Biohazard

Tularemia can be inhaled or ingested or contracted through bites or scratches. It rarely passes directly from person to person, but it can be carried by fleas, ticks, rats, and other rodents and can enter the bloodstream through minor abrasions. The disease is marked by a sudden onset of fever and chills, often followed by an incapacitating headache. As soon as it enters the body, the bacteria will begin to multiply locally, gradually spreading to lymph nodes and distant organs, including the liver and spleen.

Even after successful antibiotics were developed in the 1940s, tularemia was considered an ideal weapon for the battlefield due to the speed with which it could overwhelm an opponent's medical resources, leaving hospitals and physicians unable to cope with a flood of patients in need of constant treatment.

If taken immediately, antibiotics can contain the spread of the disease and kill invading bacteria in a matter of days. The later the drugs are administered, the longer a victim will suffer. Particularly acute cases have been known to linger for months.

Tetracycline was thought to be the best antidote for tularemia, but I had no way of knowing how well it would work against the strain we had produced in our lab. In exceptional cases, certain highly virulent strains are capable of overcoming ordinary antibiotic treatment and can be fatal.

I called a friend's wife, a physician at the local hospital, and told her I needed tetracycline urgently. Under normal circumstances I would have required a prescription, but in a small town it was easy to cut corners.

"How much?" she asked, without registering the least surprise.

Calculating quickly, I asked for three times the customary dose. There were advantages to Soviet secrecy. I would have had a hard time getting that amount of tetracycline in the United States without a good explanation. I told her not to tell anyone.

I wanted a high-impact, crash dose. If it didn't work, I'd have to check myself into the hospital. Self-treatment had its limitations.

An hour later, my friend's wife showed up with the pills in a cavernous shopping bag, the kind Russian women carry around for emergencies. Lena answered the door. I sat in the armchair in the living room, too sick to move.

By the end of the day, my fever had begun to drop. I stayed home the next day, after calling in with a cold. By Wednesday or Thursday, three days after my exposure, I was better, although I continued to take high doses of tetracycline for the next ten days. I was able to return to work the following Monday.

When Lena asked me what had happened, I told her I'd had a mild infection after an accident with one of the substances in the lab. She knew nothing about tularemia, since I never shared with her the details of my work. She pretended to be calmed by my assurances that nothing was wrong, but when we finally left the Soviet Union she confessed how frightened she had been.

I had covered up the incident, but it was a powerful reminder of the consequences of our trade.

Accident at Sverdlovsk

No nation would be so stupid as to locate a biological warfare facility within an approachable distance from a major population center.

— Raymond Zilinskas, U.S. clinical microbiologist, in a 1980 report on the Sverdlovsk accident

Sverdlovsk, 1979

Biopreparat was the darkest conspiracy of the cold war, a network so secret that its members could not be told what colleagues in other parts of the organization were doing, or where. Yet even the most furtive networks are made of human beings. Gossip, professional rivalry, and ordinary curiosity ensured that we always knew a lot more than our leaders imagined.

Eventually, everyone found out about Sverdlovsk.

I first learned what happened there in a typically, and maddeningly, casual manner. It was June 1979, two months after the accident had occurred, and I was in Siberia, struggling through a period when nothing seemed to go right. The few successes I had achieved felt dull and unimportant and, despite the recognition 1 was getting from Moscow, I was convinced my career was going nowhere. I had managed to persuade myself that the world had passed me by.

There was no one to complain to except Lena, until I found a sympathetic ear in a colonel sent to Berdsk on a routine inspection trip from headquarters.

His name was Oleg Pavlov. He was the kind of man who would drop official business at a moment's notice for a glass of vodka and a chat. One Friday, after a tedious discussion of our research budget, he asked me if there were any places around town one could go to enjoy, as he put it, "the real Siberia."