It is the mid-1960s. The Cold War is raging. The world is still reeling from the assassination of JFK - but has yet to lose his kid brother Bobby. In the midst of all this, a reluctant hero by the name of Lucien Rivard becomes enmeshed in a web of global political intrigue and corruption. The United States, Russia and France are embroiled in a strategic battle over Third World natural resources. To keep the upper hand, each of their secret services has joined forces with various organized crime factions. Lucien is the go-between, travelling to the casinos of Havana, the night clubs of Dallas, the seedy heroin labs of Marseille, the tropical jungles of Indonesia and the urban jungles of New Orleans and Montreal. As tensions heat up, he becomes a secret weapon for a black ops organization over which he has no control - and an unwitting protagonist as a tragic chain of events begins to unfold before his very eyes.

Walrus-like warden, Sven "Swede" Sorenson, a cross between Bluto and Wimpy, runs the prison, murders convicts who escape, and has the FBI on his trail in the form of agent Karen Polarski, the daughter of the town's corrupt judge. Swede's twins tell their father they're pregnant (they aren't), so he pushes their dim boyfriends, Bud and Larry, into shotgun marriages. He also turns his sons-in-law into slave labor, so Bud hatches an escape plan: to rob a train carrying old bills to the mint for burning. Larry's his reluctant accomplice. When Bud is captured and railroaded into Swede's jail, his death looks certain, until he hatches yet another plan that requires Larry's help.

Bruno Hamel is a thirty eight year old surgeon. He lives in Drummondville with his wife Sylvie, and their eight year-old daughter Jasmine. Like many happy people, he is leading an uneventful life until a beautiful fall afternoon, when his daughter is raped and murdered. From then on, the world of the Hamel family collapses. When the murderer is arrested, a terrible project germinates in Bruno's darkened mind. He plans to capture the "monster" and make him pay for his crime. The day the murderer appears in Court, Hamel, who had prepared his plan in great detail, kidnaps the monster and later sends the police a brief message stating that the rapist and murderer of his daughter was going to be tortured for 7 days and then executed. Once this task accomplished, he will then give himself up.