In late 1945, a German doctor and his two teenaged daughters arrive by freighter into the sweltering, squalid port of Cayenne in French Guyana. They enter the South American country with forged passports and under assumed names.
But the doctor is recognized by two people who were once in a Nazi labor camp, and now are in the employ of a group which is on the lookout for Fascist fugitives wanted by the Allied War Crimes Tribunal.
The two men, a middle-aged mute, and a young man of nineteen, are obsessed with bringing to justice the criminals who once ran the camp in which they were imprisoned for two years. But at what point can righteous retribution curdle into poisonous revenge?
Into this maelstrom of hidden motives and impenetrable enigmas enter other mysterious persons: a prominent Nazi in Brazil who now assists others of his kind to slip into South America; his treacherous functionary, whom he sends to masquerade at "helping" the doctor; the local guide who recognizes a blackmail opportunity when he sees one; and the corrupt, debauched French official who ruthlessly controls the entire port of Cayenne.
All are in pursuit of the German doctor--and only too late discover the truth about him, and his family. But by then, the two former camp prisoners have, ironically, become everything they once detested.
