It's 1954 and Bernie Gunther sails to Florida, where he's arrested, returned to Cuba and imprisoned. There he meets Castro, and a French intelligence officer, Thibaud. Exhaustively questioned by Thibaud, Bernie is flown to Berlin with a proposition: work for the French or hang for murder. But Bernie's past as a German POW in Russia is about to catch up with him - in a way he could never have foreseen.