At the height of the Cold War a Russian girl plots to steal the mummified body of Lenin and use it as a hostage to free her dissident brother and others from a Siberian gulag. She recruits five people, each with a motive for settling scores with Lenin; she lures an English diplomat, who loves her, into the conspiracy. But someone is a traitor; two plotters die and four others land in the notorious Lubyanka prison before one of the group hatches a plan to outwit the KGB.