Klára Born has mixed feelings as she follows her husband, a diplomat, to his new assignment in Prague. She herself spent a happy childhood in the city, but during the Second World War her whole family was sent to the concentration camp by Eindhoven in Holland, and she was the only one who returned alive. Klára doesn't feel comfortable in the villa from which Born's predecessor Morton vanished in unexplained circumstances. At a large reception the woman meets a number of diplomats, among them the mysterious Gill.