Schoen did as asked, although the Old West blended whiskey remained sealed until after the flight touched down on U.S. soil and Gershkovich, reunited with his family, had the chance to meet with then-President Joe Biden and Schoen’s boss at the time, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The 10-hour ride home was surreal. The two NESCAC guys from Maine schools, four years apart—Schoen graduated in 2010, Gershkovich in 2014—traded notes about the common points in their lives and filled in the details of their respective experiences that brought them together on this plane at this particular moment.

They were meeting for the first time, but they shared collegial familiarity, forever linked in one of the biggest geopolitical stories of the time and by the unique nature of their liberal arts education, which led each to his own personal truth and calling: Gershkovich to write about Russia for the Wall Street Journal, drawing the interest and suspicion of Russian authorities because of his keen, insightful reporting; and Schoen, a globetrotting diplomat, who learned to speak Russian at Colby, spent six years in the Army, including as a Ranger with multiple deployments to Afghanistan, then landed at the State Department with the responsibility of getting people like Gershkovich out of the stickiest situations of their lives.

To do it, Schoen helped to lead a team that orchestrated the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War.

“We talked the whole time on our way home,” Schoen recalled, noting that he and Gershkovich have stayed in contact. “He’s a great American. He was reporting the whole time we were bringing him home. He was asking questions, connecting the dots. Twelve hours before, he was in Lefortovo Prison, and now he’s at 30,000 feet on a private jet flying home to meet the president. It was pretty cool to see.”

It’s always cool to see.

For Schoen, springing Gershkovich from a Russian prison was another high-profile moment in a career highlighted by front-page news. A government major at Colby, Schoen played key roles arranging the release of other U.S. citizens held by Russia, notably Brittney Griner, Trevor Reed, Paul Whelan, and Alsu Kurmasheva, the latter two part of the complicated multinational Gershkovich release that Schoen helped orchestrate through diplomatic channels.

He’s aided the release of dozens of other U.S. citizens detained in countries around the world, and as the newly appointed regional affairs director for the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, Schoen most recently led the U.S. team that that brought home American citizens and political prisoners detained in China, Afghanistan, Belarus, and Russia.

Schoen didn’t necessarily dream about becoming a high-stakes negotiator growing up in a military family in Bethesda, Md., but he definitely wanted to go where the action was. Colby was part of his plan to get there.

His grandfather and uncle were Army veterans, serving as members of the Green Berets and Rangers, elite special-operation units. He was in eighth grade when 9/11 happened, which focused his resolve to join the military. By the time he graduated from high school, his grandparents had retired to midcoast Maine. They suggested he visit Waterville to see Colby. He was enchanted the moment he arrived on Mayflower Hill. “In my mind’s eye, I thought it was exactly what college should look like,” he said. “A liberal arts college up in the Maine woods was very appealing to me.”

It was the only place he applied.

He’s an outdoors guy with an appetite for adventure, so Maine was perfect for Schoen. He enjoyed the academic program, too. Colby’s curriculum challenged him and prepared him for the world at large. He took a lot of history and government courses, and one Jan Plan he went to Russia for a language immersion program. He lived with a family there and began to learn the culture from a first-person perspective. While brief, that experience served him well when he applied for a job at the State Department that required Russia specialization.

“You are exposed through the liberal arts to things you might not have seen otherwise,” Schoen said. By the time his senior year rolled around, his focus returned to joining the military after leaving Colby.

He admits, many of his peers and professors didn’t understand his intended path, given other possibilities. But he was certain of his choice. “I was going to do it anyway,” he said. “The chance to be at Colby was the chance to do something unexpected. It was a different kind of adventure.”

After graduating, Schoen returned home to Maryland and prepared to meet his personal commitment. He intended to join Officer Candidate School, which prepares recruits to become commissioned officers. But the wait was too long for his liking. When he was told he could leave for basic training in six weeks, he signed up.

In doing so, he followed his family tradition, eventually earning his way as a member of the Rangers, who specialize in raids, sensitive missions, and special reconnaissance. He spent three-and-a-half of his six years in the Army in the 2nd Ranger Battalion as a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment. Stationed in Washington state, he deployed twice to Afghanistan and helped execute secret missions around the world.

One of those missions made him consider his next career move.

His regiment was assigned to assist a Delta Force unit with an overseas hostage recovery. He was a low-level soldier in a high-risk situation, but the mission was scrubbed because the hostage escaped before the recovery began. Another time, he was assigned to provide perimeter security in a danger zone over which he had no control.

“You want to be the one doing the cool stuff, but you are not. That was my motivation to get out,” he said. With his wife’s urging and support, he left the military after six years and used a portion of his G.I. Bill benefit to enroll at Georgetown University, where he received a master’s in security studies and foreign service.

Schoen worked his way up to his current position from lower-level posts in the State Department, as well as the Department of Defense, joining the State Department’s Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs in the fall of 2021. He worked closely with Ambassador Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

“I wanted to bring this experience of being on the pointy end of the spear to what is essentially an office job,” Schoen said. “I felt with my background, I could speak with authority to the families, which was actually very appealing to me. And I felt, given what I knew about Russia, I could really help.”

Schoen arrived during a time of new strategies and policies with the office under the control of Carstens, a retired Ranger and lieutenant colonel. With their common background, Schoen and Carstens shared the Army’s ethos that everyone comes home.

“There is no higher principle than no one gets left behind,” Schoen said. “It is very appealing to sit here after two tours in Afghanistan and take that position over and over again, that lives are more important than broad foreign policy goals. These are complex issues, but the stakes are existential for the individuals involved. I have been the guy the U.S. government was willing to have get killed for something that I don’t think anyone really understood in the end.”

His first high-profile case was Trevor Reed, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who was arrested in Russia in 2019 and sentenced to nine years in prison after being convicted for violence against a Russian police officer. He was released in late April 2022 in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian citizen held in the United States on drug-smuggling charges.

Schoen orchestrated the logistics of the exchange, using diplomatic channels to negotiate the terms with his Russian counterparts and then arranging all the details about how it would work, including hiring the pilots to fly the mission and masking the numbers on the plane.

He found the work exhilarating, dramatic, and full of risk and satisfaction. While at Colby, he never considered the career possibilities associated with statesmanship when he chose government as his major, but he was naturally drawn to the excitement, urgency, and existential nature of high-stakes diplomacy. His favorite book growing up—and still—is the 1949 action memoir Eastern Approaches by the British Army officer Fitzroy Maclean, who recounts diplomatic and military adventures in Moscow, North Africa, and German-occupied Yugoslavia.

On the flight home, Reed, who is about Schoen’s age, asked him point blank, “How do I do this? How did you end up here?” Schoen gave him a copy of Eastern Approaches and answered, “This is why I am here.”

Within days of bringing Reed home, Schoen flew to Texas to meet with Griner’s family. The WNBA star had been detained since the middle of February 2022, when she was arrested by Russian customs officials after cartridges of medically prescribed hash oil were found in her luggage. As April turned to May, the Biden Administration made the formal determination that Griner was wrongfully detained, a distinction that meant the U.S. government could begin to work to secure her release as the legal case against her played out.

Schoen’s mission was to find a way to bring her home. His first task was preparing the Griner family for the ordeal ahead. Half of Schoen’s job is working diplomatic channels. The other half is keeping the families informed as much as he can given the confidential nature of negotiations. He is their point of contact, the one they call with questions, concerns, and to express their anger, frustration, and deepest fears.

“It’s tough work,” Schoen said. “It’s full contact. You are the face of a policy that is failing until it succeeds, and oftentimes there is simply nothing to say. I get yelled at a lot, which is fine. I have to absorb what they are going through and advocate for them within the government.”

He spent three years keeping vigil with Whelan’s family before he was released. Schoen’s work with families is about building relationships, earning trust, and being empathetic. He thinks he is uniquely qualified for the job because of his own deployments. His family often didn’t know where he was in the world or the danger he faced, if he was alive or dead.

For families, every day is the same: Their loved one is not home, and they fear the worst.

The other part of his Army training that serves him well with families is a Special Operations motto: Make a Way Out of No Way. He displays the quotation by his office door, a daily reminder that no task is too daunting, no challenge too difficult.

“I know there is a way,” he tells the families. “We will make a way out of no way. We will get your loved one home.”

After Griner’s arrest, the United States had to allow the Russian legal process to play out. Once Griner was found guilty and sentenced, Carstens, Schoen, and others could begin figuring out how to get her home. It took longer than her family would have liked, but she made it home to Texas in early December 2022, 10 months after she was arrested.

The cost: Viktor Bout, known to the larger world as the Merchant of Death.

Bout is a notorious Russian arms dealer and smuggler, who was accused of operating throughout Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The Royal Thai Police arrested him in 2008 in a joint sting operation with the United States and Interpol. He was extradited to the United States in 2010, convicted of conspiracy to kill American citizens, among other charges, in 2011, and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in federal prison.

He had served 10 years of his sentence when Schoen recommended using him as a chip to secure Griner’s release. Schoen knew the Russians wanted him back, and he suspected Griner was a target of opportunity to give Russian President Vladimir Putin the negotiating power he needed to get Bout.

“Brittney’s arrest led to a completely different negotiating environment,” Schoen said. “You add more Americans and there is a finite number of Russians Putin wants back, and all of a sudden you are dealing with a very complicated situation.”

The Gershkovich deal was even more complicated. To pull it off, Schoen got to practice old-world clandestine diplomacy, the kind he read about as a boy in Eastern Approaches. It was the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War and included a total of 24 prisoners from six countries.

The deal involved eight Russian prisoners from around the world, including three held in the United States, in exchange for 16 prisoners coming out of Russia, among them three U.S. citizens, German citizens, political prisoners, and others. It took half a year to negotiate, and the key piece of the deal was Germany’s cooperation. This time, they held the prisoner Russia wanted most, the hit man Vadim Krasikov.

It was Schoen’s job to get the buy-in of other countries to make the deal happen.

“The primary job I had in the Russian cases was the strategy behind the negotiations, building the theory of the case to figure out how we are going to get it done. That means coordinating the diplomatic aspects of it, meeting with foreign governments if they are going to host an exchange or put pressure on the Russians in a certain way or, in the case of the Gershkovich exchange, actually coughing up Russians to trade.”

He and Carstens traveled the globe to make their case and convince foreign governments the risk was worth the reward. Every country had different needs, goals, concerns, and priorities. Once the terms were agreed on, it came down to logistics and coordination.

The exchanges are always dramatic, like a scene from a movie. Typically, the planes carrying the prisoners line up tail to tail. Carstens is the first to deplane. He introduces himself, verifies the people on the other plane are who they are supposed to be, and the Russians do the same.

After paperwork is signed, the prisoners get off one plane and board another, and then head back to their respective countries.

The president usually calls early in the trip. With Griner, the call also included Vice President Kamala Harris, Blinken, and Griner’s wife, Cherelle. They called from the Oval Office, directly to Schoen’s phone.

Griner talked the whole way home, which is common.

“Most of them just want to talk for hours and unload. They want to contextualize what was happening to them in prison versus what was going on in negotiations versus what was happening in the news. So that is always kind of fun. You are hearing about their experiences, they are hearing about yours. Usually, they ask a lot of questions,” Schoen said.

And though they have just met, they are not strangers.

“Their families have communicated to them either by phone or by letter, ‘There is this team back at State, and there’s this guy Fletcher, we talk to him every week. We are working on this.’ And then you meet them, and they go, ‘Oh, you’re the guy! You’re Fletcher!’”

For Schoen, those moments of joy put the dangerous moments he experienced at the pointy end of the spear into perspective.

Mission accomplished. We’re coming home.

Everyone cheers when the pilot announces the plane has crossed into U.S. airspace, but silence settles in when the descent begins and it’s wheels down. Schoen has learned to stay out of the way, to give them all the time and space they need to process whatever they need to process before greeting their family and meeting the president.

It’s a private, sacred moment that leaves Schoen searching for words.

“When you drop them off with their parents or their wife or their family, it’s just—wonderful. No one, including you, believes that it is going to happen until it does. It’s wonderful to know you can make a difference, even in a small way.”

Schoen has stayed in touch with most of the people he has helped bring home, exchanging Christmas cards and occasional phone calls.

“In the end, I was just a government person who was involved,” he said. “What we did was incredible. But in the end, I hope they forget about us. I hope they close this chapter and get on with their lives.”