Jim Braddock- you know the type- battered, bitter- is sent to retrieve Robert Packard in Paris where he is thought to have disappeared or defected to the Russians. Braddock's search involves him with the woman they both loved, with the former party member, now cooperative, de Vernoy, with an Algerian dentist (murdered), and on to Geneva for his final confrontation with Packard... It would be upsetting to think that anything as conspicuous as this kind of intelligence operation were true to life.