GR translation: why not the breath of Mukuru?

[Mike Jing]

V524.30-34, P533.25-30   They ride on up to where Pavel’s sniffing
synthetic gasoline on the side of the lampless beige hill, under the tanks
snailing whitely to heaven, here he is, one of the IG’s happiest customers.
. . .
      Does Pavel know something the rest of us don’t? If the IG wanted this
to be a cover-up for something else, why not the breath of Mukuru?

Here, does it mean that "the breath of Mukuru" is something the IG wanted
to cover up, or that it is used to cover up something else?