Vacationing in a Latin American country, American brain surgeon Eugene Ferguson (Cary Grant) and his wife, Helen (Paula Raymond), get caught in a revolutionary uprising against dictator President Raoul Farrago (Jose Ferrer). Kidnapped by the military and ordered to operate on Farrago, who has a life-threatening brain tumor, Eugene hesitates, believing he might reason with Farrago to stop the imminent civil war. The situation is heightened when Helen becomes a pawn of the revolutionaries.