The Missionary Position: Misadventures in Russia

By Tad Browne

Followed by the KGB, robbed blind (34 times), forging visas, wrangling with mafiosos, thugs, thieves, fools and roads, strip-searched in public, having one's ass bit off by a St. Bernard, a near-scandalous affair (well, there are some perks), flailing through the 1998 financial melt-down, jumping tramp steamers and the Trans Siberian Express, toasting one (or nine) too many vodkas, commandeering a Russian Navy tall ship, helplessly watching a man break through the ice and drown, becoming TV celebrities, shivering through an unheated winter, and having our eighth baby born in an untamed land.

This is the true account of the colorful, criminal, and outrageous adventures of an American couple's four years in Russia. The often humorous, often dramatic characters and perils further complicate the escapades while the couple tries to survive and raise seven children, the eighth on the way, in the newly opened, bawdy, crime-ridden seaport of post-soviet Vladivostok.

Arranged chronologically, The Missionary Position jumps in at a major burglary and capture of thieves, through the first adjusting months, a bitter Russian winter, and a hectic summer. Highlighted with anecdotes of oddball acquaintances, petty criminals, and daily Soviet life, and peppered with brief historical notes, the book thrashes through the 1998 financial crash and finally finishes with struggling through one last Siberian winter.

The terms missionary and humor are seldom teamed up, giving The Missionary Position a unique place in literature – nowhere near the Kama Sutra, but equally far from Joseph Smith's Golden Tablets.

Neither religious nor secular, the book rather focuses on the cultural and human interest of modern Russia, the escapades, mistakes, charming eccentricities and oddball criminals. As such The Missionary Position presents a seldom-seen picaresque combination of missionary and mercenary, drama and comedy, in the Russian Far East.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098326906

Book preview

I

The Roller Coaster

Startled by the sharp ring from the old Russian Bakelite phone, I reached for the receiver.

Hallo? Browne? a gravelly, male voice asked, definitely Russian.

Yes. Who’s ...?

He cut me off. If you want see your passports and documents again, be by statue in Bortsov Square downtown, one o’clock, p.m.

What...?

Bring money. One o’clock. Today. A click, then silence. I stood stunned.

One week earlier

We desperately needed a new place with a real shower rather than the sporadically warm and cold water from the bare pipe at the cinderblock house one hundred yards across the fields from the previously unoccupied summer camp building we were using for a home. Three rooms for the fourteen of us (my wife and I, our seven children, and five helpers: two Russians, one German, one Australian and one American) was asking a lot of everyone’s patience and grace. Definitely a little late to look into planned parenthood.

So when my wife Joy found a large brick home in the woods for rent with a fireplace, seven bedrooms, gardens, eleven chickens, two pigs, three dogs and a cat, for less than we paid for our first shoebox-sized apartment, we jumped at it. In fact, we got almost everything over to the new house in the first truckload. Almost.

Not everything goes perfectly smooth in a dangerous foreign field. We expected some setbacks. Chalk it up to rent, the price you pay to be there. But when I realized that all our passports, birth and marriage certificates and visas had been stolen, I felt sick.

Coming back to the old house for the second load and seeing it ransacked was troubling enough. Discovering they had stolen our VCR, Olympus camera system, power tools and computer peripherals was a loss to be sure, but the documents, worth thousands on the black market, were crucially vital to us. Without them, we were stranded, unable to stay in Russia, but unable to leave. It can take months and thousands of dollars to replace even the basic papers.

Compounding this, our marriage certificate is from Costa Rica, and the children’s birth certificates are from Peru, Ecuador, China, Japan and Russia. To replace them would require circumnavigating the globe, twice. They were effectively as near as possible to irreplaceable.

Russian visa laws are strictly enforced; being one day late could get us thrown out of the country, at our expense. For a family of nine, that amounts to a $6000 flight out and the devil to get back in.

Couple this with the fact that in Russia, papers mean everything. Ownership papers, identification papers, employment papers, immigration papers, resident papers, tax papers, birth certificates. If you can’t produce the right paper with all the right seals, stamps, ribbons and signatures to the right official you are in deep borscht. And not just for foreigners. All Russians must carry local passports with them at all times, showing in which state they were born, where they work, where they reside and which cities they have permission to be in, at least. Ironically, these were only valid within Russia (all of the soviet republics at that time). To travel outside the USSR required an international passport, the obtaining of which was a painful and near-death experience. They were treasured like Picassos.

In the Russia of 1995, passports were demanded to buy a railway or ferry ticket, to place a long distance call, to enter office buildings, to exchange currency, pick up mail, stand in line for the dentist, and a host of other daily activities. The need for passports was so pervasive that when I bought a toaster at GUM, the famed government department store, it came with its own passport, complete with port of entry stamps. After receiving my 180 rubles, the sales clerk took out his stamp pad, exhaled dramatically onto the rubber stamp, and officiously stamped in the date of transfer of ownership with verifying signature. I presume his breath was to warm the cold rubber to enhance printability, department stores not being heated. We were cleared to roast bread.

But if you should ever lose that passport, he leaned over the counter, narrowed his eyes and dropped his voice for gravity, you will have stateless and orphaned toaster that no civilized country will claim, and I cannot be held responsible for whatever might befall it - or you. I clutched it to my bosom all the way home.

Leonid, our Russian friend, explained, "In Russia you need documents to prove you are not a camel."

Russian traffic police, the GAI, (pronounced guy-EE), an acronym for Government Automobile Inspectorate, randomly and routinely stop innocent drivers and mercilessly grill them over every conceivable paper. First the driver must prove ownership of the car, (not the spouse, unless the driver has a notarized document from the spouse stating by whom the car can be driven and in which specific city, and that must be from the current year and notarized in this prefecture). Then the driver must prove that the taxes and license fees have been paid, the custom import taxes have been paid, and the transportation department has inspected the vehicle and fees paid. After that the driver must prove identification and location and proper registration in the place of residence. Finally, the driver must have proof that the papers have been dutifully updated within the last twelve months, or since January, depending on moods.

As soon as the police are satisfied with all that, presuming of course that you are lucky enough to be carrying your file cabinet with you, and they have reluctantly determined that they are not going to receive a bribe to expedite this painfully slow process, they wave you on and stop the next unlucky driver. The city is liberally peppered with GAI whose whole duty is to harass as many motorists as they can. So you see, the worst disaster that can befall a driver is to be caught without papers or to, gasp, lose them altogether.

After checking with the local police stations, the U.S. consulate, the neighborhood grapevine, and broadcasting radio bulletins, we had nothing. Then came the phone call. Hope had sprung anew — a chance of recovery, even if it meant dealing with Ali Baba himself.

Clearly I needed help. Someone street-wise, Russian, tough, not easily intimidated, yet inconspicuous. Tusi (an endearing nickname for Natalia)! She’d be perfect! Gorgeous, twenty one years old, blond, and sassy as a dance-hall girl, always in trouble, especially with the men, and a gifted translator. She was a semi-professional singer, too, with a fabulous voice, although I wasn’t sure where that would help, but it couldn’t hurt. Her dad had worked on the docks and had dealings with the mafia before they executed him a year earlier for a minor doublecross. I quickly called Tusi’s home.

Tusi, it’s me, Tad. Listen. The thief who stole our documents just called and wants to meet me downtown in thirty minutes. I think he’s going to ask for ransom money, but I can hardly understand his sloppy Russian slang. I need you. Can you come with me?

Just one guy? We strangle his slimy throat! Always pragmatic, Tusi.

"Great, Toose, but first we gotta get the documents, then you can strangle him. But this could be tricky, maybe dangerous. He could be one guy, could be with a gang, maybe even the mafia. I don’t know."

Yeah. Right. Okay. I understand. I’m in. Pick me up in ten minutes.

Thanks, Tusi. You’re an angel. And she is. True salt of the earth, wild and wooly, rough around the edges but with a heart of gold. A year earlier she had met another Christian group that had briefly visited Vladivostok, but they refused to allow her to come to their meetings because of the way she dressed.

Insufferable prudes, she had told us. When we met her we took her into our extended family, encouraged her, and she blossomed to become a pillar of the work.

(I recently asked Tusi for a photo of her from that time and she sent me this of her younger sister but said they’re practically twins. Of course, I didn’t want to waste a perfectly good photo, but mainly I want you to see what these thieves were up against.)

I picked her up outside her house and we raced nervously downtown, parked and stood, waiting, fretting, shivering in the sub-zero December wind that comes right off the harbor to scrape Bortsov square of all but the most obstinate patches of ice. I’ve seen days when that wind actually knocked people down. The teaming sidewalk bustled with chilled workers and shoppers clutching coats and baskets, hurrying off to some unpleasant task. Scanning the flood of frowns, I searched for our mystery caller, straining to spot a piece of flotsam on a white-capped sea.

My thoughts drifted back to a similar incident two years earlier when we were relieved of all our passports in an even bolder operation. Russian co-worker Natalia and I had parked our car in the gravel lot at one of the city’s two copy centers to photocopy all nine of my family’s passports and documents for our annual visa renewal. Similar to the other center, this one had taken refuge in the converted foyer of an ailing brick building whose original purpose had long been forgotten. A few strategically nailed panels of aluminum on the floors to patch the worn out soviet era linoleum, a little glass to enclose what had been the coat-check room, one Cannon desktop copier, complete with one well-bundled, unshaven and under-trained operator, and, voila- Russia’s answer to Kinko’s.

A formidable variety of documents must be copied and presented in triplicate when applying for new visas. And in Russia one always has to stand in line, for everything, bread, eggs, paying bills, toilet paper, using pay phones. A good twenty minutes passed before we finished. Coming out we saw a white Toyota sedan packed with four swarthy men pulled up tight behind our van, blocking our exit. Looking at the van, I noticed it listed hard to port. I turned a suspicious eye on the men and half demanded, Hey, my tire’s flat. What happened?

All eyebrows raised innocently, a syncopated collective shrug. We ain’t did seen nuthin’ (or a close Russian equivalent), the driver unconvincingly replied.

The worm of accusation stirred in my mind. Vandalism is rampant in Vladivostok, but not in broad daylight and not usually by adult men. Car theft is popular, but why puncture a tire and then hang around? In any case, the only thing to do was to change the tire and the quicker the better.

Natasha put her bag in the car and I placed my bag with the passports, license, papers, money, house keys and other indispensables in the front seat, locked the door, then walked to the trunk and set about expeditiously pulling out the jack and tools. Infamously wretched Russian roads had honed my tire-changing skills to a fine art, so I figured I’d be in and out in under ten minutes. The driver stepped out of the white car.

Sometimes those lug nuts can be mighty stiff. You may need pipe to pry them, hmm? he casually offered. His partners climbed out of the car and lined up, one with a pipe as long as his arm. The worm hit overdrive. Small craft warning.

No, I’m... I’m fine. Thanks. I replied, wanting to appear confident, competent, and in charge. Normally optimistic and gregarious by nature, I like to assume the best in people until undeniably proven to the contrary. This has saved me many a friend and many an embarrassment and is a policy I still hold fast and recommend. I believe the professional term for it is terminal optimism. That day, however, had all the markings of being a major exception.

Natalia too was hearing the spooky music that comes just before the swamp monster reaches out his scaly claws to grab the heroine from behind so she stood guard while I bent over my work. The men circled round me and spoke with thick Azerbaijani accents, which was no comfort, as theirs is an ethnic group often in the center of much crime and violence in that part of Russia. Poor little soft-spoken Natalia looked like a child lost in East L.A. long after dark. Still, understanding our danger, she launched an offensive with a salvo of Gospel tracts to each of the men and began to talk to them while she stood next to me, silently praying nothing would go wrong.

Now this may sound like a foolish or impractical move, but few men murder a stranger while contemplating their eternal destiny. Usually the contemplation follows the deed. And so Natalia occupied the men like a fishmonger pitching salmon to the buyers, asking the first one what he thought, then another, then asking the third if he agreed. She was getting little more than monosyllabic grunts, but it seemed to be holding them at bay. Not expecting any dramatic conversions, I was thankful she was at least looking for the emergency brake on the Titanic. So far, so good, and I was already threading the nuts back on the wheel. Almost there. But as with any good magic trick, we don’t see what’s happening as clearly while it’s happening as we will the moment after it’s done.

The three good Samaritans hovered closely always ready with their lead pipe to lend a helping hand. When they saw I had finished, they congratulated me on a job well-done, piled back in their sedan and sped off, as if remembering their sick auntie who needed her medicine. Breathing a sigh of relief I put the last of the tools away and closed the trunk. Walking around to the driver’s side I tried to unlock the door but the key wouldn’t turn. In fact, the hole looked a little crooked. Then my eyes widened and my heart sank as I looked through the window. No bags at all.

While our three friends had been attending me, a silent fourth partner had slipped around to our blind side, slid a tire iron into the keyhole, wrenched the lock, stealthily grabbed our bags, thrown them in their trunk and given the high sign to his comrades. Mission accomplished, they bid us a cheery good-bye and vanished. It was our good fortune not to have caught wind of what was going on and earned myself a lead pipe drubbing.

We drove straight to the U.S. Consulate to report the crime, where the vice-consul patiently listened with a patronizing air. He then told us, Forget it. You’ll never see those passports again. They’re already on the black market for thousands of dollars each. But I will say this for your encouragement; you take the record for most passports ever stolen in this city, in fact, for the whole year combined. I left less than exuberant with the honor.

Now, here we were, almost two years later to the date, facing the same calamity. I felt I’d now make a good bid for the international record-holder. The end of the story however was still far off and I had no idea that this crook would not have a pistol or knife, or an unseen lead pipe friend. Vladivostok is a mafia town and gangland shootings and stick-ups are daily radio news.

The Korean consul who lived two buildings down from us had been found dead in his stairwell the previous week with both eyes neatly carved out, multiple knife wounds, his wallet, money and watch still on him. A clear message: this had been a matter of principle, not theft. And the town was still abuzz about the mafia boss who, walking out of the bar of the four-star Hyundai Hotel where I’d just had coffee, had been blitzed by three Uzi-wielding hit-men, riddled to death before they screeched off in their Land Cruiser. You never went out alone, day or night.

Waiting nervously by the agreed-upon statue that day, I shivered in a bitter gust of wind and looked at my watch. One o’clock.

A young man approached, twenty-fourish, hands stuffed deep in a dirty pea coat, a woolen stocking cap pulled low. His shifty eyes furtively combed the sidewalk like a dog sneaking up on the neighbor’s garbage. A fresh scrape graced his right unshaven cheek giving the impression of having been thrown from a moving car and having slept on a park bench.

You Browne? he asked still scanning the landscape. I nodded. Follow me, he said and walked off. I wasn’t sure what to do, but knew I couldn’t lose him.

I took off, Tusi trailing, as we tracked him through the busy crowd across the wide Stoletya Street to a small but tidy cafe. He calmly ordered himself a coffee, sat down and wrapped his hands around the cup. After a sip or two, he pulled out a photo of our daughter, Molly, when she was three, which had been in the briefcase with the passports. He pushed it across the table to me. I grabbed it, feeling a rush of violation and accusatory anger.

He came prepared to deflect direct involvement with a lame alibi about meeting thieves who approached him with passports to sell, he being therefore just an innocent middleman. You want the rest? Bring two thousand five hundred dollars by four o’clock. He took another sip of coffee, watching my reaction.

A moment of stunned silence. Are you kidding? I gasped. Although that amount couldn’t buy a home, still, over half the population would be happy to earn that in two years. It was a sum completely impossible for us to come up with. I’m a missionary and have to haggle over the price of a cabbage. I considered twelve cents for a Snickers bar an extravagant waste.

Tusi kicked me under the table, looked straight at him and said, "We’ll bring the money. You bring the documents. Smart girl. I started to protest again but she shot me a look, leaned close and said in a low voice in English, We have no other choice. Do it or you’ll never see your documents again."

Our rogue seemed satisfied, stood up, held out four fingers and repeated, Four. Here. Don’t forget the money, and left.

Lord, what do we do? Only two and a half hours from now.

We need the KGB ... or the U.S. Marines, Tusi said.

Sounded right to me. The U.S. Consulate on Pushkinskaya Street was closest, so Uncle Sam won this contract. We screeched up to the curb in front of the consulate where no cars are allowed to park or even stop. The Russian security guard rushed up with his assault rifle. Parking here prohibited! Move down road! he barked.

I leapt out with theatrical yet genuine zeal, This is an emergency. I’m an American. I need to speak to your head of security. He hesitated, confused. NOW! I yelled. He shot off to call his boss.

Rex, a plainclothes U.S. marine we had once invited to our house with his marine pals, recognized me and waved me in, pinned a large security badge on me, and sent me to the third floor. His full name was Resurrection, which I felt a wonderful name, given him by his devout Filipina mother, but which Rex felt didn’t match his Marine guard persona. (Yo, Resurrection, pass me dem goddamn grenades!) He looked as if he broke bricks with his hands in his spare time, but truly a teddy-bear - nice kid. On the third floor the heavy Plexiglas and metal door clunked shut behind me and out walked a handsome, impeccably dressed young man, who introduced himself as Andrei, chief security officer for the consulate.

I recognized him as the dashing pirate I had met at a New Year’s Party a year earlier at the Vlad Motor Inn, a local hotel and ex-patriot hangout. His very attractive wife, dressed up as a seductive gypsy, had asked me to dance. It wasn’t until the end of the dance that I realized she was working the crowd and reporting back to him, soaking me for information, and didn’t just want me for my body. I hoped he didn’t recall, or if he did, he would remember that I had behaved myself, relatively speaking.

Tell me your problem. We will see what can be done, he said with the air of a man used to making decisions. After hastily explaining the heist to him, he said, OK, first, let me warn you: this could be more dangerous than you have bargained for. It could be the Mafia; it could be a gang. There could be reprisals and you or your family would be the target. Do you still want to proceed with this? Tell me now. Holy Moses! This was not turning out like my normal day.

I imagined this was designed to quench outraged tourists and successfully weeded out most such complaints and calls for action. I stopped. Our brief encounter at the café led me to believe our extortionist was just your average freelance street hooligan. But what did I know? And what was I risking? If he was connected, we - and particularly my children - would never be safe in the city again. But regardless, I had no choice. I had to have those documents. Andrei and his staff stood patiently awaiting my decision. I took a deep breath. Let’s do it! I answered.

All right, he said decisively. Meet me back here in forty five minutes, as though he’d already formulated a plan. Just enough time, I thought, to race home, get a camera (this could be a Kodak moment) and tell the others what was happening.

Here you may ask, What the hoot was he thinking with that camera? But may I remind you that for twenty years I had always recorded every event and printed a monthly newsletter with these snaps. I rarely went anywhere without a little camera and here was a crisis that could involve gunplay, blood and guts, maybe someone’s last breath - maybe mine. Better get it on film. Besides, I didn’t own a bullet-proof vest.

Roaring back to the consulate, we found Andrei on the sidewalk with three burly Russians, introduced as undercover police, not the kind of guys you throw your peanut shells at. Big meaty handshakes and stony faces gave the impression these guys were independent contractors, freelancers, not overly religious as to which denomination they attended or whose team they played for.

We explained the set-up, our guesses as to how it would go, and described the cat that’s shaking us down as the chief put it. Andrei laid out a quick plan.

You and Tusi will be the decoys in the café, Pasha the look-out on the street, Kostiya planted in the restaurant, Sasha at the back stairs. I will be with you in the restaurant.

Maybe not, I protested. Andrei, from your haircut to your shoes, you look Yankee. You’d be a red flag in that café and tip him off. I’d feel better if you weren’t there.

Fine, he said. You’re calling the shots today. In that case I’ll wait in the security van on the street. Here, you’ll need this. He pulled out a hundred dollar bill and then wrapped old Ben Franklin around a wad of bill-sized papers to make it look like a lot. No one wanted to lose too much in case the fish got away.

One of the muscle contingent, Pasha, had been eyeballing Tusi the whole time. Hey, Kukla (doll), maybe you should put money down your pants, he said to her, showing where his mind had been drifting, in case he (nods at me) gets…eliminated. He reached out