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For a young writer starting out in New York, few pleasures equaled being hailed across a crowded publishing party by Robert Ludlum. He would burst from a circle of admirers, his big, cheery face alight with a welcoming smile, throw an arm around my shoulders, hug hard with astonishing strength, and a
When, years later, I was invited to create a new series based on Consular Operations “Machine” Paul Janson, the haunted hero of one of Bob’s later novels, the first thing I remembered was basking in the affectionate glow of his enthusiasm. I remembered, too, the upbeat ending of The Janson Directive—a finely plotted thriller of betrayal that was a stylistic throwback to the taut novels he was writing way back when he and I first met.
I recalled that the end of the novel reflected the Robert Ludlum I knew—the big fellow with his arms wide, a scotch in one hand, a smoke in the other, flashing the hope-filled smile of a man who celebrated everyone’s dreams.
I reread The Janson Directiveto see what, if anything, I could bring to it. It was good. It was exciting. It had some dauntingly gorgeous writing, and some equally daunting research, and the end was even better than I remembered.
In the end, Paul Janson wins a partner—a deadly young woman whom he admires for her strength, bravery, skills, and determination to be the best she can be. Paul Janson, “The Machine,” the best of the best and the deadliest, is in awe of young Jessica Kincaid’s fighting skills and has never seen a better sniper. And Jessica is equally in awe of the older Janson’s experience and undiminished strength and his chameleon-like ability to be almost invisible.
But the best part is that Paul Janson is keenly aware that in Jessica Kincaid he has been given a great gift. This reflected deeper layers of the writer I had known, the married Robert Ludlum whom I had observed at smaller, more intimate gatherings minus the mob of publishers. For no man ever loved a wife more madly than he loved Mary. He was thrilled by her existence.
The gift of Paul Janson that Robert Ludlum left his readers is a hero who has faced his grim past and now hungers to atone. Paul Janson is a man who reviews his life in small ways on a constant basis. He is a man who is against his own record, who has come to wonder whether sanctioned killings in the service of his country were also serial killings.
From my point of view—that of a writer invited to create Janson’s future—a hero who looks into the mirror with a cold eye and swears to redeem himself is a dramatic hero who hungers to stand up to huge challenges and immense danger. That Janson has a partner covering his back makes him all the more formidable. That he might fear for her makes even “The Machine” vulnerable.
The Janson Directive’s ending was the essence of the man Robert Ludlum was. But it was also an invitation to continue the story. Ludlum’s hero had journeyed to a new place. A new place is a jumping-off point for new journeys, and if that isn’t the definition of a splendid series, it ought to be the rule for how to write one. Clearly, Robert Ludlum was not thinking of The Janson Directiveas a one-off book but the begi
Paul Garrison
Co
2012
About the Authors
ROBERT LUDLUM was the author of twenty-six international best-selling novels, published in thirty-two languages and forty countries. He is perhaps best known as the creator and author of three novels featuring Jason Bourne: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum. Ludlum passed away in March 2001.
PAUL GARRISON is the author of the critically acclaimed thrillers Fire and Ice, Red Sky at Morning, Buried at Sea, Sea Hunter, and The Ripple Effect. Raised on the stories of his grandfather who wandered the South Seas in the last of the square-rigged copra-trading vessels, he has worked with boats, tugs, and ships. He is currently writing the next novel in the new Paul Janson series.
SNEAK PREVIEW!
With U.S. intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the president had been forced to establish his own clandestine group—Covert-One. With operators selected from the very best America has to offer, this team is only activated as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is ru
Welcome to Robert Ludlum’s blockbuster international thriller series Covert-One.
Please turn the page for an early look at THE ARES DECISION
A new Covert-One novel written by New York Timesbest-selling writer Kyle Mills
Available wherever books are sold
ONE
Above Northern Uganda
November 12, 0203 Hours GMT +3
The roar in Craig Rivera’s ears combined with the darkness to make everything he knew—everything real—disappear. He wondered if astronauts felt the same sense of emptiness, if they wondered like he did whether God was just at the edge of their vision.
He looked at a dial glowing faint green on his wrist. The letters were Cyrillic, but the numbers tracking his altitude and coordinates were the same as the government-issue unit he trained with.
Rivera tilted his body slightly, angling north as he fell through fifteen thousand feet. A hint of warmth and humidity began to thaw the skin around his oxygen mask, and below the blackness was now punctured by widely scattered, barely perceptible points of light.
Campfires.
When his GPS confirmed that he was directly over the drop zone, he rolled on his back for a moment, staring up at a sky full of stars and searching futilely for the outline of the plane he’d jumped from.
They were alone. That, if anything, had been made perfectly clear.
He knew little about the country he was falling into at 125 miles an hour and even less about the man they’d been sent to find. Caleb Bahame was a terrorist and a murderer so cruel that it was difficult to know if the intelligence on him was accurate or just a bizarre tapestry of legends created by a terrified populace. Some of the stories, though, were undeniable. The fact that he demanded his men heat the machetes they used to hack the limbs from infants, for instance, had considerable photo evidence. As did the suffering of the children as they slowly died from their cauterized wounds.
The existence of men like this made Rivera wonder if God wasn’t perfect—if even He made mistakes. And if so, perhaps His hand was directly involved in this mission.
Not that those kinds of philosophical questions really mattered. While Bahame wasn’t good for much, he would probably be just fine at stopping bullets—a hypothesis that Rivera was looking forward to testing. Preferably with multiple clips.
He glanced at his altimeter again and rolled back over, squinting through his goggles at the jungle canopy rushing toward him in the starlight. After a few more seconds, the glowing numbers turned red and he pulled his chute, sending himself into a fast spiral toward a clearing that he couldn’t yet see but that the intel geeks swore was there.
He was just over a hundred feet from the ground when he spotted his LZ and aimed for it, begi