Former
KGB officer Valeri Volodin becomes
president of Russia. Openly critical of the United States, he secretly tasks
Russian domestic intelligence (FSB) with staging
false flag attacks in an effort to justify an invasion of
Ukraine. A bomb is detonated in a restaurant in Russia, killing
Russian foreign intelligence (SVR) head Stanislav Biryukov; simultaneously, former SVR head Sergey Golovko falls ill to
polonium poisoning while visiting his old friend, President
Jack Ryan, in the
White House. Volodin accuses the US government of orchestrating the recent incidents, and then announces the merger of the SVR and the FSB into one entity led by Roman Talanov, the mysterious head of FSB. In
Sevastopol, a
CIA special mission compound comes under attack from pro-Russia protesters aided by FSB proxy agents. Campus operatives
John Clark, Domingo "Ding" Chavez, and Dominic "Dom" Caruso, who are on the ground in Ukraine to gather intelligence on Russian criminal organization the Seven Strong Men and its head Gleb the Scar, take part in defending the compound in a tense battle between the protesters and
Delta Force operators guarding the compound. Even though the compound's cover as a
State Department facility is preserved, Volodin nevertheless decides to invade Ukraine, intent on pushing his troops all the way to the capital of
Kyiv. President Ryan sends a few military troops to assist Ukrainian soldiers in the conflict with Russian forces as well as to prevent them from reaching Kyiv. Meanwhile,
Jack Ryan Jr. has been distancing himself from The Campus after its breach by the Chinese a year ago by working in a corporate analysis company based in
London. While investigating a case involving a large theft of money by Russian state-owned companies from British businessman Malcolm Galbraith, he is tasked by his father with finding out information about the codename "Bedrock" and its connection to a mysterious KGB assassin codenamed Zenith during the
Cold War, amidst rumors that Talanov is the assassin in question. Even amongst attacks from Seven Strong Men thugs, Jack finds out that Bedrock is former
MI5 "
illegal" Victor Oxley, who was tasked by British intelligence with tracking down and eliminating Zenith, who is indeed Talanov. Oxley had crossed paths with his father, then a CIA analyst investigating the murders on behalf of
British foreign intelligence, in
West Berlin just before he got caught by the East German
Stasi; he was then shipped off to the KGB and imprisoned in a
gulag for years. When Jack finds out that the Zenith affair was connected to his case involving Galbraith, he (along with Oxley and fellow Campus operatives Chavez, Dom, and Sam Driscoll) confronts his boss Hugh Castor in his
chalet outside
Zurich, Switzerland. Castor is revealed to be Oxley's former handler in British intelligence who had been doing business with Talanov for years in exchange for Oxley going
off the grid. He also reveals that Talanov is essentially the leader of the Seven Strong Men (making him expendable to the criminal organization since he was KGB), and that Dmitri Nesterov is Gleb the Scar, who is directly involved in Golovko's death. However,
Spetsnaz forces sent by Talanov attack the chalet and kill Oxley and Castor. Ryan and his Campus operators manage to dispatch the attackers and flee the scene. Back in Kyiv, Clark, Chavez, Dom, and Sam aid Delta Force operators in capturing Nesterov in the Seven Strong Men's heavily guarded base of operations. Having been fully informed by his son, President Ryan talks to Volodin, demanding the halt of the
Russian army's advance into Kyiv in exchange for Volodin not being linked with the Seven Strong Men. Russia ceases operations in Ukraine and pulls back. Two days later, Talanov resigns his position and is subsequently murdered by one of his own guards. ==Characters==