It opens in 1962 as a top spy with the KGB, Boris Kusenova (Per-Axel Arosenius), defects from the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen with the help of CIA agent Michael Nordstrom (John Forsythe) and is grilled for information as he resides in a Washington D.C. safe house with his family. Boris tells about photos of missiles kept by visiting Cuban officials. The CIA assigns, as a favor, friendly French spy Andre Devereaux (Frederick Stafford) to put his life on the line and help the Americans get the dope on who is supplying Cuba with the missiles. Andre recruits one of his freelance operatives, the black French man posing as a florist (Roscoe Lee Browne), to go to Harlem’s Hotel Theresa and bribe a corruptible Cuban diplomat (Don Randolph) so he can take photographs of the documents about the Cuban missiles. The photos are obtained but the diplomat is executed. Andre next goes to Cuba and shacks up with his beautiful Cuban mistress Juanita (Karin Dor), whose dead hubby was a hero of the revolution but she’s secretly a counterrevolutionist. Juanita recruits Carlotta and Pablo Mendoza to take photos of the missiles for the French agent to give to the American agent. They succeed in getting the photos out of the country, but get caught. As a result they are tortured to death and forced to give up Juanita, who is killed by her lover Rico Parra (John Vernon)—a higher-up closely associated with Castro. Andre is expelled from Cuba and recalled to France, but not before he learns of the leaks among the top French officials and about Topaz, the code name for a Russian spy ring, and that one of the operatives is the high-ranking French official (Philippe Noiret) with NATO, who is helping the Russians supply missiles to Cuba. In Paris Andre unmasks that his best friend Jacques Granville (Michel Piccoli) is the top double agent with the code name Columbine, who is not only a traitor but his wife’s (Dany Robin) lover.