The film was cut by twenty minutes and retitled Agent 8+3⁄4 for the US release by the American distributor Continental Distributing.

Allsop and his superior, Colonel Cunliffe (Robert Morley), then discuss the necessity to send someone to pick up something behind the Iron Curtain.

Unemployed British writer Nicholas Whistler (Dirk Bogarde) is sent by the employment exchange to be interviewed by Cunliffe, supposedly for a job as a trainee executive for a glass company.

Whistler is given puzzling instructions to meet someone who will respond to his remark, "Hot enough for June", by stating he should have been there in September, before being sent that very day to Prague on a "business" trip.

Her plan almost succeeds, but by sheer bad luck, Simenova is leaving the embassy as Whistler approaches and recognises him, forcing him to flee once more.

At the airport, he is pleasantly surprised to find that Vlasta has been assigned to the trade mission in London and is departing on the same airliner.

[5] Ralph Thomas later said he made the film "because I thought the script was quite funny and I loved working with Dirk.

"[6] Howard Thompson of The New York Times was unimpressed, calling it "a slick, bland shuffling of drollery and suspense, not especially new, at least by now, nor really funny.

"[7] He singled out one performance for praise: "Most of the real fun comes from the mouth of Robert Morley ..."[7] Kinematograph Weekly called the film a "money maker" at the British box office for 1964.