It's July 1992, six months after the dissolution of the USSR. Crime is rampant in post-Soviet Russia and opportunists are using the political end of the Soviet Union to buy up state enterprises. Bob Bellamy, a diffident Canadian with a degree in European and Russian history, arrives in a Siberian city to negotiate a contract for the removal of industrial waste and gets caught up in the disorder and violence of the 1990s. But Polar Ventures in Vancouver, the outfit that hired Bellamy, ceases operation after receiving a half-million-dollar deposit from the Russians. Bellamy realizes Polar Ventures may not be as legitimate as he thought. Tasked by his new Russian partners to get the money back, he returns to Vancouver, where with the help of Vera, a former KGB agent, they team up against Canadian business clouts and aggressive thugs who prove to be just as dangerous as those in Russia.