Covert-One returns in the thrilling new series from the bestselling master of international suspense For over thirty years, Robert Ludlum has been acknowledged as the master of international suspense and intrigue. With an unbroken string of bestsellers in nearly every country around the world, his audios have been heard by tens of millions of listeners. In 2000, Ludlum managed to raise the bar yet again with his widely acclaimed bestsellers The Prometheus Deception and Robert Ludlum's The Hades Factor, the first novel in his exciting new 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. Lt. 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 to Smith the vital intelligence-someone is out to steal Russia's store of the smallpox virus. Completely irradiated, 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.
The author of the spine-tingling thrillers Days of Drums and Last Rights has written his most complex tale yet, that of an innocent caught in the vortex of international political intrigue. Powered by characters whose ambition and cunning make them intolerant of any threat to their conspiracies, Gatekeeper also features a labyrinthine stage -- from the chambers of the American embassy in Paris and the North African ghetto of Marseilles to the glittering avenues and back alleys of New York City.
Hollis Fremont has recently arrived in Paris to begin her job as a "visa slave" at the American consulate. Her return to the City of Light forces her to revisit tragedy: the mysterious assassination of her parents by a sniper's bullets fifteen years earlier. Hollis, an unprepossessingly beautiful young woman, soon attracts the notice of Paul McGann, deputy chief of mission, whose ardent attention to Hollis is matched by his violent temper and calculating treatment of anyone who crosses his path. Hollis's involvement with McGann will accidentally reveal to her the elaborate and clandestine paragovernmental alliances colluding to create a new world order -- one in which certain high-level officials and unfortunate individuals, including Hollis herself, are set in the sights of a hired gun.
This implacable killer is called the Handyman. His relentless, and anonymous, pursuit of Hollis sends her on an international flight. As she struggles to elude the Handyman and his colleagues, it becomes evident that she can trust no one, not even those whose confidences she holds most dear.
From the opening scene in an assassin's hideout to the cataclysmic climax at the Statue of Liberty, Gatekeeper is electrifying. Like Mitch McDeere in The Firm, Hollis Fremont becomes snared in the carnage of a zero-sum game that is hopelessly beyond her control. In the face of murder, betrayal, and desperate ambition, her only weapon is her desire for vengeance and justice.
From the author of the stunning bestseller Days of Drums comes a novel of Washington intrigue that thrusts the reader into a whirlwind of murder spawned by elaborately masked scandals in the corridors of power.
When General Griffin North, a highly decorated African American icon, is killed in a suspicious plane crash, the special commission, led by renowned federal judge Simon Esterhaus, deems it a tragic accident caused by pilot error.
But Mollie Smith of the Criminal Investigation Division vows to keep the investigation alive -- single-handedly and on her own terms, if necessary. Certain the general was assassinated, and keenly aware that certain officials in high places would have stopped at nothing to keep a black man from a possible vice-presidential nomination, Mollie intensifies the pitch of her inquiry.
Then Mollie -- her investigation nearly complete -- is found murdered. Rachel Collins, Mollie's prot and close friend, is left to follow the scent of conspiracy enveloping the dead. With the help of Mollie's brother, Logan, the head of the hermetically-sealed FBI team tracking domestic terrorists, Rachel comes head to head with the Engineer, an ingenious and ruthless killer whose sole goal is to cut short her inquiry -- and her life. For Rachel, this assassin becomes her only link to a conspiracy that is much more deadly and far-reaching than she thought possible. It becomes clear to Rachel that she is marked by a man whose mysterious resources and top-secret information continually help him to thwart her.
From its harrowing first scene to its conclusion, Last Rights is a masterfully crafted thriller spinning around an unforgettable heroine. Phillip Shelby once again demonstrates that he is among the great thriller writers in america today.
