As he tottered through the darkened gardens toward the looming bulk of the Hot Zone, weariness overcame him with an evil metabolic rush. His day’s experiences suddenly struck him as being totally insane. He’d been abducted, gassed, bombed; he’d traveled hundreds of miles in cheerless, battered vehicles; he’d concluded an unsavory alliance with a powerful gang of social outcasts; he’d been libeled, accused of embezzlement and criminal flight across state boundaries.... He’d arrested a group of police; he’d talked an armed fugitive into surrendering.... And now his sometime lover and his dangerously unbalanced security director were uniting to plot behind his back.