It is 1989 in a small, fictitious Eastern European country set to explode as its 40-year-old revolution teeters on the edge of collapse. At the same time, a murderer is on a rampage. Now head of the People's Militia and nearing retirement, Emile Brod reopens a case that started his career in the 1940s even as he finds his name on a list of elderly people to be eliminated.