1. Lakoba, “Ya—Koba, a ty—Lakoba,” 68; Mlechin, KGB, 199. In a recent interview, Davlet Kandalia, Lakoba's driver and bodyguard, offers a completely different retelling of Lakoba's death. According to Kandalia, the fateful dinner took place at the home of Sukhishvili, the founder of a well-known dance ensemble, rather than at Beria's home. Late in the evening Lakoba was brought to Kandalia in their hotel covered in dirt, as if he'd been taken all around the city in order to allow the poison to take effect. Kandalia says that before expiring Lakoba whispered two things in his ear: first, he ordered Kandalia to kill his murderer (which Kandalia laments that he was unable to fulfill), and second, that there was a briefcase in his car containing a note from Lakoba to Stalin about Beria, Lakoba's written agreement to become Commissar of Internal Affairs, and a request to join Abkhazia to the Krasnodar region of the RSFSR. Lakoba asked Kandalia to send these papers to Poskrebyshev, but the messenger had a heart attack on the train to Moscow and the papers disappeared, and on the following day Kandalia was arrested. “Nestor i ten,” Ogonyok, no. 42, November 2003, v. 4818 (http://www.ogoniok.com/win/200342/42-60-63.html).
2. Cited in Shamba and Neproshin, Abkhazia.