Impulsively, he insisted hat he must have it immediately ("I can""t live without it"), and she helped him to load the oversized, heavy and unwieldy piece of art-junk into the back of his convertible.Henri pauses before a mirror to assure himself that he is still the dapper-looking music hall idol of years earlier, even though he is aging.Inside the van with tinted windows, the undercover group""s command center, Harry""s assistant Stanley (John Cazale in only his second film) is seated at a workbench over a row of reel-to-reel ape recorders - monitoring the couple""s transmitted conversation from two opposing positions - one next to the CITY PARIS sign and another with a parabolic reflector from an open office window.He had used the funding to engage in cocaine smuggling and was being brought to the US for trial on racketeering, bribery, and drug running charges.The time period of the provocative, sophisticated film is set in the early 50s during the height of right-wing McCarthyism - a time of tense political paranoia with the overriding, reactionary fear that Communists (Russian and Chinese) were scheming to take over the US via advanced brainwashing techniques and programmed terrorist raining.