In 1942, a female British reporter joins the French Resistance and embarks on a mission to kill Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, only clouded by a contentious love affair, and betrayal by a man in which she shares a past. 

SYNOPSIS:

Sadie Hemmings, a British reporter, travels to France in 1942 to assist Aggie Allard, a French woman, and a committed resistance fighter. They are trying to undermine the Nazis who had occupied Paris since 1940. Sadie travels with her fiancée, Ben Wesling, an intelligence agent working for British Special Operations Executive (SOE). They hook up with Allard and her boyfriend, Jocko Conway, a former British pilot, who is an expatriate, and an enthusiastic fighter. After they arrive, Allard believes Sadie is more attuned to lead the effort because of her unbridled enthusiasm. Within several weeks of arriving, Sadie and Ben visit with Jean Moulin, a Frenchman who wants to oversee the resistance movement. Sadie spells out her philosophy concerning a viable resistance undertaking, calling it The Circle. it Is simple concept: man is born into this life, struggles to stay free and will fight for it, and will die for it, which circles around from birth to death.

The group embarks on an effort to create and publish resistance flyers, providing advice how to defeat the enemy, to be circulated among French citizens under the banner of The Circle. After several sabotage operations, in a group meeting at a farmhouse in rural Limoges, Sadie lays out a plan to assassinate Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo in France, which would be a monumental task. While the group is busy making flyers, a German Nazi soldier arrives and says he’s left his unit and is not a threat to them and needs help, they reluctantly agree to hide him. They make him stay in the barn, and he initially keeps to himself. Later becoming a nuisance. During scouting of a train station, Sadie surprisingly meets an old boyfriend, an American intelligence agent, John West, who just arrived under cover. They talk in a bar and rekindle their relationship in a hotel, both realizing it should be a one-night stand because of her engagement. John claims he has a place to stay after Sadie offers a place if he needs it. After several months, a young girl, Raven D’Arnaud, hastily arrives at the farmhouse saying she was raped by a Nazi and being chased by one. When they realize no one is after her, they also decide to let her stay hidden there. But when she realizes a Nazi is staying there, she wants to know why and makes it clear he will leave her alone.

The Circle engages in numerous sabotage operations that are more caustic than normal. In a meeting with Moulin, he accuses them of being over-zealous, ruining the resistance movement. Sadie and Ben dismiss his accusations and continue their operations. John shows up at the farmhouse and claims his lodging arrangements fell apart and Sadie offers to have him stay there. In a group meeting, John finds out about the Barbie assassination plot and tells Sadie it is a bad idea. What Sadie doesn’t know is that John is there on a State Department mission to ensure Barbie’s safety because of his hatred of Communists and supposed inner hated of Hitler since the State Department wants to use Barbie against Russia after the war. In the ensuing days, Ben and Charles Leroux, an enthusiastic member of the group, stake out a train station they want to take down while Ben meets with a French contact that provides data about the station. Unfortunate, during the sabotage operation, the Nazis catch Charles which concerns the group because he could finger them when things got bad for him.

Ben confronts John about why he is really at the farmhouse, and he knows about the relationship he has with Sadie, and it gets heated, and Sadie intercedes telling them it’s all about the mission. The Circle meets about how they will assassinate Barbie and develop a plan to do so. They will assassinate him at the restaurant he frequents in Lyon. John tries to persuade them to abandon the mission. Knowing he won’t be successful, John meets with his State Department contact in a deserted park about the Barbie plot, and she says she knows what has to be done. John also realizes his mission trumps his feelings for Sadie and even though he knows he is betraying her; he tells the contact to alert the Nazis about the Circle. On the night of the planned assassination, things don’t go the way the Circle envisions them. Barbie doesn’t enter the restaurant but jumps in a car and quickly departs. They abandon the operation. John West is invisible now. That same day, The Circle are all arrested in Limoges except Sadie who somehow disappears from the farmhouse.

Fast forward: 1955 – John meets with Klaus Barbie, now living under the name of Altmann in Bolivia, and they talk extensively about Hitler, the Nazi occupation, Barbie’s help undermining Communists, and the fate of Sadie who was killed in London by Fascists in 1950.

Fast forward: 1995 – John, now an old man, hobbling with a cane, visits Sadie’s grave in London and fervently apologizes for betraying her, and after several heartfelt remarks about his love for her and his misguided mission, he slowly walks away into obscurity feeling the weight of his horrible transgression.

EDGE OF THE CIRCLE