The Courier

Simon Leonidovich is an average looking guy, a few pounds overweight with a disarming smile and more frequent flyer miles than your average rock star. And he's no glorified UPS delivery man, either. His "packages" range in importance and value from priceless works of art, to live human organs, to nuclear materials. On the return flight from Madrid to New York, after having delivered a Gutenberg Bible to the Prado museum, Simon gets an urgent e-mail about a pickup at a pharmaceutical company in Sweden. Deciding, despite his exhaustion and the additional long hours of fllight to take the order, he finds himself protecting information that, if revealed, could save the lives of millions of people and ensure the demise of a very powerful drug manufacturer. In hot pursuit of the courier are a fearsome, psychotic hired killer and the European police community who have flagged Simon as the prime suspect in the murder of a beautiful stewardess.

Add to the mix the fact that Simon's sister and office manager, Lara, is kidnaped by the killer in order to be used as ransom in return for the "hot" diskettes containing the scientific research in question and you've got a great international thriller.