On the eve of Bastille Day in Paris, American drifter and pickpocket Michael Mason steals a woman's handbag, not knowing that it contains explosives. After he drops the bag off, it detonates and kills four people. Upon being captured by CIA agent Sean Briar, who is being reprimanded for irresponsible conduct on the job, Mason protests that he is not a terrorist, and tells Briar that the bag contained a cell-phone owned by a woman named Zoe. The bomb was set up by a group of corrupt policemen led by Rafi Bernard, all of them members in the French special force RAPID who intend to pull a robbery at the Banque de France. Zoe was told to plant the bomb at the office of the French Nationalist Party (as part of a diversion for the heist), but after seeing the night cleaning crew arrive, she was unwilling to kill innocents and so abandoned the plan. Zoe's boyfriend Jean, one of the conspirators, allows her to escape, realizing that his compatriots will kill her.