Stettin, 1945/6 - a town at the end of one world and the beginning of another - a near-lawless wen of German residents and refugees, desperately clinging to a history, a sense of belonging; of Polish settlers, gangsters and sharp-dealers, all looking to seize a life here in New Poland, the 'wild west'; of Red Army personnel, busily supervising the stripping out of industrial machinery, natural resources and personal booty from what used to be eastern Germany. In this broil of hope, greed and despair, Otto Fischer - a broken-bodied Luftwaffe veteran - has found oblivion and unlikely love. But the storm of change sweeping across Stettin leaves no refuge untouched. A solitary, casual murder crushes his thin hopes of a personal future, throwing him into the path of men for whom any German life is worthless currency. At what seems to be the whim of a Russian Intelligence officer he is charged with finding the murderer, when every instinct tells him that the last thing the Red Army wants is a resolution.