Robert Ludlum's The Altman Code: A Covert-One Novel

by Robert Ludlum, Gayle Lynds

Overview

New York Times Bestselling Series

For three decades, Robert Ludlum's bestselling novels have set the standard in almost every country in the world against which all other novels of international intrigue are measured. Now The Altman Code is the latest volume in the series of novels featuring Robert Ludlum's Covert-One.

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 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. 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 is murdered, the proof is destroyed, and Smith escapes with only his life, scant clues to 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, 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429906722
Publisher:	St. Martin''s Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/01/2007
Series:	Covert-One Series , #4
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	11,742
File size:	535 KB

About the Author

Robert Ludlum is the author of more than twenty internationally bestselling novels, including The Bourne Identity--the basis of the international hit movie--and The Scarlatti Inheritance. His books have been translated into thirty-two languages and, with over two million copies in print, are the standard by which all works of international suspense are judged.



Gayle Lynds is the coauthor of two previous Covert-One novels, The Hades Factor and The Paris Option, as well as several bestselling thrillers on her own: Masquerade, Mosaic, Mesmerized, and the forthcoming The Coil.

Robert Ludlum was the author of 25 thriller novels, including The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum--the books on which the international hit movies were based--and The Sigma Protocol. He was also the creator of the Covert-One series. Born in New York City, Ludlum received a B.A. from Wesleyan University, and before becoming an author, he was a United States Marine, a theater actor and producer.
Gayle Lynds is the bestselling, award-winning author of several international espionage thrillers, including Masquerade, The Coil, and The Last Spymaster. A member of the Association for Intelligence Officers, she is cofounder (with David Morrell) of ITW (International Thriller Writers). She lives in Santa Barbara.

Date of Birth:

May 25, 1927

Date of Death:

March 12, 2001

Place of Death:

Naples, Florida

Education:

B.A., Wesleyan University, 1951

Website:

http://www.ludlumbooks.com/

Read an Excerpt

Friday, September 1, 2002

Shanghai, China

On the north bank of the Huangpu River, giant floodlights glared down on the docks, turning night into day. Swarms of stevedores unloaded trucks and positioned long steel containers for the cranes. Amid the squeals and rasps of metal rubbing metal, the towering cranes lifted the containers high against the starry sky and lowered them into the holds of freighters from across the world. Hundreds streamed in daily to this vital port on China's eastern coast, almost midway between the capital, Beijing, and its latest acquisition, Hong Kong.

To the south of the docks, the lights of the city and the towering Pudong New District glowed, while out on the swirling brown water of the river itself, freighters, junks, tiny sampans, and long trains of unpainted wood barges jostled for position from shore to shore, like traffic on a busy Paris boulevard.

At a wharf near the eastern end of the docks, not far from where the Huangpu curved sharply north, the light was less bright. Here a single freighter was being loaded by one crane and no more than twenty stevedores. The name lettered on the freighter's transom was The Dowager Empress; her home port was Hong Kong. There was no sign of the ubiquitous uniformed dock guards.

Two large trucks had been backed up to her. Sweating stevedores unloaded steel barrels, rolled them across the planks, and set them upright on a cargo net. When the net was full, the crane arm swung over it, and the cable descended. On its end was a steel hook that caught the light and glinted. The stevedores latched the big net to the hook, and the crane swiftly lifted the barrels, wheeled them around, and lowered them to the freighter, where deckhands guided the cargo down into the open hold.

The truck drivers, stevedores, crane operator, and deckhands worked steadily on this distant dock, fast and silent, but not fast enough for the large man who stood to the right of the trucks. His sweeping gaze kept watch from land to river. Unusually pale-skinned for a Han Chinese, his hair was even more unusual--light red, shot with white.

He looked at his watch. His whispery voice was barely audible as he spoke to the foreman of the stevedores: ''You will finish in thirty-six minutes.''

It was no question. The foreman's head jerked around as if he had been attacked. He stared only a moment, dropped his gaze, and rushed away, bellowing at his men. The pace of work increased. As the foreman continued to drive them to greater speed, the man he feared remained a looming presence.

At the same time, a slender Chinese, wearing Reeboks and a black Mao jacket over a pair of Western jeans, slid behind the heavy coils of a hawser in a murky recess of the loading area.
Motionless, almost invisible in the gloom, he studied the barrels as they rolled to the cargo net and were hoisted aboard The Dowager Empress. He removed a small, highly sophisticated camera from inside his Mao jacket and photographed everything and everyone until the final barrel had been lowered into the hold and the only remaining truck was about to be driven away. Turning silently, he hid the camera inside his jacket and crab-walked away from the brilliant lights until he was wrapped again in darkness. He arose and padded across the wood planks from storage box to shed, seeking whatever protection he could find as he headed back toward the road that would return him to the city. A warm night wind whistled above his head, carrying the heavy scent of the muddy river. He did not notice. He was exultant because he would be returning with important information. He was also nervous. These people were not to be taken lightly.

By the time he heard footsteps, he was nearing the end of the wharf, where it met the land. Almost safe.

The large man with the unusual red-and-white hair had been quietly closing in, taking a parallel path among the various supply and work sheds. Calm and deliberate, he saw his target tense, pause, and suddenly hurry.

The man glanced quickly around. To his left was the lost part of the dock, where storage and seagulls found their haven, while on the right was a pathway kept open for trucks and other vehicles to go back and forth to the loading areas. The last truck was behind him, heading this way, toward land. Its headlights were funnels in the night. It would pass soon. As his prey darted behind a tall pile of ropes on the far left, the man pulled out his garotte and sprinted. Before the fellow could turn, the man dropped the thin cord around his neck, yanked, and tightened.

For a long minute, the victim's hands clawed at the cord as it tightened. His shoulders twisted in agony. His body thrashed. At last, his arms fell limp and his head lolled forward.

As the truck passed on the right, the wood dock shuddered. Hidden behind the mountain of p0ropes, the killer lowered the corpse to the planks. He released the garotte and searched the dead man's clothes until he found the camera. Without hurrying, he walked back and retrieved two of the enormous cargo hooks. He knelt by the corpse, used the knife from the holster on his calf to slash open the belly, buried the points of the iron hooks inside, and sealed them there by winding rope around the man's middle. With alternating feet, he rolled him off into the dark water. The body made a quiet splash and sank. Now it would not float up.

He walked toward the last truck, which had paused as ordered, waiting, and climbed aboard. As the truck sped away toward the city, The Dowager Empress hauled up her gangway and let go her lines. A tug towed her out into the Huangpu, where she turned downriver for the short journey to the Yangtze and, finally, the open sea.


Copyright 2003 by Robert Ludlum

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

This latest product from the efficient assembly line of the Ludlum thriller factory has been somewhat overtaken by events: it revolves around a Chinese freighter carrying weapons-grade chemicals to the port of Basra in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. There are also a couple of neat subplots, including an elderly American being held prisoner in China who claims to be the real father of U.S. President Sam Adams Castilla, and the dirty doings of a giant international business combine called the Altman Group, whose members make Ian Fleming's old adversaries look like the operatives of a corner candy store. All of this provides plenty of action and intrigue for the folks at Covert-One, the top-secret agency which now operates out of a private yacht club in Anacostia, Md.-close enough to the White House for President Castilla to drop in on agency boss Fred Klein of an evening with just one Lincoln Town Car full of Secret Service folk. Most of the heavy lifting, actionwise, falls on the capable shoulders of Covert-One's Col. Jon Smith, who as "a medical doctor and biomolecular scientist" as well as an army officer is the ideal combination of brains and muscle. He needs both, as well as the patience to endure dialogue like this from Castilla: "I don't know whether you realize it, but China is one of the signatories of the international agreement that prohibits development, production, stockpiling, or use of chemical weapons. They won't let themselves be revealed as breaking that treaty, because it could slow their march to acquiring a bigger and bigger slice of the global economy." Exactly. (June 17) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

As the Chinese ship the Dowager Empress sails from Shanghai to Iraq with a secret deadly cargo, Covert-One agent Jon Smith must attain a copy of the real manifest to prevent an international incident. Ludlum and Lynds populate their novel with the requisite double-crossers, counterspies, and ambitious politicians in two countries and have keen screenwriters' eyes with their major players and characterizations. The central villains and heroes may be Bondian in scope, but the plot bogs down with repetitious reports to the usual higher-ups and is too predictable to maintain the tension. Extending the timetable of Jon's prime mission to allow him extra theatrics to seal the two major plot lines together is far too convenient. An entertaining book read by Don Leslie, but not essential for smaller collections.-Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Rising from the dead, Ludlum's fourth postmortal burlesque in the Covert-One biotech series (lotsa germs!), with US President Castilla's ultrasecret personal agency's virologist, Lt. Colonel Jon Smith, M.D., lately retired from the Army Medical Research Unit for Infectious Diseases. Lynds's fleshing out of Robert Ludlum's The Paris Option (2002), like her first venture in this original trade paperback series, was far smoother and less hysterical than old Bob. Hosts of readers, however, preferred by far Ludlum's manic hand to Lady Gayle's pressed prose and silken twilights over the arrondissements. But only Bob can kill nine people on the Bahnhofsträsse in a thriller's opening three pages, then leapfrog continent to continent leaving blood-splotched prints. So, germicidally, what's up? The Iraqis want to buy some bioweapons from China! Now who could believe that? On a dark Shanghai dock we watch barrels secretly loaded onto the freighter The Dowager Empress while a spy taking pictures gets offed. Covert-One informs the president that the ship carries tons of thiodiglycol and thionyl chloride, used in both blister and nerve weapons. But hasn't China signed a prohibition against chemical weapons? That ship cannot unload at Basra! Call biomolecular agent Smith in Taiwan! Smith must get Empress's manifest for payment in Baghdad to the president. Last place the Navy can board that freighter is the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf in five days. And-my God-the Chinese have held David Thayer, the president's real father, prisoner since 1949! Wow. Can we get him out? Can Smith steal the true Empress manifest in Shanghai and outwit security chief Feng Dun, that vicious sorcerer? What will happenwhen Jon Smith meets by night with agent Adrian Mondragon on the outskirts of Taiwan to receive the manifest? And what is the Altman Code? Can it have anything to do with top-level leaks at the White House? Brand-Name Bob's Back!!! Battle stations! Battle stations!

Kirkus Reviews

Ludlum is light years beyond his literary competition in piling plot twist upon plot twist, until the mesmerized reader is held captive...[He] dominates the field in strong, tightly plotted, adventure-drenched thrillers. Ludlum pulls out all the stops and dazzles his readers.”—Chicago Tribune

”Ludlum stuffs more surprises into his novels than any other six pack of thriller writers combined.”—The New York Times

“Reading a Ludlum novel is like watching a James Bond film.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Welcome to Robert Ludlum's world...fast pacing, tight plotting, international intrigue.”—The Plain Dealer

“Robert Ludlum is the master of gripping, fast-moving intrigue. He is unsurpassed at weaving a tapestry of stunningly diverse figures, then assembling them in a sequence so gripping that the reader's attention never wavers.”—The Daily Oklahoman

“Don’t ever begin a Ludlum novel if you have to go to work the next day.”—Chicago Sun-Times

”If a Pulitzer Prize were awarded for escapist fiction, Robert Ludlum undoubtedly would have won it. Ten times over.”—Mobile Register

“An exciting medical-military thriller that moves at a rapid pace to its climax...an exciting new series.”—Midwest Book Review

“A pop hit...that should bounce right up the bestseller lists.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Gripping...robust writing and a breakneck pace.”—Boston Herald

From the Publisher

Ludlum is light years beyond his literary competition in piling plot twist upon plot twist, until the mesmerized reader is held captive...[He] dominates the field in strong, tightly plotted, adventure-drenched thrillers. Ludlum pulls out all the stops and dazzles his readers.

Chicago Tribune

Ludlum stuffs more surprises into his novels than any other six pack of thriller writers combined.

The New York Times

Reading a Ludlum novel is like watching a James Bond film.

Entertainment Weekly

Welcome to Robert Ludlum's world...fast pacing, tight plotting, international intrigue.

The Plain Dealer

Robert Ludlum is the master of gripping, fast-moving intrigue. He is unsurpassed at weaving a tapestry of stunningly diverse figures, then assembling them in a sequence so gripping that the reader's attention never wavers.

The Daily Oklahoman

Don't ever begin a Ludlum novel if you have to go to work the next day.

Chicago Sun-Times

If a Pulitzer Prize were awarded for escapist fiction, Robert Ludlum undoubtedly would have won it. Ten times over.

Mobile Register

An exciting medical-military thriller that moves at a rapid pace to its climax...an exciting new series.

Midwest Book Review

Gripping...robust writing and a breakneck pace.

Boston Herald