A supposedly simple break-in turns out to be a murder: the body of the owner Jian Chien lies in the development company Al Drones. Jörg Albrecht, the German managing director, suspects that sensitive data has been stolen from the company, since AI Drones specializes in the development and production of autonomous drone swarms. Thien Wong, the dead man's uncle, a high-ranking diplomat, who clearly rejects the obvious suspicion of Chinese industrial espionage, turns up at the scene of the crime. However, Ellen Lucas is not intimidated and continues to investigate in this direction. Claudia Bittner, the leading software developer at AI Drones, is suspected because the stolen data was on her computer. But she has a watertight alibi through her life partner Leon Kern.
Kern device, howeverthe focus of the investigation because Jian Chien bequeathed his entire fortune to Dissident's Freedom, a human rights organization for Chinese dissidents, for which Kern has recently started working. Kern's daughter from her marriage to a Chinese woman is being politically persecuted and has been held in China for years. What is the connection between Bittner and Kern about? What do the company Al Drones and the human rights organization have to do with each other? And did Jörg Albrecht really only want to produce drones for civilian purposes? Suddenly Thien Wong disappears. Ellen Lucas and her team scrutinize the distribution structure of Al Drones down to the last detail and penetrate deeper and deeper into the connection between the human rights organization and the politically persecuted. This is how they succeed in deciphering the Chinese riddle.