Biohazard

This decision would affect me directly. I was developing a reputation for getting results. Uncertainties about the direction of my life, and the morality of what I was doing, had long since receded.

Everyone soon learned of the plans to upgrade Stepnogorsk for anthrax production — it was the subject of office gossip for months. The most ambitious amongst us were eager to be part of a project that was bound to receive unlimited support and money. I put in a bid to become manager, the warning of Oleg Pavlov having long since been forgotten.

I was still only a major, a rank that didn't qualify me for a senior management position, but I was filled with more confidence than I probably deserved. My success with tularemia had given me an edge over other candidates, and I thought I could handle the job.

I called Kalinin and asked to speak with him about taking over as director of the plant. I think he enjoyed the brashness of my approach. There was just one difficulty: Stepnogorsk already had a director, a colonel appointed earlier that year. Kalinin told me to go on vacation while he considered a strategy.

A few weeks later I was on the way to Stepnogorsk with my family. I had been appointed deputy director of the upgraded anthrax facility. After we settled in, I went out for dinner with the director and some of the Stepnogorsk managers. Toward the end of the evening, the vodka was running freely.

The director, a colonel named Davydkin, pulled me to his side and gave me a playful punch.

"Kanatjan," he said, "it's really nice to have you here — but I want you to tell me the truth. You're here to take my job, aren't you?"

I laughed. "Of course not! Where did you ever get that idea?"

In less than a month, Davydkin was transferred and I was appointed director of the Kazakhstan Scientific and Production Base in Stepnogorsk.

Back in Sverdlovsk, anthrax production at Compound 19 was officially stopped. The military facility would continue to serve as a research base and a storage site for biological weapons. In 1983, the first of sixty-five army technicians and scientists from the now-discredited anthrax plant in the Urals began to arrive in Kazakhstan. One of them was Nikolai Chernyshov.

Chernyshov walked into my office in 1984, accompanied by the chief of Stepnogorsk's Biosafety Division, a lieutenant colonel named Gennady Lepyoshkin. The two young men made a startling contrast.

Lepyoshkin was sharp-tongued and gregarious, a man whose energy made him seem larger than any room he occupied. Chernyshov was a little older, in his late thirties, his brown hair already flecked with gray. I knew nothing about his background except that he was regarded as an expert in anthrax drying methods. He refused to look me in the eyes.

I hated to act as a "boss," especially in the company of men my age, and we soon launched into a free-flowing discussion about people we knew in common at Biopreparat and the Fifteenth Directorate. Chernyshov hardly participated. I noticed that his hands trembled as he held his teacup.

Lepyoshkin noticed my glances and began to grin.

"Kolya!" he said, turning to Chernyshov. "Why don't you tell our commander Kanatjan what you have done?"

"Go on, tell me," I said with a smile, enjoying our camaraderie. "I won't punish you."

I thought Chernyshov might have committed some embarrassing blunder in the lab. He was an experienced scientist; I couldn't imagine it was anything serious.

Chernyshov turned beet red. He kept sipping his tea and reIused to talk.

Lepyoshkin was enjoying himself too much to hold back.

"Have you heard about the Sverdlovsk accident?" he asked me.

By then, of course, I had.

"Do you know who was responsible?"

"Who?"

"You're sitting across the table from him."

I stared at Chernyshov in disbelief. His face was riveted on an invisible spot in front of him, and his hands began to shake so violently that he had to put his teacup down. He looked as if he was about to burst into tears.

Lepyoshkin began to describe what had happened that March afternoon in Sverdlovsk. Chernyshov didn't try to deny a thing. He refused to say a word.

His friend kept smiling. "So, now you know: this is the guy who killed all those people."

Chernyshov finally got up and walked out. I thought Lepyoshkin had been unnecessarily harsh, but I also felt a stirring of anger. Chernyshov would carry the guilt for his moment of thoughtlessness for the rest of his life. But he had never been punished, and no one in any position of authority had bothered to inform me of his responsibility for the accident before he was transferred to my facility.