The Perseus crisis was a period of heightened Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that occurred from 1981 to 1984. The Soviet spymaster "Perseus", perhaps without the backing or knowledge of the Soviet government, planned to take control of America's arsenal of nuclear bombs hidden within Europe's capital cities (as part of Operation Greenlight) and detonate them, holding the United States responsible for the nuclear atrocity and forcing the world into a state of chaos that the Soviet Union could exploit. While Perseus' plans were foiled by a CIA-JSOC task force in 1981, his successor Vikhor Kuzmin attempted to see the project through until he was killed in Donetsk in 1984.
History[]
Origins of Perseus[]
The Soviet Union's "Perseus" spy ring was established during World War II, and the American CIA believed that Perseus was responsible for compromising the Manhattan Project in 1943 and thus enabling the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons of its own. The nuclear arms race escalated during the 1950s, and, in 1958, American president Dwight D. Eisenhower - convinced that the Americans could not respond quick enough to repel a potential Soviet Army invasion of Europe - authorized Operation Greenlight, a top-secret program that placed nuclear bombs in every major European city as the ultimate countermeasure to a Soviet invasion. If all hope was lost, all nuclear bombs would be detonated. In 1974, the Greenlight bombs were upgraded to high-yield neutron bombs capable of destroying life while simultaneously preserving infrastructure.
During the 1960s and 1970s, a rogue hardliner Soviet officer assumed the mantle of "Perseus" and made plans to abolish the Western influence present throughout the world and establish the USSR as the world's dominant superpower. He developed the Perseus spy ring into an international force attracting rogue military and intelligence personnel, as well as anti-Western terrorists and criminals. In January 1968, Perseus failed to steal an American tactical nuke that had been deployed to South Vietnam as part of the "Operation Fracture Jaw" contingency plan amid the Vietnam War.
Operation Greenlight[]
However, in January 1981, East Berlin-based Russian Mafia boss Anton Volkov discovered an American "Greenlight" nuclear bomb buried beneath Berlin and handed it off to Perseus, who sought to use the nuke to unlock the rest of the Greenlight arsenal hidden throughout Europe. Perseus planned to devastate Europe with their explosions and destroy public opinion of the United States, while Perseus' agents in Europe would take advantage of the ensuing chaos to infiltrate every European government and turn them towards the Soviet Union as his sleeper agents in the United States would continue to undermine the country.
At the same time, as Republican President-elect Ronald Reagan prepared to assume office, the American news put out sensationalist headlines and statements such as, "Some US intelligence analysts believe America is already in a state of war with the Soviet Union," "Are Soviet spies living among us?," "An unnamed White House official claims that a Cold War disaster could be just around the corner," and even footage of Soviet cosmonauts going to space with the news headline "State of War?"
Events of January-March 1981[]
The United States caught wind of Perseus' plans after a 12-13 January 1981 CIA operation to capture the Iranian terrorists Arash Kadivar and Qasim Javadi - two of the masterminds behind the Iran hostage crisis - brought about revelations of Perseus' role in organizing the hostage crisis. CIA agent Russell Adler discovered from Kadivar that the hostage crisis was "never about the hostages," and that Perseus - who was still alive after his unconfirmed death in Vietnam - had a plan that was underway, and would result in the West burning.
In response to these revelations, President Reagan authorized a "Black Ops" team to neutralize Perseus after being briefed of his threat by Jason Hudson and Adler. Adler's team consisted of CIA operative Lawrence Sims, former Mossad operative Lazar Azoulay, MI6 intelligence officer Helen Park, and a captured Perseus operative who was brainwashed by the CIA and codenamed "Bell". The team established a base of operations in West Berlin, and, after Hudson and his superior Emerson Black learned of the Berlin bomb's theft by Volkov, they sent in Adler's team to follow Volkov's courier Franz Kraus to the "big fish" on 24 February 1981. Adler's team infiltrated East Berlin via the U-Bahn, stealthily taking out East German police, Stasi agents, and soldiers before accessing a ghost station on the other side of the Berlin Wall. Along the way, Bell rescued his BND contact Greta Keller's informant Lukas Richter from the Stasi and let him live. From the ghost station, the CIA team watched Kraus as he entered the city, and Bell snuck into Kraus' apartment and stole a briefcase from his hidden room. However, he was ambushed and knocked out by Kraus, and he and Keller were taken to Volkov's warehouse hideout, where they discovered that Richter had betrayed them. Adler's CIA team rappelled through the roof in time to rescue the agents, and they shot their way through Volkov's mobsters and Spetsnaz detail before capturing the mob boss.
The CIA discovered from Volkov that Perseus had smuggled a nuclear device through East Berlin, while also learning from his documents that the Soviets had a base in remote Zakarpatska Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. Adler decided that he wanted to know everything that went on inside that building. Bell and Frank Woods infiltrated the facility on 27 February 1981 as Adler and Alex Mason stood by for an extract, and their stealth mission went awry when they stumbled across a Spetsnaz live-fire drill held within a recreated American "Main Street". The two of them killed dozens of Spetsnaz operatives in the model town, retrieved intel on Operation Greenlight from the Soviets' computer hub, and escaped on a commandeered Soviet APC, killing dozens more Soviet troops. They discovered Hudson's role in the operation, resulting in a violent confrontation between Woods and Hudson.
The team was forced to refocus its efforts on learning what Perseus was planning for the stolen nuclear bomb, and they learned from their printout from the Zakarpatska base that the Soviets were excavating the old Soviet base at Mount Yamantau in the Ural Mountains to salvage the old mainframe. KGB double agent Dimitri Belikov smuggled Woods and Mason into Mount Yamantau aboard a Soviet helicopter on 3 March 1981, and the two of them shot their way through scores of Soviet soldiers before reaching the old mainframe, which they lifted out of a chasm with a helicopter winch that also helped them escape the base. The CIA used the mainframe to learn that Perseus was looking for the names of sleeper agents Nikita Dragovich had used in 1968, and that Perseus had erased the names. Black informed Hudson that his team could only find that information in the Lubyanka Building, the KGB headquarters, forcing Hudson to make preparations for a raid on the Lubyanka.
At the same time, the CIA discovered that its rogue agent Robert Aldrich, who had been working with Perseus to establish a spy ring inside US borders, was preparing to move hideouts from Colorado to New Mexico. After using a numbers station broadcast reel from East Berlin, a coded message obtained from Javadi, and the front page of a newspaper found at the Zakarpatska facility, the CIA was able to crack an encrypted floppy disk retrieved from one of Aldrich's agents, exposing their identities. On 7 March 1981, Woods led a successful operation to ambush Aldrich's convoy in transit and eliminate Aldrich along with his 60 Spetsnaz escorts at a motel on the Colorado-New Mexico border.
On 9 March, after Belikov returned to Moscow, the CIA planned its daring raid on the KGB headquarters. The CIA discovered that the sleeper agent records were stored int he archives 100 feet below ground in a nuclear defense command bunker, and the only way in or out would be through a high security elevator. Belikov provided Adler and Bell with forged documents to get them access to the building, but Belikov faced increased security measures at the headquarters before he could help the Americans. Brezhnev took an interest in the new security development, and he assigned CPSU secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to have Imran Zakhaev of the First Chief Directorate oversee Colonel Lev Kravchenko's investigation into a mole within the KGB. After Zakhaev revealed that General Anton Charkov would be the only man left with a bunker key, Belikov accessed the server room, silently killed any guards he came across, and remapped his communications with the CIA to Charkov and printed the false evidence before delivering it to Kravchenko. Kravchenko, believing Charkov to be the traitor, stripped him of his bunker key, which Belikov secretly took. He then accessed the prison level, ostensibly for a security sweep, and lured two soldiers into the tunnels to enable Adler and Bell to steal KGB uniforms. Adler and Bell snuck in through a furnace door, and they ambushed two Soviet guards before stealing their uniforms and pretending to report to Commander Sobol as they passed through Soviet checkpoints. Belikov pretended to search their bags at the checkpoint to guarantee them entry, and the two agents entered the elevator, to be joined by Zakhaev. Zakhaev questioned their purpose and their identities, and they said that they reported to Sobol; Zakhaev, who had an appointment with Sobol, told the men that he would send Sobol their regards, and left the elevator at a level above the CIA's destination. When the CIA agents reached the bunker, the retrieved their assault rifles from a duffel bag, took off their uniforms, and proceeded to engage the Soviet soldiers with live fire. The Americans fought their way through the guards, copied the Soviets' information on sleeper agents from the main computer to a disk, and escaped through the bunker, made it to the elevator, donned body armor, and shot their way out of the main level of KGB headquarters, leaving dozens dead as the heavily-armored Americans blasted the Soviets with miniguns. The Americans escaped in Lazar Azoulay's car, returning to base with their intel.
This achieved, the CIA set its sights on another related threat. Major Vadim Rudnik was serving as handler for a group of Soviet agents embedded within multiple European governments; those agents could be strategically positioned to set up a larger Soviet plan for Europe. The Americans used previously captured intel clues to identify the cell's three ringleaders, enabling the CIA to neutralize them in conjunction with a raid on Rudnik's base in the remote mountains of the Uzbek SSR. On 12 March 1981, Woods and Mason inserted into the mountains of Uzbekistan, and, after an American airstrike took out the base's radio tower, the two agents charged into the Soviet base and cleared its buildings of Soviet agents before locating and killing Rudnik. They then withstood a Soviet counterattack before escaping aboard an American helicopter. The deaths of Rudnik and his ringleaders put an end to Perseus' plot to infiltrate Europe's governments through his sleeper agents.
That same day, Hudson reported to Black that one of the sleeper cell agents identified on the disk was tied to Operation Greenlight: the Salt Lake City-based nuclear engineer Theodore Hastings. The Black Ops team was assembled in West Berlin, and they tracked Hastings' recent movements to a vacant government facility in the Cuban countryside that had become a hub of activity for Perseus and likely the location of the stolen nuke. Fidel Castro agreed the Soviets to hide their nuke on the island in exchange for the Cubans having a peek at the hardware. On 13 March, the Black Ops team parachuted into Cuba, planning to steal back the nuke and sky-hook out. They attacked the compound 30 miles south of Havana, enduring heavy resistance, but they found the Cubans and Perseus himself massacring the scientists. Hastings was mortally wounded by Perseus, and Hastings revealed that Perseus forced the Greenlight scientists to reverse-engineer the detonation codes to give him full access to Greenlight and enable him to detonate multiple nukes in Europe. Perseus escaped on a chopper as the CIA team reached the rooftop of the compound in preparation for their exfiltration with a balloon device. They fought off several waves of Cuban soldiers before a Cuban RPG wounded Bell, Park, and Azoulay as they prepared to hook up to the harness. Bell was only able to save Park, while the abandoned Azoulay was shot dead by the arriving Cuban soldiers. The fiasco did, however, give the CIA intelligence on Perseus' capability to detonate all the nuclear bombs. Black ordered Hudson to find out where Perseus was planning to broadcast the activation signal, and Black revealed that Bell knew where the numbers station was. On 14 March, Adler, Park, and Hudson interrogated Bell and used mind tricks to force him to recall that Perseus planned to detonate all of the nukes from the safety of the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea.
Reagan authorized a final operation to prevent the nuclear bombs from being detonated, telling Hudson that his team was, "Protecting our very way of life from a great evil." Two US Navy destroyers and an aircraft carrier were dispatched to the White Sea, and Adler, Mason, Woods, Bell, and two US Marines boarded a UH-1 helicopter, to be accompanied by support helicopters and their complements of troops. On 15 March 1981, the Americans utilized Marrakesh assault vehicles provided by Belikov to assault the ruins of the Solovetsky monastery, from which the Soviets lit up the night sky with smoke and anti-aircraft fire. A Starfish missile exploded directly over the monastery, disabling the radio towers, and the CIA team went in to knock out the anti-aircraft guns and give the American planes a clean shot. The American armored vehicles assaulted the Soviet base, and Bell and Adler fought their way through Spetsnaz special forces before destroying the anti-aircraft guns with C4 explosives. With the AA guns destroyed, the Americans evacuated the monastery as American bomber planes leveled the entire area, destroying everything in their path along with the radio towers. Black reported the CIA's success to Reagan, although Perseus' whereabouts were unknown. Black also reported that the CIA had seen signs of confusion from Russia, as Perseus' plot may have been a rogue operation, and he may not have been following orders from Moscow.
1981-1983[]
Hudson then contacted Black about the other results of the CIA operation. Qasim Javadi took over Kadivar's terror network while serving as a CIA asset, giving the CIA deeper insight into Soviet activity in the Middle East and influencing regional affairs with the help of CIA resources. Volkov, who was taken alive, became a prime source of information; the MI6 established a series of listening posts in East Berlin and intercepted messages from the KGB to assets throughout the city. The CIA recovered Azoulay's body from the compound in Cuba, and his casket was sent to Tel Aviv as Reagan personally reached out to his family. Aldrich's sleeper cell network was wiped out, and Perseus was expected to take a while to recover. Rudnik and his network were wiped out, providing a significant blow to Perseus' European network. Adler tied up loose ends by executing Bell on a cliffside and throwing his body into the sea, covering up the CIA's use of MK Ultra against the former Soviet agent.
Unraveling[]
In 1983, Perseus died of cancer, and his protege Vikhor Kuzmin took up the mantle of Perseus for himself. On 9 November 1983, Soviet operatives stealthily infiltrated an American facility in the Cheyenne Mountains and nearly succeeded in launching a nuclear warhead being used as part of the base's Operation Able Archer training simulation, causing a deterioration of US-Soviet relations. On 21 January 1984, Kuzmin sent a squad to attack a CIA safehouse in West Germany before leaving behind a flyer to the Mall at the Pines in New Jersey to lure Adler into a trap. Adler was captured by the Soviets while attempting to thwart a Nova 6 attack on the mall, and he was taken to Laos and tortured by Kapano Vang before being taken to Donetsk in the Ukrainian SSR. The CIA raided Laos on 19 April and learned from Vang that the Nova 6 supply line run by Vang's Golden Triangle Cartel was merely a distraction to Adler's whereabouts in Verdansk. On 2 June, Kuzmin sent Freya Helvig and Roman Gray to infiltrate Yamantau, steal data on Dragovich's brainwashing project, and detonate a nuclear device to destroy the mountain. Meanwhile, Frank Woods and a team of NATO operatives rescued Adler from Donetsk, but the Soviet plan to utilize Dragovich's numbers broadcasts and activate sleeper cells continued. On 26 June, Owethu Mabuza and his Perseus agents attacked the Jumpseat satellite ground station in South Africa to forestall the CIA using the satellites to disrupt Stitch's number broadcast, and, with the satellites out of the way, Kuzmin had Kaori Tanaka and a team of Perseus agents infiltrate an Echelon NATO listening station on Teufelsberg in West Berlin to start the broadcast across Europe. Woods and Colton Greenfield's NATO team arrived at the site to interrupt the broadcast, and a brainwashed Adler - retaining his agency - triggered explosions across Donetsk. Alex Mason restored Adler's mind, and the two NATO operators joined Hudson and Woods in deploying to Donetsk to confront Kuzmin. On 19 August, Adler confronted Kuzmin at the grave of Perseus, and Kuzmin revealed that "Perseus" was never one man, but a succession of spymasters. Adler proceeded to execute Kuzmin after the latter told him that his work was already complete.