Former crook and disreputable spy Harry Palmer has to carefully engineer the defection of a Russian officer responsible for safeguarding vital military secrets - but the mission proves less than straightforward. Cold War thriller and the second film to feature Len Deighton's character, starring Michael Caine, Eva Renzi, Oscar Homolka, Paul Hubschmid and Guy Doleman.

Colonel Stok, a Soviet intelligence officer responsible for security at the Berlin Wall, appears to want to defect but the evidence is contradictory. Stok wants the British to handle his defection and asks for one of their agents, Harry Palmer, to smuggle him out of East Germany.