Maj. Józef Mayer Marek Kondrat is a retired Polish intelligence officer facing a grim prognosis in a Warsaw doctor's office, a quiet start that soon broadens into a web of international danger. The film shifts quickly to Baghdad, where Iraqi security forces raid a CIA safehouse run by Jeff Magnus Kristof Konrad. Walton [Michał Gadomski] and his two fellow agents manage a narrow escape, slipping into the shadows as they plan to leave Iraq before the looming conflict, while a Polish-American Mossad contact named Karen Pierce Anna Korcz urges Walton to pull out immediately. Pierce also harbors a complicated personal secret: she is entangled with Mayer’s son, Paweł Mayer Radosław Pazura, a Polish engineer working in Iraq, and their affair becomes a bitter thread that runs through the mission’s stakes.
Back in Warsaw, Mayer is summoned to the Polish Office for State Protection (UOP). The head of the agency reveals that his own son has vanished after a meeting with Pierce, pushing Mayer into a perilous chase that crosses continents. An embassy attaché offers a glimmer of hope regarding Pierce’s whereabouts, signaling that intelligence networks across borders remain deeply interconnected. In Baghdad, two Polish UOP operatives, Edward Broński Bogusław Linda and Stanisław Kosiński Olaf Lubaszenko, press for information about Pierce and Mayer’s missing son, while Mayer himself pushes through danger toward a possible rescue.
As the strands tighten, Pierce is revealed to be a Mossad asset. Magnus and his team assemble for a high-stakes helicopter extraction, only to be battered when their aircraft is shot down; they endure the setback and vanish again into the Iraqi landscape. In Poland, the CIA chief and Mossad leadership convene with Mayer’s fate in mind, coaxing the UOP to coordinate the evacuation of American agents from Iraq. Hayes Jerzy Skolimowski, a senior CIA official, emphasizes the potential payoff: if the extraction succeeds, Poland’s debt service with the United States could be eased, a pragmatic thread driving the operation even as it ghosts through moral peril. Mayer, meanwhile, insists on infiltrating Iraq under cover as a construction engineer to recover his son, a plan that intensifies the peril for everyone involved.
Pierce makes a crucial move, slipping back into Iraq and reuniting with Shopsowitz Gustaw Holoubek, a high-ranking Mossad contact who reveals a precious asset: Magnus’s microfilm containing Saddam Hussein’s daily schedules. Pierce agrees to seize the microfilm, setting in motion a chain of events that compels Mayer’s group to act quickly. In Baghdad, Mayer arrives with an Iraqi driver named Faisal Tuğrul Çetiner, fluent in Polish, and he and Faisal work to locate Mayer’s son at a nearby police station. Pierce’s reconnaissance and the newly acquired microfilm become critical pivots, enabling the Polish agents to shepherd the CIA operatives toward safety with renewed urgency.
As the plan to extract the CIA agents coalesces, Mayer remains a deeply personal focal point: the covert operation is staged to persuade Iraqi authorities that Mayer is the one driving the rescue effort, when in truth his primary aim is to recover his own son. Kosiński and the CIA operatives board a bus bound for the border, aided by Polish passports and new cover identities, while Mayer infiltrates a police station to reach his wounded son. The convoy crosses into Turkey with the help of the Polish team and Faisal, moving toward sanctuary even as the danger intensifies. At a border checkpoint into Turkey, tragedy strikes when an Iraqi colonel and his troops shoot Pierce, cutting a fragile thread of hope just as they cross into safety.
Back home in Poland, Mayer, Broński, Kosiński, and the UOP chief are publicized as heroes, awarded medals at the American Embassy for their roles in the perilous escape. The film closes on a quiet, human note: Mayer is reunited with his estranged son, the personal victory tempered by the toll of a mission that intertwined fatherly resolve with international espionage. The story, told with a restrained, steadfast tone, underscores how loyalty, courage, and family can collide in the shadowy world of Cold War–era intelligence, leaving viewers with a sense that some battles are won not by raw force, but by perseverance and resolve that travels across borders.
