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After digging most of the night in the crawlspace under the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles, Andre Vano dusted off his dirty watch to see what time it was.
“It’ll be daylight soon, let’s get the hell out of here.”
Victor Zurab, who didn’t need to be asked twice, started crawling toward the hole right behind him. They shook their clothes off to make sure they did not carry any dirt up into the church with them. They pushed the marble tiles back off the top of the hole and climbed up and out through the hole in the floor of the cathedral. As they took their first long breath of fresh air for the first time in eight hours, an unexpected voice came from nearby and echoed throughout the cathedral.
“How are we doing, men.”
The two men were nearly scared to death and turned around to see Tafar and Ella standing behind them, and they sat down in the pew to collect themselves.
After he settled down, Zurab asked, “How did you get in here?”
“Oh, I have my ways,” Tafar said with a smile as he bent down to look inside the hole.
“Very good, I see that things are progressing nicely,” he said as he viewed the neatly dug work area that the men had made for themselves. He then picked up the marble tile with his strong arms and sealed the hole for the two men. Vano and Zurab were grateful for the help, but were still edgy from the scare.
“I came here to tell you that I have to leave for Azerbaijan today,” Tafar said, “Ella will stay here to keep an eye on things and I’ll call you when I get there. If you need anything at all, call Ella at the cell phone number I gave you, do you understand?”
The two men nodded.
Tafar then pulled some rags out of one of the men’s packs and helped them dust the area for any dirt that they might have been carried up from under the floor.
“Maybe you’d better mop this area before you leave,” Tafar said to Zurab.
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