Product Description

A terrorist cell based in China called Dark Cloud has devised a plan to release a deadly poison on entire nations using rocket technology. In true six degrees-of-separation style, Agent Sydney Bristow's friend from graduate school, Keiko Terajima, happens to be the daughter of a prominent Japanese physicist, and Dark Cloud needs his top-secret knowledge to carry out its devious plan. What's more, Keiko's married to Franklin, the son of an old colleague Jack Bristow killed years ago to protect Sydney. When APO learns that Franklin is part of an elite group of agents who marry women to gain access to information, Sydney begins to question his true intentions with Keiko.

Tracing the connections leads deeper and deeper into the terrorists' plot -- with Keiko's father and husband at the centre. Suddenly, Sydney finds herself on a mission not only to prevent the poisonous rain from devastating a country, but to save her loved ones as well.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #236249 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Steven Hanna is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

New OrleansSix Years Ago

A high-pitched squeal of female laughter contrasted sharply with the low grinding of ineptly shifted gears. The rental car lurched forward, and for a moment it seemed like it was about to burst into a determined spurt of speed before it shuddered pathetically to a stop, its transmission emitting a pained groan as the driver slumped giggling over the steering wheel.

"You have to be the worst driver I've ever seen!" Sydney Bristow marveled, leaning back in the passenger seat. She was amazed that the airbags hadn't been triggered by that last abrupt stop. "You do understand the point is to make the car go forward, right?"

Keiko Terajima turned her head slightly and peered out at Sydney from the crook of her elbow. Her eyes were all that Sydney could see, and they seemed to be smiling. "You're going to be mad," Keiko began, feigning embarrassment, "but could you remind me which one's the clutch again? They shouldn't put it so close to the other pedals. It makes everything more confusing."

Sydney sighed a very loud sigh, playing the part of the exasperated driving instructor even though she was having more fun than she'd had in a long time. Keiko was in one of her graduate classes at UCLA, and they'd bonded when a late-night study session in the library turned into a caffeine-fueled who-likes-who gossip exchange that still hadn't ended at sunrise. They both botched the next day's exam, but they'd been close ever since, and for Sydney it was a real pleasure to have a school pal. Her best friend would always be Francie, of course, but she couldn't talk to Francie about how bad the critical essay was that she had to read for Lit. 47, or about what a kiss-up that tattooed girl had been in lecture the other day. And Keiko never asked questions about Sydney's job at Credit Dauphine -- to Keiko, it was just the way Sydney was paying for tuition, an uninteresting means to an end -- which meant that Sydney never had to lie to her. There were advantages to having more casual friends when one was leading a double life.

And now here they were in New Orleans, where they were both giving papers at the national meeting of the Scholars of American Literature. The SAL conference was a welcome departure for Sydney from the world of shadowy intrigue and muscle-straining roundhouse kicks. Ever since she'd learned that SD-6, the organization she worked for, was in fact not at all a government agency but a rogue operation headed by the loathsome Arvin Sloane, her life as a spy had been even more of a drain on her mental energies. Playing the part of a loyal SD-6 agent while actually working for the CIA under the stewardship of an attractive handler named Michael Vaughn was taking its toll on her ability to concentrate in her classes, and getting away for a few days to a gorgeous Southern city to give a paper on F. Scott Fitzgerald was exactly the break from spying that she needed. It was nice to pretend, if only for a little while, that she was just a typical grad student, nothing more. Sydney had been overjoyed to hear that Keiko was attending the conference as well, and since Keiko had been in the market for a new car and was considering a model that only came in stick shift, they figured taking Sydney's rental car out for a spin would be a perfect opportunity for Keiko to practice. "I warn you, I'm a newbie when it comes to driving stick," Keiko had said, and she hadn't been kidding. Keiko was really putting this poor little jalopy through its paces. If Sydney hadn't paid for rental insurance, she would actually be a little worried, but as it was, every grinding lurch of their rented red coupe was positively hilarious.

"It was really morbid of you, Sydney, to suggest we come out to this old cemetery for me to practice," laughed Keiko as she gamely turned the key in the ignition once again. "I mean, by the time I'm through with it, this car is going to be ready for a funeral of its own."

"I wanted someplace quiet and deserted, and with some hills so you could get used to the other gears. But I don't think you're going to get out of first." Keiko gave it too much gas and came to a

sudden stop. Sydney felt her stomach rise a little as she was thrown back into the seat. She remembered the time she'd been in an airplane whose wings were sheared off by two skyscrapers. She'd crashed the aircraft into the raging water off a Caribbean island, using a jacket she'd stripped off a K-Directorate flunkie for a braking parachute. And yet Keiko's driving struck her as a pretty rough ride. Perhaps Keiko shouldn't be investing in an expensive new car -- that money might be better spent on a million bus tokens. The city of Los Angeles would be a safer place without Keiko Terajima on its streets, Sydney thought to herself, then giggled. Keiko smiled too, letting the contagious laughing fit overcome her as well.

For this one weekend in New Orleans, Sydney's greatest fear would be that her grad school friend might flood the engine of her rental car. What a welcome change from worrying about the security of the world!

A man knelt before a mausoleum, hands folded in his lap, head bowed. He did not pray. Praying wasn't really his style. His unclosed eyes, ever alert, passed quickly over the epitaph on the grave, which apparently contained a "loyal soldier in the army of Andrew Jackson." This soldier's bones had been resting here, a few feet away, for close to two hundred years. That struck the man as an awfully long time to have been dead.

The man had been responsible for the laying to rest of many bones, much more recently than the nineteenth century, in wars much more brutal and much more covert than the War of 1812. He wondered idly if the spirits of the men, women, and children he killed ever chatted with those who'd died before them. Did the soldier buried here, who probably passed on bravely in open warfare, protecting America from British invasion, sit openmouthed and stunned in the afterlife as he listened to the souls of the family of four the man had butchered last month in Boston? The man shook his head. The idea of a powwow among the souls of the dead was ridiculous. Of course that sort of thing doesn't happen, the man thought, putting the notion aside. There is no afterlife. Each person I kill simply ceases to exist the moment I terminate his life. Just as I will cease to exist as well, someday. The hint of a grin played across the man's face as he thought the words he always added when philosophical ruminations like these came to him: Perhaps it will happen today.

The knife felt heavy on his hip. Other men in his profession used guns, but he knew there was an asterisk next to his name in the Rolodexes of the rich and ruthless because he had style. There's nothing more stylish than dispatching someone with a perfectly sharpened blade, the man reflected as he heard yet another annoying tittering come from the abused rental car nearby. The sound grated on his ears, but it pleased him to think that his target remained so unaware that the end was near.

They want me to kill a student, he thought with a smile, picturing a meek little thing with her hair in a bun, a pencil tucked behind her ear, and spectacles perched on her plain little face. Her skin's probably pale and pasty from endless hours poring over books in a library carrel, he thought. My knife will look so nice slicing through it! This job would be a pleasure.

"I think she's starting to get the hang of it, don't you?" muttered Michael Vaughn, not really expecting a response. The noncommittal grunt that came from Jack Bristow could have been a yes or a no, or it could have been an indication that Jack thought anything Vaughn could possibly say would not be worthy of consideration. Vaughn knew Jack didn't care much for him. He probably thinks I have inappropriate feelings for his daughter, feelings that a handler shouldn't have for his charge, Vaughn reckoned. And he's right. I do.

But Jack had asked him to come along. He'd found only a single line about a "New Orleans job" amid pages and pages of otherwise fairly typical terrorist chatter, but Jack had red-flagged it and funneled it to Vaughn, who quickly alerted his superiors. However, no one had deemed it a solid enough lead to merit expending manpower to investigate -- Vaughn thought sometimes that the CIA underestimated what an important asset they had in Sydney Bristow -- and Jack felt uncomfortable utilizing SD-6 personnel to thwart what could, for all he knew, be an operation funded by Sloane and his cohorts. Furthermore, Jack knew how much this time away from SD-6 meant to Sydney, so he didn't want to suggest she cancel her trip or ruin it by telling her to be on the lookout. Vaughn understood this. He too thought it would be nice if Sydney could go a weekend without worrying about someone trying to kill her. And he was flattered when Jack had asked him to come with him to New Orleans and keep covert surveillance on Sydney. "I need more eyes," Jack had said flatly. Vaughn had had to suppress a smile. "I've got two," he'd said. If Jack had had to suppress a grin in return, he showed no sign of it.

Now the two men were perched side by side behind a rather ugly-looking angel monument on a crest above the road where Sydney and her friend were chugging along in a red Ford Focus. Jack and Vaughn's dark blue sedan was parked nearby, and they peered intently through binoculars, scanning the area for signs of trouble. The cemetery was beautiful, overgrown with thick Southern foliage that hung down wetly over peacefully winding roads and paths. Green and gorgeous, it was the kind of place where, one imagined, the dead slept particularly well.

Vaughn's task was to scan the perimeter, but so far he'd spotted nothing. Occasionally tourists would admire the metalwork of the cemetery gates, and now and then someone would stroll through and meander among the graves, taking a rubbing or pausing to reflect upon a weathered monument. But Vaughn had detected nothing that set off alarm bells. It was possible that the CIA higher-ups were right, and nothing was going to happen.

"Maybe the bad guys are taking the...

Customer Reviews

Did Steven Hanna Ever Watch this show????
First off I belive that this would have been better if written by Greg Cox. Mr Hanna has probably only seen about 2 minutes of an episode because in this book he makes Sydney seem weak (which we all know she is not), He didn't really give the main Charater much to do since she had was injured and what got on my nerves the most was that he had Sydney call Vaughn "Michael" (which she NEVER does) and has people call Dixon "Marcus". For a second when I was reading the book I had to think of who this "Marcus" was. So overall this is a book that you can skip. You won't be missing anything.

Old Friends...something Steven Hanna and Alias are not.
***Rated 0 Stars***


Pitiful. Really. I've read the first three chapters in this book and am disgusted. How many episodes of Alias did Mr. Hanna watch? One? One Half? A Quarter? Somebody who read the back of the first season box set could write a better book than Mr. Hanna did. From the increasingly stupid first chapter where Vaughn is portrayed as somebody who doesn't know the first thing about espionage (I need to confiscate your scooter..psh.), Where Jack HATES Vaughn with a more intense passion then ever shown in the show, and a Sydney who doesn't realize that she has a gun pointed at her until Jack tells her, I knew this book was awful. And then it progressed into the second chapter, where Sydney spends 5-6 pages thinking about how hot she looks in her dress and maybe a collective paragraph about espionage, the book is awful. Plain awful.

Own if if you're a dedicated fan of the series, if not... don't.

Mr. Hanna, do everybody a favor by not embarassing yourself by writing another book.

Why this book lacks the 'Alias' feeling
If you are a collector of the 'Alias' books, and have each and every one, like myself, then go ahead and get the book. But I warn you now that this book is not very accurate in it's portrayal of characters. It is always dangerous in a novel to write what the character is thinking if is is based on a Television show, and in this case, the author should have taken this to heart. The plot had potential in the begginning, but then it spiraled downward into dissapointment before i even finished the first chapter. So be warned: if you read this book, do not have high expectations that it will read like the show.