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

From Berlin, a counterplot by Himmler, designed only to steal the play away from Wolff, threatened to retire Sunrise to the limbo of lost causes.

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

Ever the unexpected happens, surprise follows surprise, plot is succeeded by counterplot.

From The Blunders of a Bashful Man by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

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

Instead of counterplotting, as I might have done, I was pleased at their frustrated efforts.

From The Pacha of Many Tales by Frederick Marryat

Sir Robert Wingate listened while John Strong told the story of the plotting and counterplotting in Chicago.

From Ted Marsh on an Important Mission by Alice Carsey

He resolved to learn the nature of the plots that were in existence, before he commenced counterplotting.

From The Spy of the Rebellion Being a True History of the Spy System of the United States Army during the Late Rebellion, by Allan Pinkerton

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

From John Marsh's Millions by Arthur Hornblow