Nicholas Fandorin, head of a consulting firm exposed to a horrible blackmail struggles against murderers appointed by unscrupulous billionaires and must abandon programming a video game that previously occupied most of his time. Strangely, the game inspired by the biography of Danila Fondorine, former Secretary of Catherine II and distant ancestor of Nicholas seems to have acquired a life of its own. From adventures twists, the virtual world is like a shadow in the history of Nicholas, who is embroiled in a chase at the heart of modern Russia, undermined by dirty money and new rich mafia and Czarist Russia, that of Catherine the Great, conspiracies and intrigues of court.