1985 -- A top secret F117 aircraft crashes into the Nevada desert. The Nighthawk is the most advanced fighting machine in the world and the Soviets will do anything to get their hands on its secrets. In East Berlin, a mysterious figure contacts the CIA with an incredible offer -- invaluable details of his government's espionage plans in return for asylum. It's an offer they can't pass up... if it's genuine, but the risks are too great to blindly stumble into a deal. With the East German secret police closing in, someone will have to go to behind the Berlin Wall to investigate the potential defector. It's a job Deputy Director James Greer can only trust to one man: Jack Ryan. Ryan is a former Marine and a brilliant CIA analyst who's been the architect of some of the CIA's biggest coups but this time he's in enemy territory with a professional assassin on his tail. Can he get the right answers before the Cold War turns into a Red Winter?