“Sorry, but I don’t think I follow.”
“I am his friends’ spiritual father and I have been waiting for Gega as well.”
“Where have you been waiting?”
“At my monastery. I’ve waited for days but when he didn’t show up, I came myself.”
“He’ll probably call today, so could I take a message?”
“How did they go?”
“By plane.”
“Have they departed already?”
“They must be in the air already.” Automatically, Natela looked at the clock on the wall. “About an hour ago.”
“Did the others go with them?”
“Yes, the boys went with them.”
“I was supposed to go too, but I was late.”
“Did they know you were also going?”
“They didn’t. Nor did I.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”
“I am their spiritual father and should be together with them now on that plane.”
“Did you miss the flight?”
“I didn’t know they were going today.”
“But you wanted to go with them.”
“I didn’t want to go at all and I didn’t want them to go, either.”
“I apologize again, but I still don’t understand you.”
“I don’t understand either why they hurried…”
Natela didn’t say anything else to the monk, though she still didn’t understand what he meant. Suddenly she realized while she had been talking to the visitor from the window it was getting cold.
“Come in, please.” Only now did Natela invite him in and the monk smiled.
“Thank you very much, but I must be going. It’s already late. Everything is late.”
“What shall I tell Gega when he calls?”
“Where from?”
“From Batumi,” Natela said, the anger mounting in her.
“If he calls, tell him I’m praying for them and will always be praying for them.”
The monk turned to go, then looked back and said goodbye to her as he left.
Only then did Natela begin to wonder why the monk knocked on the window and not on the door and, unable to find an explanation, she went over his words. In her anxiety, her thoughts flowed in one direction and then the next. She called the families of Gega’s friends to find out whether they knew anything. She called the homes of those who she knew for sure were together with Gega and Tina, but she received the same answer everywhere—no one had called from Batumi yet, which meant the plane was still in the air.
Then Natela really fell asleep, utterly exhausted. She fell into a very deep sleep and slept until the evening. She slept, until they woke her up…
The Plane
Later referred to as a hijack, it looked more like a group suicide of the desperate.
The hijackers were dressed casually, just like the jeans generation did in those days. Only Giorgi Tabatadze wore a suit with a tie and held a globe in his arms. He also had the Bible, which he passed to Gega once on board. Later, the globe disappeared, later giving birth to an assumption that the guns were smuggled inside it. In reality, Tina’s friend had them in her handbag without knowing it.
Giorgi took only a globe and the Georgian Bible. He left behind an amazing letter for his son, in which he told little Giorgi how to find the shining star whenever he missed his father.
After delays from the unruly drunk, there were problems with weather once they were in the air. According to the official report, when approaching Batumi, the pilots received information about worsening weather conditions and changed the course. Some theorized that such a sudden change likely seemed suspicious to the hijackers and so they acted immediately. However, based on the black box data, the official report also mentioned that the pilots weren’t receiving orders from the flight dispatchers, but from military authorities, which lends credence to the likelihood there was a pre-planned operation.
Among the fifty-eight passengers on the plane, there was one who didn’t have any business in Batumi whatsoever. His job was to sit on the plane, just as KGB officers accompanied other flights. In Soviet airspace, there was not a single flight without at least one KGB officer traveling under the guise of a regular passenger. All Soviet citizens were aware of it, as were Gega’s friends. In their attempt to hijack the plane, they were convinced that they had to identify the KGB agent accompanying their flight right away. They thought that getting rid of him would make it considerably easier to force the crew to cross the border from Batumi and land in Turkey at one of the US military bases. However, they didn’t know for certain which of the fifty-eight passengers was the KGB officer, so their plans were only speculative. It was like a childhood game where kids identified spies based on their clothes. Accordingly, they decided that a middle-aged man sitting in the first row was the agent because he wore a grey raincoat. Though Gega voiced his uncertainty, most of the conspirators had a different opinion supported by a “very solid” argument mentioned by one of them and then repeated by the rest.
“That’s him for sure, look at his typical KGB face!”
“Yes, he does look like one, but what if he’s an ordinary passenger?” Gega’s question had little effect on the others.
“If that’s not him, then search for someone else, show him to me and I’ll take care of him,” Kakhaberber advised Gega, as Giorgi laughed.
“Where am I supposed to look for one?” Gega was genuinely surprised.
“Here, on the airplane,” said Giorgi. It became clear to Gega that the choice had already been made.
Acting quicker than Kakhaber, Giorgi got to his feet and headed towards the cockpit with a bottle of sparkling wine in his hand that he drained on the way. When he approached the first row, he hit the selected passenger on his head with the bottle, catching him completely unawares, and the attempt to hijack the plane began.
Much later, only when everything was over, did it transpire that the hijackers were wrong. The middle-aged man, who passed out right away from the blow, was actually an ordinary passenger, not a KGB agent. However, it didn’t make any difference to the man at the time, since he lay sagging in his seat, with a gash on his head, while a woman sitting next to him screamed loudly with fear and shock for the whole plane to hear.
It was strange that the racket didn’t cause a panic among the hijackers at all. It seems they were prepared for the reaction, so they began to carry out their plan without delay.
As soon as Giorgi had got up from his seat with the bottle in his hand, the others immediately took their positions and the first with a weapon in his hand to reach the pilots was Giorgi himself, who was closely followed by his elder brother. But Giorgi didn’t even have time to pass their demands to the crew in the cockpit. Without any warning, an armed man shot Giorgi, killing him on the spot. The armed man in plain clothes was sitting facing the aisle and with his back to the sky. His presence in the cockpit was completely unexpected to the hijackers.
They had studied plans for a small plane, and this larger one was all new to them. The cockpit of a small plane didn’t have enough space for anyone apart from the pilots. No one could fit there as comfortably as that armed man who surprised Giorgi and Kakhaber.
Giorgi was dead and the hijackers didn’t have time to think about their mistakes. There was no time left for thinking at all, since the armed man was already shooting down the aisle. Fifty something passengers sitting on the plane ducked their heads at the sound of the gun. So did the hijackers, but bullets can never distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. The shooter had little time to think either. He wounded Kakhaberber, and another passenger, which led the flight attendant, possibly instinctively, to close the cockpit door. She may have closed the door in order to block the way for the hijackers, so they couldn’t reach the pilots. Regardless, it proved difficult due to the first victim lying motionless in the entrance.