The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

laid down on the couch. He felt pressure in his chest. He asked his secretary Lyuba, thedriver’s wife, to call the embassy clinic for a doctor. Alexander Mikhailovich, typical of theStalin school of leadership, would very rarely succumb to illness and would never make hisailments apparent. Nobody could see the seventy-two-year-old ambassador’s weaknesses,although sometimes, like any other mortal, he would not feel well. He awaited the doctorwith grim and foreboding expectations.Ten years later, in his Moscow apartment overlooking the Kremlin, Puzanov told theauthors of this book that then, in the morning of April 27, 1978, he vaguely, subconsciouslyunderstood that the quiet, idyllic way of life he had been enjoying in Afghanistan wasover—that from then on, everything would go wrong. Blood would be spilled, the “time oftroubles” would arrive, and too many innocent lives would be broken up in the process.The head of the embassy clinic arrived shortly. He was an experienced doctor and avery tactful man. He took Puzanov’s blood pressure, prescribed pills, and ordered theambassador not to worry. An odd character, he diagnosed the hypertension to be a result ofthe approaching thunderstorm. “What does it have to do with the weather?” AlexanderMikhailovich grumbled to himself after the doctor left.At about 2 p.m. Osadchiy and Pechenenko almost simultaneously received urgentcables from Moscow that were obviously coordinated by the leadership of the KGB andGRU. The cables reported the growing concern among Politburo members and other Sovietleaders about the volatile political situation in Afghanistan and urged them to send regularreports regarding the evolution of the situation in Kabul. Moscow stressed its acute interestin receiving minute-by-minute updates regarding military activity as well as analyses of thepossible outcomes for both the loyalists and the rebels. Moscow suggested that the KGB34