Riley Fitzhugh, former Hollywood private detective turned US Navy lieutenant, is recruited by the OSS for temporary duty as a naval spy in Morocco during the planning for Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa. Riley's assignment is to kidnap a French river pilot and extract him from Casablanca.

Along the way, Riley meets an old flame from his days in Hollywood. She's an English aristocrat who may or may not be a German agent or an Allied double. Together with an employee of the US Consulate in Morocco—a lapsed Russian rabbi—they spirit the pilot out of French Morocco to Tangier. But some surprises are waiting for all of them in the end.