Nelson Crowe is a CIA agent who is forced to work for a private organization called the Grimes Organization, which uses blackmail to control powerful individuals. He teams up with a former colleague, Margaret Wells, to bribe a judge, but the plan goes wrong. One of his associates, Tod Stapp, finds out about Crowe's CIA involvement in a plot against Grimes and uses it to blackmail Crowe. Wells then manipulates Crowe to murder Grimes, and the CIA uses this to blackmail Wells into killing Crowe. The story raises the question of trust and loyalty in the world of covert operations.