In the period before World War II, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier is a decorated war hero in Paris who has a love affair with lawyer Anna Skarbek. She works as a lawyer for the League of Nations and is also the mistress of Max Mostove, a Russian exile on the run from Comrade Stalin. And so there are many more mysterious characters Mercier will have to deal with. Like Edvard Uhl, a German engineer who claims to have information about German weapons and equipment. As tensions build in Europe, they become entangled in a web of kidnapping, betrayal and intrigue centered in Warsaw.