“What kind of car?” I asked.
He grinned, a flash of gold. “A Volga, of course,” he replied with typical Georgian bravado.
“I’ll be right back.” It was a two-hour ride and I had to use the toilet.
In the stuffy terminal toilets, I decided to take off my raincoat and rolled it neatly into my carry-on sports bag.
A shiny Volga was standing with the motor running at the head of the taxi rank when I returned, but the young Georgian with the gold teeth was gone. Momentarily confused, I stood on the curb and looked around for the driver.
Then a stocky older man stepped from the other side of the car and reached for my suitcase. “You’re going to Tskhakaya, aren’t you?” His words were more of a statement than a question.
“I’ve already made my deal for seventy rubles,” I said, keeping a grip on my suitcase handle. I didn’t like the way this fellow had pushed in here. So I decided to see if he’d accept five rubles less.
“Sure, of course,” the man replied.
We were about six miles from the airport when the driver turned to face me. “Say,” he said without a trace of the typical singsong Georgian accent, “didn’t you forget something at the terminal?”
“What?” I was genuinely confused now.
“Your raincoat.”
I stared back at the man’s eyes in the rearview mirror. A chill pang stabbed beneath my throat. This driver had not been out here when I’d reentered the terminal to use the toilet. How did he know I had been wearing a raincoat? Was it possible that the KGB had managed to shift surveillance so quickly? Then I noticed the man’s cheap leather jacket. Despite the heat of the afternoon, he had that jacket zipped to his throat.
“I’ve got it here,” I answered, patting my nylon sports bag. My voice sounded shrill. The paranoia had begun.
Carrying my suitcase up the steep stairwell of my apartment building podyesd, I met my friend Valery coming down. He had been back from his last tour in Afghanistan for almost two months, but I’d hardly had a chance to talk to him. He was dressed in civilian clothes, carrying an overnight bag slung on his shoulder.
After we had shaken hands heartily and embraced, he looked me over and a warm smile spread across his face. “I hear you’re making waves, Sasha.”
I smiled back and shrugged, a neutral gesture devoid of information. The last thing I wanted to do was to ensnarl Valery in my escape plans. But his pleasant greeting and unfeigned pleasure at seeing me again provided important evidence that — whatever the Osobists were doing — they had not yet tried to suborn my friends as knockers.
Valery explained he was off to Tbilisi for several days’ leave to see his father, a retired Russian factory worker who had lived in Georgia for years.
I had a shock when I unlocked the door of my little apartment. Papers and clothing were scattered on the floor, and the doors hung open on the hardwood armoire I had finally managed to buy the previous autumn. It looked like the Osobists had, after all, paid a visit. Then I realized what had actually happened. While I was in Moscow, Jana had returned from the university in Kiev to collect her possessions. A quick check of the apartment revealed that was not all she collected. The small strongbox where I kept our meager savings was open, empty. She had taken more than her share. But at least she was gone.
That night at the officers’ dining room I learned that our regimental Osobii Otdel officer, Major Soloyov, was occupied on other matters than my escapades in Moscow. Captain Rustam Salamov had apparently become a scandalous irritant to the zampolits and Osobists. The issue was still Salamov’s wife, Anna, the pretty Hungarian girl he had married while stationed at a MiG-23 regiment in western Hungary. Even though she was legally married to Salamov, she had only been granted a tourist visa. The fact that he had divorced a Russian girl to marry a “foreigner,” and had then audaciously brought this alien back to visit an officers’ housing compound of a Soviet air base, was viewed by the authorities as a blatant provocation.
They knew, of course, that Salamov intended to provoke them to the point of landing a discharge, at which point he would simply emigrate to Hungary and go into private business with his wife’s prosperous family. His tactic seemed to be working. Like me, he was grounded and pressing his superiors hard for a favorable resolution to the whole painful situation. Major Soloyov and his invisible crew of knockers were reportedly working around the clock, keeping Salamov and his suspicious alien wife under constant surveillance.
So much the better for me. I had delicate preparations to make in the coming weeks, and I certainly did not want to have to worry about every fellow I saw on the street wearing a leather jacket.
The next afternoon, Sunday, April 9, I was alone in my kitchen, listening as usual to the news summary on Radio Liberty. But this news bulletin was hardly normal. There were preliminary reports from Tbilisi that “Soviet security forces” had violently dispersed pro-independence demonstrations before dawn that morning. At least six people had been killed and scores more injured. Early eyewitness accounts were confused, the calm Russian-speaking reporter in Munich conceded. But it was clear that “several hundred” Army and MVD Interior Ministry troops, supported by armored vehicles, had converged on Lenin Square and attacked peaceful demonstrators.
I carefully tuned the set when the signal began to fade. Then the familiar buzzing thump of shortwave jamming began. Quickly I snapped on the alligator clip of my wire antenna and managed to boost the signal from the Munich transmitters so that I could hear the announcer clearly, despite the attempts to jam the broadcast.
The commentator was now giving a background report on these latest independent demonstrations in Tbilisi. For the past week, several thousand demonstrators had gathered on the wide boulevards of central Tbilisi, some demanding greater autonomy, others actual independence from the Soviet Union. Senior Georgian Party officials, including First Secretary Dzhumber Patiashvili and the Georgian Minister of the Interior, Shota Gorgodze, had repeatedly declared the demonstrations illegal and ordered that the crowds disperse. The Communist officials’ refusal to even discuss the issue of Georgian autonomy from Moscow seemed to incense the demonstrators. That morning at least a thousand more joined the peaceful demonstration, waving pro-independence banners and singing the republican anthem.
Despite the size of the crowds, there had been none of the mass anger and minor violence that had often marked the independence demonstrations in the Baltic Republics. Instead, the leaders of the Georgian movement had responded with a different tactic: The day before, several hundred had declared a hunger strike. Surrounded by supporters, they had gathered beneath the budding shade trees on Rustaveli Prospekt and Lenin Square, fronting the handsome neoclassic building of the Georgian Council of Ministers.
The Radio Liberty commentator noted that the Tbilisi demonstrators had combined the spontaneous passion of the Georgian people with unusual mass coordination. Their banners were printed in Russian, Georgian, and English. A typical placard read: “Down with the decaying Soviet Empire.” Many people waved the black, white, and claret flag of the once-independent Georgian Republic.
By Monday morning Radio Liberty’s reports were more detailed and alarming. Approximately six thousand demonstrators had been massed along Rustaveli Prospekt and on Lenin Square at four o’clock Sunday morning, still singing their republican anthem and waving banners. The crowd had been swelled by thousands of rugby fans, who had left a match at the big Tbilisi stadium to march to Lenin Square. There were hundreds of children among the demonstrators, some infants in their mothers’ arms. It was a warm spring weekend night, and the crowd was in an exuberant, almost joyful mood. Speakers with bullhorns mounted the steps of the government buildings on the square to address the crowds. One, the local patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, warned the demonstrators that the Communists were planning a violent military crackdown. But few people in the crowd seemed alarmed. They should have taken the warning seriously.