In a village close to Chernobyl, detectives Joseph Melnyk and Galina Novak uncover a man's mutilated body hanging from a building. All clues left at the scene of the crime point to a double homicide that took place on the very night that the nuclear power plant exploded. Doubtful of the abilities of the Ukrainian police, the murdered man's father, a Moscow mafia boss, summons Rybalko, a Russian police officer of dubious morals, to conduct a parallel investigation to find and execute his son's killer. Rybalko goes to Ukraine and recovers the corpse, which no-one has dared to touch because of its radioactive contamination.