PM Aldo Moro leads the conservative party into a radical alliance with the Communist Party. This `Historic Compromise' causes discontent and, on the day of the swearing-in ceremony, Moro is kidnapped by the Red Brigade.

The BR allows Moro to write letters to several leaders and Pope Paul VI. However, Moro's request to open a secret negotiation with the BR, delivered privately to Cossiga, fails due to the publishing of the request.

Monsignor Curioni approaches one of the BR's lawyers to act as a middleman: he would like to initiate a secret negotiation with the kidnappers on behalf of the Pope Paul VI.

Despite the request of the `Transversal Democratic Front' to free Moro, in the final confrontations between BR members, Moretti's hardline prevails.

After witnessing the massacre of her husband's private detail, Eleonora Moro accuses Zaccagnini, Secretary of DC, of endorsing the newspapers that discredited her husband in order not to start the negotiations he asked for.

Moro is alive, and his comrades rush to see him at the hospital, but he does not utter a word. At the same time, Moretti calls the Moro family to tell them where to find his body.