On a remote island in Central America Dr Romer has secretly built a clinic like no other. His patients are the elite of the crime world - Mafia bosses, Triad leaders, the new czars of the Russian criminal fraternity, the lords of the Japanese underworld. For them, he provides organ transplants. And the organs come from the bodies of those killed for that purpose by the sinister organ- isation controlled by the woman known only as Madam. At the annual Nobel prize ceremony, Dr Yoshi Kramer is to receive the Prize for Medicine. And David Morton, UN Special Investigator, is taking a particular interest. For only Morton knows that Yoshi has a heart condition and needs urgent surgery...