In a tense political thriller, Colonel Kassar, Michel Piccoli, an African dictator backed by the CIA, forges a covert pact with the French secret service to remove Sadiel, Gian Maria Volonté a left-wing exile from his homeland who dreams of returning to lead a democratic opposition. Sadiel’s distant hope becomes the centerpiece of a fragile game of shadows, where power brokers weigh loyalty against liability and the line between truth and manipulation grows increasingly thin.
French intelligence sets its sights on François Darien, Jean-Louis Trintignant, a militant left-wing journalist whose radical past and silenced conscience make him an appealing tool for dirty work. It’s hinted that Darien once supported the FLN during the Algerian War and was arrested for a police killing, only to be turned into a police informant. Lempereur, Michel Bouquet, a lawyer who collaborates with the secret service, identifies Darien as a former associate of Sadiel, tying the two men’s fates together in a web of surveillance and leverage.
Under pressure, government agents coerce Darien into cooperation, though he believes his role is merely to facilitate Sadiel’s travel from Geneva to Paris for a television appearance. He quickly senses the program is a sham, yet Lempereur insists it conceals secret negotiations between Sadiel and Kassar. The tension tightens as the plot thickens, and the audience is pulled into a game where every move could betray a greater truth.
Sadiel ultimately agrees to travel to Paris, but before he can meet Darien and Michael Howard, an American TV correspondent on the assignment, he is abducted by corrupt policemen. Roy Scheider brings Howard into focus as the man who will chronicle the thriller, even as the web of deceit tightens around them. Darien tracks the trail to a mobster’s house and discovers that his former mentor has betrayed him, while realizing that he is in mortal danger and that French intelligence may silence him to protect the operation.
Darien escapes, warning his girlfriend Edith Lemoine, Jean Seberg, but refuses to turn to the police, whom he suspects of corruption. Edith turns to Sadiel’s lawyer, Michel Vigneau, Bruno Cremer, who heads to the authorities but refuses to disclose Darien’s whereabouts. Police Commissioner Rouannat, Michel Beaune, orders a search of the mobster’s house, yet the only striking clue is a strange knife that Kassar had used to threaten Sadiel.
As Darien phones Howard to petition help, he records a conversation that could expose the entire scheme. The call is intercepted by French intelligence, who have likely been tapping Darien’s lines for years. Howard arrives at the appointment, kills Darien, and escapes, revealing himself as a CIA asset. The police rush in, but the death is framed as a suicide, and the incriminating tape is presented as Darien’s confession. Rouannat remains wary, but his superiors suppress any further inquiry.
What unfolds is a stark meditation on power, loyalty, and denial, where political theater is weaponized and truth becomes a casualty. Against a backdrop of Geneva exile, covert negotiations, and a Parisian trap, the film traces how information is weaponized to protect interests, how compassion can collide with cynicism, and how one act of betrayal can ripple through journalists, lawyers, officials, and ordinary lives alike.
