“Everyone loves a conspiracy.”
- Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
Six:thirty-seven p.m. Same day. At the office of the Secretary of the Central
Records and Investigation Bureau.
Gazing from her office window at the sea of faces stranded outside by the
converging traffic, Secretary Dilema emphatically shook her head once again in dismay,
then turned to face the attorney sitting right across the conference table where, minutes
before, a briefing of the theft of the Comb of Lerma had all but ended.
The two had been the only ones left in the spacious and conveniently
airconditioned press room.
The woman in her late fifties, who had been known in most government circles as
a figure of utmost integrity, had been at a loss with the present case and, so, had felt the
need to set up this in
