[3] The film stars Yul Brynner as a CIA agent investigating his son's fatal "accident": although he learns a few things from others, he slowly is convinced something else is happening and discovers a fiendish Russian plan.

[4] During the Cold War a Russian intelligence officer tells an army general he has a plan to infiltrate the upper ranks of the American CIA.

The general approves the plan, but is skeptical and warns the intelligence officer of the fatal consequences should anything go wrong.

In Washington, top CIA official Dan Slater receives a cable informing him that his teenage son has been killed while skiing in the Austrian Alps.

In the town at the base of the ski resort where the son died, Slater meets up with Frank Wheatley, a friend and ex-colleague who years earlier had tired of the paranoid approach to life demanded of intelligence agents.

As they move through town they are surreptitiously watched by the Russian intelligence officer, who tells his two burly subordinates that his plan is unfolding perfectly.

She is Gina, a ski-lover working for a rich local woman who throws extravagant ski parties.

The double reconnects with Wheatley, who has been joined by the agent sent to make sure Slater flies home immediately, and the Russian plan seems about to succeed.

Slater, handcuffed and gagged but fully conscious and with his legs unrestrained, is put in a car that is to drive him out of town, never to be seen again.

He eludes the immediate pursuit and search for him, but the Russian intelligence officer spots him dashing into the middle of the group of ski revelers on their way to the cable car station.

The two of them chat and then seek out the double (still thinking he is Slater) who is waiting with the CIA agent to take the next train out of town.

In The New York Times, Renata Adler found it "a modest third-rate film...But the plotting is tight and Mr. Brynner looks exotic and stony enough to keep one's mind off the title; when the denouement comes it is a moderate surprise;"[5] while more recently, Cinema Retro called it "one of the better spy films of the era thanks in no small part to the direction of Franklin J.