- After a newspaper reporter helps expose a Member of Parliament as a possible spy, he finds that there's much more to the story than that.
- A reporter Mullen 'stumbles' on a story linking a prominent Member of Parliament to a KGB agent. In fact it is also linked to a near Nuclear disaster involving a teenage runaway and an Americal USAF base. Has there been a Government cover-up,Mullen teams up with Vernon Bayliss, an old hack, and Nina Beckam the MP's assistant to find out the truth.—Matthew Stanfield <mattst@cogs.susx.ac.uk>
- On a foggy night a car containing two men is pursued by police. The radio is discussing the country being on high alert due to a terrorist attack in Ankara. Going down a dead end one, Steven, one the men escapes over a high barbed wire fence but the other one is caught.
Dennis Markham (Ian Bannen), a prominent Member of Parliament is reported by a London paper to have been seen leaving a woman's home on the same evening as she is visited by a military attaché from East Germany, Markham's loyalty to his country is questioned. The media men debate whether or not to print the story.
Bayliss (Denholm Elliott), Mullen (Gabriel Byrne) and MacLeod (Bill Paterson) all work together for the Daily Dispatch. Bayliss is sent for a private meeting with Markham and explains the link to the German agent (which Markham is unaware of). Meanwhile Mullen goes to interview Nina (Greta Scacchi), Markham's pretty secretary, and then speaks to Markham's wife (Annabel Leventon) (initially pretending to be a policeman).
The story breaks as the "Markham Affair" on television and throughout the newspapers.
Markham is hounded by the media and forced to resign.
The author of the newspaper exposé, Nick Mullen, continues his work alongside colleague Vernon Bayliss who suspects that Markham was framed. When Bayliss dies from a supposed heart attack the same night as Bayliss' flat is ransacked by someone who was not after money or valuables, Mullen suspects something deeper at work. He breaks into Bayliss's desk and finds press-cuttings and a tape which insinuate a different motive behind the attack on Markham.
Mullen visits the young man in prison (caught by police at the start of the film) telling him that his accomplice is dead. This leads him to go to the site where the film began a high security but seemingly unmanned military base run by the USAF near the village of Brandon. Mullen realises that the USAF presence in the UK involves a nuclear weapon capability and Markham seems linked to aims to rid the UK of such. This may have been the motive to start a mudslinging campaign.
With the help of Markham's secretary, Nina Beckman, Mullen continues to investigate the affair despite a break-in at his flat, surveillance and other attempts to stop him.
When he goes to publish the story his editor calls him in to say it is a great story but they cannot publish due to the Official Secrets Act. Moreover, the newspaper owner Kingsbrook (Fulton Mackay), a character akin to Lord Beaverbrook, as personally intervened to make sure it isn't published. But how did he know it existed?
Mullen discovers the "KGB agent" was actually a British agent so asks the editor where they got the source that said he was KGB. He gives up the name Anthony Clegg (Oliver Ford Davies). But when he confronts Clegg in a gentleman's club he is grabbed by two henchmen and driven to an office for questioning by senior ministers. Without explanation he is then left alone in an industrial building. He returns to his ransacked flat. Nina arrives at the door but as she steps in a bomb goes off.
However, she had posted the incriminating evidence to Germany and the story of the near-nuclear-disaster spreads across the globe through the European press.
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