Missionary Position (eBook)

II

The Scouts

Three and a half years earlier

May 25, 1995

I peered through the porthole, wiped it with my sleeve, and peered again. So green. But all I could see appeared to be virgin wilderness, not a sign of civilization. Scanning the rocky beaches and forested hills, I felt like Captain Cook discovering new land. My first glimpse of Mother Russia and she looked majestic, raw, impressive.

“Let me see,” said Dan, my seventeen-year-old son. I moved back. We had decided that we two would be the scouting team to check out a landing site in Russia for the rest of our family. After four days at sea on a tramp steamer, we were seeing our first landfall since leaving Japan. The cargo ship, Sormovsky 40, had delivered Siberian logs to Niigata on the north coast of Japan. We’d met Captain Vladimir on the docks and asked him to take us back to Russia. They had never carried passengers before, especially not Americans, but did have an extra room. With a gesture of international reconciliation, and a hearty appetite for American dollars, he agreed to fit Dan and me in, along with our van.

The ship was returning to Russia with a cargo of used Japanese cars, including eleven brand new Toyota Land Cruisers worth close to half a million dollars. These were carefully ensconced in one of the forward holds and labeled “used” on the manifest, while the rest of the cars sat lashed down on the upper deck. We were getting our first lesson in, and soon-to-be first run-in with, the Russian mob.

“But is this where we’re going? Where’s Port Olga?” asked Dan, referring to our disembarkation point. “They said it was a logging town but I don’t see any signs of life anywhere.”

Strange, I thought, to bring all these cars to the middle of nowhere. I was glad we had called ahead to old friends we’d known in Japan who now lived in Khabarovsk, six hundred kilometers to the north. They told us they would send two young Russians who worked with them to meet us and help us through customs.

The ship swung to starboard, and a small grouping of squat cement buildings appeared with a cluster of men on an otherwise bare dock. The engines slowed, then stopped altogether. The only sound was the lap of water on the bulkhead and the pook-a-taka, pook-a-taka of a small tug plying towards us with a brace of soldiers in the bow, looking as though they were dragging it through the waves.

The tug pulled up alongside and six olive-coated men with assault rifles jumped on board, not a smile in the bunch. This sober reception contrasted with my excitement at our arrival. I noticed the red star on the leader’s cap and the scowl as he spoke with one of the shipmates while he scrutinized the ship’s manifest, crew and cargo lists. Walkie-talkies buzzed and clicked; crisp orders barked back and forth; a few voices raised. Then the head officer shook his head and shouted to his men to get back aboard the tug. As quickly as they had invaded us, they all retreated. The tug pulled away.

“Gee, that was fast,” I said. “Wonder what they were so upset about.” Out in the gangway I found Alexander, the first mate. “Alex, when do we get off?”

“Pfooh!” he spat. “We are not getting off in Olga. We must go to Vladivostok! The KGB, they say you are Amerikans. You cannot come in to Olga. Is closed port. Forbidden. They think maybe you are spies!”

“Are you kidding? The Cold War is over, Alex. And Vladivostok is two hundred and fifty kilometers to the south!”

“Yes, and all the drivers for these Land Cruisers are waiting on the dock here in Olga. Now they all have to travel by land over dirt roads down to Vladivostok to meet us.” Alex shrugged.

“I’m really sorry, Alex. Is this a big problem? All because of us?” I asked feeling guilty for upsetting everyone’s plans.

“Kha! Let me tell you, Olga women? Phooh!” He spat again emphatically, having clearly logged in much practice at this. “Vladivostok women? Mmmmm!” And he raised his bushy eyebrows with a smile to let me know that this was indeed a godsend for the crew and much to his liking.

“But Yuri…,” he added, referring to the slick Russian buyer of the eleven Land Cruisers who was also on board. He lowered his voice and glanced over his shoulder, “You should be staying away from him. He had arranged with customs in Olga to get his cars in for… special price. He may have to pay quarter million dollars taxes now that we go to Vladivostok. Maybe he want to keel you.” Here Alex drew a crooked, dirty finger across his neck with a grisly sound, and laughed. Oh, yes, an entertaining thought. I backed into our cabin and locked the door.

“What’d he say?” asked Dan.

“Oh, not to worry, Son. We’re headed for Vladivostok. Should be a memorable trip. Just keep the door locked for now.”

We woke the next morning to find Golden Horn Bay outside our porthole, the commercial port of Vladivostok swarming with all manner of tugs, fishing and cargo vessels. The shoreline was an endless panorama of rusting warships, tramp steamers, drab cement block buildings, dilapidated warehouses and gnarled rusty car bodies strewn like driftwood along the beaches. A cold overcast sky didn’t add any cheer to our welcome, but we remained animated. Before us stood exotic Mother Russia, mysterious, foreboding, unpredictable, and wholly unknown.

After dropping anchor, another tugboat of authoritative KGB officers approached, no more friendly then yesterday’s, but with fewer objections and less shouting. Alex rapped on our door. “Get your bags and come! You go ashore now.”

No one on the tug spoke to us or smiled. I wondered if we were being taken prisoner. This felt more like an arrest than a welcome. A tall, blond young man in a black leather jacket took one last drag on his cigarette, flicked it into the bay like Bogart and motioned for us to follow him. The tug bumped up to the dock, we jumped ashore and hurried after him into an imposing gray building where we were told to sit and wait. I leaned over to Dan and whispered, “Definitely KGB.” With his long leather jacket, upturned collar and scowl, he appeared right out of Hollywood. Later we found out he was just the shipping agent. Ivan, for so was his name, soon returned and asked for our passports and visas and shot off to have these duly scrutinized and stamped. Everyone seemed so serious, suspicious, and gloomy.

I’ll add this here for the spymasters who will say the KGB did not exist in 1995 but the newly created FSB had taken over: Nothing more than a shuffling of consonants, the same people in the same offices doing the same dark business, but with new and improved ID cards.

Our friends from Khabarovsk arrived: Steven, a strikingly good-looking young man, dark, Russian, and Slava, a buxom young woman with a wild, sandy blond mane and big blue eyes. Their excited and cheerful faces contrasted greatly with the rest of the population we had seen so far. Although we’d never met, they gave us big hugs and Russian kisses on both cheeks. I could get used to this. Ivan returned and handed us our passports. “You are free to go. Good luck,” he added as though we would sorely need it.

“Did you have any problems? Are you OK?” Steven and Slava asked anxiously. “We were on the dock in Olga when they turned your ship away. All the mafia drivers were furious. We didn’t tell anyone that we knew the Americans. They said if they could get their hands on you they would cut off your balls.”

Whoa! And I was hoping to hang on to those a bit longer. “Maybe we could put some distance between us and the boat before Yuri and the others get off,” I suggested. We were still standing right on the dock next to the ship at the Seaport Station.

“Is that him?” Steven pointed to a scowling figure on deck berating one of his henchmen. I nodded. “Noviy Russky,” Steven said.

“New Russian?” I asked, a little proud that I could translate that complex expression.

“Yes. That’s what we call the newly rich businessmen who’ve made a killing overnight in the collapse of the Soviet Union by semi-criminal means. If the Rolex and gaudy jewelry didn’t give him away, that arrogant scowl would. He looks dangerous.”

“Right. I suspect he is right now. Shall we go?” With that we hustled through a large doorway and found ourselves facing an enormous, exotic building with steeples, wrought ironwork, arched windows and tiled borders.

“What’s that?” I asked, awed by the impressive structure.

“That’s the final terminus of the Siberian Express Railway, the Vladivostok train station,” Steven replied. “You’re as far east as you can go on the longest railroad in the world.” We were later to learn that this area is called the Russian Far East, and Vladivostok literally means “Master of the East”, which is a great improvement over the much less flattering Chinese name for it: “sea cucumber cliffs.”

The famous Tran Siberian railway ends here, six thousand miles from Moscow. Laid out in 1891 by the heir to the Russian throne, the future emperor Nikolai II, it became the main road of Siberia connecting the coast and the centers of Asian Russia with European Russia and Moscow. Once called the fairest jewel in the crown of the Tsars, its construction has a bleak history of slave...