The Cardinal of the Kremlin
First edition
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| Author | Tom Clancy |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Jack Ryan universe |
| Genre | Techno-thriller |
| Publisher | G. P. Putnam's Sons |
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Publication date
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1988 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 543 (hardback edition) |
| ISBN | (hardback edition) |
| OCLC | 17618316 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3553.L245 C37 1988 |
| Preceded by | Patriot Games |
| Followed by | Clear and Present Danger |
Coordinates: 38°16′31.01″N 69°13′35.70″E / 38.2752806°N 69.2265833°E
The Cardinal of the Kremlin is a novel by Tom Clancy, featuring his character Jack Ryan. It is a sequel to The Hunt for Red October, based on the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and its Soviet equivalent, covering themes including intelligence gathering and counterintelligence, political intrigue, and guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan.
The SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) systems discussed in the book are based on real-world systems. In the book, satellite photos are shown of the Dushanbe Complex called "Bright Star" in the novel. These images are of an actual contemporary Soviet mountaintop site of then-disputed function called Okno. The Soviet government claimed that the site was an imaging station for optically tracking space objects, while Western experts believed it was built to employ directed-energy weapons against space based targets. The site is referenced in the Federation of American Scientists' Space Policy Project Special Weapons Monitor section.
CIA analyst Jack Ryan attends a diplomatic conference in Moscow as part of an American delegation to the Soviet Union. He learns that the CIA's most highly placed agent, codenamed "CARDINAL", is none other than Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, the personal aide to the Soviet Minister of Defense and a national war hero. Filitov was recruited by GRU colonel and British agent Oleg Penkovsky, and offered his services to the CIA after the deaths of his wife and two sons; the latter two were killed during their service in the Red Army. As a result, Filitov has been passing political, technical, and military intelligence to the CIA for the past thirty years.
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