Winter, 1952: Leningrad's icy streets are haunted by a murderer. The name is whispered everywhere - Koshchei has returned, the people say, Koshchei the Immortal. Koshchei, named after a sinister figure from Slavic folklore, is an invisible killer who cuts out the tongue of his victims and replaces it with a scroll of paper containing a few lines of what seems to be Italian verse. 3000 kilometres away in a labour colony above the Arctic Circle, threatened by the Thieves who rule the camp, former militia lieutenant Revol Rossel is close to death. As helicopter blades whip the snow into hallucinatory flurries, Rossel watches the arrival of a saviour he hates: Major Nikitin, the man who once cut off the former virtuoso violinist's fingers. Along with skilled aviator Tanya 'Vassya' Vasilievna, the two men must hunt Koshchei down.