It is summer 2001 in St. Petersburg, Russia. A young woman named Katya arrives at a babushka’s (“old woman’s”) house. At first, the babushka is wary of Katya—but realizes who she is upon hearing her American accent. Katya says she received a tape from her grandfather that led her to this address. The babushka invites her inside.

It is summer 1998 in Michigan. An old man named Mikhail Semyonov records a tape for his granddaughter, Kate (who is first introduced as “Katya”). The man claims that his real name is Leonid Sednyov, or Leonka. He confesses that he worked as a kitchen boy in the Ipatiev House where the Russian royal family—the Romanovs—was imprisoned by the Marxist Bolsheviks in 1918.

On July 1, 1918, Leonka witnessed the assassination of the Romanovs. He is the only living witness and wants to lay bare everything he knows—including the whereabouts of the two Romanov children whose bodies were never found. Leonka fled Russia after the Romanovs were killed and arrived in America in 1920. He is known in the States as a rich businessman, but he reveals that this is yet another lie and that he made his money elsewhere.

Leonka intends to leave behind a series of tapes and secret documents for Kate, his only heir, before he dies.