 Louis Rapiere aka Tiger is sent to Port-a-Pitre (French Guyane), to supervise the recuperation of a treasure from a sunken ship. A group of revolutionaries pirates the ship and robs the treasure, intending to sell it to an international terrorist organization, named Orchid. When he gets there, he demands that the French authority arrests the revolutionaries, but trying to prevent a general strike, the police does nothing. The Tiger finds himself acting alone, in a paralized territory - as the revoltionaries incited the people to the general strike anyway... and competing against American, Russian, and German spies. Everybody is very interested in the treasure, a rare mineral with tremendous impact on arms development, now about to fall into the Orchid s clutch.