The year is 1968 and the Cold War has been smoldering for more than 20 years. The scene is the divided Germany. The adversaries are East German communist police and American secret service agents and their contacts in East Germany. A U.S. agent narrowly escapes the East. When a wealthy American look-alike is mistaken for him and killed by an East German agent, the U.S. agent assumes the dead man's identity. The murdered millionaire's wife is willing to go along for reasons of her own.