An explosion in the middle of the night reduces part of Paris' esteemed Pasteur Institute to rubble. Among the missing is the world's top computer scientist, Emile Chambord. Even though a terrorist group claims responsibility for the bombing, many in the intelligence community suspect the scientist was actually kidnapped and the bomb set to divert attention. Chambord may have been close to devising a working molecular computer which, in the wrong hands, could be the most deadly weapon in the world. If he were now in the hands of hostile forces, the consequences would be unspeakably dire.

When a sample of smallpox from Russia's cache of bioweapons is smuggled into the United States, Jon Smith and his colleagues must unravel the mystery of the Cassandra Compact and recover or destroy the virus - before the power of Armageddon falls into the hands of a madman.

On the dark waterside docks of Shanghai, a photographer is recording cargo being secretly loaded when he's brutally killed and his camera destroyed. Shortly thereafter Covert-One director Fred Klein brings the word to the 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. Klein is ordered to get the President solid proof of what the Chinese ship is ferrying.

A car explodes along a quiet Prague side street—among the dead is an undercover Treadstone agent. It's not unusual for such men to meet their fates on an operation, but in this case there's one catch. None of his superiors know what he was doing there.

In the first installment of an exciting new series from Robert Ludlum, a teenage girl in Atlanta, an Army major in California, and a homeless man in Boston all die a horrible and painful sudden death from the devastating effects of an unknown virus. Join the search for the truth behind the deadly virus in this heart-stopping listen!