***SPOILERS*** British underpaid and overworked secret agent Harry Palmer, Michael Caine, who uses public transportation in not being provided with a car, any car, by the British I5 agency that he works or slaves for is given the task by his boss Col. Ross,Guy Doleman, to sneak Russian Col. Stok, Oskar Homolka, out of Communist East Berlin to the freedom of the west in a casket provided by a local funeral home. Not a bit fooled by this story Palmer smells a rat in all this but just goes along with it just to find out what the real reason is about what this is all about and who's behind it.
The film starts to go into all directions that have to do with Nazi gold, taken from Jews in WWII, as well as Nazis hiding in both East and West Germany after the war who are planning to use the stolen loot to revive the third and soon to be forth Reich when the time is right. Plamer for his part hooks up with his contact in East Germany Johnny Vulkan, Paul Hubschmid, who's later discovered to be the fugitive Nazi war criminal Louis Borum who after murdering inmate Vulkan back in 1944, in a Nazi concentration camp, took over his identity. We also have the Israeli Mossad getting into the act in order to get its hands on the stolen gold that it feels , in being stolen from it's Jewish owners, belongs to the state of Israel.
***SPOILERS*** It soon turns out that the escape plan to get Col.Stok out of East Berlin was just a cover to really get the person involved in sneaking Germans out of the city, for as much as $20,000.00 apiece, Kreutzman,Gunter Meisner, killed. This is all discovered when the live Col. Stock's body was replaced, in the casket, by Kerutzman's dead one! It's now up to Palmer to find out why he's been set up in all this that leads to his contact in East Berlin Johnny Vulkan who's really escaped Nazi war criminal and wanted by the Isralie Mossad Louis Borum. The final showdown comes on the west side of the infamous and now demolished Berlin Wall were Borum plans to escape from the law and Isralie Mossad into Communist controlled Eastern Europe. With Plamer whom he's using as a decoy switching his clothes back with Borum, who want's the Mossad to mistake him for Palmer, Borum is killed by a burst-the first and last in the entire movie-of Mossad gunfire before he could make it across the wall!
The film starts to go into all directions that have to do with Nazi gold, taken from Jews in WWII, as well as Nazis hiding in both East and West Germany after the war who are planning to use the stolen loot to revive the third and soon to be forth Reich when the time is right. Plamer for his part hooks up with his contact in East Germany Johnny Vulkan, Paul Hubschmid, who's later discovered to be the fugitive Nazi war criminal Louis Borum who after murdering inmate Vulkan back in 1944, in a Nazi concentration camp, took over his identity. We also have the Israeli Mossad getting into the act in order to get its hands on the stolen gold that it feels , in being stolen from it's Jewish owners, belongs to the state of Israel.
***SPOILERS*** It soon turns out that the escape plan to get Col.Stok out of East Berlin was just a cover to really get the person involved in sneaking Germans out of the city, for as much as $20,000.00 apiece, Kreutzman,Gunter Meisner, killed. This is all discovered when the live Col. Stock's body was replaced, in the casket, by Kerutzman's dead one! It's now up to Palmer to find out why he's been set up in all this that leads to his contact in East Berlin Johnny Vulkan who's really escaped Nazi war criminal and wanted by the Isralie Mossad Louis Borum. The final showdown comes on the west side of the infamous and now demolished Berlin Wall were Borum plans to escape from the law and Isralie Mossad into Communist controlled Eastern Europe. With Plamer whom he's using as a decoy switching his clothes back with Borum, who want's the Mossad to mistake him for Palmer, Borum is killed by a burst-the first and last in the entire movie-of Mossad gunfire before he could make it across the wall!