counterplot

Unlike the “Bourne” films, whose baroque webbing of plot and counterplot suggested an allegory of global paranoia, “Haywire” goes to great lengths to avoid being about anything beyond its immediate situations and effects.

From New York Times ● Jan. 19, 2012

Patiently, month after month, the FBI had been trying to untangle the all-but-invisible skeins of plot and counterplot by which Russia had stolen U.S. atomic secrets.

From Time Magazine Archive

In two of three new television shows, the singers are almost buried under plot and counterplot, characterization and attempted comedy.

From Time Magazine Archive

Since the starlings were plainly not going to migrate from Radford of their own accord, the townsfolk and various wildlife experts hatched a counterplot.

From Time Magazine Archive

During the meal the President was too deeply engrossed in the working out of a small counterplot to hear or heed much of the desultory table-talk.

From A Romance in Transit by Francis Lynde

By this fellow's means, I have counterplotted all his master's fine schemes.

From St. Ronan's Well by Sir Walter Scott

Khrushchev can no longer invoke the capricious plotting, counterplotting and murders of Stalin's Kremlin.

From Time Magazine Archive

Over the plotting and counterplotting, the rivalries and jealousies which followed, we must pass.

From Love affairs of the Courts of Europe by Thornton Hall

There followed a long contest, in which there was plotting and counterplotting on one side and on the other, and manœuvres without end.

From Margaret of Anjou Makers of History by Jacob Abbott

Would all this trouble, the plotting and counterplotting, never end?

From John Marsh's Millions by Arthur Hornblow

During the whole reign they were plotting and counterplotting, mining and undermining.

From The Leading Facts of English History by D. H. (David Henry) Montgomery