‘Jack Ryan’ Season 3 Episode 5 Recap: “Druz’ya I Vragi”

If you’re Elizabeth Wright, how much leeway can you really give your rogue field agent who has now dragged his lone wolf investigation of the Sokol nuclear plot from Athens, Greece and Vienna, Austria, onward to Budapest, Hungary and now – and this really adds some tasty icing to a cake baked fully from crazy – all the way into the heart of Russia and the ruined company town of Matoksa? Having arrived in Budapest personally to take Zubkov into custody, Elizabeth forbids Jack to tell her how he’ll enter Russia in Jack Ryan Season 3 Episode 5 (“Druz’ya I Vragi”). “But let me know when you go in – I’ll provide overwatch.” When Jack asks if that means CIA support, or just her own, Elizabeth can only frown. 

In Prague, President Alena Kovac has become the captive of Radek, her double agent security chief. But as they drive, she realizes he’s in improvisation mode. “You haven’t decided yet, have you,” she says. Whether Radek intends to hold her hostage or kill her outright, she doesn’t yet know. But Kovac is going to force him to make that decision. In his brief phone conversation with his wife, Radek was also correct about Petr being the one to fear most. He’s creeping around Radek’s home with a suppressed pistol when he phones the man who was once his teacher. “I know how you work – no loose ends. Which is why I propose a trade. My family for yours.” Radek heads for the president’s mansion in the country to lie in wait for Petr.

Jack, Mike, and a small tactical team have slipped into Russia, set up on the outskirts of Matoksa, and established a communications link with Wright. This is where Sokol began, a Soviet town dedicated to the research and development of a secret nuclear program, and the site of the Red Army’s massacre of scientists that kicked off Jack Ryan Season 3. But these days it’s a toxic scar, abandoned and tainted by fallout. Or, at least that’s what the signs say. Jack, ever the bold risk taker, tests for radioactivity by inhaling and walking deeper into Matoksa – “He does that,” Mike November notes wryly – and the gambit pays off. The fallout warning was a scare tactic, and Jack’s operation is underway. They advance to the cooling towers in search of the Sokol plotters.

After the CIA uses phone records to track Radek and Petr, who are both converging on the president’s country estate, Greer heads that way too. And speaking of bold moves, he even calls Petr. “What doesn’t make sense,” he tells him, “what’s never made sense, is you. But I’m starting to get it. For a while, I thought Radek took her because we’re onto him. But he took her because of you.” For as we’ve learned, the past matters more to Petr than the present. The restoration of his beloved Soviet Union is more important than any harm his plan might cause, and that includes hurting peoples’ loved ones. Petr might threaten Radek’s wife and daughter. But Greer wonders if he would kill his own daughter and a head of state, all to uphold his cause.

After some snooping through buildings and the brandishing of firearms, Jack reaches the destroyed cooling tower control room where the scientists were shot fifty years before. And while there’s new evidence of the Sokol project, Jack is surprised to find Luca there. The SVR spymaster says that his own internal pursuit of the rogue faction has led him to Matoksa, where the black market uranium has been loaded into a physical warhead. And he asks Jack to trust him. Even though trust is a precious and nearly unattainable commodity in the global intelligence community, the Russian agent asks the American agent for it, so that he might follow the warhead to whoever is behind its construction. It’s a tense moment, particularly when a firefight breaks out as Jack and Mike are attempting to recover the weapon. And in the chaos, Luca escapes with the weapon in a Sprinter van. 

Has Luca been lying to Jack about his intentions this entire time? Are there competing factions within Russia that hope to secure control of the country’s nuclear capabilities? Luca already knew about the high-level involvement of Petrov in Sokol. If he does not mean to betray Jack’s trust, then there’s really only one guy Luca is still looking for, and that’s Petr. We’ve already learned of Petr’s Red Army past. But Luca has history with the Soviet military, too. It could be that his reason for destroying Sokol isn’t to save the world from nuclear catastrophe, but to settle a decades-old score.

Locked in the boathouse while Radek has set booby traps for her father, Alena eventually escapes and sneaks up to the main house, where she arrives inside just in time to watch Petr stab Radek to death right in front of her. “What have you done?” she cries, and it’s not simply about the murder of her former security chief. She now knows the true scope of her dad’s deceit. He tells her he had to do it – installing Radek, orchestrating the Russian minister’s assassination, putting his Sokol plan into play. In fact, he says he did everything he could. Petr even seems to suggest that he manipulated the election to install her as the Czech Republic president. And for Alena, a progressive politician with faith in her people’s mandate, it’s pretty tough to take in. By the time Greer arrives at the mansion, the sun has come up and her father has gone. Kovac sits alone near the boathouse. “Nobody knows anyone anymore,” she says to Greer, but mostly to herself. “Not really.” How could she have trusted the man who told her never to trust anyone? Even if he is her father? That Alena feels duped is an understatement.

Jack and Mike are in Finland after their helicopter exfiltration from Russia. Luca is on the move with the warhead, likely deeper into the country, and they’re prepared to follow, especially when Jack makes another discovery in the data left behind in Matoksa. “They’re building a missile to mirror an American nuke, so that when it goes off it’ll look like we did it.” That’s the kind of hot tip you want to drop on your CIA boss right away, so Jack calls Elizabeth. But there’s a problem. The FBI has arrived to escort her from her post. Elizabeth Wright has been recalled. Jack’s list of allies is growing shorter by the episode. 

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges