Smerť špionam. Udarnaja volna

May, 1943. Major General Polunochenko, Head of the Chief Counterintelligence Directorate (SMERSH), assigns Nikolai Kovalchuk, a young Lieutenant from State Security, to do a background check on Veniamin Shabalin, a caretaker at a school who has caught the interest of German Intelligence. Kovalchuk discovers that Shabalin is a nuclear physicist and former researcher for a Ukrainian Applied Physics Institute. The caretaker was arrested in connection with the saboteur physicists case during the anti-sabotage campaign in the USSR. However, he along with Georg Houtermans, a German physicist arrested for espionage and one of the prisoners condemned under the Kharkov case, managed to escape on their way to the camp. Soon Intelligence receives information that in view of the threat of the Soviet offensive, the Germans plan to un-install the uranium reactor set up at the Kharkov Applied Physics Institute and take it to Germany. Kovalchuk suggests a risky plan to Polunochenko – to use Shabalin to penetrate into the institute in German-occupied territory. Once the Germans are helped in transferring the physicist over the front line, SMERSH will receive access to the reactor. A SMERSH officer will take Shabalin’s place. However, the planning of the operation takes too long because hostility and distrust in Shabalin who was denounced as an “enemy of the people” before. At the same time, Georg Houtermans, who agreed to cooperate with the Nazis, arrives in Kharkov to help un-install the uranium reactor. A nuclear reactor controlled by either side is capable of re-writing history. The operation must go ahead immediately. (Star Media)