After nearly being caught on a routine burglary, master safe-cracker Nick Wells decides the time has finally come to retire from his criminal activities. He shares this idea with his girlfriend Diane, offering to live together and open a legitimate restaurant.
He is enticed into taking one final score by his fence Max. The job, worth a $4 million payoff to Nick, is to steal a sceptre, a French national treasure stored in the ultra-secure basement of the Montréal Customs House. The sceptre was discovered by Customs agents being smuggled into Canada. Max introduces Nick to Jack Teller, an ambitious thief who has infiltrated the Customs House and gained security information by pretending to be a mentally-challenged janitor.