An English musician, living in London at the turn of the millennium, is offered the grand piano he used to practice on during his student days in Warsaw thirty years earlier. The piano had originally belonged to an eminent concert pianist who had escaped to the West in the fifties and left it behind. The Englishman has it transported to London and renovated. During the renovation a note is discovered hidden inside, apparently intended for the piano's original owner and having been there since before his defection. The discovery unravels secrets and mysteries from the Communist world, having consequences for all the people whose lives had been connected with the piano.