While Canadian history professor Andrew Stanhope is doing research in Paris on the German invasion of France in 1940, he stumbles upon an odd and long-lost exchange between Colonel Marius Michel, principal deputy in France's counter-intelligence agency, the Deuxième Bureau, and the Directeur-Général of the Val de Grâce military hospital. The Colonel wants the Directeur to warn the incoming Prime Minister, Philippe Pétain, that there is an active spy in the French war ministry and that the Marshal's own ring of advisors includes at least one Nazi sympathizer; their espionage may have led to the sudden and ignominious defeat of France.