At the funeral of his schoolmate, the nearly-fifty-year old architect Jirí Mánek (Václav Voska) meets his former close acquaintance - physician Jarmila (Blanka Bohdanová). They both are still single. Jarmila has recently returned to Prague after years of work on the frontier. Jirí leaves for a business trip. As a conservationist, he is to grant permission for an adaptation of a Baroque château to office spaces. On the road, a pretty young hitchhiker named Eva (Ida Rapaicová) stops him. Eva is Slovak and her spontaneous behavior enchants Jirí. He thus does not mind making a short detour and takes Eva all the way to the luxurious cottage of her parents. A romance develops between the two people, so different in age and temperament.

After the death of his father, Robby Duray's faith is put to the test when he is seduced into the corrupt world of organized crime, extortion and violence; masked in the form of an underground cult threatening to take over the world.

The happenings in a shoe factory serve as a not very thinly veiled examination of the pros and cons of both socialism and democracy.