An unknown doomsday virus quickly claims the lives of four people across the country —- including Dr. Sophia Russell, a researcher leading the team trying to crack the disease. Devastated and enraged, her fiancé, Lt. Colonel Jonathan Smith, uncovers evidence that his lover's death was no accident —- that someone out there has the virus, and the pandemic that threatens countless millions of lives was planned. Not knowing where to turn or whom to trust, Smith assembles a private team to aid his fight against the deadly virus. While the death toll mounts rapidly, their quest leads them to the highest levels of power and the darkest corners of the earth, as Smith and his team match wits with a determined genius out to destroy them, with the fate of the world in the balance ...

For over thirty years, Robert Ludlum has been acknowledged as the master of international suspense and intrigue. In 2000, Ludlum managed to raise the bar yet again with his widely acclaimed bestsellers The Prometheus Deception and The Hades Factor, the first novel in his exciting Covert-One series. Now Covert-One is back, in a novel that could only have come from the imagination of the world's greatest storyteller. "What they're going to do, I never would have believed it. It's insanity!" They were 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. In possession of Danko's classified papers, Covert-One operative Jon Smith and CIA undercover agent Randi Russell have unearthed a terrifying global conspiracy that threatens to unleash a plague of immeasurable proportions. A Serb terrorist has been dispatched from Russia to spirit hazardous vials of deadly bacteria into the United States. His mission: deliver it to an unknown American government agent—a shadowy figure whose own motives for acquiring the bioweapon are made all the more unfathomable when both men are found murdered, and the strain is stolen. Now Smith and Russell must 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. Visit the Covert-One Web site: www.CovertOne.com

For thirty years, Robert Ludlum's novels have set the standard for the finest in international intrigue and suspense. With an unbroken string of bestsellers in almost every country in the world, his books have been enjoyed by hundreds of millions of readers and are widely acknowledged as classics in the field. Now, after the bestselling Covert-One novels The Hades Factor and The Cassandra Compact, comes the third thrilling novel in the series. A fiery explosion in the dark of night shatters one of the laboratory buildings in Paris' esteemed Pasteur Institute. Among the dead is Emile Chambord, one of the leaders in the global race to create a molecular or DNA computer. Unfortunately, Professor Chambord kept the details of his work secret, and his notes were apparently destroyed in either the bomb blast or the raging fire that followed. Under the cover of visiting his friend Marty Zellerbach, who was severely injured when the Pasteur lab was destroyed, Covert-One agent Jon Smith flies to Paris to search for the connection between the Pasteur explosion and the forces now wielding the computer. Following a trail that leads him across two continents, Smith uncovers a web of deception that threatens to wreck havoc and forever reshape the world.

When word reaches the President of the United States that a Chinese cargo ship is transporting chemicals to a rogue nation intent on creating new biological weapons, the president knows he must act quick to obtain the proof he needs. Covert-One agent Jon Smith is sent to rendezvous in Taiwan with another agent who has acquired the ship's true manifest. But before Smith can get the document, he is ambushed, the second agent is murdered, and the evidence is destroyed. Smith escapes with only his life and a verbal message-the president's biological father is still alive, held prisoner by the Chinese for fifty years. As the mysterious ship draws closer to its end port, Smith is losing time in uncovering the truth about the vessel and its cargo-a truth that probes the secrets of the Chinese ruling party, the faction in Washington working to undermine the elected government, and the international cabal who is thrusting the world to the brink of war...

For the past three decades Robert Ludlum's bestselling novels have been enjoyed by hundreds of millions of readers worldwide and have set the standard against which all other thrillers are measured. His Covert-One series has been among his most beloved creations and now comes the latest thrilling novel in the series. The Lazarus Movement, the dominant force in the eco-conscious, "anti-technology" protest movement, has sent rumblings down the halls of the world's intelligence agencies. Led by a mysterious, never-seen figure known only as Lazarus, this increasingly prominent group is believed by some to be preparing a bold strike.When an attack on a nano-technology research facility leaves thousands dead—- protestors and scientists alike—-from what appears to be a cloud of inadvertently released but gruesomely deadly nanobots, pandemonium reigns. Lt. Col. Jon Smith is activated by Covert-One to find and uncover the truth about Lazarus where all others have fai

At an international conference in Prague, Lt. Col. Jon Smith, an Army research doctor specializing in infectious diseases and secretly an agent attached to Covert-One, is contacted by a Russian colleague, Dr. Valentine Petrenko. Petrenko is concerned about a small cluster of mysterious deaths in Moscow and about the Russian government's refusal to release publicly any information or data on the outbreak. When the two meet, they are attacked by a group of mysterious men and Petrenko is killed, his notes and medical samples are lost, and Smith barely escapes with his life. At the same time, a series of government officials around the world are coming down with a mysterious, fast-acting virus with a 100% fatality rate. These deaths are somehow related to the increasing militarism from the new Russian government, headed by the autocratic and ambitious President Victor Dudarev. With few clues and precious little time, Smith and Covert-One must unravel this mysterious plot and find the mysterious figure who stands at the center of it all…

On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic, researchers discover the wreckage of a mysterious World War II-era aircraft, a discovery that forces the Russian Federation into a shocking admission. The unmarked plane is a Soviet strategic bomber that disappeared with its crew more than fifty years ago while carrying two metric tons of weaponized anthrax. Desperate to prevent a political and diplomatic firestorm, the U.S. president dispatches a Covert-One team led by Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith to the crash site. But others have reached the frigid, windswept island first, including an international arms dealer and his crew of vicious mercenaries. As for the Russians, they are a second, even deadlier secret rests within the hulk of the lost bomber, a secret the Russians are willing to kill to protect. Trapped in a polar wilderness, Smith and his team find themselves fighting a savage war on two front—against an enemy they can see and another hiding within their own ranks.

With U.S. intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the President was forced to establish his own clandestine group—Covert-One. It is only activated as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is running out.In northern Uganda, an American special forces team is decimated by a group of normally peaceful farmers. Video of the attack shows even women and children possessing almost supernatural speed and strength, consumed with a rage that makes them immune to pain, fear, and all but the most devastating injuries. Covert-One’s top operative, army microbiologist Colonel Jon Smith, is sent to investigate the attack and finds evidence of a parasitic infection that for centuries has been causing violent insanity and then going dormant. This time, though, it’s different. The parasite had been purposely kept alive and crudely transmitted in acts of terrorism. Now the director of Iranian Intelligence is in Uganda trying to obtain this biological weapon to unleash it on the West. Smith and his team are ambushed and cut off from all outside support just as they begin to suspect that forces much more powerful than the Iranians are in play—forces that can be traced to Washington itself.

With U.S. intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the president was forced to establish his own clandestine group—Covert-One. It is activated only as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is running out. It begins with a terrorist attack. Covert-One operative Colonel Jon Smith is attending a conference in The Hague on infectious diseases, together with leading scientists and political figures from around the world. Without warning, the conference hotel is consumed in a bloodbath. Smith is caught in the crossfire and barely escapes . . . but not before discovering a picture of himself and two other targets in the pocket of one of the shooters. But the hotel is not the only location under attack in The Hague. Bombs are going off at the train station, the airport, and the International Criminal Court, where Pakistani warlord Oman Dattar is being held while he's tried for crimes against humanity. In the resulting chaos, the prisoner escapes.Dattar nurses a special hatred for the United States and its allies. With his freedom, and access to a mysterious new weapon, Dattar puts in motion a murderous, ambitious plot to exact his revenge and bring down the West once and for all—unless Covert-One can stop him.

With U.S. intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the president has been forced to establish his own clandestine group—Covert-One. It's activated only as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is running out.When Dresner Industries unveils the Merge, a device that is destined to revolutionize the world and make the personal computer and smartphone obsolete, Covert-One operative Colonel Jon Smith is assigned to assess its military potential. He discovers that enhanced vision, real-time battlefield displays, unbreakable security, and near-perfect marksmanship are only the beginning of a technology that will change the face of warfare forever—and one that must be kept out of the hands of America's enemies at all costs. Meanwhile, in the mountains of Afghanistan, CIA operative Randi Russell encounters an entire village of murdered Afghans—all equipped with enhanced Merge technology that even the Agency didn't know existed. As Smith and Russell delve into the circumstances surrounding the Afghans' deaths, they're quickly blocked by someone who seems to have access to the highest levels of the military—a person that even the president knows nothing about. Is the Merge really as secure as its creator claims? And what secrets about its development is the Pentagon so desperate to hide? Smith and Russell are determined to learn the truth. But they may pay for it with their lives.

On one evening in Washington, DC, several high-ranking members of government disappear in a mass kidnapping. Among the kidnapped is Nick Rendel, a computer software coding expert in charge of drone programming and strategy. He is the victim with the most dangerous knowledge, including confidential passwords and codes that are used to program the drones. If revealed, his kidnappers could reprogram the drones to strike targets within the United States.Jon Smith and the Covert One team begin a worldwide search to recover the officials, but as the first kidnapping victims are rescued, they show disturbing signs of brainwashing or mind-altering drugs. Smith's investigation leads him to Fort Detrick, where a researcher, Dr. Laura Taylor, had been attempting to create a drug to wipe memory from soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. But Dr. Taylor's research was suspended almost a year ago, when she was placed in a mental institution. Now, if Smith doesn't figure out the brainwashing drug, and track down the kidnapped Nick Rendel, the kidnappers will soon have the power to carry out drone strikes anywhere in the world....

Robert Ludlum's bestselling Covert-One series continues with an exciting new novel by New York Times bestselling author Kyle Mills. An attack on a Japanese warship brings Japan and China to the brink of war. Meanwhile, top Covert-One operative Colonel Jon Smith is sent on a mission to recover mysterious material from the wreckage of the Fukushima nuclear reactor.When Smith fails to return, CIA agent Randi Russell heads off on an unsanctioned mission to find him. She quickly discovers that the missing samples may be evidence that Japan, led by hawkish military chief of staff Masao Takahashi, has been secretly developing next-generation weapon systems in preparation for a conflict with China. If the Covert-One team can't prevent General Takahashi from provoking a war, the entire world will be dragged into a battle certain to kill tens of millions of people and leave much of planet uninhabitable for centuries.