Plot summary
In West Berlin, Germany, a mysterious figure hands out a computer disk and a note to U.S. Foreign Service officer Ruby Keller. The disk contains information on radar technology, while the note provides instructions to meet while warning of a mole at the U.S. station in West Berlin. Jack Ryan, CIA’s liaison to MI6 in London, is tasked with investigating the possible East German defector, codenamed CALISTO. He is accompanied by CIA officer Mary Pat Foley and a surveillance team from Helsinki, Finland, while Special Activities Division (SAD) officer John Clark provides covert security for Ryan and Foley.
Meanwhile, a top-secret F-117 Nighthawk stealth plane crashes into the Virgin Mountains in Nevada during a test flight. East German foreign intelligence (HVA) agent Garit Richter picks up a piece of the wreckage embedded with radiation-absorbent material. The pilot, Boden Lee, survives the crash and witnesses Richter killing two UFO watchers before fleeing the scene. FBI legal attache to London Daniel Murray is assigned to lead the manhunt for Richter, accompanied by special agent Betty Harris.
Keller’s colleague, CIA officer Jennifer North, is revealed to be coerced into working for Stasi officer Rolfe Schneider after having slept with him; she had been disillusioned by her colleague Lane Buckley taking credit for her previous intelligence operation, which subsequently led to his promotion as assistant deputy director of operations at CIA. Schneider abducts Keller and puts her at Hohenschönhausen Prison in East Berlin, where she is tortured by prison guard Mitzi Graff. Meanwhile, CALISTO is revealed to be Stasi major Kurt Pfeiffer, who meets Ryan and Foley at an abandoned building in East Berlin and identifies North as the mole.
After Pfeiffer leaves, Ryan and Foley run into his asset, professional singer Elke Hauptman, who initially wanted to kill her handler for tormenting her and had subsequently overheard their conversation. They encounter a KGB officer, who fights Ryan and wounds Foley as she shoots him dead. They are met by Elke’s husband Uwe, a physicist at Humboldt University, who had suspected his wife of having an affair. They discover that Pfeiffer had taken his research on radar technology through Elke and passed it to Keller.
Nearby, Clark kills a group of KGB agents who had Uwe under surveillance. He later rescues his son Hans from a trio of German assassins, who had been tasked by Schneider with eliminating Pfeiffer and had killed most of the CIA surveillance team from Helsinki. Meanwhile, North meets Ryan and Foley and offers to accompany them and the Hauptman family across the border to West Berlin through a secret tunnel. They are met by Schneider, but Ryan agrees to give up Pfeiffer in exchange for letting them escape. Schneider later kills North.
Pfeiffer is arrested by the CIA chief of station in West Berlin, who gives him to Stasi in exchange for Keller. Acting on a lead provided by Elke, Murray and Harris arrest Richter at a train station in Winnemucca, Nevada. Graff is killed by a CIA asset who had sheltered Clark in East Berlin.
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