With the
Cold War rapidly coming to an end, retired
CIA operative Sam Boyd has taken up freelancing as a corporate spy for cosmetics giant Maxine Gray, only to find that his hands-on style of espionage is being rendered obsolete by the capabilities of younger computer hackers. Boyd is suddenly called back in to the CIA by his superior, Elliot Jaffe, for a seemingly straightforward prisoner exchange with the
KGB overseen by Colonel Pierce Grissom. Jaffe and Grissom explain that they have to use Boyd instead of an active agent to keep the operation off-the-books, since the $2 million that the Russian side demanded in addition to their own agent is being supplied by a Colombian
drug cartel as a favor. Boyd is tasked with chaperoning Pyotr Ivanovich Grushenko, a KGB mole who had been caught and imprisoned ten years earlier, and the briefcase containing the money to
Berlin, where they will both be traded for Benjamin Sobel, a
U-2 pilot who was shot down over the
Soviet Union during the 1960s. A resigned Boyd and a skeptical Grushenko depart from
Dulles Airport and arrive in Berlin, where they bond at a bar over Grushenko's beverage of choice,
Starka. During the handover in a closed stretch of subway tunnel the next night, Boyd recognizes Sobel as a man he noticed at Dulles and calls Grushenko back, triggering a shootout with the KGB. Boyd and Grushenko are forced on the run from both the KGB and Boyd's superiors; even though Boyd told Jaffe that the handover was a setup, Grissom insists that Boyd has gone rogue and orders Jaffe to hunt him and Grushenko down. Boyd and Grushenko decide their only option is go into hiding and live off the $2 million, but they first need to
launder the cash since the CIA can track the serial numbers on the bills. After securing fake IDs and credit cards and evading a police dragnet, the pair go to Faisal, a Saudi arms dealer previously used by the CIA to support anti-communist movements, to see about the money, but find that the easing of the Cold War has left him practically impoverished. With the CIA now working with the KGB to find Boyd and Grushenko, the pair make their way to
Paris, where Grushenko claims to have a girlfriend who can handle their money problem. Grushenko also reveals to Boyd that the man in the subway really was Sobel, who had been turned by the Soviets after his capture and was living in America as a sleeper agent in the guise of an economics professor. Grushenko knew Sobel because they both had the same handler, a turncoat in the US military codenamed "Donald". Boyd concludes that the cash-strapped KGB had arranged the fake handover of Sobel with Donald's help to scam the CIA out of $2 million, but the botched trade had jeopardized Donald's cover. In Paris, Grushenko reunites with his apparent girlfriend, Natasha Grimaud, who is in reality his daughter and works at a Japanese corporation where she can wire their money to a Swiss bank account to be withdrawn as clean bills. While Grushenko travels to Switzerland to retrieve the money, the CIA/KGB kidnap Natasha to coerce Boyd and Grushenko into surrendering. Boyd concedes to their demands and chooses the
Eiffel Tower as the handover site. Boyd and Grushenko manage to free Natasha and then dodge the CIA/KGB, but find the tower's exits have been cut off. The two friends duck into
Le Jules Verne to share one last bottle of Starka. After Boyd suggests that they should take up residence in the
Seychelles if they somehow escape, Grushenko relates that he just called Donald, implied to be Grissom, and left a false message that Sobel had been a triple-agent for the CIA all along. ==Cast==