Biohazard

As the months progressed, Sandakchiev and I developed a respectful working relationship, and I was able to unsnarl some of the bureaucratic logjams that had been making his life impossible. At first our biggest concern was safety. If even a tiny amount of smallpox were to escape into the surrounding countryside, it would cause a horrific epidemic. It would be much harder to cover up than the anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk.

Sandakchiev was determined to protect his employees. He repeated time and again that he would not sacrifice the health of a single worker to the pressure of a deadline. But running a biological weapons plant was not like managing a small research facility. New rules had to be enforced, and there were higher expectations. To keep the country — and our program — safe from exposure, Moscow imposed quarantine conditions on all Vector employees engaged in smallpox research. The staff was confined to special dormitories near the compound and guarded around the clock by security police. In a compromise, we granted them periodic leave to visit their families.

Considering that outsiders might be suspicious if they saw him — dreds of people with the distinctive marks of fresh smallpox inoculations on their arms years after the Soviet Union had discontinued all immunization, we decided, after some deliberation, to issue a directive that workers be inoculated on their buttocks. We assumed this part of their anatomy was safe from prying foreign eyes. Despite his laboratory expertise, Sandakchiev knew little about the technological process required to mass-produce smallpox. We needed someone who was not only a smallpox expert but who could make our new equipment and production lines work efficiently. A search of Biopreparat's personnel records turned up no one in the country who satisfied both requirements. Without such a production manager, the project was sure to falter.

I was at my desk early one morning in Moscow when Sandakchiev's excited voice came through on the phone.

"I've found the man we need," he said. "But I'm going to need your help to get him here."

I recalled with trepidation the trouble I'd gotten into at Stepnogorsk for my unorthodox hiring policies.

"I'll do my best," I said cautiously. "Who is he?"

"His name is Yevgeny Lukin. He's a colonel, works for the Fifteenth Directorate at Zagorsk. No one in the country knows more about producing smallpox. I've already spoken with him and he wants to come. We need you to do the paperwork."

I hadn't thought of the Fifteenth Directorate. The army command's jealousy and its distrust of Kalinin made personnel transfers between the directorate and Biopreparat almost impossible to arrange.

I made a few calls. Sandakchiev was right: Lukin was perfect for the job. As a young scientist at Zagorsk in the 1960s, he had been one of the luminaries of the early smallpox weaponization program. I decided to invite him to Moscow for an interview with Kalinin.

Lukin was in his early fifties but he carried himself with the military bearing of a younger man. I liked him at once.

The interview was excruciating. Kalinin fired questions relentlessly and with each passing moment Lukin seemed to sink deeper into the floor. "Yevgeny," the general drawled, "I don't remember ever hearing you stutter before. Is this a new defect?"

Suddenly, I remembered that Kalinin had spent part of his early career at Zagorsk. The two men were almost contemporaries. They obviously knew each other. Whatever relationship they had once enjoyed, Kalinin was determined not to let him forget the difference in their status.

The interview over, the terrified colonel was finally permitted to leave. I was about to follow when Kalinin motioned for me to stay behind. He had evidently enjoyed himself.

"He's not a bad guy," he said. "I don't see why he was so frightened."

"A lot of people are scared of you," I said.

Kalinin bent his head over his desk. I couldn't see the expression on his face, but I suspected my comment pleased him.

"All right," he said finally. "Sign the order and make him deputy at Vector."

Any doubts I had had about Kalinin's ability to manage the transfer soon vanished: Lukin was on his way to Siberia within a week.

From that point on, my opinion of Kalinin began to change. He had dominated my life almost from the moment I had joined Biopreparat. Like many of my colleagues, I resented his manipulative behavior and cool arrogance. But we all understood that those traits had helped secure the organization's place in our cutthroat political world. At closer range, however, they were even less attractive. I knew I owed my status to him, but as I watched him deal with his subordinates every day in the same callous manner in which he had treated Lukin, I wondered whether some day he would, at a whim, crush me too.