Luka Gocharov

Luka Gocharov
Alias(es):	The Asset
Professional Details
Status:	Unknown
Affiliation:	Soviet Union (formerly) Russian Federation
Personal Details
Gender:	Male
Age:	70s or 80s
Residence(s):	Moscow, Russia
Nationality:	Russian Soviet Union (Formerly)
Behind The Scenes
Played by:	James Cosmo
Season:	3
First appeared:	Falcon
Last appeared:	Star on the Wall

Luka Gocharov is a major character in Season 3 of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. He is a Russian spymaster and former Red Army officer who provided information on the revival of Project Sokol to Jack Ryan and the Central Intelligence Agency as confidential informant.

Biography

Sokol Project

In 1969, Gocharov, serving as an officer in the Red Army, was tasked by General Kuznetsov with taking a detachment of soldiers (including Petr Lebedev and Rolan Antonov) to a research facility in Matoksa and eradicating all record of the Sokol Project, which had become a liability to the Kremlin. This task included executing a dozen of the Project's head scientists, which Petr was particularly reluctant to do. After finishing the job, Luka retrieved a personal item from each of the slaughtered scientists and returned these trinkets to the scientists' families, explaining that the men were killed in a terrible lab accident.

Season 3

Gocharov was a close advisor to President Surikov and present in various intelligence meetings between Surikov and Alexei Petrov after the assassination of Minister Dmitriy Popov in the Czech Republic. Gocharov is a long-serving and well-respected fixture in the Russian intelligence community, known for his service in the Red Army before the end of the USSR and in various roles with the KGB and FSB after that.

Gocharov learns that a rogue faction of Russian officials are collaborating to revive the former Soviet Union using a Cold War strategy known as Seven Days to the River Rhine, involving a former top secret Soviet operation called Project Sokol as a crucial component of the strategy. Understanding that this faction is putting his country at risk of disaster by baiting it into a war with the United States, Gocharov quietly operates to deliver intelligence to the CIA in hopes of thwarting Seven Days.

Jack Ryan, operating on the intelligence provided by Gocharov (unbeknownst to him), raids a Russian ship and recovers a defecting scientist. He uncovers that Sokol is operational and that they've successfully built the weapon. However, when Konstantin Vyatkin's team attacks Jack and kills the scientist, the CIA believes Jack is responsible for the death's of both the scientist and a Greek police officer who was killed in the crossfire. The agency burns Jack, forcing him to go on the run and thwart Sokol virtually alone. ("Falcon")

Gocharov eventually makes contact with Jack on a train to Budapest, killing Vyatkin in the process. From there Gocharov directs Jack, working alongside Mike November, to Budapest where they can track down arms dealer Levan Zubkov, who is the most likely candidate to sell weaponized uranium to the rogue agents for the Sokol weapon. ("Running with Wolves")

Meanwhile Gocharov returns to Moscow and confronts Petrov, feigning outrage that Vyatkin was sent to kill him and revealing that he knows Petrov and his confederates have resurrected Sokol. His intimidation of Petrov presents a façade that he's still a hardline communist who misses the Soviet days the same as Petrov's faction. Later, he sat in on an intelligence briefing for President Surikov where Petrov detailed Czech defense movements, suggesting it was an offensive move favoring NATO and that Russia should respond with movements of it's own.

Later, Gocharov interrogated Mikhail, who admitted to spying on Surikov and confessed that Petrov was his only contact and that he had no idea who ordered Popov's assassination, though he did hear Sarhan Lychkin's name. He mentions the codename "crossbow" before Gocharov shot and killed him.

He later makes contact with Jack again at Motoksa, a defunct Soviet nuclear bunker in Russia where Sokol was based. He explains to Jack that the only way he can help is from the inside because Petrov trusts him, and that he has been aware of the renegade Russian's plan to execute Seven Days. He tells Jack that Sokol is a tool and finding the one who means to use it is the only way to stop everything, vowing to do so after failing to stop it a first time many decades earlier while he was in the Red Army.

Gocharov oversaw the deployment of the Sokol weapon as it was loaded on to a truck and the driver left in pursuit of a U.S. Military convoy inbound from Ramstein Air Base. The weapon, having been designed to American specifications, would be detonated among the convoy in a small Czech town, implicating the Americans in the nuclear strike. Jack succeeded in thwarting the weapon's final deployment, detonating inside a large tunnel system and collapsing part of the mountain above it, but sparing the city. ("Ghosts")

Though the weapon was destroyed, Gocharov explained to Jack that Sokol is just one part, and the ultimate goal is all-out war between Russia and the United States. Jack accompanies Gocharov back to Moscow along with Greer, Mike, and Czech President Alena Kovac. There, they expose to President Surikov the rebel plot lead by Petrov.