He was XIII’s most dogged enemy from the start, but who really was the Mongoose, that mysterious assassin-for-hire who nearly killed the amnesiac hero so many times? During an encounter between him and Kim Rowland - an event that took place just before the start of the XIII series - the merciless hitman tells the story of his childhood and how he became a contract killer. ‘Anyone would have in my circumstances’, he claims. But would they? You be the judge.

Belarus, in Soviet times. Irina is an unremarkable young woman growing up in an orphanage. One night, a mysterious visitor demands to see her and her best friend Julia. The latter goes first, then Irina is told she won’t be needed after all. The next day, Julia has vanished without a trace... Thus begins a quest for truth and vengeance, from Minsk to Moscow to Washington – one that will lead Irina to discover her true calling.

Chicago, the Seventies. Life is tough when you’re an orphan in the streets – and even more so if you’re black. Little Jones, 10, doesn’t even know her real name. All she has is a brother who flirts with the Black Panthers, a streak of cunning and determination a mile wide, and a dream: that of some day enlisting into the Army. A chance encounter with war hero Major Whittaker will change her life forever...

Colonel Amos is the head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. His current investigation sends him on the trail of an agent of Mossad – Israeli intelligence. The ensuing operation – a joint FBI/CIA effort – will prove to be a difficult one. Not only because of the agent’s skill, or because the colonel and his CIA counterpart Giordino don’t get along, but also because before coming to the USA, Samuel Amos was a founding member of Mossad...

Steve Rowland. It’s under that name that XIII received the fateful wound that deprived him of his memories, while attempting to infiltrate the Conspiracy of the XX. By then the real Rowland was already dead, breathing his last in his wife Kim Carrington’s arms. But what had driven that man, a patriot and war hero, to betray his government? What events, what trauma – what manipulations – had made him into someone capable of assassinating the President of the United States?

He’s a disturbing fellow, that Billy. A man with the face of an angel with whom XIII briefly shares a cell during his incarceration in a prison for the criminally insane … A kid you couldn’t believe guilty of anything – yet who soon reveals that behind bars is exactly where he belongs. Find out, now, what Billy Stockton was convicted of, but also why, exactly, he happened to be in that exact prison at the same time as XIII …

Betty Barnowsky’s life, after crossing path with danger-magnet XIII, eventually reached calmer waters and a happy ending when she married Armand, the French aristocrat. But it wasn’t smooth sailing all the way! After all, before playing supporting character to the amnesiac and becoming a marquise, Betty was a member of the elite SPADS in her own right – a unit corrupted by its traitorous commander McCall, and which General Carrington wants to clean up thoroughly …

Martha Shoebridge has the best job in the world: she helps women give birth. But when this workaholic obstetrician meets the handsome senator from Delaware, William Sheridan, her heart leaps … and her life is changed forever, for the world she enters then is without mercy. Political ambitions trump all; everyone lies, everyone tries to manipulate someone, everyone schemes. So begins the slow descent into hell that will eventually put her in XIII’s path …

Statuesque, alluring and a literal femme fatale … Felicity Brown, former waitress, former call-girl and pretend nurse, nearly caused the end of XIII when she murdered for his money the man he believed might be his father. But crime doesn’t pay in the end, and Felicity is forced to flee from the FBI. Thus begins a bloody escape that will take the black widow to Costa Verde, into the arms of a dictator and in the middle of a revolution that will soon draw in none other than … XIII!

Within the Conspiracy of the XX, Calvin Wax was nominally only number two. But how accurate was that? What was the real responsibility of this utterly unscrupulous man, who was – openly or secretly – adviser to three presidents? Now, discover the birth of the Conspiracy, through a few very difficult days in the life of Wally Sheridan, caught in the merciless schemes of the true brain behind the plot …

Jonathan Fly, XIII’s official father, was once a respected, famous journalist. Unfortunately, his radical ideas, deemed anti-American, led him to be discredited, arrested, and eventually sent to jail. Having served his sentence, he moved to the small town of Green Falls with his son Jason … who grew up mostly on his own, as Jonathan had never given up the fight and remained driven and distracted. Until, one day, a powerful man arrives in Green Falls, and the tragedy begins …

When XIII washed up on that beach one day, with the head wound that robbed him of his memory, he was rescued by Abe and Sally Smith. The old couple took him in and nursed him back to health out of kindness, but also because he looked a little like their son Alan, killed in operation in Vietnam. In fact, however, Alan’s story is a bit more complicated than that, and his fate closely tied to XIII’s. Now, discover the birth of the Conspiracy, through a few very difficult days in the life of Wally Sheridan, caught in the merciless schemes of the true brain behind the plot …

Judith Warner. Once the pharmacist in Green Falls, where XIII spent part of his childhood. Once his ally, and his lover of one night. The beautiful, independent Judith, having had her life turned upside down by hurricane Jason McLane like so many others, left for California and a new, quiet, routine existence. Until the day a woman she’s never met before rings her door, and everything is thrown into chaos once more as the past resurfaces …