In 1919 a White Army train carrying the bulk of Czar Nicolas' gold reserves arrives empty at Siberia's Ikutsk station. Decades later the grandson of a White Army officer inherits a map to the treasure.

After the passing of his Pondicherry-born mentor, Susanna, Mumbai-based Dr. Arun Kumar Singh narrates his story to his wife, Nalini. With photographs from an old album that he has never shared with anyone, he informs her as to how Susanna caught him stealing; got him to quit his job & enrolled in a Panchgani school, as well as arranged for further education in St. Petersburg. While Susanna herself searched for true love and her marriages with six deceased men - including the abusive Major Edwin Rodrigies; drug-addicted and womanizer guitarist-singer Jamshed Singh Rathore; impotent and abusive Mohammad Wasiullah Khan; bigamist/spy Nicolai Vronski; Inspector Keemat Lal; and Dr. Modhusodon Tarafdar - men who influenced her life, broke her heart - and met with sudden and mysterious deaths.