The Matarese Countdown

The Barnes & Noble Review November 1997 Long considered a master of the international-espionage superthriller, novelist Robert Ludlum has written eight No. 1 New York Times hardcover-fiction bestsellers and 11 No. 1 New York Times paperback-fiction bestsellers. With his latest offering of suspense and high-stakes intrigue, The Matarese Countdown, Ludlum brings back the Matarese, the sinister cabal whose ultimate purpose is worldwide economic domination via a deadly Machiavellian manifesto: by any means necessary. Originally destroyed by a tenuous KGB-CIA alliance in 1979’s The Matarese Circle, the insidious Matarese dynasty has returned in all its glory and evil to the highest reaches of global finance and government. CIA agent Cameron Pryce is the lone man with enough knowledge to stop them, but as the title suggests, he may not have enough time — Matarese assassins have already struck with brutal efficiency, eliminating all who stand in their way. Pryce’s only hope lies in the faint last gasp of a dying victim of the Matarese: “Find Beowulf Agate….” “Beowulf Agate,” as Pryce soon discovers, is the code name for retired field agent Brandon Scofield, the only man ever to penetrate the Matarese organization and survive. Now Pryce must draw Scofield and his wife out of their blissful Caribbean paradise and back into a place they never thought they would have to go again: the chilling Matarese circle of death. Reaching from the oil fields of the Persian Gulf to the boardrooms of Manhattan, from the hills of Corsicato the halls ofpower in Washington, the circle is closing, and the panic is spreading. And Pryce has made a shocking new discovery: The Matarese conspiracy may have penetrated further than anyone could have imagined — to deep within the very walls of CIA headquarters itself.