In Hamburg, a popular young German businessman is arrested and accused of being a drugs trafficker. His British wife, Helen, is faced with social and financial ruin and decides to take the family's future into her own hands.

Jack Lithgow, a minister at the British Home Office, is responsible for overseeing a new aid agreement with Pakistan to reduce production of opium there. He visits Pakistan on a fact-finding mission and is approached by Fazal, a local farmer who complains bitterly that the aid and promised grants never reach the local communities.

The story in Pakistan follows Fazal and other farmers once their illegal poppy fields have been discovered.