Robert Ludlum's the Cassandra Compact

Robert Ludlum's the Cassandra Compact by Ludlum, Robert. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781587240751.

In Robert Ludlums The Cassandra Compact, Covert-One, the presidents personal, super-secret agency formed after some recent virus-driven chaos (The Hades Factor, co-written with Gayle Lynds), is staffed by an unknown number of international covert operatives, including Dr Jon Smith, late of the USAMRIID. And a good thing, too, because someones helped themselves to Russias share of the worlds last two stores of the smallpox virus, an eradicated yet hideously deadly bug with no ready vaccine. That the pox was nabbed and who nabbed it is clear enough early on. Why such a seemingly large and disparate cadre of global citizens (keeping the players straight puts one in mind of Abbott and Costellos "Whos on First" routine) chose to pinch the bug and for what end are the novels driving questions. Freelance Serbian uber-nasty, Ivan Beria, is among the apparent perpetrators as are Dylan Reed and Adam Treloar of NASA, Tony Price, the head of the super-secret NSA and a bunch of Russians. The good-guys roster claims Smith, Covert-Ones head Nathaniel Klein, Briton and ex-SAS man Peter Howell, Smiths deceased girlfriends sister and CIA operative Randi Russell, the girlfriends best friend, backup shuttle astronaut Megan Olson and another bunch of Russians. Suffice it to say that Smith and company trot the globe, cat-and-mousing after the pox and in so doing careen through a classically speedy and Ludlumesque (if coincidence dependent) plot leaving large numbers of efficiently dispatched corpses in their wake. --Michael Hudson