Plot
In London, during the early 1900s, aspiring journalist and women's rights campaigner Sonia Winter (Rigg) uncovers an organization that specializes in killing for money, the Assassination Bureau, Limited. To bring about its destruction, she commissions the assassination of the bureau's own chairman, Ivan Dragomiloff (Reed).
Far from being outraged or angry, Dragomiloff is amused and delighted and decides to put it to his own advantage. The guiding principle of his bureau, founded by his father, has always been that there was a moral reason why their victims should be killed — these have included despots and tyrants. More recently though, his elder colleagues have tended to kill more for financial gain than for moral reasons. Dragomiloff, therefore, decides to accept the commission of his own death and challenge the other board members: Kill him or he will kill them.
With Miss Winter in tow, Dragomiloff sets off on a tour of Edwardian Europe, challenging and systematically purging the bureau's senior members. Little do they realise that this is a plot by Miss Winter's sponsor, newspaper publisher Lord Bostwick (Savalas), to take over the bureau and plunge Europe into war — Bostwick is the bureau's vice-chairman and is bitter for having been passed over in favour of the founder's son.
Bostwick and the other members of the Bureau plan to get rich quick by the "biggest killing" of them all — buying stocks in arms factories and then propelling Europe into war by assassinating all the heads of state of Europe while they attend a secret peace conference.
Dragomiloff and Miss Winter uncover the plot — dropping a bomb from a Zeppelin airship on to the castle in Ruthenia where the kings, emperors and presidents of Europe are trying to avoid a possible war caused by the death of a Balkan prince who was killed by a bomb intended for Dragomiloff.
Dragomiloff steals aboard the airship and destroys it, killing the remaining members of his board of directors. He is then decorated by the heads of state he has saved. It is implied that Dragomiloff may wed Miss Winter as well.
Read more about this topic: The Assassination Bureau
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
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And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
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