Plot

Two ex-government agents turned rival industrial spies have to be at the top of their game when one of their companies prepares to launch a major product. However, they distract each other in more ways than one.

Ray works for MI6, Claire for the CIA. She burns him in Dubai. Jump ahead five years: he sees her in Grand Central and confronts her. Both now work in industrial security for corporate giants whose CEOs hate each other. Flashbacks fill us in: is it coincidence that he sees her in Grand Central? In about a week, one of the firms is going to announce a revolutionary product. Under the guise of helping that corporation's rival, can Ray and Claire work their own theft and find an independent buyer? To work together, using the corporate rivalry to their advantage, they would have to trust one another - difficult, if not impossible. Or, is one playing the other?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

Five years ago, in 2003. Ray Koval (Clive Owen), an MI6 agent, meets Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts), a CIA officer, at a party in Dubai. He is unaware of her identity and attempts to seduce her. Claire drugs him and steals classified documents from him. Three years later in Rome, Ray and Claire meet for the first time since Dubai and spend several days together at a posh hotel. Claire misses her flight and feels that Ray planned it. Whereas Ray also feels that it was not a chance encounter, and that Claire sought him out for another play on him.

They imagine leaving their government jobs for work in an intensely competitive area in the private sector. They contemplate using their skills in intelligence to enrich themselves. After exploring possibilities over several months, including companies vying for the market in double-crust pizza, they settle on cosmetics and personal hygiene. How they will turn their positions to their advantage is unclear even to them, but they will be ready when the opportunity presents itself.

Throughout the weeks that follow, Claire and Ray remain wary of one another. Both are experienced in double-dealing and despite their romantic connection and plans to escape with new identities once this operation is complete, neither is entirely free of the other's suspicion. They decide to quit their jobs simultaneously but have a brief episode in London where they both feel that the other ditched them and left them hanging.

Claire is hired by Equikrom and they help her accept a job in counter-intelligence at Burkett & Randle. After more than a year, Ray takes a position in intelligence at Equikrom, where he will act as the handler and Claire as one of his agents.

Aware that Ray's new employer will be spying on him to assess his loyalty, he and Claire first practice how they will pretend to be meeting in New York for the first time since Dubai, reprising much of the dialog of their actual encounter in Rome. They are unaware that Claire's employers at Burkett & Randle are spying on her and hear this rehearsal, which blows her cover. Burkett & Randle CEO Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) decides to keep Claire in her job, even though she is a mole, and to manipulate her in his rivalry with Equikrom. Tully ensures that Claire only gets her hands on fake, planted intelligence to pass on to Ray.

Duke Monahan (Denis O'Hare) & Pam Fraile (Kathleen Chalfant) run the research lab at Equikrom and analyze everything that Ray brings in from Claire. Claire and Ray, working as mole and handler, reprise the dialog yet again and, as they anticipated, Ray's employer is listening in and is persuaded that Ray is loyal. Equikrom believes that whatever Ray is bringing in is legit.

Tully makes a speech to his intelligence team, including Claire, that paints his company as the innovator defending itself from duplicity and theft. He underscores how the unannounced new product makes vigilance even more urgent. He and others in his organization (Burkett & Randle) plant information that they know she and the intelligence team at Equikrom will steal as they try to understand what that "major development" might be.

Claire provides a copy of this speech, via Ray, to Equikrom CEO Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti), who plots to steal whatever Burkett & Randle has developed. Duke and Pam have mapped out the entire R&B research lab and they are confident that there is no major activity going on there. There is free parking in the lots, porn searches are up and online shopping is down (no big bonuses anticipated). They are sure that this new product is an acquisition.

Garsik's team, including Ray, devote themselves to stealing information from Burkett & Randle's offices, in the course of which Ray seduces one of their travel office employees Barbara Bofferd (Carrie Preston) (through which they hack into R&B travel database). Duke and Pam analyze R&B acquisitions in the last 6 yrs and find that they bought 7 companies in one after noon. Tully made 6 visits personally to a small time in Georgia, which leads Duke and Pam to Formivale labs. Ronny Partiz (Christopher Denham) sold Formivale to Tully. He was working on some kind of a cream. Ronny is in the Bahamas, living up the good life post the acquisition.

Garsik has a shareholder convention in 9 days and he knows that Tully will time the announcement of the new product just before his convention, to make sure it goes badly.

Ray travels to the Bahamas with an Equikrom team to apprehend Ronny. But Claire reaches there with a R&B team and gets them thrown out for Casino fraud.

Thanks to information from Ray, Claire is able to appear a hero to her employers, catching Equikrom's spying activities after the fact or preventing them in the Bahamas. Tully at Burkett & Randle pretends to be impressed, thanks Claire for successfully defending the company's new product, and he reveals to her that it is a cure for baldness. She informs Garsik at Equikrom, who leaves for a shareholder meeting in Las Vegas expecting she will obtain the chemical formula and he will announce the new development to his shareholders before Burkett & Randle goes public with the information.

Excitement builds as the Equikrom team, using Claire as their principal source inside their rival's offices, succeed in acquiring a copy of the formula. Claire and Ray rendezvous at the Zürich Airport, each with a copy of the formula that they plan to sell to a Swiss company for $35 million. At the same time, Garsik tells his shareholders that they are in the final stages of testing for a product that cures baldness.

The formula, the Swiss announce to Ray and Claire, is not what they think, just a harmless lotion. They in turn are disappointed, but impressed by how completely they were manipulated. Pam was working for Tully inside Equikrom. They have only each other now, and a thank you bottle of champagne from Tully.