Biohazard

I was to maintain production until I received an order from Moscow to stop, or until our plant was destroyed.

It may be hard for anyone to imagine today the seriousness with which we prepared for war, but along with most of my colleagues, I believed that a superpower conflict was inevitable.

In the early 1980s, relations between the Soviet Union and the West had plummeted to their lowest point in decades. The election of President Ronald Reagan had led to the biggest American arms buildup our generation had seen. Our soldiers were dying in Afghanistan at the hands of U.S.-backed guerrillas, and Washington was about to deploy a new generation of cruise missiles in Western Europe, capable of reaching Soviet soil in minutes. Intelligence reports claimed that Americans envisioned the death of at least sixty million Soviet citizens in the case of a nuclear war.

We didn't need hawkish intelligence briefings to persuade us of the danger. Our newspapers chafed over Reagan's description of our country as an evil empire, and the angry rhetoric of our leaders undermined the sense of security most of us had grown up with during the detente of the 1970s. Although we joked amongst our selves about the senile old men in the Kremlin, it was easy to believe that the West would seize upon our moment of weakness to destroy us. It was even conceivable that our army strategists would call for a preemptive strike, perhaps with biological weapons.

The Progress Scientific and Production Association was the eeriest place I had ever worked. Encamped on a windy plain ten miles from the uranium-mining town of Stepnogorsk, the enterprise was ringed with high gray walls and an electric-wire fence. The surrounding land was stripped of all vegetation, partly as a safeguard against the accidental release of pathogens (a lesson from Sverdlovsk, where hosing down the contaminated bushes had created a new source of infection), and partly to preserve a clear line of sight against intruders. Motion sensors were embedded everywhere.

Inside the compound, dozens of white and gray buildings were arranged on a grid of narrow streets. It was a miniature city, with a skyline of oddly shaped towers and buildings, some more than five stories high. There were separate entrances for civilian and military employees. Armed guards were stationed at both.

Security inside the compound was even more oppressive. Following the Sverdlovsk accident, intelligence organs had increased their influence throughout the Soviet biological weapons establishment. No explicit connection was ever drawn between what had happened in the Urals and the tightening of security regulations, but it was made clear to us that no one wanted another uncomfortable bout of international attention.

As a lab scientist, my worst fear had been that a careless act might put my life and that of my immediate coworkers at risk. As director, I had become responsible for the health and safety of tens of thousands of people in the nearby community. It was my job to make sure that our secrets stayed, both literally and figuratively, behind the walls of our compound.

At night, Lena told me I was grinding my teeth so hard it kept her awake. And I was talking in my sleep.

"You keep mumbling about requirements for this, requirements for that," she smiled. "You ought to forget about things when you come home." Even if I had wanted to forget, one person at Stepnogorsk was determined to keep my level of anxiety as high as possible.

One morning in October 1983, a few weeks after I arrived, KGB lieutenant colonel Anatoly Bulgak, commander of the facility's counterintelligence unit, poked his head around the door of my office.

"Mind if I come in?" he said.

He was inside before I could reply.

He plumped down in a chair close to my desk and casually stretched his legs out on the floor as if he had been doing this every morning of his life.

"Since you and I have to work together," he said, "I think we should be friends."

"What do you need?" I said.

"It's not what I need. It's really what you need."

He paused. I said nothing.

"You and I know a lot of new people will have to be brought here in the near future," he went on, clearly disappointed by my lack of response. "This place will get crowded, and it will be easy to make mistakes."

"Mistakes?"

He sat up in the chair and put a hand on each knee, to emphasize the seriousness of what he was about to say.

"Mistakes of the security kind. We can't afford that."

I bristled at his use of "we."

"I don't see any reason to worry," I said. "I'm sure I'll be able to call on you if there's a problem."

"You don't understand," Bulgak went on impassively. "It would be natural, and sensible, to go over the personnel lists ahead of time. That way, there won't be any problems with Moscow."

"I don't think you are qualified to choose scientists — are you?" I said.

I tried to make this sound like an innocent remark, but he recognized it immediately as the insult it was meant to be.