Biohazard

It was a difficult moment. My grandparents had had a marriage of opposites: he was a staunch Communist and she was a member of the old Kazakh nobility, a descendant of Teuke Khan, who had unified the country in the seventeenth century and created its first legal code. My grandmother, who used to take me as a child to the mosque to imbue me with the religion of my forebears, had never been reconciled to the Socialist regime — and it was now about to kill her husband. "He looked over at your uncle and me, and then he looked at my mother, and he told her to take us to an orphanage," she said, biting her lip. "My mother started to cry, and then I cried also because I thought that was a terrible thing to say.

"My mother asked why and he said it was the only way to save our lives. Otherwise they would soon come to arrest her too.

"But your grandmother didn't follow his advice. She took us home and hid us for months. And every night she would hear the cars coming down the street to take more people away. Each time she heard a car, she would say, There goes another person who killed your father."

My mother had tears in her eyes.

"You always have to do what you think is right."

The next evening we flew from Almaty to Moscow, where we were to board another plane and fly out of Russia. We landed a few hours before midnight. The connecting flight was not until the next morning, which presented me with a difficult decision.

Flights from Almaty arrived at Domodedovo Airport, south of Moscow. Our next flight left from Sheremetevo, the main international terminal north of the capital. The drive between the two airports was nearly two hours, and it would take us through the heart of the capital. To go directly to Sheremetevo might give our plan away to the KGB, who were sure to be watching. Our apartment was in northern Moscow, close to the highway leading to Sheremetevo. It made sense to go home first and wait.

If we were lucky, we would fool the KGB into believing we had returned as promised from our vacation.

A friend picked us up at Domodedovo. It was dark and cold, and there were few cars on the highway leading into the city.

I noticed a car following us. Its headlights glared in our rear window. When we changed a lane to let it pass it changed lanes with us. But when we turned off into our street, our tail disappeared. I took a deep breath. The first part of the plan had worked.

I paced back and forth in our apartment while the rest of my family napped. I peered out the window to check if the KGB had posted someone to wait for us. Finally, before daybreak, I woke everyone up. My friend's car was outside, puffs of white smoke trailing from the exhaust pipe.

We crept downstairs, hoping not to wake our neighbors. I held the doors open as Lena and the children bundled into the car and looked up and down the street. I couldn't see anyone.

No one followed us to Sheremetevo. My stomach continued to churn until we finally stood up in the waiting room to join the passengers boarding the plane.

It was hard to believe that we had tricked the KGB. When we settled in our seats, the stewardess's smile struck me as the most wonderful thing I had ever seen.

Debriefing

Russia has… never developed, produced, accumulated, or stored biological weapons.

— Address by Grigory Berdennikov, head of the Russian delegation to a November 1996 conference of signatories to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention

One month before I came to America, Russia signed an agreement with the United States and Great Britain putting an end to its biological weapons program. In September 1992, the three countries agreed to work together to convert former weapons-making facilities into centers for peaceful scientific research, to encourage scientific exchanges, and to establish procedures for reciprocal visits to military and civilian installations. The biological arms race was on its way to becoming a closed chapter of cold war history. Or so it seemed to the Americans who took charge of my debriefing.

Nearly every weekday morning during my first year in the United States, I drove to an office building in a small city in Virginia, twenty minutes' drive on Route 66 from Washington, D.C. In a second-floor room with comfortable chairs and a large table, I answered questions put to me by senior officials from intelligence agencies and various branches of government, including the Department of Agriculture, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. They generally introduced themselves, but after the fourth or fifth introduction I would lose track of who they were and which agency they came from.