Malibu, California. The sun has just come up and there is no fog along the beach. Suddenly all hell breaks loose. Retired Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Richard Greene's wife, Jenny, discovers the gruesome corpse of a man wedged between rocks at the foot of a cliff. There should have been blood, lots of it, because one of the man's legs is missing, severed just below the hip, the frayed edges of his jeans exposing a fresh stump. All identification, including fingerprints, has been removed, the only clue, a peculiar hand-embroidered design on the right-rear pocket of his jeans. Was it a revenge killing, a hate crime, the work of a satanic cult? Inspector Greene, in L.A. to deliver the keynote speech at the International Forensics Symposium, suspects the bizarre presentation is the work of ALOPEX, master of disguise, scourge of Scotland Yard, purposely designed to draw the Inspector into another deadly game of chess. When Alopexs's first taunting postcard arrives, the Inspector's worst suspicions are confirmed.
Alopex's victims are always members of the medical profession who have through financial influence or membership in the "old boy's club," circumvented the judicial system, their patient's deaths never avenged. His latest victim, Dr. Louis Bronsib, a lustful egomaniac, covets a Nobel Prize at any price. In bed with organized crime, he ruthlessly tests an untried AIDS vaccine in Africa where he becomes Alopex's quarry.
When the young son of a Greek shipping magnate dies after mistakenly receiving a bone-marrow transplant containing hyped AIDS-virus instead of Bronsib's "miracle designer genes," maliciously added by one of Bronsib's discarded lovers, Bronsib becomes the target of a mob-style hit while fishing in Capri.
Taban, Alopex's partner in crime, accidentally overhears the plot to kill Bronsib.