In early 1912, the hapless Lieutenant Otto Prohaska finds himself stuck as a gunnery officer aboard a battleship mostly moored in harbor. He answers a War Ministry advertisement for training as a naval air pilot, but he soon finds himself appointed aide-de-camp for aviation to the appalling, boorish, near-insane Austro-Hungarian heir-apparent: the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Having taken an ill-considered break from duties to engage in a mad fling with a Polish actress, he makes a desperate attempt to elude his lover’s husband, and soon finds himself mistaken by anarchists as one of their own. Otto soon masters their code names and secret handshakes, but when he also learns of their plans to assassinate the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, his duty is clear. He must alert his superiors–now, if only he can find someone who will believe him! ()