1919 year. Fate confronts the young idealist Osya with the Turkish swindler Ibrahim Bender. And the honest Osya would never have contacted such a shameless and cunning swindler if they had not been united by an incredibly dangerous adventure - a hunt for a royal relic, a precious rod, which local bandits and white officers would also like to get. In a series of dizzying adventures, Osya is forced to learn from Ibrahim charming flattery, delicate deception, captivating blackmail and - brute force. And all this - being in love with the purest girl in the city. And, it seems, into one more - a fatal foreign beauty. This is how the portrait of the legendary great schemer and favorite of women, Ostap Bender-Zadunaisky, begins to take shape.