Biohazard

Rumyantsev and I built a microbiology lab from scratch. We planned the layout of the room from the sterile working tables to the sinks and water pipes. Gradually unpacking the boxes, we pulled out microscopes, test tubes, ovens, and a collection of equipment gathered from every part of the world. There were U.S. and Japanese fermenters, Czechoslovak reactors, French-made flasks. The bulk of our equipment came from the United States and Great Britain. We owed a lot more to our old allies than anyone could publicly concede. The fact that we could use standard fermenting machinery was a vivid illustration of the dual nature of the tools of our trade.

Within three or four months, we presented our managers with a fully equipped laboratory.

In January 1977, the commander of Berdsk, Colonel Vitaly Kundin, returned from a visit to Biopreparat headquarters carrying two small ampoules filled with freeze-dried Brucella, a bacterium that preys on cattle and other livestock. Transmitted to humans as brucellosis, or Malta fever, the bacteria cause fever, sweats, a sore throat, and a dry cough, sometimes accompanied by vomiting, acute abdominal pains, and diarrhea. Even when treated, the illness can last for months, and it can become chronic. My knowledge of this disease came from other sources besides textbooks. My father suffered for years from recurring bouts of brucellosis that left him in so much pain he was sometimes unable to move his hands.

"Now that we have a laboratory, we have something to use it for," Kundin said cheerfully. "Why don't you fellows see what you can do with this?"

None of the Biopreparat labs manufactured brucellosis in any significant quantity. The standard growth medium used until then contained a milk protein called casein. Examining some of my textbooks, I discovered a recipe for a mixture of yeast extract, vitamins, and other growth stimulators that had produced high yields with other cultures. In our new lab, Rumyantsev and I spent long hours experimenting with various combinations of the mixture until we got it right.

After eight months of work, we presented our findings: our new growth medium produced a substantial yield of bacteria that could be weaponized. Moscow headquarters was pleased. For me, it was a personal achievement — I had gone from being a pupil to a practitioner.

In the fall of 1977 I was promoted to senior lieutenant and senior scientist for my work in Berdsk. I also became the head of a new family: Lena gave birth to our first child, Mira, that year, and our lives seemed perfect. With my growing salary and the professional esteem of my peers, I began to believe that I had found the best of all possible worlds in the Soviet Union.

Two years later, when Lena was pregnant with our second child, Alan, I was named acting lab chief at Berdsk. After Alan was born I was promoted again and handed a new assignment: I was ordered to return to Omutninsk to develop a production process to weaponize tularemia. Building 107, they told me, was finally ready.

Building 107

Omutninsk, 1980

Omutninsk was a hive of activity. There were new buildings everywhere in the compound, but the one that mattered most was the spotless gray three-story structure designated as the pilot plant for tularemia.

Building 107 was structured according to the box-within-a-box principle, to keep the deadliest organisms out of the surrounding countryside. If you could lift the roof, it would resemble a Russian matryoshka doll. Snuggled inside the matryoshka is another doll, and then a tinier one inside, continuing until you reach the limits of the craftsman's skill, or, in this case, workable space.

The outer shell of Building 107 was Zone One. It housed the offices of administrative and security personnel and laboratories used for noninfectious organisms. Workers dressed in plain white lab coats and white pants milled in the corridors. Daylight poured through the windows, and the walls were plastered with resolutely upbeat Party banners: "Fulfill our Five-Year Plan in four years!" "Long Live the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!" It was possible to spend an entire day in Zone One without being aware of what was happening deeper inside the building.

Zone Two contained "hot" laboratories for work with pathogenic materials, storage vaults, animal cages, and giant sixteen-ton and twenty-ton fermenters, which soared to the upper levels of the building. Zone Three, nestled inside Zone Two, displayed the fruits of our engineering efforts since 1973: rows of gleaming steel centrifuges and drying and milling machines.