TWO DAYS AFTER Edwards' death, his office manager died. Heart failure. Age thirty-two.

     One day after that, a twenty-year-old college student -- moonlighting as a custodian with the company that had the cleaning contract for Edwards’ building -- died. Massive heart failure.

     With each succeeding death, suspicion grew. 

     Ruskjer sent a team to look for the original pardons. 

     “Look, but don’t touch” were his specific instructions.

     They did look, didn’t touch, and found the suspected documents still open on the credenza behind Edwards’ desk. Using industrial-strength gloves, they put the documents in a hermetically-sealed envelope and flew them to a toxicology lab in Germany -- at least that’s what it looked like happened if one wasn’t watching closely.

     On the off chance someone was watching, the first snatch was a decoy.

     If someone (or ones) were watching, they would have seen the original documents pushed behind the credenza. 

     Seven hours later, they would have seen someone -- dressed in the garb of a custodian, with gloves -- pick up the originals and fly them to a different lab in Hong Kong.