Prologue

The shades at the window were hastily lowered. Then a light glowed in the room.

It gleamed off glass jars, the steel surface of the table, the chair, and the surgical instruments on a steel tray.

"It is too soon. I told you… you must give the incisions time to heal."

"Four weeks! It has been long enough!" Then, "You have been well paid for your time and your expertise."

"I cannot guarantee there won't be repercussions…"

He cut him off. "I have not paid you for guarantees. Only results. Now, get on with it, and I will be on my way."

"You must continue to rest. To do this now might well ruin everything."

"I do not need your advice, only that you finish this now."

It began, slowly, carefully, each bandage loosened then removed. One by one, discarded.

Then another bandage removed as the face of the man in the chair gradually emerged. Another bandage just below the eyes was peeled away and revealed high cheekbones and a patrician nose.

One more, the hand that held the bandage trembling, as full lips were revealed, and curved in a smile after the weeks of waiting, and the chiseled chin beneath with a sparse growth of beard upon the barely healed skin.

Six weeks he'd waited… Longer, truth be known.

The search, the risk, and the deception was close at hand.

"Mirror!" he demanded as the last bandage was removed.

It was thrust into his hand and he stared at the reflection, the arch of the brows, the nose, cheeks with only thin scars remaining at the hairline.

He slowly smiled, testing the feel of it, the look of it. Perfect.

For weeks he'd waited, planned, fought his way through the pain, paced the flat where he'd hidden himself away, going out only at night to come here so that the bandages could be changed.

A genius, he was told of the man he'd found. A man who could work miracles. And he had.

Only one thing remained to be done, he thought, as he grabbed the man by the front of the surgeon's coat, seized the knife from the steel tray and plunged it into the man's throat.

The surgeon flailed, a stunned expression on his face, blood spurting from the wound as he stared at his creation.

Newly shaped lips curved in a smile as he slowly lowered him to the floor.

The surgeon wouldn't be found right away, in this secret place where he worked his little miracles. But it didn't matter.

There were no records, no names written anywhere. He had seen to it with each payment that bought the surgeon's skill and his silence for the experimental procedure.

What was one more death, when the most important one waited?

He seized the bandages and threw them in the coal stove, then slipped on the pristine white shirt from the exclusive tailor's shop. The only blood was in a pool surrounding the good doctor.

Then he scattered the other instruments, threw the jars to the floor, and tore books from the shelves— including the book he'd read about the procedure, as old as the Egyptians.

When he was finished it looked as if there had been a robbery, the physician murdered in the midst of it. Not uncommon in that part of London.

He donned the cravat then his long coat and hat, taking care with the freshly healed skin on each side of his head and neck.

Then, out the door, the misty night air redolent with the stench that was almost constant in London, the sliver of dawn at the embankment.

After months, countless meetings, planning, and the painful surgeries and recovery that had followed, it was finally time to set their plan in motion…