At Spencer Airlines in England, American pilot Richard "Van" Van Ness tries to stop his friend Nick Talbot from taking off in a storm. Nick threatens to tell their boss, Boyd Spencer, that Van suffers from blackouts. The next morning, debris from Nick's aircraft washes ashore, leaving Van with a chilling sense that his fear has become reality.
Van tells Spencer, who responds with cold indifference toward Nick's death. He then presses Spencer's girlfriend, Alexia LaRoche, to exchange pounds for dollars, a move that hints at the financial web behind the men’s volatile lives. The following night, Van visits his girlfriend, Nick's sister, Avril Talbot, who is being blackmailed by a man named Snell to keep her father from discovering Nick's post-war black market business. The tension tightens as Avril’s precarious situation intertwines with Van's own precarious loyalties.
Van forces Snell to confess and learns that a set of tools is to be delivered to Cherbourg for Spencer. He tracks them to a storage room, but another man bursts from the room and escapes on a motorcycle. Customs officer Inspector Maxwell then discovers the tools are made of solid gold, adding a remarkable twist to what began as a personal crisis.
Later, the bellboy is shot while driving Van's car to the front door, and Snell is arrested. Inside Spencer's office, Alexia reveals that a coded notebook with financial information sits hidden in the boss's desk. Van breaks into the darkened office and finds the notebook, but he also hears Spencer collapse and sees the man from the storage building sprinting away toward his motorcycle.
Van gives chase, but a sudden blackout overtakes him and he crashes his car. A mysterious figure rescues him, and when he regains consciousness, he finds himself in a cottage, waking beside Nick—the cottage belonging to Nick's girlfriend, Jeanette. Nick admits he faked his own death because he’s wanted by the French police, and Spencer knows that. He also reveals that Spencer has been producing counterfeit dollars from old Nazi forging plates, tying their fates to a larger criminal conspiracy.
The confrontation with Spencer resumes, and Nick is shot during the clash. Van leaves Nick in the care of [Jeanette] and Avril, returning with Inspector Maxwell to pursue the fleeing boss. Together they race to the airport, where Spencer’s engines fail, causing a fatal crash. Nick, meanwhile, is dying but manages to tell Avril that Van is afraid to marry her because of his blackouts.
In the aftermath, Van tells Avril that he plans to leave town for a while to think things over, but just as his aircraft is ready to take off, Avril intervenes, telling the pilot to leave without him, choosing loyalty and love over leaving town.
