What is a kidney worth?

But as the detectives' coffee cools, they weigh the other side, too. They wonder if rumors about "organjacking" - people being killed for their organs - might be true. Critics say the current system has already jump-started a dangerous commodification of the human body, which could turn the world's slums into reservoirs of body parts for the rich. Today, in Manila's slums, the selling of kidneys has led to sales of lungs and corneas.

As the detectives talk it through, Johan's views develop. "Life is already really cheap in our society," he says later. "People will kill each other for a firearm and a little cash." And if you start giving people money for their kidneys, "you're going to start finding a lot of dead bodies with no organs."

These kinds of gruesome scenarios are what seal Johan's opinion. The detectives get up from the table, strengthened in their resolve to break open the case.

* * *

A few weeks later, Johan adds another plank to his position. As he's eating breakfast, he tunes into an American TV news show. A reporter is interviewing a mother whose 17-year-old son, as Johan recalls, was killed in a car crash. With the mother's consent, doctors salvaged 47 organs and tissues from the boy's body - corneas, kidneys, liver, lungs, heart. "I didn't know they could get that many organs from one body," Johan thinks to himself.

The reporter asks if the mother thinks she should be paid for all the organs her son gave away freely. How could I take money for them? Johan remembers her saying. God gave each of us the body we use when we're alive. He gave it to us for free. How could we charge someone else for part of it? He calls his wife right away.

"This makes more sense to me as a Christian than anything else I've heard," he says to her.

* * *

The detectives have been toiling for months now, slowly piecing the trafficking puzzle together. But in late November they get a major break. The police team gets a call, out of the blue, from an officer at a nearby police station. The cop has two Israelis with him. One is accusing the other of stealing $18,000, and there's something about a kidney. When the detectives later question the two men, they can't believe their ears.

One man, known as S. Zohr, admits he received $18,000 for agreeing to sell his kidney. He'd actually been lying on the operating table at St. Augustine's, just moments away from surrendering his organ to an ailing Israeli man named Agania Robel, when he got spooked. Zohr jumped off the table, grabbed his clothes, and bee-lined for the airport, trying to take the $18,000 with him.

But then, a man named Shushan Meir, who later is charged with being part of the syndicate, called the police and told them Mr. Zohr was stealing the money. Mr. Meir apparently hoped, strangely enough, that the cops would help prevent this illegal deal from going sour. It was the final confirmation the police needed to bust up the ring.

On the morning of Nov. 27, 2003 - a year and a day after Hernani went under the knife - Johan, Helberg, and a police team that includes a photographer and several plainclothes detectives converge on the back parking lot at St. Augustine's. They walk quickly up the hill into the facility's transplant division.

Helberg, the team leader, announces that they have a search warrant and will be seizing files. Johan adds that he's an independent investigator looking into crimes committed under the Human Tissue Act. He doesn't need a search warrant and can look at any of the clinic's files at any time. He steps into a side office where a whiteboard hangs on the wall. Scrawled on it are two names - "A. Robel" and "Rogerio Bezzera" - and today's date.

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