When a John Doe with a bayonet wound in his chest is discovered in a Washington, D.C. alley, geneticist Dr. Alexandra Blake of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology is pulled away from her bioterrorism work to aid in the investigation. Just a little digging reveals a corpse that's not at all that of the homeless robbery victim it was set up to resemble---and Alex and her colleagues find themselves wrapped up in a complicated mystery of high-stakes international financial intrigue. The homicide investigation is just heating up when a political firestorm erupts over the AFIP's possession of human skulls brought back from Vietnam thirty years earlier by American servicemen. Alex is handed the delicate task of managing the restoration and return of these grisly souvenirs.
