[1] For thirty years, Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich "Misha" Filitov, a personal aide to the Soviet Minister of Defense and war hero, has been passing military, technical, and political intelligence to the CIA as their highest agent-in-place, codenamed CARDINAL.

His latest mission concerns a Soviet anti-ballistic missile research project codenamed "Bright Star", based at a secret defense installation located 50 km southeast of Dushanbe, Tajik SSR.

In an effort to salvage the mission, CIA analyst Jack Ryan, who had now learned of CARDINAL's identity, concocts a plan to secure the return of Filitov and at the same time force the defection of KGB chairman Nikolay Gerasimov, who has been vying for the position of General Secretary since Filitov's arrest; Ryan tries to prevent his ascension to power due to his anti-American ideology.

As counter-leverage should he refuse to defect, Gerasimov arranges for the kidnapping of Tea Clipper's top SDI researcher, Major Alan Gregory.

Meanwhile, the secret ABM facility in Dushanbe finds itself under attack by the Afghan mudjahedin, whose leader was known as "the Archer" due to his expertise in using surface-to-air missiles to bring down Soviet ground support aircraft.

Colonel Bondarenko, who was there for a second round of evaluations, manages to repel the attackers, protecting Bright Star's scientific and engineering personnel and eventually killing the Archer.

They successfully board the American delegation's aircraft, but Ryan allows himself to be captured by KGB officer Sergey Golovko, who is his counterpart in the arms talks and had become aware of their planned departure.

He is then led to the private dacha of General Secretary Narmonov, where they discuss the CIA's interest in his political position and interference in the Soviet Union's internal security.

It also continues elements set forth in previous novel The Hunt for Red October (1984), including Filitov and Ramius’s similarities in motivation for committing treason against their own country.

"[4] In Robert Lekachman's review of the book for The New York Times, he hailed it as "by far the best of the Jack Ryan series", adding: "While his prose is no better than workmanlike (the genre does not, after all, attract many budding Flauberts), the unmasking of the title's secret agent, the Cardinal, is as sophisticated an exercise in the craft of espionage as I have yet to encounter.