September 15, 1971
In order to interest a television mogul in buying his stories for the small screen,novelist and adventurer Jason King describes to the man a typical plot involving his hero Mark Caine. Caine meets a girl who has been given plastic surgery to resemble the deceased Michele who died in a fire. She is taken by two crooks to meet Bellini, a fence of Michele's acquaintance,supposedly suffering from amnesia,to find out where he has hidden his private stash of valuables. Caine is aware that the girl will be killed once she has served her purpose and steps in to rescue her.
On a visit back to England, Jason finds himself with income tax problems. However, it turns out to be a way of blackmailing him into helping the police solve a series of robberies where the police computer seems to be illegally accessed.
Jason King is abducted to Moscow to unravel the mystery of three men who have been turned into three tidy piles of ashes. He creates his own Phoenix.
Jason is mistaken as a hit man when he is left holding a bunch of roses at a Swiss airport after coming to the aid of a seriously ill man. To Jason's horror, the roses are soon to be exchanged for a rifle!
Jason falls under the hypnotic spell of two glamorous thieves, Claudia and Elaine. Claudia steals from him the only copy of his recently completed film script, and she and Elaine demand that, for its return, he pose as an expert in ancient manuscripts in order to steal the Constance Missal, a valuable document recently acquired by the British Museum. He is to authenticate it for one Lord Barnes, but his lordship is also planning to obtain the Constance Missal for himself.
