The Courier

About the Book

As a young US Army officer, Jake Yeager was once a top-secret military courier until he was gunned down smuggling stolen Soviet diamonds in his spare time.  Twenty years later, he’s a globe-trotting economist going through the motions of living after losing his wife to cancer.  

Jake’s mission to Armenia to restructure a World Bank loan looks routine until he meets his beautiful interpreter, Anahit Stepanian.

Anahit’s career in the Soviet Intourist agency came to an abrupt end when the USSR collapsed and Armenia became an independent nation.  Now, at 34, she makes an uncertain living interpreting for itinerant scholars and trade delegations sifting through Armenia’s ashes.

Almost against their will, Jake and Anahit fall in love.  After three failed romances, Anahit doubts that an affair with Jake can have a happy ending.  But as Jake’s about to depart, a favor to a friend forces him and Anahit into a deadly game of hide-and-seek with her first love, a former KGB major, Aleksandr Avakian.

Avakian knows that Anahit is involved with Jake.  And he’s seen them with Sarkis Melikian, Avakian’s source for stolen antiquities.  Unaware of  Sarkis’ dealings with Avakian, Jake agrees to carry two pieces of antique jewelry to Amsterdam.  Avakian thinks he has something more.

In the most brutal way, Jake and Anahit quickly discover that Avakian will go to any lengths to take what he wants.  

From the ancient Armenian capital of Yerevan to the Turkish crossroads of Diyarbakir, to the tiny Syrian border town of Ras al’Ain and on to Aleppo, Damascus, Dar’a and Amman, Jordan, The Courier delivers fast-paced romantic adventure.

About the Author

James W. Christian has worked in every region of the world, including the newly-independent nations emerging from the old Soviet Union. The Courier, set in Armenia in the middle 1990s, is his first novel. A second novel, Audrey’s Bonds, is in the publication process and he’s presently researching a third. He lives with his wife in the Texas Hill Country.