Tom Clancy Red Winter: A Jack Ryan Novel, Book 22, Marc Cameron, author; Scott Brick, narrator
For this novel, the author has reached back into the past and introduced Dr. Jack Ryan, who having finished his military service, is now working for the CIA. His wife Cathy is an ophthalmic surgeon. They have two small children, Sally and Jack Jr. They are living in London, but may soon move back to the states.
It is 1985; East Germany is under the control of Russia. In West Berlin, Ruby Keller, who only recently began working as an entry level employee for the State Department, is mugged in a failed robbery attempt. The would be robber collapses and dies right in front of her, but no one saw how it happened. When it turns out that he was murdered, and an unidentified woman finds and returns her purse with a computer disc in it that was not there before, she informs the CIA and is immediately interrogated. Apparently, the disc reveals that there is possibly an East German who is trying to make contact with the CIA in order to defect with important secrets about espionage.
Because of the circumstances, Ruby is suspected of treachery, not only by the CIA, but also by an unknown mole in the CIA who thinks she can identify her. Jennifer North calls her handler, Colonel Rolfe Schneider, of the East German Ministry of State Security, and the wheels are set in motion to kidnap Ruby and bring her to East Berlin for questioning. Jennifer North, AKA Fledermaus, disappears and so does Ruby Keller. Although the search is on for both of them, the powers that be are not very interested in Ruby, and feel she is expendable. They want to catch Jennifer, the mole.
James Greer, the Deputy Director of the CIA, calls in Jack Ryan, CIA liaison to M16 in London, to locate and determine if the defector is legitimate, before the East Germans do. With the help of the more senior agent, Mary Pat Foley, CIA operations officer also assigned to the investigation, arrangements are made to meet Calisto, the defector’s code name. Foley is a young wife and mother, but also a very tough operator. John Clark, a CIA operations officer in the Special Activities Division is enlisted to secretly cover Ryan and Foley, in case of an emergency.
At the same time that all this is going on, a top secret experimental plane, that can avoid radar detection, crashes in the desert of Nevada. The FBI secures the site. So, while the East Germans are searching for their defector, a Russian spy, Garit Richter, reaches the crash site and steals a piece of the fuselage in order to bring it back to Russia for examination so they can steal and recreate the technology. The CIA mole had already informed her handler of the existence of this plane, so with Schneider’s information, they knew how important it was as a weapon and desperately want it.
As one man wants to divulge secrets, another wants to steal them and will commit murder to accomplish his assignment. Now the hunt is on for him as well to prevent him from giving this vital piece of the plane to our enemies. There are several current problems. There is a defector who must be found, a spy and a thief who must be caught and a mole that must be terminated. Then there is also the problem of the kidnapped Ruby Keller. Where is she?
While all these problems need solutions, in East Germany there is a different related problem. A woman named Elke Hauptman has been coerced by Major Kurt Pfeiffer (secretly Calisto), of the DDR Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, with threats against her husband, Uwe, a physicist, and their son Hans, to steal her husband’s secret scientific research which he plans to use to improve his situation.
How all of these people are captured, and/or neutralized, is the crux of the book. It is action-packed and exciting, though with so many interpersonal relationships and tangents, it is often very confusing. The print book would be a better choice since it is easier to look back, but the audio has an excellent narrator who is able to use language accents and honest expression to enhance the novel.
Also, it was nice to recognize the names of some of the characters in the series that we have gotten to know, and then to learn of how they started out and proved themselves before they rose up the ladder of success and entered the government’s inner workings in later life.