Robert Ludlum's The Cassandra Compact: A Covert-One Novel

Ludlum, Robert; Shelby, Philip

ISBN 10: 1427201307 ISBN 13: 9781427201300

Publisher: Macmillan Audio, 2007

Synopsis

Colonel Jon Smith, currently working as a medical researcher, is contacted by a Russian colleague with an urgent request that they meet in Venice in ten days. When they meet, however, his colleague is killed almost instantly in a hail of automatic gunfire but not before he passes on to Smith the vital intelligence--someone is out to steal Russia's store of the smallpox virus. Completely eradicated, smallpox is the deadliest of viruses and could well cause an epidemic of unheard of proportions should it be unleashed on the population at large. Smith, with the help of his colleagues at Covert-One, must prevent the virus from being stolen. But his adversaries are several steps ahead of him and now he must find and stop the conspirators before they loose Armageddon upon the world.

About this title

Review:

Covert-One, the president's personal, super-secret agency formed after some recent virus-driven chaos (The Hades Factor, cowritten with Gayle Lynds), is staffed by an unknown number of international covert operatives, including Dr. Jon Smith, late of the USAMRIID. And a good thing, too, because someone's helped themselves to Russia's share of the world's last two stores of the smallpox virus, an eradicated yet hideously deadly bug with no ready vaccine.

That the pox was nabbed and who nabbed it is clear enough early on. Why such a seemingly large and disparate cadre of global citizens (keeping the players straight puts one in mind of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine) chose to pinch the bug and for what end are the novel's driving questions. Freelance Serbian uber-nasty, 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, and a bunch of Russians. The good-guys roster claims Smith; Covert- One's head, Nathaniel Klein; Briton and ex-SAS man, Peter Howell; Smith's deceased girlfriend's sister and CIA operative, Randi Russell; the girlfriend's best friend, backup shuttle astronaut Megan Olson; and another bunch of Russians. Suffice it to say that Smith and company trot the globe, cat-and- mousing after the pox and in so doing careen through a classically speedy and Ludlumesque (if coincidence dependent) plot leaving large numbers of efficiently dispatched corpses in their wake.

Most authors of international thriller-mysteries would give their right trench coat to make The New York Times® Best Sellers list. Of the late Robert Ludlum's 21 novels, 21 have resided upon that list. Where The Cassandra Compact, written with bestselling thriller author Philip Shelby (Gatekeeper, etc.), winds up is anyone's guess, but a few hundred thousand nightstands is a good place to start. And stay tuned for more installments--Ludlum may be dead, but he's not done yet. --Michael Hudson

From the Back Cover:

The #1 bestselling master of suspense and international intrigue continues to set the standard against which all other thrillers are measured with his expertly plotted, pulse-pounding Covert-One series.

ROBERT LUDLUM’S™

THE CASSANDRA COMPACT

What they're going to do, I never would have believed it...These were among the final words spoken by Yuri Danko, an officer in the medical division of Russia’s security service, before his body was ripped apart by a spray of assassins’ bullets. Danko’s confidential appointment in Venice with Covert-One operative Jon Smith might have ended in death—but his secret didn’t die with him...

“Reading a ludlum novel is like watching a james bond film...slickly paced...all-consuming.”—Entertainment Weekly

 Now, in possession of Danko’s classified papers, Smith and CIA undercover agent Randi Russell have unearthed a terrifying global conspiracy. A Serb terrorist, backed by Russians, is on a mission to spirit hazardous vials of deadly bacteria to a U.S. government agent—a shadowy figure whose motives for acquiring the bioweapon are made all the more unfathomable when both men are found murdered—and the strain is stolen. Time is running out for Smith and Russell to track it down, find the madman who possesses it, and stop him before he holds a defenseless world hostage with the power to render the human race extinct.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1427201307
• ISBN 13: 9781427201300
• Binding: Audio CD