Max Baumstein is a reputable businessman who founded an international organization fighting against violations of human rights. Why would he commit an act that apparently negates the principles he has striven for so long to uphold? As he is tried for first-degree murder for killing a Paraguayan ambassador in cold blood, he reveals a secret about himself that he kept hidden from his wife Lina. His act is the conclusion of a struggle that started many decades earlier in his childhood...

Yves Dorget, major reporter in a daily newspaper, finds on an "affair" part of a simple news item Catherine Carré, his former friend, editor and chief and star presenter of a television newscast.