the red wire

INES AIVEN is the director of a gallery of art "Far East" located in the Pagode, rue de Courcelles, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. INES is a beautiful woman of Eurasian type.

As she picks up her bag, she drops a key on a delicate red wire. Her eyes are lost. She remembers a special moment of her childhood in Dakar. INES, 8, was given this key by her adoptive parents, Betty and Jacques BOUBAKAR. She learns that her mother, Betty’s sister, died shortly after her birth from a mysterious disease.
Back in the present, INES came out of her dreams by a telephone call from a certain HARRY, an investigator in the arts. She asked him to find the furniture corresponding to the famous key given by Betty. HARRY found his trace in a Marquis of PORTOFINO.
they decided to go to PORTOFINO with the assistant of INES, NINO who will serve as their interpreter to the Marquis. On site, they are welcomed by a MARQUIS...

Unfortunately, he will tell them that the furniture was stolen. The investigation restarts with documents of the MARQUIS and their preliminary investigation: the parallel markets of NANKIN In China.They are followed by mysterious Chinese twins. In NANKIN, they visited numbers of museums and antiquity expositions. They understood that theirs questions are not well received. The danger is around.
As they wonder if they should give up, they are invited, with the support of the MARQUIS, to a reception at the cultural art centre in NANKIN. Despite his efforts, a young architect, Tchong Yong, will serve as their guide. But when it comes to the famous furniture, Tchong Yong disapeared.

The next day, Tchong yong calls INES. He wants to see her again. Tchong Yong is obviously trying to find out what she knows and what exactly she wants to find out.

Back at the hotel, she is called urgently from France. She learns of the death of her future husband, a navigator in her state, an elderly man with whom she had a more or less regular relationship. She realizes that her whole life is based on the quest of her father, without which she is nothing. Finally, they give up.

After almost a year, his friends HARRY, NINO and the Marquis decide to take INES to a New Year’s Eve at the Hôtel des Beaux-Arts. TCHONG YONG and INES meet "by chance" at this evening (in fact, the meeting is organized under the cover of a mysterious sponsor of Tchong Yong). TCHONG YONG tells her that he may have information about the furniture and the key she is looking for. After that evening, their relationship becomes more and more ambiguous. An internal conflict seems to torture TCHONG YONG, between his now uncontrollable attraction towards INES and the fact that he seems to know more than he says. Ines and Harry build a trap for tchonyong.

The trap works and they follow TCHONG YONG to NANKIN to finally surprise him in full discussion with an old man who is the grandfather of INES. He waited, without admitting it, for this meeting to put an end to the lies that are eating him: the original story of the meeting of INES' parents, the truth about his mother’s death, the disappearance of his father...

Will INES stand for the truth? Will the relationship with TCHONG YONG resist it? What is its true destiny?