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.

Even amongst attacks from Seven Strong Men thugs, Ryan Junior 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 Ryan finds out that the Zenith affair was connected to his case involving Galbraith, he (along with Oxley and fellow Campus operatives Chavez, Caruso and Sam Driscoll) confronts his boss Hugh Castor in his chalet outside Zurich, Switzerland.

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.

In a statement, Putnam president Ivan Held said: "Tom Clancy left us an incredible group of characters and a truly phenomenal record of fictional plots that sometimes preceded world events.

Publishers Weekly noted it as "a classic spy novel", concluding: "Fans of extended combat sequences should look elsewhere, as the focus is on high stakes espionage and assassinations carried out in rented rooms and dark alleys, not well-lit battlefields.