Binary

by Michael Crichton

(1972)

Publisher: Open Road Media

Political radical John Wright is plotting an act of mass destruction – and federal agent John Graves has him under surveillance, trying to figure out what the plot is.

The villain is a middle-class small businessman named John Wright who decides to assassinate the President of the United States. He spends his life savings to carry out the theft of an army shipment of the two precursor chemicals that form a deadly nerve agent codenamed VZ when combined.

On a night in August 1972 in Utah, seven men, all with known links to the American underworld, hijack a Department of Transport train. They have been paid by an unknown source to steal two canisters of a highly effective insecticide, one black and one yellow. Not even these highly trained men know why they have stolen the insecticide and for what sinister purpose it will be used. They have been chosen because they will not ask questions…

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Intelligence Agent John Graves is called in to investigate an unknown source that is tapping into highly secret files stored on the National Defence computer. Graves soon realizes that there is a vital link between the mysterious computer tapper and the leader of an insane right wing organisation, a man with ideas of getting rid of the President and making America great again.

Graves uncovers a plot so evil that it will push his own intelligence and sanity to the limits, and time is beginning to tick away… Soon it seems that the city of San Diego will be poisoned by a nerve gas so deadly that it takes only minutes to kill… and Graves finds himself in a race against the clock, a race so important, that if he loses, it will result in the death of thousands of innocent lives…