Robert Ludlum S Tm The Utopia Experiment Free Preview First 9 Chapters

With U.S. intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the president has been forced to establish his own clandestine group--Covert-One. It's activated only as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is running out. THE UTOPIA EXPERIMENT When Dresner Industries unveils the Merge, a device that is destined to revolutionize the world and make the personal computer and smartphone obsolete, Covert-One operative Colonel Jon Smith is assigned to assess its military potential. He discovers that enhanced vision, real-time battlefield displays, unbreakable security, and near-perfect marksmanship are only the beginning of a technology that will change the face of warfare forever--and one that must be kept out of the hands of America's enemies at all costs. Meanwhile, in the mountains of Afghanistan, CIA operative Randi Russell encounters an entire village of murdered Afghans--all equipped with enhanced Merge technology that even the Agency didn't know existed. As Smith and Russell delve into the circumstances surrounding the Afghans' deaths, they're quickly blocked by someone who seems to have access to the highest levels of the military--a person that even the president knows nothing about. Is the Merge really as secure as its creator claims? And what secrets about its development is the Pentagon so desperate to hide? Smith and Russell are determined to learn the truth. But they may pay for it with their lives . . .

The superb new edge-of-your-seat Covert-One novel in the series created by the undisputed master of the thriller genre, Robert Ludlum. The Merge: a device destined to revolutionise the world and make the personal computer and smart phone obsolete. When Covert-One's Jon Smith is assigned to assess its military potential he discovers that its enhanced vision, real-time battlefield displays, unbreakable security, and near-perfect marksmanship could change the face of warfare for ever. Meanwhile, CIA operative Randi Russell encounters an entire village of murdered Afghans - all equipped with enhanced Merge technology. As Smith and Russell investigate, they're blocked by someone who seems to have access to the highest levels of the military. Is the Merge really as secure as its creator claims? And what is the Pentagon so desperate to hide? Smith and Russell are determined to learn the truth - but will they pay with their lives...?

Robert Ludlum has been acclaimed as the master of .suspense and international intrigue. His many books have thrilled millions of readers, reaching the top of bestsellers lists the world over and setting a standard that has never been surpassed. Now, from the imagination of one of America's greatest storytellers comes Robert Ludlum's The Hades Factor--a thrilling new entry in the Covert-One series. A homeless man in Boston, an Army Major in California, and a teenage girl in Atlanta all die suddenly and painfully--each a victim of an unknown doomsday virus. For three days, a team of scientists is a U.S. government laboratory has been frantically trying to unlock the virus's secrets. When the leading researcher from that lab, Lt. Col. Jonathan Smith, returns from overseas, he barely survives a series of well-orchestrated attempts made on his life. By the time Smith eludes his pursuers and makes it home, he discovers that the virus has claimed its fourth victim, Dr. Sophia Russell--Smith's fiancee. Devastated and enraged, Smith quickly uncovers evidence that his lover's death was no accident--that someone out there has the virus, and the pandemic that threatens hundreds of millions of lives is no accident. But wherever he turns, Smith finds that some unseen force has blocked his quest for information. Not knowing whom to trust, Smith assembles a private team to search for the truth behind the deadly virus. While the death toll mounts, their quest leads to the highest levels of power and the darkest corners of the earth, as they match wits with a determined genius--and as the fate of the world lies in the balance.

"In the early 1990s, a small group of "AIDS denialists," including a University of California professor named Peter Duesberg, argued against virtually the entire medical establishment's consensus that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Science thrives on such counterintuitive challenges, but there was no evidence for Duesberg's beliefs, which turned out to be baseless. Once researchers found HIV, doctors and public health officials were able to save countless lives through measures aimed at preventing its transmission"--

Covert-One agents must trace the source of a deadly disease - and stop the outbreak of a Third World War. A once-great nation is determined to rebuild its shattered empire, and lightning military strikes against its neighbours are planned. But first they must sow confusion and fear in the ranks of their enemies. They turn to one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men. He has control over an undetectable and incurable bio-weapon, the perfect assassin's tool. Created using a strand of each victim's own DNA, it is the ultimate precision-guided silent killer. Lt Col. Jon Smith and his Covert-One operatives take orders from the US President: their mission is to stop this murderous conspiracy - and thwart the leaders who are seeking to restore their country to her former power...

This book addresses the question of what it might mean today to be a Luddite--that is, to take a stand against technology. Steven Jones here explains the history of the Luddites, British textile works who, from around 1811, proclaimed themselves followers of "Ned Ludd" and smashed machinery they saw as threatening their trade. Against Technology is not a history of the Luddites, but a history of an idea: how the activities of a group of British workers in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire came to stand for a global anti-technology philosophy, and how an anonymous collective movement came to be identified with an individualistic personal conviction. Angry textile workers in the early nineteenth century became romantic symbols of a desire for a simple life--certainly not the original goal of the actions for which they became famous. Against Technology is, in other words, a book about representations, about the image and the myth of the Luddites and how that myth was transformed over time into modern neo-Luddism.

In northern Uganda, an American special forces team is decimated 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. Covert-One's top operative, army microbiologist Colonel Jon Smith, is sent to investigate the attack and finds evidence of a parasitic infection that for centuries has been causing violent insanity and then going dormant. This time, though, it's different. The parasite had been purposely kept alive and crudely transmitted in acts of terrorism. Now the director of Iranian Intelligence is in Uganda trying to obtain this biological weapon to unleash it on the West. Smith and his team are ambushed and cut off from all outside support just as they begin to suspect that forces much more powerful than the Iranians are in play-forces that can be traced to Washington itself.

For the past three decades Robert Ludlum's bestselling novels have been enjoyed by hundreds of millions of readers worldwide and have set the standard against which all other thrillers are measured. His Covert-One series has been among his most beloved creations and now comes the latest thrilling novel in the series. The Lazarus Movement, the dominant force in the eco-conscious, "anti-technology" protest movement, 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 a nano-technology research facility leaves thousands dead--- protestors 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.