The Kobra manifesto

Cutting from scene to scene at a merciless pace, Quiller's new mission takes him through the semblance of a nightmare. At the very outset, his longstanding feud with the Bureau has wrecked his chances. But he can't give up the only life he knows and, in the depths of the Thai jungle, Quiller finds the first hope of a mission. 'Hi', the American said. 'It was a bomb. Body's over there, clothes blown off it, no identification.' And Quiller knows that his own body would have been here in the wreckage of the jet, if an unknown voice on the telephone hadn't warned him not to take this flight. Then he meets international arms dealer Mariko Shoda -- 'Little Kiss-of-Steel' -- the enigmatic, ruthless Cambodian beauty who becomes his most deadly opponent. My eyes went back to the kneeling woman in the temple. 'She's deeply spiritual,' Chen had told me. 'She always prays before she kills...' So begins a duel between the two of them, their arena the crowded backstreets of Singapore and the dense jungles of Cambodia. But the true battleground is in the mind. For Shoda has the face of the angel of death -- and Quiller finds a challenge in her that goes far beyond the simple desire to complete the mission. Shoda watched me with her dark eyes shimmering, the eyes of a woman in love, in love with what she was going to do. And there was nothing I could do to stop her. In Quiller's Run, the Bureau agent of international acclaim has never been closer to the brink. j