Jean Carlos Renault, a.k.a. "The Salamander," has returned to Panama after committing multiple crimes in several Central American countries; only special agent Coster Bravo can stop him… as the rest of the agents are either on vacation or off-duty. Catching him will not be easy as The Salamander is protected by a well-organized criminal network.

Confined to his Tahitian hut by the French colonial authorities in 1903, the painter Paul Gauguin is forced to paint a new masterpiece to save his five-year-old native son, while battling illness and torn between madness and sanity. In the course of these events, memories of the past, especially of his life and work at the Panama Canal, the place where his artistic career began and his guilt at abandoning his family in Paris, begin to haunt him.