Return to Sonneberg

"We have him.” Those three words spoken by his friend Sergei Mycoff changed Rusty’s life forever. He had no other choice but to fly to Europe to unravel a twenty-five year old mystery. But he was not prepared for the near death adventure that would lead him across Western Europe into the Communist Zone of East Germany to the town of Sonneberg.

Return to Sonneberg is a novel based on an episode in the life of John “Rusty” Russell a U. S. State Department diplomat who is unwittingly pulled into a scheme to return a spy, who was thought to have been dead for twenty-five years, from Russia to the United States.

The year is 1988, a time of new relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. Rusty is stationed at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. and working in the fray of the fast moving developments between the United States and the Russians. The future of the new relationship between the two countries depends on the outcome of his mission. At the outset the plan seemed simple enough but not all plans, whether simple or not, turn out as anticipated. Rusty did not realize when he accepted the mission that it could cost him his life.