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The late Robert Ludlum was an acknowledged master of the espionage novel. When the
Cold War ended, there were many who felt that Ludlum's run had come to an end, that there
would be no more bad guys to battle for world domination. Ludlum, of course, proved them
dramatically wrong; in addition to an extended run of excellent, post-Cold War novels, he
also initiated the Covert-One series about a shadowy, off-the-books US Agency accountable
only to the President and held in reserve to battle only the most extreme situations
threatening the United States.
THE CASSANDRA COMPACT is the second novel in the Covert-One series and it maintains the
standard established by the inaugural volume, THE HADES FACTOR. THE CASSANDRA COMPACT
opens with Jon Smith, a Covert-One operative, assigned to bring in Yuri Danko. Danko, a
deep-cover Covert-One operative, has made an urgent plea for extraction. Smith makes
contact with Danko but is only able to speak with him for a few moments before Danko is
gunned down by assassins --- leaving Smith with no idea as to what prompted Danko's
request or resulted in his death.
Smith and Covert-One soon learn that Danko uncovered a plot to steal one of the world's
two remaining samples of the smallpox virus from its safeguarded holding in Russia. The
people behind the theft do not have benevolent research in mind. They want to mutate the
smallpox virus into a fast acting, effective, and lethal biological weapon. And these are
not your garden variety terrorists, either --- they have ties to the highest levels of the
US Government and are using the nation's space program to further their goals. Smith and
other Covert-One operatives --- who are, for the most part, unaware of each other's
identities --- are in a race against time to trace the path of the virus samples and to
prevent the experiments from bearing fruit.
There are those who say that the next war will not be fought with bullets, but with
microbes. Given recent world events, Ludlum and Shelby's plot begins to look like a
plausible scenario. Notwithstanding the fall of the Soviet Union, it has become obvious
that a plethora of dangers, both within and without the country, still exist. Although
Ludlum is regrettably no longer with us, his ideas and his books will live on.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
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