'Inspector Hans Bärlach, at the end of his career and suffering from cancer, is recovering from an operation. He witnesses how his friend and doctor Samuel Hungertobel turns pale and becomes nervous when looking at a photograph in a magazine he is reading. The person pictured is the German Dr. Nehle who carried out horrific experiments on prisoners in the concentration camp Stutthof near Gdansk, including operating on patients without anesthesia. Hungertobel explains that his colleague Fritz Emmenberger, who was in Chile and publishing medical articles from there during the war, closely resembles Dr. Nehle. Bärlach suspects that Nehle and Emmenberger either changed roles during their time in Chile or happen to be the same person. [...] Bärlach is convinced that Dr. Emmenberger, who is now the director of a famous private clinic for the rich and dying in Zurich, committed Nazi war crimes under the false name of Dr. Nehle. He determines to sign himself into Emmenberger's clinic [...] in order to confirm his suspicions and put the suspect under pressure.'