THE ALTMAN CODE

Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds

Orion, £12.99 Rel: September 2003

Reviewed by L. J. Hurst

If SHOTSMAG weren't on-line, I'm not sure that we would be able to keep up with events. Sometimes I receive a novel for review and I point out that it has connections with some other recent work, sometimes I point out that it deals better with something going on than another previous work. It is the terrible events about government scientists in the real world, though, which bear on The Altman Code, because The Altman Code, one of Robert Ludlum's Covert-One series, is about government scientists and the roles they might play in the struggle against weapons of mass destruction. As events emerge of the death of Dr David Kelly, and we put, say, the announcements of his former American colleague Scott Ritter into context, The Altman Code moves more firmly into a sort of alternate history. Its premise has been superceded by more ghastly events.

Like Reg Gadney's The Scholar of Extortion, The Altman Code is concerned with dodgy shipping in the South China Sea and the roles and conflicts within communist China. Does the Chinese government want better relations with the west, with its concomitant necessity for improved human rights? Is there even a single Chinese government, or does it actually consist of feuding factions, with the skills to stoneface when appearing in public?

Why would the Chinese want to send a shipload of something to Saddam Hussein's Iraq? What is the something? Is the cargo innocent, or hidden beneath the bags of cement are there banned chemicals, and dangerous engineering? Someone must know, someone drew up a manifest. However, no one would want to admit to putting weapons of mass destruction on a ship to Iraq, so there are two manifests - the public one, and perhaps another which lists the weapons. The US president sends the agents of Covert-One to find out what is on the ship, before he can authorise the interception of a Chinese vessel on the high seas. He cannot risk weakening the position of those in the Chinese government sympathetic to his approaches. Those in the communist leadership who realise that someone is setting them up are concerned as well.

At the heart of everything is one man - scientist and spy, Colonel John Smith, setting off from his headquarters in Washington. THE MAN FROM UNCLE used to disappear into a dry cleaners, things have gone upmarket in DC. Covert-One is based in a yacht club.

With no mention of the UN embargos on Iraq before 2003 or of the war I wasn't sure when this book was supposed to take place, but I was able to ignore that. Years ago I gave up trying to read a Ludlum title, The Osterman Weekend, I think it was and never tried another. This one must be Gayle Lynds's work entirely and it held me to the finish, but a few days later now few single details have stuck in my mind - descriptions of the short-lived effects of Chinese meals spring to mind. Perhaps another name for this in fiction is holiday reading, but it was good holiday reading.