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In the musty office of the abandoned warehouse on Shanidze Street in Tbilisi, Georgia, Tafar Rasulon was sitting and relaxing with his feet up on a desk while Ella Mamedov sharpened her knife and watched out a dirty window for the two people they were expecting. Victor Zurab and Andre Vano knocked on the door not really sure of what to expect. Ella opened the door without saying a word and directed them to enter. The two local men were still dressed in their work clothes and were surprised when they saw Tafar Rasulon is his custom fitted camouflage military uniform.
The two men looked around the room nervously as Tafar looked them over with his cold dark eyes. Even more unnerving was the sound of Ella’s cleated boots as she slowly paced around the room behind them.
“We’re interested in the job that you have,” Zurab said nervously.
“That’s good,” Tafar said, “Sit down and we’ll review some of the details first.”
The two men brushed the dust from two wooden chairs in front of the desk and sat down.
“I’m told that one of you has access to the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles in Mtskheta.”
“Yes, I do,” Victor Zurab said, “I’m a janitor at the cathedral and I have a set of keys.” He pulled them out of his coat pocket and jingled them proudly.
“This job will require you to work nights, will there be any problems with that?” Tafar asked.
The two men looked at each other before shaking their heads.
“Good, you must continue your normal routine so no one knows or suspects what you are doing. I drew you a small map,” Tafar said as he laid it out on top of the dusty desk for the men to see.
“Your job is to enter the church at night so you will not be seen by anyone.”
“We’ll use the side door,” Zurab said, “No one will see us from the front street.”
“Good, now once you are inside, you will walk to the front entrance of the church. From the front of the church, turn around and walk toward the altar. You will walk up the middle aisle and stop at the tenth pew on the right. You will walk into the pew about midway. Once, there, you will cut out the marble tiles in the floor, just big enough for you to get down into the crawl space under the floor.”
“It will take forever to get those tiles out,” Victor Zurab said, “We’ll get caught.”
“No one is going to get caught,” Tafar said with a serious look, “You have to hear me out, okay?”
“Okay,” the two men said in unison.
“This has been well planned out, you will be given the finest tools in the world to do this job, and every morning before you leave, you will seal the hole back up with the marble tiles.”
“I don’t know” Zurab said while Vano shook his head, “Those tiles are heavy as hell, I had to replace one once and it took me all day.”
Tafar pulled his feet down from the desk and said, “Well then, there’s nothing else to discuss, there’s the door, not get the hell out of here.”
The two men sat there with stunned looks on their faces and said nothing.
“My uncle said that you were brave and ambitious men that wanted to get rich, if that’s not the case, I don’t want you here wasting my time.”
Tafar stood up and pulled out a hundred-lari bill ($75 U.S.) from his wallet and threw the bill in front of Zurab saying, “All you have to do now is make me a copy of the key for the Cathedral, and I’ll find two more men to do the job.”
“I can’t give you a key, I’ll lose my job,” Zurab said.
Tafar pulled his large knife from its sheath on his belt and angrily stabbed it into the desk. Vano and Zurab backed away as they stared at the razor sharp blade with a serrated edge.
“You will get me a key or you will die. The choice is yours."
“Okay,” Zurab said scared for his life.
“If either of you breathes a word of this to anyone, I’ll gut you like two pigs, now get out of my sight you cowardly bastards, and bring me back that key.”
Vano and Zurab slowly walked to the door and looked at each other and wondered if they were making the right decision. Tafar sat back down at the desk and turned his scornful attention away from them. Ella gave them a pitying look to make them feel worse than they already did.
“We aren’t cowards, we’re just being cautious,” Vano turned around to say to Tafar.
“If we get caught, we’ll go to jail, how much will you pay us to make this worth our while?” Zurab asked.
“You will each get 100,000 lari ($75,000), and if we get more than we expect when we sell the coat, so will you.”
“What is this ‘coat’ you’re talking about? Zurab asked.
“I’ll tell you more only when you agree to do the job,” Tafar said as he still glared at the men with contempt.
“For 100,000 lari, we’d kill our own mothers,” Vano said while Zurab laughed and nodded his head.
“Now these are the brave soldiers we’ve been looking for,” Tafar said as he stood and smiled, “Ella, please pour us some wine to celebrate our partnership with our new soldiers.”
Tafar walked around the desk and shook hands with the two men and put his arm around their shoulders like they were comrades in arms.
“So, tell us about this coat,” Vano said with wide-eyed curiosity as he and Zurab sat back down in front of Tafar’s desk.
Tafar offered the two men cigars that they declined. He lit one for himself and began his story.
“After Christ was crucified in Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago, a rabbi named Elioz, who was from Georgia, was watching from a distance as the centurions gambled for the poor man’s clothes. Eloiz managed to barter the cloak of Christ from one of the soldiers. Meanwhile, back here in Georgia, Elioz’s mother saw the crucifixion in a dream and saw that her son was a witness to it. At the moment when the Lord’s body was nailed to the cross, Eloiz’s mother said that she felt the blows of the hammer in her heart and was frightened for her life. The next day she told this story to her daughter, Sidonia, and Elioz’s mother died very soon after. When Eloiz returned to Georgia, he told his sister Sidonia that what their mother saw was true, and he showed her the coat of Christ. Sidonia held the coat in her arms, kissed it, and died almost immediately with the coat still in her grasp. They couldn’t take it away from her.”
The two men stared at Tafar following his every word as Ella set down two small glasses of wine on the desk for them.
“Both Sidonia and the coat are still buried in a crypt under the floor of the Mtsket Patriarchal Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles in Mtskheta.”
“They told us in Sunday school that all of the Christian relics were stolen and sold by the Muslim invaders,” Zurab said.
“Other relics like the robe and parts of the cross were taken, but the coat has been buried here in Georgia for almost two thousand years.”
“Why hasn’t anyone else tried to dig it up?” Vano asked.
“Because the church leaders would have you hung if they caught you,” Tafar said, then laughed after the men got scared looks on their faces. “Hell, without a military takeover of the city, there was never any easy way to get to the coat from under the cathedral, but not to worry, today we have the tools and the technology to lead us to the prize.
My uncle told me that his grandfather and his grandfather’s grandfathers dreamed of getting to the coat, but there was no way to safely do this in the old days.”
“They thought that the coat could perform miracles?” Vano asked.
“I thought that you were supposed to be the smart one,” Tafar said with a grin, “Of course, why wouldn’t there be miracles if it is the real coat.”
“And how is a wise military man like you going to get money from a stolen Christian relic?” Vano asked.
“All we will have to do is prove just one miracle and we could sell it to the highest bidder. My uncle and I will fly to Switzerland and have a silent auction and we will remain totally anonymous. Maybe we could use you two as intermediaries when the time comes to deliver the coat to the winning bidder.”
“Aren’t you concerned about something bad happening to you?” Zurab asked.
“You mean because the coat may have some powers?”
Zurab nodded his head.
“Hell no,” Tafar said with a laugh, “I’m Muslim.”
“And your uncle is Christian?” Vano asked.
“Yeah, his brother, who was my father, married my mother who was a Muslim. I was eight years old when my father died and my mother moved us to Azerbaijan to be near her family.”
Ella walked over and put her hands on Tafar shoulders as if to soothe him as he told the sad story of his youth.
“My uncle was always good to me because he felt bad that I had lost my father. He’s started telling me about the coat when I was a kid, and every time I would come and visit, he would take me to the Cathedral and we would sit in the tenth pew. We would just sit there quietly and dream. He told me that if we find the coat, he wants me to touch it, and maybe I’ll turn into a Christian,” Tafar said with a laugh, “Deep down, I think he really wants to save my soul or maybe get me into a new line of work. I told him I’d help him get the coat, but I wouldn’t make him any other promises. Since my mother died, I killed more people than I could count, Russians in Chechnya, Jews on the West Bank in Palestine, black or white, yellow or brown, killing is how I make my living.”
Vano and Zurab looked at each other wondering why two young Christian men were sitting in a room reviewing a plan to steal the long buried Coat of Christ with a cold blooded mercenary.
“Comeback in two hours, the tools should be here by then,” Tafar said.
Vano and Zurab started walking toward the door.
“Get yourself a good meal with that money I gave you, and buy some good work gloves, you have some long nights ahead of you. No boozing at night until the job is done,” Tafar said as he pulled his knife out of the desk, “If I catch you sleeping on the job, I’ll cut you a new ass.”
The two men walked out of the office and Tafar sat back down in the chair with a smug look on his face. He was totally pleased that his plan was coming together. He didn’t want to tell the two men that he already had a buyer in mind for the coat for fear that they might mention it to his uncle. He even had the invitation to bid typed up on his computer back at his military compound in Ismailly, Azerbaijan.
Tariq Amin was, after all, one of the richest men in this part of the world, and it took Tafar two years to gain his complete trust. If Amin was spending tens of millions of dollars each year to right himself with his God and religion, will owning the coat of the Son of God not gain him some favor at the hour of his death? Maybe now, all the time that he spent pandering to Amin was finally going to pay off.
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