Gregory Peck stars as Colonel Van Dyke, a CIA Agent stationed in West Berlin. When an American soldier is kidnapped by the Soviets in the Easter sector, Van Dyke is verbally assaulted by the soldier’s influential industrialist father Leatherby (Broderick Crawford) who demands that something be done immediately. The Colonel realizes that it's not as simple as that: in return for the soldier, he is ex-pected to turn over an elderly couple, both former anti-Nazi activists, to the East Germans, who will probably execute the couple. Leatherby backs off a bit when he meets the couple, then agrees to let Van Dyke handle the crisis in the most diplomatic manner possible.