Covert-One is the United States president’s personal, supersecret intelligence group, unknown even to the CIA, NSA, the Secret Service, or Pentagon.
Cassandra picks up Smith a year later, burying a diamond ring under Sophia’s gravestone, where he meets Dr Megan Olson, another biochemist and Sophia’s colleague who has switched from jobs with the NIH and WHO to being the first alternate on the next space-shuttle mission. Will she be his new love, or will it be Sophia’s sister in Moscow, Randi Russell, who is the undercover CIA agent?
Now, in possession of Danko's classified papers, Smith and Russell have unearthed a terrifying global conspiracy. A Serb terrorist, backed by Russians, is on a mission to spirit hazardous vials of deadly Smallpox virus to a US government agent - a shadowy figure whose motives for acquiring the bioweapon are made all the more unfathomable when both men hired to ferry the vials are found murdered - and the strain is stolen.
Freelance Serbian assassin, Ivan Beria, is among the apparent perpetrators as are Dylan Reed and Adam Treloar of NASA, Tony Price, the head of the super-secret NSA, an army general and a bunch of Russians.
Suffice it to say that Smith and company trot the globe in a cat-and-mouse chase after the pox to prevent the virus from being stolen and in so doing, careen through a classically speedy and thrilling plot, leaving large numbers of corpses in their wake. The fight includes a nerve-wrenching battle on board the Space Shuttle between Olson and Reed.
Another interesting thriller that will certainly keep readers on the edge of their seat till the last page.
● Check out Robert Ludlum’s bio @ Biography.