He placed a Turkish cigarette into his onyx holder. "What word from Kabul?" he asked Ghazi.
"Things are coming in piece by piece," the army major reported. "I have beefed up security. Early last night a convoy was massacred near Charikar."
"That area is secured."
"Uh, so Kabul thought. As you know, comrade General..."
"Yes, yes, of course, the situation is still far too fluid. Kabul believes this to be an orchestrated offensive then, is that it?"
"So it would appear."
"And yet it troubles me in particular, coming so close as it does to the implementation of Operation Devil's Rain." Voukelitch thought aloud through a blue-gray cloud of exhaled smoke. "The man Lansdale, the CIA agent, could well have been on to us and what we have been up to here these past four months."
"The man is dead, sir."
"True, but you had better triple your security measures, Major, and not only in preparation for possible attack from those savages. Whoever helped Lansdale to escape from the base at Kabul. If Lansdale knew about us, it is most likely his allies now possess the information as well. All too likely..."
"And you suspect someone other than the mujahedeen?"
"It could very well be."
"But who?"
"That is my concern, Major. Yours is to see that this installation is impenetrable to attack. Operation Devil's Rain will not be delayed or sabotaged."
"Perhaps we should request reinforcements."
"That is a very bad idea, Major. Have I not repeatedly stressed the sensitivity of this project? There are members of the Central Committee and the General Staff who are not aware of the work that has gone on in the laboratory facility constructed here."
"Of course, comrade General, of course. A very bad idea."
"A far better one, Major, would be for you to personally see to increasing security measures immediately."
Ghazi again got abruptly to his feet to deliver a crisp salute. "But of course, comrade General. I will see to it."
Voukelitch did not bother returning the salute.
"See that you do, Major. That will be all." Ghazi turned and exited the office.
Voukelitch waited five minutes in silence, doing nothing but thinking, to insure that Ghazi would not return with some follow-up question. The KGB man smoked another cigarette in the interim. When he felt certain he would not be disturbed, most of the base asleep at this hour in any event, he leaned forward and depressed a hidden buzzer he had installed on the underside of the desk since taking over this office.
A side door opened and Voukelitch's bodyguard entered, armed with a holstered pistol and a shoulder-strapped submachine gun. "Yes, my General?"
"What have you learned, Corporal Fet?"
"I, uh, socialized with the CQ staff in the orderly room while you spoke alone with Major Ghazi," the Soviet soldier reported promptly. "Major Ghazi has done an admirable job in increasing security measures."
"Corporal" Fet was in fact a KGB agent, transferred to Ghazi's command as one of the regular Soviet liaison months before Voukelitch's arrival and the Devil's Rain project. Fet had seemed a random choice by Voukelitch as his bodyguard from the ranks, the perfect spy, a means by which Voukelitch could double-check on the camp CO's activities.
"Very good. Please lock the hallway door, Corporal."
The two men played out their roles in Fet's deception even in private.
"Yes, sir." Fet locked the door and returned to stand before Voukelitch's desk.
"And our... other business?" Voukelitch inquired in a lower voice. He had the office searched daily by Fet for hidden microphones, but one could never be too sure.
"Your pilot returned with a passenger less than thirty minutes ago," Fet replied in the same lowered voice. "The man awaits you now at the appointed spot."
Voukelitch pocketed his cigarette holder, stood from his desk chair and started toward the door by which Fet had entered. "Excellent. We will leave as discreetly as possible, though no one will attempt to stop us."
Fet moved to the door.
"It is good that we hurry, sir. The pilot told me that in addition to the goods... the jukiabkr has something vital to tell you."
Voukelitch paused before the door. He unholstered his own pistol, checked it, reholstered it and nodded for Fet to open the door. "Very well, Corporal. We are on our way. It is a busy night and far from over."
Voukelitch and Fet exited the building via a side door. A sleek ZIL limousine stood waiting beside the building. Corporal Fet held open the door for the general, then moved around to the driver's seat. Neither man spoke as the officer's car cleared through the well-guarded main gate of the fort without being stopped, into the pitch-dark night.
Voukelitch considered again the advisability of liquidating Fet when this mission ended, since only Fet knew the true extent of the general's dealings in and around Parachinar.
The Devil's Rain operation was far more than strategical genocide in much the same way as the KGB itself was far more than merely the security and terrorist arm of the USSR.
In fact, Pytyour Voukelitch and the inner core of the KGB had been exploiting the very capitalistic potentials of their far-flung organization's activities for years.
The military strategy of blanketing the Panjir Valley, the Khyber Pass and other vital areas with Devil's Rain was but a cover for its real value to General Voukelitch.
Other countries, Third World mainly, would pay dearly for the secret ingredients of the Rain and there was the "other business," one of the reasons he ventured out at night in the bulletproofed ZIL, though Ghazi had assured Voukelitch countless times that the vicinity was safe even at night.
Voukelitch had earlier that evening dispatched a Hind helicopter to a village in the relatively distant Charikar region to bring back the village jukiabkr.
During the past four months the man had served as an excellent source of hashish, which Voukelitch channeled on to the next link in the chain via KGB channels for his share of the considerable profits the drug brought from both Western countries and, more increasingly of late, from the Soviet Union herself. This pleased Voukelitch; it would be easier to make money closer to home and his cut would be larger.
He fitted another cigarette into his holder and lit it, reaching his decision.
No, he would not kill Fet. Not yet, he decided.
With the Devil's Rain ready to fall, Voukelitch reasoned that the first order of business would be to cancel out the jukiabkr. Voukelitch expected to be moving on within days; dealings with the Afghan peasant would no longer be feasible and the man could hardly be allowed to live to tell others that he had wholesaled hashish in quantity to a Russian officer.
The whole of the KGB was impossible to control and there were elements, the naive, the idealists, who would have Voukelitch sent to the gulag if the activities of him and his cohorts ever came to light. No, he decided, the jukiabkr had expended his usefulness.
Tonight he would die, and for that Voukelitch would need Fet.
The ZIL traveled at a snappy speed along the well-maintained road toward Parachinar, the limousine's headlights piercing the night like fingers pointing the way.
Voukelitch's mind jumped ahead in anticipation of what would happen after his rendezvous with the jukiabkr.
Until not too many years ago, prostitution in Muslim Afghanistan had been punishable by death — and probably still was among the mountain tribes, Voukelitch reflected — and things had not got much better. The world's oldest profession was conspicuous by its absence in this nation of religious fundamentalism... except for the "safe houses" established by the Soviet command for the chosen among its ranks. Parachinar had not rated such a place until Voukelitch insisted on and supervised the start of one on the outskirts of town.