Jack Lawrence

The simplest plan was to get me on a boat to Russia across the Black Sea, like Krasnodar.

And then from Krasnodar, I could take a train or plane to St.

Petersburg and meet up with my wife's family.

And then my wife, we could go back to Russia or sort it out.

My wife is a Russian lawyer.

We found this small port, small cargo port on the Black Sea that was like down the side of a cliff and was not very busy and was mostly fishing boats, but got some small cargo boats from Russia.

And so we were talking to this.

We just go make friends with these guys.

Sometimes we come with some like rakia, which is kind of like the Bulgarian equivalent of vodka.

We just start chatting.

We're like, so my buddy here, you know, he's got this situation.

And a lot of times we start telling the story like, oh, yeah, I read about you in the papers.

A lot of them were all too willing to help me out.

So, um...

I need to get onto a cargo ship, but I don't have a passport.

And I was hoping that possibly if I paid some kind of fee, you might take a long bathroom break or something.

And in pretty much every place we went, they're like, yeah.

So this harbor master,

He's like, well, it'd be too obvious if you just leave straight out of here and so forth.

So he says, there's this ship that goes back and forth to Russia.