The story concerns an experimental nuclear cruise missile which is stolen from a Soviet military site in the USSR. An international terrorist group, under the command of a European power-crazed man known only as the Baron is responsible. The Baron plots to use the stolen Soviet missile to destroy an international peace conference in one week located on an island in the Persian Gulf. When the U.S. consul to Iran is murdered by the Baron's henchmen, Alec Franklin, a US intelligence agent, is ordered to travel to Iran to take over as consul as well as investigate the murder. Upon arrival in Tehran, Alec is followed by two of the Baron's henchmen who attempt to kill him, but Alec manages to escape.
Alec then travels from Tehran to Abadan where he meets Konstanine, a Soviet KGB intelligence agent who is in Iran searching for leads to locate the missing cruise missile, which leads to Alec and Konstantine joining forces along with Galina, another Soviet agent, and Leila, an undercover Iranian policewoman, to investigate the Baron in order to find the location to where the cruise missile is being kept before it is used to start World War III.
