On Course

January 1971 . . . the wheels are now in motion.  Sergei Kourdakov would soon be aboard the ship that brings him near the coast of the United States and Canada.  His plans to defect from the Soviet Union are always in the back of his mind.  That very same month, I accepted a new job offer that would take me out of the Pentagon to the office where we would eventually meet.  We were still teenagers that January . . . only nineteen years old.

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Excerpt from The Persecutor:

“I knew in my heart I would not be coming back—not to that.

With my decision firmly made, I plunged back into my studies and duties as Chief of the Youth League, eagerly waiting the time I could go to sea.  A month later, in January 1971, I graduated from the naval academy as a radio officer and was commissioned Cadet Second Lieutenant Sergei Kourdakov of the Soviet Navy.  I was assigned immediately to sea duty and shipped out aboard a Soviet destroyer.”

- Sergei Kourdakov, The Persecutor (Chapter 19, pgs 231-232)

* * *

Excerpt from A Rose for Sergei:

“I don’t know what I was happier about, the promotion or a chance to work in a building where I could tell if it was day or night or snowing or raining.  I had windows and sunshine.  My new office was located on the fourth floor of the Pomponio Building in Rosslyn, Virginia.  The area where my desk was situated had a wall of windows at the end of the room.  I had a view to die for that overlooked the Key Bridge and Georgetown.”

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Unbeknownst to us we were on course to meet in the fall of 1972.