrandt’s painting Aegina. The baron tells his partner that this is a good copy, realizing that in fact it is the original, stolen from the Hermitage. Soon the Baron ends up in prison, where he bequeaths to the journalist Andrei Seregin, who writes on criminal topics, to take the painting from his woman and return it to the Hermitage. Seregin takes on the investigation alone. The bandits, fearing that a story with a fake hanging in the Hermitage may come up, are trying with all their might to prevent this.