Robert Ludlum's The Cassandra Compact

A brilliant Covert-One novel from 'the real Titan of the genre' GQ Yuri Danko, an officer in the medical division of Russia's security service, is murdered in a spray of assassin's bullets. Now Covert-One's Jon Smith has Danko's classified papers, and he's unearthed a terrifying global conspiracy. A Serb terrorist has been despatched from Russia to smuggle hazardous vials of a deadly bacteria into the United States. His mission: to deliver them to an unknown US government agent. Then both men are murdered, and the deadly bacteria is stolen...It's up to Lt Col. Smith to find the madman who possesses it, before he holds a defenseless world hostage with the power to render the human race extinct.