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A deliver van pulled up to the warehouse on Shanidze Street and a man got out of the passenger side of the van and rang the doorbell on the office door. After a few seconds Tafar Rasulon opened the door and silently stared at his visitor.
The visitor was surprised when he looked at the tall, muscular Tafar with his thick, dark moustache and military uniform and thought that he might be the victim of a set up. He slowly backed away and thought about running or at the least, coming up with a good lie fast.
Seeing the fear in the man’s eyes, Tafar said, “Relax, we are the buyers.”
The visitor said nothing as his eyes darted around the area looking for more soldiers or police.
Tafar became impatient with the man and grabbed him by the collar and said, “ Do you have the tools?”
“Yes, sir,” the man stuttered, “And you have the money?”
Tafar held up a small moneybag and said, “You’ll find that this is the amount that we agreed to.”
He tossed it to the man who hurriedly walked it over to the van and handed it in the window for the driver to hold. The man then walked around and started to open the back door of the van when Tafar walked up to him and abruptly kicked the van door closed.
“What’s the matter with you, don’t open that out here.”
Tafar then signaled with a ‘thumbs up’ for Ella, who was watching out the window, to open the garage door. The men pulled the van into the warehouse as Tafar turned on the lights and closed the garage door behind them.
The first man again opened the back door of the van and said, “Here’s the equipment that you ordered.”
“Excellent,’ Tafar said before yelling for Vano and Zurab to come and get the equipment. The two men came out of the office and into the warehouse and started helping the man remove the boxes from the van and lay them on the concrete floor of the warehouse.
“If there’s a problem with the equipment, my men will contact you,” Tafar said.
“Yes, of course, but I think you’ll be quite satisfied.”
“I hope so,” Tafar said, “Because I’ll be in Azerbaijan, and if I have to come back here to settle any disputes, I won’t be very happy,” he said as he opened his jacket enough for the man to see his pistol and big knife.”
The man quickly pulled out his business card and said, “Your men can call me any day and anytime, I will replace every defective tool that you have.”
“We paid you a lot of money, I would expect as much,” Tafar said.
As the man started to slowly back away from Tafar and move toward his van, he bumped into Ella who was blocking his path, and she shoved him back in front of Tafar.
“Remember what I said on the phone, if you breathe a word of this transaction to any one, I will cut out your tongue so you never speak to anyone again.”
Tafar let the man get back into his van and Ella walked over to open the garage door and let the van out. As the van was backing out, Tafar pulled out his big knife and pointed at the man who was now sitting in the passenger seat and fearing for his life. He told the driver to stop, rolled down the window and said, “You will not have to worry about me, I won’t say anything.”
The van continued backing out and Tafar stared him down coldly making sure that that the man knew that he was to be taken seriously.
After he closed the garage door, Tafar walked over to Ella, Vano, and Zurab, who opened the boxes and were inspecting the tools.
“This is great,” Vano said when he picked up a small hand held rotary saw with a diamond edged blade and a vacuum clearer attachment, “These tools must have cost a small fortune.”
“It takes money to make money,” Tafar said.
“Then we could get started tonight?” Zurab asked eagerly.
“Of course, the sooner the better,” Tafar said, “Go to the cathedral tonight and cut the entry hole in the floor. We’re not sure how much work area, you’ll have when you go down into the crawl space, so you may spend a lot of time clearing away dirt to make room for yourselves under the floor.”
Tafar opened another case and pulled out some small electronic boxes and handed one of them to Zurab. “Find a good secure place to hide this box in the main part of the cathedral.”
Zurab inspected the box and said, “What is it?”
“It’s a sound and motion detector. This way you’ll know if anyone is in the cathedral before you exit the hole in the morning. If anyone is in the cathedral the light on this monitor box will flash. Don’t even think about trying to sneak out of that hole. If you do anything stupid to jeopardize this mission, you better hope the police hang you before I get my hands on you.”
Vano and Zurab stared at each other worriedly.
“Ha ha ha,” Tafar laughed, “Relax, if we do our jobs properly, no one is going to get caught.”
He handed the men a cell phone and said, “If you find that someone is in the church, call Ella at the number I wrote on the back of the phone. She will come over and look the area over and secure it before you climb out. The bottom line is that you should get your asses out of the hole before 5:00 A.M., no one should be around then. But if you lose track of time, you may have to stay in the hole. Call Ella, and she will bring you food, and call your work and tell them that you’re sick, okay?”
The two men looked at each other again and then nodded their heads.
“Do either of you men know how to drive?”
“Sure, we both do,” Vano said, “But neither one of us could afford to keep car.”
“Load the tools in that van over there,” Tafar said as he pointed to a beat up old van. You could use it to go back and forth to the cathedral in Mtskheta, but if I find out that you are using it for personal use, you won’t have hands to hold on to a steering wheel to ever drive again. If I see you driving that van drunk, the van will become your coffin.”
The two men wait to see if Tafar was joking, but he doesn’t laugh this time.
“You won’t have to worry about us,” Zurab said.
“I better not have to,” Tafar replied.
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