A film about the life of smugglers with a prologue and an epilogue. In a southern town a gang of currency speculators, led by the Chef and his assistant Earl, is wielding. A modest Soviet employee and an exemplary family man Semyen Semyenovich Gorbunkov goes to a foreign cruise, on which Earl also sails, who must pick up diamonds in one of the eastern cities and smuggle them in his plastered hand. But due to a misunderstanding an unsuspecting Semyen Semyenovich falls on the appointed place instead of the rogue and the precious plaster is applied to his arm. This is where it all begins.