During World War II, Albert Foiret runs both a café in Brussels, where locals mix with the Nazi occupation forces, and a network of the Belgian resistance called Lifeline, devoted to the evacuation of downed Allied pilots to Britain. He and his secret 'army' constantly risk their own lives and those of many others to find the pilots, hide, nurse and prepare them for the long, dangerous journey out of the Reich under the Nazis' noses. It is a never ending cat-and-mouse game against specialized German hunters, the gentlemanly Luftwaffe officer Major Erwin Brandt and the ruthless Gestapo officer Sturmbannfuhrer Ludwig Kessler, whose devotion to Hitler's cause is boundless.