Tom Clancy · 2002 · thriller

Tom Clancy's 2002 thriller. In the early 1980s, a KGB communications officer learns of a Kremlin plot to murder the Pope, and resolves to defect. A young CIA analyst named Jack Ryan helps spirit the man - code-named Rabbit - and his family out of Moscow by way of Budapest, racing to expose the conspiracy before an assassin's bullet can find its mark in St. Peter's Square.

1. 1
   Moscow

   In Moscow, a KGB communications clerk named Oleg Zaitsev reads the traffic of a monstrous secret - the Kremlin means to assassinate the Pope - and, sickened, opens a channel to the West with a single coded message.

2. 2
   Budapest

   Under cover of a Black Sea holiday, Zaitsev and his family are steered to Budapest, where Jack Ryan and Western intelligence stage a delicate exfiltration to pluck the defector out from under the eyes of the KGB.

3. 3
   Rome

   The clock runs down toward St. Peter's Square in Rome, where a Bulgarian-run gunman waits to carry out the Kremlin's plan - and only what Rabbit knows can stop the bullet meant for the Holy Father.