Tom Clancy, Red Rabbit

In this 2002 installment in the Jack Ryan series, Clancy returns to Jack's early days in the CIA, after his run-in with the IRA in Patriot Games. In the hey day of the Cold War, with tensions in Eastern Europe rising, the new Pope, John Paul II, sends a letter threatening to renounce the papacy and return to Poland to shepherd his people who are buckling under communist rule. When word of his plans reaches Moscow, the politboro is concerned about destabilization in Poland that could spread across the Warsaw Pact. So Yuriy Andropov, the head of the KGB, sets a plan in motion to assassinate the Pope. Meanwhile, the CIA and the British SIS have gotten word of the letter, and are busy trying to guess the Soviets' next move.

As the Soviets' plans unfold, an operator in the signals section of the KGB (a person who transmit coded messages), Zaitzev, is overtaken by the weight of the messages he is translating. Even though as an operator he isn't supposed to have an opinion about the messages, isn't really supposed to read them, he can't be a party to the murder of an innocent man. On his commute home, he has been seeing a new American ride the train, and suspecting that he might be CIA, he slips him a note on the train. The American, Ed Foley, is in fact a CIA field agent, and a careful courtship begins. Zaitzev wants out for him and his family, and, to get such a well-placed agent, the CIA is willing to comply. The "Red Rabbit," that is a communist who wants to defect, is a valuable source of communications intelligence about a wide array of soviet intelligence, so a plan is put in motion to get him out of the country. The CIA brings the British SIS in on the plan, which is to have Zaitzev take a train to Warsaw and then smuggle him across the border into Yugoslavia. Ryan takes part in that little bit of the operation, as the CIA representative on the otherwise British-run phase of the operation. The exfiltration goes off without a hitch, and Ryan is amazed to learn of the plans to kill the pope, and he quickly relays the information to Washington.

But, that leaves the CIA in a precarious position, walking the fine line between using the intelligence they get and protecting the valuable source. In the end, it is decided that they can't notify the Vatican because the source needs protecting, but Zaitzev is able to identify the probable assassin, so the Brits dispatch a team to try thwart his plans, surmising that he will try kill the Pope during his weekly tour around St. Peter's square. Ryan goes along, and they scout out probable scenarios for the shooter. They find themselves in the square, and have spotted the shooter, but Jack realizes that he's not looking at the Pope, but somewhere else. Just then, shots erupt from nearby in the crowd. The Pope is shot, but only wounded, the shooter is captured, as is the Russian assassin, who was there to kill the assassin so his actions couldn't be traced back to Russia.

Red Rabbit is another interesting and enjoyable installment in the Jack Ryan saga, though Ryan is both on the periphery as well as at the center of the story. But the facet of the book that pulled the story together was the character of Zaitzev. His own struggles with the information he was transmitting, and with the whole Russian disregard for God made for an interesting character at the center of the plot and pulled the book together. It may not rank as one of Clancy's best, but it is still vintage Clancy.