The retired director of MI5, NC, who suffers from delusional paranoia, decides to infiltrate a Nazi-cartel in Brazil. Along with his niece and an ex-army major, a psychiatrist, and two rouge agents and their resources. They set up their base in Australia (1990). However, NC's unrequited love with his niece and the pressure of their cover over the years as husband-and-wife results in sexual reality. This results in the full expression of NC's underlying paranoia, and his niece develops depressive mania. Because of the close relationship between NC and his niece and the two rogue agents they enter a folie a' beaucoup, a shared paranoid disorder. The group realize that the ex-army major psychiatrist, Psyche, and his associates are working for MI5 and ASIO, and so they are diverted away from the true intent of the group, the destruction of the Nazi-cartel, whereas the original objective was to take financial control. This was to be achieved using unconventional field operatives who have been unknowingly trained to achieve an unknown objective, in this way the operatives would avoid detection. The group, under the guidance of Psyche, select three potential field operatives for further training: a university lecturer, a deregistered dentist and a gay ex-priest and ex-prisoner. Their selection is based on their need for adventure-escapism and their mutually supportive eccentric approach to problem solving. Their eccentricity allows them to see the funny side of a serious situation and allows them to cope with reality. Their selection and conditioning program take them into a yacht race with a new wing keel that they discover is made of gold. They think Chinese gangsters, Tongs, are involved but this is a part of their assessment to see how they handle the events as they unfold. Further assessment leads to a more hands on situation, under the guise of a business game, involving false trails in smuggling diamonds from South Africa.
The major project that they think they are being trained for is the illegal removal of medicinal plants from the Amazon, the Amazon Project. Under cover of the Amazon Project the dentist and the priest deliver three crates, they think contain religious artifacts, to a chapel in Rio. In the chapel family members of the Nazi-cartel and ex-SS officers await the arrival of the crates. They think the crates contain the cultural treasure of Germany; Schlieman's treasure, the Trojan Gold, lost to the Russian trophy brigades at the end of the Second World War. But the Trojan Gold is replicates made from the smuggled gold and diamonds in the form of fragmentation grenades. The congregation in the chapel is destroyed on the 1st of May the anniversary of Hitler's suicide. At the same time NC and his niece murder the directors of the Nazi-cartel by a suicide bombing. The two rouge agents are killed in a bizarre manner. By the university lecturer and the dentist. Psyche and his associates, who have been diverted by the Amazon Project, escape execution by NC's bodyguard; they meet up with the three selectees aboard an exchange yacht at marina Gloira in Rio and all is revealed. They now must plan their escape. (Stand Alone prequel-sequel TB II).
