When Covert-One's top operative Jon Smith wakes in a hotel room, he's staring down the barrel of a gun. The area is under terrorist attack and within minutes, bombs explode right across the city.In this perfectly formulated chaos, criminal warlord Oman Dattar, held for crimes against humanity, escapes while his men attempt to steal a new strain of deadly bacteria being showcased at an international conference. In the wrong hands, it has the power to devastate nations - and Dattar and his men have it firmly in their sights to use in their plot to bring down the West once and for all. Can Jon Smith stop him or is it already too late?

Robert Ludlum launched his career as a bestselling writer with THE SCARLATTI INHERITANCE in 1971, the first of a string of international bestsellers. There are more than 300 million copies of his books in print and they have been translated in 32 languages.