Covert-One series

The Covert-One series is a sequence of thriller novels written by several authors in conjunction with Robert Ludlum. The books feature a team of political and technical experts, belonging to a top-secret U.S. agency called Covert-One, who fight corruption,conspiracy and bioweaponary at the highest and most dangerous levels of society.

List of books

1. The Hades Factor (with Gayle Lynds) (2000)
2. The Cassandra Compact (with Phillip Shelby) (2001)
3. The Paris Option (with Gayle Lynds) (2002)
4. The Altman Code (with Gayle Lynds) (2003)
5. The Lazarus Vendetta (with Patrick Larkin) (2004)
6. The Moscow Vector (with Patrick Larkin) (2005)
7. The Arctic Event (with James H. Cobb) (2007)
8. The Ares Decision (with Kyle Mills) (2011)

Characters

• Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Jonathan 'Jon' Jackson Smith, M.D.: Jon Smith was born and raised in Council Bluffs, Iowa, graduated from the University of Iowa, and attended medical school at the University of California at Los Angeles. His career is varied—a military doctor in MASH units, operative in military intelligence, and a troop commander. During the First Gulf War, he was a battlefield surgeon, and he served a short time in Somalia. In the opening book of the series, The Hades Factor, he is a research scientist with USAMRIID, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, located at Fort Detrick, Maryland. During his time there, he became engaged to another research scientist, Sophia Russell. At the end of the first novel, he's approached to join a brand-new, independent, highly secret agency called Covert-One.
• Randi Russell: Randi is the younger sister of Dr. Sophia Russell, Smith's fiancée who dies in The Hades Factor. She is a skilled operative working for the CIA, and is often seconded by Covert-One to assist Smith in his endeavors. In many cases, it is by simple chance that she encounters Jon Smith. She is known to resent Smith for his failure to save her fiancé, a major in the U.S. Army, and also for failing to save her sister Sophia. In The Arctic Event, the head of Covert-One flags Randi as a possible recruit for his agency, finally taking her in during The Ares Decision.
• Martin 'Marty' Joseph Zellerbach: Marty is a computer expert with Asperger syndrome. He is very helpful in The Hades Factor and in The Paris Option. He also makes a short appearance in The Ares Decision.
• Peter Howell: Howell is a British national, a former-Special Air Service officer and known for working with a number of intelligence agencies, including the CIA and MI6. He is an old friend of Jon Smith's, appearing in six novels, but absent from The Altman Code, The Moscow Vector and The Arctic Event. He has a secluded home in the U.S., which contains a command center and a sizeable armory. Like Randi Russell, Howell usually encounters Smith purely by chance, except in The Ares Decision, where he is recruited by Smith for a mission.
• Nathaniel Frederick 'Fred' Klein: An obscure government agent with experience with the CIA and the Pentagon, Fred Klein is selected by President Sam Castilla to set up Covert-One, after the devastating effects of Victor Tremont's Hades Project. Klein is an extremely secretive man, and almost nothing is known about him. He often counsels the president directly, advising him on what to do.
• Samuel Adams 'Sam' Castilla: Castilla is the President of the United States in all Covert-One novels, an experienced and wise diplomat and politician. After he and his numerous intelligence agencies failed to prevent the Hades Project before it killed thousands, Castilla orders Fred Klein, an old college friend, to set up Covert-One, an elite agency and the personal action arm of Castilla, to combat such national security threats. Though several have their suspicions, Castilla is the only man outside of Covert-One who knows of its existence.
• Major General Oleg Kirov: Kirov is a former officer of the KGB, a self-proclaimed 'new Russian', who now operates as a senior intelligence officer at the Federal Security Service. Kirov appears in The Cassandra Compact, and also in The Moscow Vector. In both cases, he assists Lieutenant Colonel Smith in succeeding, even though in his second appearance, the enemy Smith is fighting is Kirov's own government.
• Professor Valentina Metrace: Metrace is a professor of Warfare at Cambridge who is a special weapons expert. Her first appearance is in The Arctic Event.
• Maggie Templeton : Ex-CIA, she's Fred Klein's secretary, executive assistant and second in charge of Covert-One. She appears in The Altman Code.

Plot summaries

The Hades Factor

The first major crisis in Jon Smith's life was the Hades Project, a deadly and sinister viral experiment. The virus was first tested upon six soldiers and six Iraqis during the First Gulf War. Many years later, three people—a Vietnam Veteran, a young teenage girl, and a Gulf War Army Major all die of disturbing and unnatural causes. In the novel, co-written with Gayle Lynds, the virus, though not easily transmittable, spreads across the world, killing nearly half a million people. Sophia Russell, Jon Smith's fiancée and coworker, recognizes some of the symptoms as being similar to the Monkey Blood Virus that she discovered in Peru along with Victor Tremont. After confronting Tremont, she begins to develop the symptoms of the virus.

Meanwhile, Jon is returning to Fort Detrick after an assignment and is attacked by a number of rogue assassins, whom he dispatches after a couple of close shaves, much to the surprise of their leader, Nadal al-Hassan. Upon returning, he finds Sophia horribly sick. Despite all efforts to resuscitate her and to treat her, Sophia dies within less than three hours after being discovered. Upon performing an autopsy, and exploring more deeply into it, it is discovered that she was murdered by a lethal injection to the ankle injected by Nadal.

Enraged, Jon Smith vows revenge upon the killer, and teams up with Randi Russell, Sophia's sister and a CIA operative, and Peter Howell, a former British MI6 agent, in order to find out who is behind the deadly virus and Sophia's murder. Despite desperate efforts, Jon is quickly deemed a rogue by the United States government; thus, in addition to trying to discover the killer, he must avoid the government by all possible means. Along with Marty Zellerbach, a computer genius with Asperger syndrome, Jon Smith discovers that Victor Tremont, Deputy Director of a medical company has been trying to infect people with the virus through its widespread distribution through antibiotics. After revealing the truth to the world in front of the President of the United States, Samuel Adams Castilla, Jon Smith captures Victor Tremont and holds him until he is arrested.

Despite charges being dropped against him, Jon resigns from USAMRIID. An enigmatic man by the name of Nathaniel Frederick Klein approaches him later and asks him to join Covert-One. Jon, having found a new reason to live, agrees.

The Hades Factor was made into a CBS miniseries, Covert One: The Hades Factor, which appeared in the United States in 2006.

The Cassandra Compact

After a 30-year career that engendered dozens of bestselling novels of international intrigue, Ludlum died in the spring of 2001, just before publication of The Cassandra Compact, the second title in the Covert-One biotech series, and co-written with Philip Shelby.

After a long absence from the United States Army Military Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID, a real military organization), Jon Smith continues to wander without meaning in his life, upset by the death of his fiancée, Sophia Russell. After meeting Sophia's old childhood friend, Megan Olson, an astronaut and scientist, he has begun to rethink his destiny.

The head of Covert-One, a relatively innocuous man by the name of Nathaniel "Fred" Klein, approaches Jon for his first assignment: the extraction of a Russian military scientist named Yuri Danko, whom, by coincidence, is also a good friend of Jon. Although Jon reaches Yuri and exchanges words with him, Danko is murdered by a pair of Sicilian assassins. Peter Howell – a former SAS officer and MI6 operative – acts as backup support for Jon, and quickly recovers a document off of Danko's body. Upon analysis, they realize that Danko tried to warn them about the theft of a smallpox sample from Russia's Bioaparat biological disease research center.

Jon travels to Moscow, where he meets Randi Russell, the sister of his dead fiancée and a CIA agent currently under the guise of a Moscow venture capitalist looking to recruit gifted young Russian trainees as computer analysts for the Central Intelligence Agency. She gives him the name of General Kirov as a trustworthy government liaison. After meeting Smith and being warned about the situation, he and his lieutenant/lover Lara Telegin warn the Russian president about the impending theft. Immediate orders are given to secure Bioaparat.

A Russian guard, however, steals the smallpox sample and gives to Ivan Beria, a Serbian terrorist who is being paid to take the smallpox out of the country. Beria treacherously murders the guard and immediately passes off the sample to Dr. Adam Treloar, a NASA scientist traveling to Russia under the pretense of visiting his dead mother.

At this point, Telegin has been exposed as the traitor within Russia's military, who warned the guard about the cordon to be set at Bioaparat. Kirov, devastated, agrees to help Smith out under all circumstances. They capture an image of Beria and Treloar on tape. Through computer enhancements done by Randi's protégé, Sasha, Treloar is exposed and comes within seconds of being captured by Smith.

Treloar has been secretly working for Dylan Reed, another NASA scientist and colleague of Megan Olson. Reed in turn has been working for Dr. Karl Bauer, the CEO of Bauer-Zermatt A.G., a pharmaceutical company known for its philanthropy – and its secrets during Nazi Germany in World War II. Bauer's allies in the U.S. Government, General Frank Richardson and Deputy Director of the NSA, Anthony Price are the main players in the scheme of the convoluted Cassandra Compact, which revolves around modifying the smallpox into a doomsday virus to use against the enemies of the United States.

Beria is ordered to kill Treloar, who is considered the weak link and a possible liability. After Smith recognizes a connection to NASA, Reed panics and orders Beria to kill Smith. Kirov and Smith, however, anticipating Beria's actions, disable Beria and interrogate him.

Meanwhile, Peter Howell discovers – after a failed attempt on his life – that the U.S. Military is connected to this entire scheme. He also uncovers the name of a Swiss financier who handles the money used by Karl Bauer, and with the help of Smith, he helps uncover the identity of Bauer as the leader of the entire scheme.

Randi, meanwhile, with the help of her protege Sasha, unlocks the files of the Cassandra Compact found upon Telegin's laptop, and pinpoints Richardson and Price as the moles in the United States government working for Bauer. Smith decoys both men into revealing their secrets to the President, and the moles are killed by a trap made by a team of Klein.

Reed smuggles the smallpox onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, which is bedecked as a laboratory to monitor bacteriological phenomena in space. After the launch, Reed secretly modifies the smallpox to become larger and much more potent, gaining the ability to kill within minutes instead of weeks. He releases the smallpox onboard, killing most of the crew except for Megan Olson, who is revealed to be a Covert-One agent as well.

After shuttle lands back on Earth, Jon rescues Megan. Bauer, who kills Reed to keep the secret of the smallpox safe, takes the sample but is locked inside the spacecraft by Jon Smith. The auto-destruct sequence destroys the spacecraft, along with the doomsday strain and Karl Bauer, ending the Cassandra Compact. Megan, counted among the dead upon shuttle Discovery, is given a new identity and is reshaped by plastic surgery. The novel ends with Jon Smith laying flowers on Yuri Danko's grave – without whom the world would now be at the mercy of a madman.

The Paris Option

This third Covert-One was co-written with spy novelist Gayle Lynds, who helped to create the Covert-One series.

A horrific explosion destroys the Paris lab of computer genius Emile Chambord on the eve of his breakthrough in the development of a revolutionary molecular DNA computer that has the ability to control virtually all the world's computerized operations. Overnight, military satellites, international data banks and worldwide communications threaten to crash. Faced with the enormity of this malevolent power play, Dr. Jon Smith sets out to find the perpetrators. Arriving in Paris just as Chambord's daughter, Therese, is being abducted, Smith trails the terrorists to Toledo, Spain, then back to Paris, Algeria, and finally France again, where French nationalists are secretly planning to use the remarkable computer to initiate a nuclear attack on the United States.

The Paris Option was a People magazine "Beach Read of the Week."

The Altman Code

In the middle of the night, on the dark waterside docks of Shanghai, a photographer is recording cargo being secretly loaded when he’s brutally killed by a man named Feng Dun and his camera destroyed. Shortly thereafter, Covert-One director Fred Klein brings word to the U.S. President that there’s a Chinese cargo ship rumored to be carrying tons of chemicals to be used by a rogue nation to create new biological weapons.

The President cannot let the ship land and risk the consequences of a new stockpile of deadly chemical weapons. Klein is ordered to get the President solid proof of what the Chinese ship is ferrying.

Covert-One agent Jon Smith is sent to rendezvous in Taiwan with another agent who has acquired the ship’s true manifest. But before Smith can get the document, the two agents are ambushed, the second agent, Avery Mondragon, is murdered, the proof is destroyed, and Smith escapes with only his life, scant clues to the mystery behind the cargo ship, and a verbal message—the President’s biological father is still alive, held prisoner by the Chinese for fifty years.

As the Chinese cargo ship draws ever closer to its end port in Iraq, Smith must race against the clock to uncover the truth about the ship and its cargo, a truth that probes the deepest secrets of the Chinese ruling party, the faction in Washington working to undermine the elected government, and the international cabal who is thrusting the world to the very brink of war.

A strength of the book is the insider information about how the Chinese government works. It was co-written with Gayle Lynds.

The Lazarus Vendetta

Co-written with Patrick Larkin, the novel follows the Lazarus Movement, the dominant force in the eco-conscious, "anti-technology" protest movement. It has sent rumblings down the halls of the world's intelligence agencies. Led by a mysterious, never-seen figure known only as Lazarus, this increasingly prominent group is believed by some to be preparing a bold strike.

When an attack on nano-technology research facility leaves thousands dead – protesters and scientists alike – from what appears to be a cloud of inadvertently released, but gruesomely deadly nanobots, pandemonium reigns. Lt. Col. Jon Smith is activated by Covert-One to find and uncover the truth about Lazarus where all others have failed. As Smith slowly uncovers the deadly underpinnings of the group, he soon learns that the Lazarus Movement is only the very tip of the iceberg in a deadly scheme that threatens billions of lives and will forever change the nature of the world itself.

The Moscow Vector

Determined to rebuild their shattered empire, Russia's increasingly authoritarian leaders led by Viktor Dudarev are preparing a lightning military strike designed to overrun several republics formerly part of the USSR before the West can intervene. To succeed, they must first sow confusion and fear in the ranks of their enemies, so they turn to Konstantin Malkovic who is one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men. By taking on the services of a cold and calculating bioscientist from the remnants of the old East German days, he finances the development of an undetectable, unstoppable and incurable bioweapon, the perfect assassin's tool. Created using a microsopic strand of each victim's own DNA, it is the ultimate silent killer. This bioweapon is used against leaders, analysts and other persons dangerous to the plans to great effect such that the Covert-One operatives need to act quickly to. Jon Smith, approached by a Russian doctor about this disease, uncovers the plans of the Russian leaders whilst at the same time CIA operatives are closing in from another lead they have discovered. Moles and informers in various agencies leave make the whole plot far more interesting than would otherwise be the case, but there is a final sting in the tail...

The book was co-written with Patrick Larkin.

The Arctic Event

Lost for several years in the Arctic, a mysterious World War II-era aircraft is located by research crews. The Russian Federation is forced to acknowledge that the Soviet strategic bomber was a mobile biological weapons platform, carrying over two metric tons of weaponized Anthrax.

Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith is called into action by Covert-One to ascertain if the plane is intact and recover it, assisted by CIA officer Randi Russell and weapons expert Professor Valentina Metrace, as well as the secretive Russian liaison, Major Gregori Smyslov. However, the objective is hard to accomplish in the frigid landscape with his team fighting two enemies, ones they cannot see and ones in their own ranks.

The book was co-written with James H. Cobb.

The Ares Decision

In Northern Uganda an American Special Forces Team is wiped out by a group of normally peaceful farmers. Video of the attack shows even women and children possessing almost supernatural speed and strength, consumed with a rage that makes them immune to pain, fear, and all but the most devastating injuries. Colonel Jon Smith is sent by Covert-One to investigate and discovers evidence of a parasitic infection in the area that for centuries has been causing violent insanity and then going dormant. But this time the infection is being manipulated by the man. The director of Iranian intelligence is in Uganda trying to acquire a sample of the parasite to make it into a biological weapon to unleash on the West. While trying to stop the deadly plot, Smith and his team are cut off from outside support; however, they soon realize that they must face not only Iranians, but other, more powerful enemies, conspiring behind the scenes from the inner circles of Washington itself.

The novel was co-written with Kyle Mills.

References