Sergei Kourdakov, a former KGB agent and Soviet naval intelligence officer, defected from the USSR at the age of twenty. A year later we met at my Federal Government office in Washington DC. We were watched and followed. “Even you could be spy,” Sergei whispered. My book, A Rose for Sergei, is the true story of our time together.

Friday, January 10, 2020

Sergei Kourdakov … Life-Changing Words


When I was a child, I always had mixed emotions about New Year’s Day.  It was either, “Yaaay, Happy New Year,” or “Boo, I have to go back to school tomorrow.”  When I was in my late teens, and working full-time for the U.S. Federal Government, I felt the same way about New Year’s Day—glad to celebrate a new year but not ready to go back to work after a few days of holiday vacation time.

My way of thinking changed once again when I was twenty-one.  That New Year’s day, I was alone in my apartment in Arlington, Virginia.  I had just returned from visiting my family for the Christmas holidays.  While unpacking my suitcase the telephone rang, and I quickly answered, expecting to hear Sergei’s voice.  Instead I heard these life-changing words ...

“They got him!  They got Sergei,” my boss shouted into the phone.

Shortly after midnight on January 1, 1973, Sergei Kourdakov’s life ended abruptly.  He was just twenty-one years old.  It has been forty-seven years since the unexplainable happened.

That phone call … and those words … slip into my mind each year.

They got Sergei.


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A Rose for Sergei is Available From


Amazon (eBook & Paperback)


Barnes & Noble (Paperback)