For all the horror and shock of it, there had been something more in her voice. Anger. Something had been done to her, she told him, suddenly whispering as if she were afraid someone would overhear. No matter what the doctors said or would say, she was certain that the infection killing her had been caused by bacteria that had deliberately been given to her. It had been then, judging from sounds in the background, that someone had come into the room. Abruptly she'd finished with an urgent plea for him to come to Washington, then hung up.

He hadn't known what to think. All he knew was that she was terribly frightened and that her situation was made all the worse by the very recent deaths of her husband and twelve-year-old son in the crash of a private plane off the coast of California. Considering the physical and emotional toll the combination of these tragic things would have had on her, and with no other information, Marten found it impossible to know if there was any basis at all for her suspicion. Still, the reality was that she was desperately ill and wanted him to be with her. And from everything he'd heard in her voice he knew he'd better get there as quickly as he could.

And he had; within the day flying from Manchester in the north of England to London and then on to Washington, D.C., taking a taxi from Dulles International directly to the hospital, and later getting a room at a hotel nearby. That Caroline knew who he really was and the risk she dared subject him to by asking him to come back into the United States had not been brought up. It wasn't necessary. She would never have asked if something wasn't terribly wrong.