Misha Filitov
Mikhail Semyonovich "Misha" Filitov, codenamed CARDINAL, was a highly placed agent for the CIA giving vital data on the Russians. He is mentioned in several novels but plays vital parts in Red Rabbit and The Cardinal of the Kremlin. Filitov worked for Dmitri Timofeyevich Yazov, the Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Biography
Filitov was a former tank officer for the Soviet Army during World War II, who is three times a Hero of the Soviet Union. He later became alienated from the Soviet government after the death of his wife and two sons as well as the excessive losses in the Soviet military. This led to his recruitment into the CIA by Oleg Penkovsky in the early 1960s under the codename "CARDINAL". He would go on to become the CIA's highest agent-in-place in the Kremlin for thirty years. By 1986, he was working as the personal aide to the Soviet Defense Minister.
Filitov first met his wife-to-be at a performance of the Kirov Company, a Russian ballet. He had been rewarded with tickets to a performance, as he had the best-maintained tanks in his armored division. As it is said on page 45 of The Cardinal of the Kremlin:
"Misha smiled also as he remembered the first impression of a young armor officer given tickets to the performance as a reward for having the best-mantained tanks in the division: How can they do that? Perched up on the tips of their toes as though on needle-point stilts. He'd remembered playing on stilts as a child, but to be so graceful! And then she'd smiled at the handsome young officer in the front row. For the briefest moment. Their eyes had met for almost as little time as it takes to blink, he thought. Her smile had changed ever so slightly. Not for the audience any longer, for that timeless instant the smile had been for him alone. A bullet through the heart could not have made a more devastating effect."
Colonel Filitov went on to marry Elena in 1937. Unfortunately, Elena dies in 1957. In The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Filitov states the couple would have been married 50 years that February. Before her death, he and Elena had 4 children (according to The Cardinal of the Kremlin) but all have died.
Appearances
Template:Characters/Red Rabbit
| |||||||||||
| ||||||||