Determined to find out the truth about a murder she witnessed in the 1990s, an American journalist returns to Russia and rekindles a romance - unwittingly placing her friends in danger when she underestimates the dark side of the Putin regime.

SYNOPSIS:

In the mid-1990s a successful businessman in St. Petersburg, Russia, Shamil Karaev, is gunned down by a hitman at a reception. In the present day journalist Emily Robinson wakes up from a dream about the murder. She is at the airport in Frankfurt from Alaska on her way to St. Petersburg, where she will be staying with her old friend Larisa Belskaya. She hasn’t told Larisa that she also wants to follow up a new lead about the murder. Emily and Larisa were room-mates 17 years previously, when Emily was a reporter on an English-language newspaper, The St. Petersburg Herald. Emily constantly writes in her diary during her trip. Emily decides to get back in touch with her ex-boyfriend Anton Radulov, who used to be a well-known newspaper reporter but now writes for a soap opera. Anton is now divorced and has a 16-year-old daughter. Emily is married and has a four-year-old son. Emily’s husband Nate asks her in a video call to look for a Soviet camera for him. Emily also meets dissident Misha Arbuzov, who gives her a flash drive with photographs of oil company boss Alexander Peshkov paying the hitman who killed Karaev. Emily meets up with Anton: they go for a walk in a park, and then back to his apartment, where she meets his teenage daughter, Tanya. Anton warns Emily not to get involved in the Karaev case. Anton puts his arm around her as they walk to the bus stop. He tells her he has to go to work, but instead meets up with his girlfriend. Later Emily and Anton get together again and look for a Soviet camera, but Emily doesn’t say it’s for her husband. After buying the camera they go to Anton’s apartment and lie on the couch together, but Anton says he doesn’t want to cheat on his girlfriend. Emily wants to stay the night anyway, but suddenly has to leave when Anton’s girlfriend calls and says she’s coming over. Emily and Anton meet up a few more times, while Larisa gets increasingly frustrated that Emily is never around. Anton has an opportunity to read Emily’s diary, but doesn’t. On the last weekend of her stay in St. Petersburg Emily visits St. Isaac’s Cathedral and a museum with Anton, and they go back to his apartment. Meanwhile, Larisa has been arrested and interrogated by the FSB and told she has to persuade Emily to give the photographs back and drop the story about the Karaev murder. Tanya is in the apartment. She tells Emily that she gets paid to post pro-Kremlin comments on social media. Emily and Anton go for a late-night walk. When she gets back to the apartment Yuri takes Emily straight over to FSB headquarters. She sees Larisa in her cell and agrees not to write anything about Alexander Peshkov in return for Larisa’s freedom. Emily will never be allowed to return to Russia. Misha Arbuzov has been sent to prison in Siberia. In the car on the way back Larisa makes Emily promise not to tell Max what happened. On her last night in Russia Emily has a meal with Larisa and family and guests, but she again abruptly leaves to meet Anton in the evening. When Emily gets back to Alaska she finds her diary from the time when she was on the St. Petersburg Herald. Reading it she discovers that her relationship with Anton was much more difficult than she remembered. The action switches to the mid-1990s. Anton was married and kept promising to do things with Emily, such as going on a trip to Bulgaria, but then reneged. She often sat around in the apartment she shared with Larisa hoping that Anton would call. Emily attends the reception where Shamil Karaev is murdered. The hitman asks Emily if she knows who Shamil Karaev is. She points him out and the hitman kills him. Racked with guilt over this, Emily investigates. Misha Arbuzov – a firebrand politician, recently released from prison himself - tells her that Alexander Peshkov hired the hitman to kill Karaev, an ex-friend and business partner who became a rival. She confronts Peshkov, who denies it and turns on the charm, but then gets angry and tries to rape her. Emily and Anton try to plan a trip to Sweden together on a long-haul truck, on the pretext of writing an article, but Anton doesn’t get his visa in time. Meanwhile, Anton reads a jokey comment that Emily had made in her diary about wanting to kill his wife. He doesn’t take it as a joke, and gets very upset, without telling Emily why, while Emily is furious about the trip to Sweden, and at Anton providing no emotional support to her. She tells Anton she never wants to see him again. At home in Alaska in the present day Emily has told Anton that she’s not sure she wants to talk to him any more, having read her old diary, but he sends her an email saying he’s missing her. With her husband engrossed in his smartphone, Emily decides to burn the old diary so that her past won’t influence her present. She replies to Anton that she’s missing him. He’s in his apartment with his girlfriend asleep in bed.