Alec Guinness

Vacuum cleaner salesman Jim Wormold is recruited by the British Secret Service. He becomes an unlikely agent in Cuba. To avoid working while cashing the checks, Wormold spins a web of lies about foreign government secrets. When the local coppers decode his fake messages, all hell breaks loose in Havana and Wormold must become the spy he dreads in order to survive his own swindle.

In the gloom of a country graveyard, a young boy encounters an escaped convict, a chance meeting that years later leads the boy to tragedy, mystery and wealth.