Following "The Hades Factor" and "The Prometheus Deception, " this novel continues the best-selling Covert-One series. Covert-One operative Jon Smith and CIA undercover agent Randi Russell come into possession of a slain Russian security service officer's classified papers. They soon unearth a terrifying global conspiracy that threatens to unleash a plague of immeasurable proportions. National radio ads. TP: St. Martin's Press. (Fiction--Espionage/Thriller) 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 ROBERT LUDLUM was the author of twenty-one novels, each one a New York Times bestseller. There are more than 210 million of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. Ludlum passed away in March 2001.JAMES H. COBB, a longtime mystery/thriller writer, is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound and an avid student of military history and technology. He is a member of the United States Naval Institute and the Navy League. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.