Only a couple of days before the state visit of the President of the United States, Filiberto Garcia -- an impeccably groomed "gun for hire," ex-Mexican revolutionary, and classic anti-hero -- is recruited by the Mexican police to discover how much truth there might be to KGB and FBI reports of a Chinese-Mongolian plot to assassinate the Soviet and American presidents during the unveiling of a statue.

Garcia kills various bad guys as he searches for clues in the opium dens, curio shops, and Cantonese restaurants of Mexico City's Chinatown -- clues that appear to point not to...