efficient.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 12
Massacre
April 7–14, 1989
The Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Sochi on the Black Sea was scheduled to land in midafternoon. As always, the twin-jet Tu-134 airliner was filled to capacity. This flight went on to Yerevan and many of the passengers were Armenians. I noticed one group of young men seated behind me who seemed nervous, almost apprehensive. They were whispering among themselves and at one point called over the Armenian flight attendant for a hushed conference.
Their conspiratorial behavior forced me to consider my own situation. Colonel Ivanov probably had good connections in the KGB and the GRU Chief Directorate for Military Intelligence. My desperate attempt to blackmail him to obtain a medical discharge could well indicate that I was capable of even more desperate action. An officer like me serving in a MiG-29 regiment might be considered a dangerous security risk. So there was a good chance the Osobii Otdel would be waiting at the Sochi airport to put me under surveillance.
Then, on the final approach to Sochi airport, I heard the pilot apply full throttle and begin climbing away in an aborted landing. The flaps came up and the landing gear thumped back into their wells. We crossed the coast and banked left onto a southwest heading over the Black Sea. I checked the angle of the sun and noted the time, 2:27 P.M. Ten minutes later we were still heading out to sea and had obviously cleared Soviet airspace. This had to be a hijacking attempt by those furtive young Armenians behind me.
I tried to relax in my seat. This was the height of irony. Every day for the last three months I had been trying to find a foolproof escape route from the Soviet Union, and now I had apparently been given a free ticket to Turkey.
Then the engine pitch changed again and we banked further left, back toward the Soviet mainland. Soon we were set up on final approach to another airport. When we touched down, I realized at once that we had landed at Sukhumi, 150 miles down the coast. As we taxied to the terminal, the attractive young flight attendant finally deigned to tell us what was happening. “Dear passengers,” she said, batting her dark eyes seductively. “We followed our assigned route all the way to Sochi… but then we landed here in Sukhumi.” She laughed sharply and turned her back on us.
Around me the disgruntled passengers were grumbling loudly. Some were on health-cure holidays to resorts near Sochi. The buses from those resorts were waiting over a hundred miles away. These passengers realized that, once more, Aeroflot had taken their money and not delivered proper service.
As I shuffled out past the cockpit, I asked the copilot why we had aborted at Sochi.
“Sudden fog,” he said. “Zero ceiling, zero visibility.”
Walking across the sunny tarmac to the terminal, I considered this piece of news. Obviously the aborted landing had indeed been sudden; we were locked up on short final when the pilot climbed away. If the KGB surveillance team was waiting for me up at Sochi, they probably hadn’t had time to reassign a new team down here. People thought the KGB was omnipotent, with thousands of agents evenly spread across the country. But I knew from my friends Zaour and Vladimir just how shorthanded they were here in Georgia.
I had not earned a free ride to Turkey. But at least I wasn’t being followed yet.
Twenty minutes later the porters shoved my bag off their rusty cart, and I cut through the crowd to the line of Volga and Zhiguli taxis half blocking the crescent drive outside the terminal building. The taxi ride to Tskhakaya normally cost twenty-five rubles per person, but I offered a driver — a mustached young Georgian with prominent gold teeth — seventy-five to take me straight to my base with no side trips to deliver other passengers.
“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.
