It is 1970 and taxi-driver Tomás Gross is planning to leave for Switzerland to join his great love Kamila, previously a waitress in a Prague bar. With the help of his younger brother, bricklayer Pavel, Tomás has already been stealing statuettes from churches and selling them to the antique-dealer Pánek, who has given him a letter from Kamila inviting him to join her, but on one condition: he must steal a rare stamp called the Vltava Carmine at a philatelic exhibition as a fee for the Swiss tourist Richter who will smuggle him over the border.