Christian Courbois, CIA in Russia?

Christian Courbois, from Boone NC, CIA in Russia?

Christian Courbois and I met in the spring of 1998 just after I had moved self and then girlfriend Svetlana Chuloshnikova to Saint Petersburg Russia.  Sveta and I lived in a corporate flat provided by the majority American owned Russian phone company that had chosen to employ me as their director for sales, marketing, and customer service.  The corporate flat was located at the head of Rubenshtien Street, at house 6, in a large second floor flat.  Today Rubenshtien is home for multiple restaurants, having a city wide reputation for good food and a variety of cousines.  Then in 1998 it was a rather dark place, with a single bar of note, Mollie's located on the same side of the street as our flat but much further down, towards the point where Rubenshtien met other streets, locally termed 'the five corners'.  

I don't recall what Sveta and I were doing that evening, as it was over 20 years back.  I do recall meeting this American ex-pat, Christian Courbois, with his then girlfriend Luba, whom he later married and divorced, she a well raised and educated Russian, working for a time at world reknowned Ernst and Young.

I thought it completely random that we had this encounter, now far less sure, suspecting it was one of those classic CIA moves, having a target like me, as in time I learned I was, meeting purely by chance someone they intended me to meet, this for effect most foul.

I would experience such chance encounters in my time in Saint Petersburg with another few Americans, one now head of Bloomberg Moscow, Bradley Cook, and an Army vet who for a time was Director of Investor Relations at large Russian company Ulmart, Brian Kean, and billionaire American expat, owner of Ulmart, and once owner of Russian supermarket chain Lenta, August Meyer.  Those are stories for another time.  

I took to Christian immediately.  He owned a western postal delivery service located on Nevskiy prospekt, named Westpost.  Sort of a Mailboxes R Us, focused on the newly birthed corporate market of that time, for getting mail in those days via the Russian post was a thing questionable at best.