I stood in the war room. The enormous, multi-screen display wall was alight with every piece of information we possessed: satellite feeds, financial transactions, cargo manifests, and the smoldering report from Murmansk. But all I saw was a single, perfect image of my wife’s frightened face, followed by the sight of Irina’s lifeless hand.

Grief is a luxury. Sorrow is a distraction. I had buried both somewhere cold and deep on the road back from Nizhny Novgorod, sealing them beneath the ...