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Robert Ludlum lives. There were those who believed that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ludlum and other spy craft practitioners would quietly fade away, having no credible villain to frame a novel around. Such true believers forgot that evil always exists; it merely takes different forms. Ludlum's work continued apace and --- as is amply evident by THE MOSCOW VECTOR and its predecessors --- even survived his passing, with the able assistance of Patrick Larkin.
THE MOSCOW VECTOR is the latest of the Covert-One novels. Covert-One arose from a concept created by Ludlum shortly before his death. It is a secret organization answering only to the President of the United States, a group that quietly goes about the business of protecting the government and the documents and principles upon which it is built while operating outside of it. THE MOSCOW VECTOR arguably is the best volume in the series to date, and not because of the principals involved, who include the reliably competent Dr. Jon Smith and the quietly enchanting but dangerous Fiona Devlin. Nor is the startle factor of this tale provided by Wulf Renke, the mad scientist who is the method by which Victor Dudarev, the President of Russia, intends to bring about the reinstitution of the Soviet Union with the involuntary involvement of the former member states.
Rather, the real star of THE MOSCOW VECTOR is the ingeniously dangerous weapon that Dudarev is using to put his plan into motion. It is a bio-weapon (not a virus) tailored to strike a particular individual's DNA, destroying silently and insidiously from within, while leaving no trace of its passage. It's a brilliant concept that's frightening in its potential. The targets of this lethal instrument are U.S. intelligence analysts, the duly-elected leaders of the former Soviet satellites --- and a certain leader of the free world who sits in the highest office of the U.S. government. Dudarev's plan is to remove everyone capable of stopping his invasion before it takes place.
Smith, Devlin, and a couple of surprising but familiar assistants are in a race against time, not only to prevent Dudarev from hatching his plot, but also to stop the implementation of the bio-weapon as it moves, slowly but quietly, into place in the White House.
Larkin's always competent and reliable storytelling abilities are augmented here by an ingenious weapons concept that is all the more frightening because of its believability. Those who have never sampled a Covert-One novel will find THE MOSCOW VECTOR an excellent place to begin, as Larkin brings Ludlum's Cold War villains full circle with a 21st century weapon to boot. Recommended.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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