Jack Ryan Season 3 Episode 3 Recap: “Running With Wolves”

“The US and Russia are being baited into a war, and right now, we’re the only ones standing in the way.” Jack’s message to Elizabeth toward the end of “Running With Wolves,” the third episode of Jack Ryan Season 3, is the clearest statement yet of what all of the pieces on its game board mean. But that doesn’t at all make clear the myriad relationships inside the already shady world of spycraft, intelligence, and geopolitical intrigue. For example, Elizabeth Wright is still wary of fully trusting Jack. But when an FBI team suddenly arrives in Rome to execute a warrant on her AWOL field officer for violating the Espionage Act – treason, in other words – she realizes the decision makers above her pay grade have totally read her out of their conversations. Jack is still a fugitive. But not only is what he has discovered real. It has ramifications that run all the way to the top of the world’s power centers. Oh yeah, and global nuclear catastrophe is also on the table.

In Vienna, Austria, Jack is set to make contact with Zoya Ivanova. “Your friend is clearly out of practice,” she says with a jab at Mike November, who had been tailing her. “I picked him up eight blocks ago.” And Zoya isn’t very happy to see Jack. (“You’re not the only one whose cover’s blown.”) But she does agree to set up a meet between him and her mysterious Russian contact, the original source of the Sokol intel, who we know is the Russian intelligence veteran Luca. Knowing that if he can locate Zoya, so can the CIA, Jack and Mike also arrange for a little digital chicanery, hacking the train station’s security feeds to reflect them taking a train for Semmering, Austria when they’re actually traveling to Budapest, Hungary. When you’re an international fugitive, sending uppity FBI agents and your CIA boss on a wild goose chase is all in a day’s work. 

As the former chief of the agency’s Moscow station, Greer has a working relationship with Alena Kovac. She receives him warmly in the president’s office in Prague while Radek (Adam Vacula), her security chief who’s actually a double agent, looks on angrily. Greer lays it out for Kovac – that the slain Russian defense minister was quietly an advocate of nuclear detterence, that Petrov, the new minister and a true hardliner, was likely behind the assassination, and that Radek was involved in the plot. Kovac had already sniffed out the Petrov connection. But it’s Radek’s collusion that startles her. Still, whatever game Russia’s playing, the president tells Greer, she won’t let the Czech Republic be their playground.

Alena Kovac is a smart politician, and someone who Greer knows will not be pushed. But she also trusts her father Petr implicitly, which seems like it’s going to be a problem. Petr is hosting a gathering at his hunting lodge in the wilds of Bohemia, and arriving first are two men, Zubkov (Ivan Mathias Petersson) and Lychikin (Lenn Kudrjawizki). “The item we have agreed upon has been acquired,” Zubkov says, and Lychikin hands him a bank token attached to $20 million in payment. Petr reassures Lychikin that neither Jack Ryan nor his daughter the Czech president will be a problem, and then he welcomes a third guest to the lodge. It’s Alexei Petrov, the new Russian defense minister. Petrov says it’s vital to their “project” that Kovac authorizes NATO to put missiles in her country. Clearly, Petr’s relationship with his daughter is one of both love and opportunity. But, he says, Alena “is Russian, whether she knows it or not.” Russia, Petr says, was once the monster that kept the world up at night. But now? “War without cost is meaningless. Without cost, we have no identity.” And for these guys, the rise of a new Soviet Union is the only identity they want. Which is too bad for Lychikin. Later, on a hunt in the woods, Petr puts a bullet in his brain. The financier wasn’t a true believer. And there can be no loose ends. 

On the train to Budapest, Luca finally reveals himself to Jack as Zoya’s contact. “We have much to discuss and little time if we are to stop Sokol,” he says. But wait a second. Why would a longtime player in Russian intelligence reach out to the CIA for assistance? The older man agrees that it looks suspicious to be on the same side. But he explains that Petrov and his allies in the government and military, in their quest to restore the Soviet Union, have already acquired the uranium necessary to build the Sokol nuclear device. With time running out, he says he could no longer trust anyone on his own side, due to the rogue faction acting independently within his government, and instead was compelled to contact the CIA. But when you’re a rogue agent yourself, like Jack, contacting the Company to reveal that your secret intelligence source is actually Russia’s most ruthless spymaster doesn’t have a whole lot of upside. “Remember that line I was telling you about?” Mike says to Jack after their meet with Luca. “You just crossed it.”

President Kovac is naive to her father’s plot. He seems to believe that she’ll come around to his faction’s aims, that her Russian blood will sway her to his side. But for as much as he has betrayed his daughter’s trust, he might also be underestimating her mettle. With Greer’s evidence that the Russian minister’s assassination was an inside job, Kovac has authorized NATO to place missiles in Czech Republic, which while it does represent a show of force against Russia’s encroachment into Ukraine, is also the exact move Petrov and Petr’s cabal wanted. But while it will give them precedent to poke the beast of international conflict, it’s also a signal that the president is not buying the sham story of US involvement in the assassination. In other words, she’s making clear her allies. And with Jack and Mike still in the wind and operating in the shadows, baiting any country into war won’t be as simple as these factional plotters think.   

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